The Third Reich

by Thomas Childers

  In the general uproar, Hitler, surrounded by his Shock Troop guards, pushed his way through the crowd. Shouts of protest rang out, tables and chairs were overturned, beer mugs crashed to the floor. Just in front of the podium Hitler clambered onto a chair, gave a signal to the SA man on his right, and a pistol shot was fired into the ceiling. In the sudden silence, Hitler bellowed, “The German revolution has broken out! This hall is surrounded.” The response was not what he had anticipated. Many in the distinguished audience whistled and stamped their disapproval; others shouted “Mexico” or “South America.” This was no banana republic!

  Dripping sweat, Hitler stripped off his rumpled trench coat, and to the surprise (and amusement) of some, stood before them in a long-tailed black cutaway. He appeared, one bemused onlooker remarked, “like a cross between Charlie Chaplin and a headwaiter.” But this was no laughing matter. Hitler climbed down from his chair and moved to the speaker’s platform where Kahr, Seisser, and Lossow stood as if paralyzed. After guaranteeing their safety, Hitler politely asked the three gentlemen to follow him into an adjoining room. There he apologized for the nature of his actions, but told them, “It is done and cannot now be undone.” He was creating a new Bavarian government in preparation for a move on Berlin. He assured them that all three would hold leading positions in that new government, and he hoped he could count on their cooperation. His manner seemed to swing between the respectful and the intimidating, pleading for their support one minute and at another threatening to shoot the “traitors” and then himself if his enterprise should fail.

  The triumvirate did not immediately agree to cooperate. After fifteen minutes of alternately cajoling, menacing, and finally subjecting them to a hectoring speech about their patriotic duty, Hitler returned to the hall to address the crowd, which had grown restless in his absence. At one point Göring had to fire a shot into the ceiling to restore order, screaming that a new Germany was in the making. Everyone should settle down with their beer and be patient. When Hitler finally reappeared without Kahr and company, the crowd again grew raucous and did not subside when he tried to speak. Finally Hitler drew his pistol and fired yet another shot into the ceiling. If order wasn’t restored, he shouted, he would order a machine gun placed in the gallery.

  The crowd noise subsided, and Hitler began to speak. At first he seemed shaky, unsure of himself, but he quickly rebounded, gaining confidence with every fiery word. A new government was being formed, Hitler told the crowd. General Ludendorff would assume command of the army; the triumvirate would all have prominent positions in the new government. With the army restored to its former glory and with the support of the people, the provisional government would “begin the march against Berlin, that sink of iniquity, with all the might of this state and the accumulated power of every province in Germany.”

  In the audience was the peripatetic professor Karl Alexander von Müller, who had taught Hitler in the Reichswehr’s speakers course in 1919. He was thunderstruck. Hitler’s words, according to Müller, had an electrifying effect on the crowd. In a flash, the audience, sullen and skeptical at the outset, swung behind Hitler. His performance was “an oratorical masterpiece, which any actor might envy. . . . I cannot remember in my entire life such a change in the attitude of a crowd in a few minutes, almost a few seconds. . . . Hitler had turned them inside out, as one turns a glove inside out, with a few sentences. It had almost something of hocus-pocus, of magic about it. Loud approval roared forth, no further opposition was to be heard.” Hitler told the crowd that Kahr, Seisser, and Lossow were in an adjoining room, trying to decide whether to support the new government. Could he report to them that “you will stand behind them?” The room was filled with boisterous cries of “Yes, yes!”

  Back with the sequestered triumvirate, Hitler was frustrated to discover that they were still wavering. The situation was saved only when General Ludendorff appeared, dressed in his impressive uniform from the Great War, topped off by the pointed Pickelhaube helmet. Ludendorff commanded great respect as the leader of the nationalist right, and together with Pöhner the general managed to convince the recalcitrant trio to join the cause, though Kahr still insisted that he was merely acting as regent in preparation for a restoration of the Wittelsbach monarchy. Hitler had no intention of restoring the monarchy but was happy to let Kahr posture as he would. The group now reappeared on the platform, joined by Ludendorff. Unity achieved, a beaming Hitler ostentatiously shook hands all around, projecting an image of harmony and solidarity. The crowd broke into thunderous applause. It was pure political theater. While this display of goodwill reigned onstage, contingents of SA men began rounding up members of the Bavarian cabinet in the hall. They would be held as hostages.

  While these dramatic events were unfolding in the Bürgerbräukeller, Ernst Röhm and Hermann Esser were addressing a large Kampfbund crowd at the Löwenbräukeller. At about nine o’clock, Röhm received a short telephone message: “Safely delivered.” It was the signal he had been waiting for: Hitler had succeeded; the Putsch was successfully under way. Röhm strode to the podium and announced that the Kahr government had been deposed and Adolf Hitler had declared a national revolution. His words were met with wild cheering. He called for everyone to march on the Bürgerbräukeller to join the revolutionary troops there. But as the two thousand excited men began moving down the street, a motorcycle courier stopped them with a new order from Hitler. They were to proceed to the Reichswehr’s District IV headquarters and seize it. Another contingent was to collect some three thousand rifles from a monastery basement on St. Annaplatz. All across the city Kampfbund troops were moving on their assigned objectives.

  Back at the Bürgerbräu, things had begun to go wrong. Hitler received a message that Kampfbund forces were in a standoff with government troops at the barracks of the army engineers. Believing that he might resolve the situation, Hitler sped to the scene, leaving Ludendorff in charge of the Bürgerbräukeller. Shortly after Hitler left, Lossow asked Ludendorff if he might leave the building to attend to matters at his office—after all, he had important orders to issue. He gave a solemn promise not to undertake any action that would harm the Putsch. Kahr and Seisser echoed Lossow’s request, and Ludendorff permitted them all to leave. When Hitler returned, he was flabbergasted at what Ludendorff had done. Didn’t the general realize that they could sabotage the whole enterprise? Ludendorff was surprised and offended. Didn’t Hitler, a corporal, understand that a German officer would never break his oath?

  Hitler’s suspicions were well founded. As soon as Kahr and company gained their freedom, they renounced their pledge to Hitler, explaining that they were not bound by a promise made under duress, and immediately began working to rally government forces against the Putsch. Lossow and Seisser worked the phones to alert military and police units around the city to resist the rebels and issued orders to troops from the outlying districts to move on Munich. Inexplicably and contrary to their hastily drawn up plans, the Putschists had not taken the key communications and transportation centers that were so crucial to the success of their endeavor.

  By ten o’clock Röhm had taken control of the Reichswehr headquarters without firing a shot, some bridges were occupied, and placards declaring the creation of the revolutionary government were being posted about town. Roving SA bands were harassing Jews, beating some, dragging others off to the Bürgerbräu, where they were thrown into the cellar to be held as hostages. But in the cold midnight hours, the Putsch began to fall apart. Efforts to seize the Municipal Police Directorate, the Office of the State Commissariat, the City Military Command, army barracks, and police installations had misfired. As the night wore on, it was becoming increasingly clear to Hitler and his allies that the Putsch had failed.

  The crowd in the Bürgerbräukeller had long departed, and in the great hall hundreds of restless Storm Troopers stood about or tried to get a little rest, dozing on tabletops, in chairs pulled together, and on the floor. The frenzied excitement of the Putsch’s
first hours was long gone, as were the beer and bread and pretzels (the management would later present the party with a bill of over 11 million marks). Still the leaders had no new orders to give them. As dawn approached and the unraveling of their plans sank in, the leadership debated its next move. In the hurried, improvised planning of the Putsch, Hitler had given little thought to the possibility of failure. There was no backup plan. Grasping at straws, Hitler dispatched a messenger to Crown Prince Ruppert in Berchtesgaden, hoping that he would intervene with Kahr and convince him to back the uprising. It was symptomatic of the Putsch’s disorganization that the messenger could not find a car and had to travel by train, arriving in the afternoon. Ruppert flatly refused. He had, in fact, already encouraged Kahr to crush the rebellion. Kriebel, the military commander of the Putsch, recommended pulling out of Munich and regrouping in Rosenheim on the nearby Austrian border. There they could count on the support of the local population. Göring agreed, but Ludendorff, who had gone home to rest and returned in civilian clothes, wouldn’t hear of it. “The movement cannot end in the ditch of some obscure country lane,” he snorted.

  In the late morning, with the situation deteriorating with each passing hour and no resolution reached, Ludendorff made a straightforward declaration that sounded like an order: “We will march!” Röhm and his men were barricaded in the Reichswehr headquarters, surrounded by government troops. The Putschists would march through the city and liberate them. The idea of a march appealed to Hitler (so much so that he later claimed that it was his own). Freeing Röhm was the ostensible objective of the march, but as Hitler envisioned it, a march through the center of the city with banners flying and a band leading the way would stir support for the Putsch among the people. The public simply didn’t know about the revolution—that was the problem—and this display of power by the rebels would turn the tide. It was an exercise in the sort of performance politics that Hitler so enthusiastically practiced. The government troops would not dare fire on the aroused people; indeed, they would join their ranks, and Kahr and his allies would be forced to cooperate with the national revolution after all. Even in his desperation, Hitler must have realized that this was more of a hope than a realistic expectation.

  As they made preparations to march, Hitler sent Feder, Streicher, and other party leaders into the streets to rouse the people. They were to hold speeches on public squares, explaining the goals of the national revolution, whipping up support. At 11 a.m. things at last began to move at the Bürgerbräukeller. Two thousand men, many of them exhausted from little sleep, hungover, and stiff in the bracing morning chill, began pouring out of the hall, forming up in the Rosenheimerstrasse. It was a ragtag assemblage. The Shock Troop Hitler, in Reichswehr helmets and outfitted with army-issue rifles and grenades, bore some resemblance to a military unit; the regiments of the Munich SA wore gray-green jackets, topped with Norwegian ski caps. Others were dressed in an array of civilian clothes—workers’ overalls and business suits with bits and pieces of wartime uniforms peeking through. All wore red swastika armbands and almost all were armed.

  Kriebel quickly organized the men into columns, with ranks of eight across in the front, followed by ranks of four for the SA and other trailing units. Swastika banners and the black-white-red battle flags of the old imperial army sprouted at intervals throughout the formation. Leading the procession in the first rank were Hitler in his tightly belted trench coat, Ludendorff in hunting jacket and overcoat; Göring in a black leather coat, his Pour le Mérite visible at the neck, topped by a steel helmet with a white swastika painted on the front; and assorted other party officials. The brass band, which Hitler had engaged in the morning, played one uninspiring march as the troops assembled and then departed, angry that they had not had breakfast and had not been paid.

  Finally, the procession lurched into motion, swinging westward down the sloping Rosenheimerstrasse to the Ludwigsbrücke, where they encountered a police blockade. The formation pushed through the outmanned police and continued across the river toward the Isar Gate. Along the way, curious onlookers lined the streets, uncertain of just what they were witnessing. Some shouted their support; some on the crowded sidewalks waved small Nazi flags; others jeered. Finally, the procession reached the Marienplatz, where it was swallowed up in an immense throng. An enormous Nazi flag fluttered from the balcony of the Rathaus, and smaller swastika banners flew from windows all around the square. Whipped up by Strasser and other Nazi speakers, the crowd greeted the Putschists with rousing cheers and shouts of Heil. Some joined the marchers, as if on parade. The spirits of the marchers soared. They sang as they marched. It was an encouraging sign that Hitler’s hope of an aroused public storming to support the Putsch might actually work.

  The goal of the march had not been made clear to most of the men, and no one expected an armed confrontation. Some thought that having made a show of force, the formation would return to the Bürgerbräukeller in preparation for a next step. But Ludendorff was determined to liberate Röhm and his men trapped in the Reichswehr headquarters and pushed on. Reluctantly Hitler went along. Ludendorff led the procession away from the Marienplatz down a narrow street just off the Rathaus, then into the even narrower Residenzstrasse, barely wide enough for the eight-man ranks walking abreast. One hundred meters or so down the Residenzstrasse, the street widened into the broad Odeonsplatz, where nine years before Hitler had stood in the exultant multitude cheering the outbreak of war. Beyond the Odeonsplatz lay the Reichswehr headquarters.

  Just as the marchers reached the Feldherrnhalle, a massive stone structure honoring Bavaria’s military heroes, at the mouth of the Odeonsplatz, the procession encountered a line of blue-uniformed State Police. This time the police did not buckle. As the marchers pushed forward, a shot rang out, echoing up the canyon walls of the tapered street. Then a frantic volley of gunfire. The shooting lasted no more than thirty seconds. When it stopped, eighteen men were lying dead in the street—fourteen Nazis and four policemen. The Putschists fell back in disarray. Hitler, his arm locked with another’s, was dragged down with such violence that his shoulder was separated. Göring was badly wounded, hit in the upper thigh. Rosenberg and Streicher, in the second rank, turned and fled. They saw Weber, leader of the Bund Oberland, pressed against a wall, weeping hysterically. Ludendorff, who immediately hit the cobblestones when the shots were fired, regained his feet and, certain that no troops would dare shoot the hero of the Great War, marched ramrod stiff through the police lines, where he was politely greeted by the officer in charge and escorted to safety in the Residenz. In the chaos, Hitler and Göring were dragged to safety and escaped the scene.

  The ranks now dissolved in panic. Those in the rear of the formation were still singing patriotic marching songs when they heard the shots. They had no idea what had happened—no one expected a battle—but saw those in front of them frantically retreating from the Feldherrnhalle. The long column abruptly halted and began to scatter. During the afternoon the State Police rounded up hundreds of Putschists and disarmed them, taking the Bürgerbräukeller without any resistance from the dispirited revolutionaries. Hitler managed to evade capture until the 11th, when he was found hiding at the Hanfstaengl villa south of the city. By that time the NSDAP was officially banned, its newspaper closed down; its leaders either on their way to prison or hiding in exile. Hitler’s daring bid for power had lasted less than twenty-four hours and ended in an ignominious fiasco.

  Hitler was removed to Landsberg Prison about forty miles west of Munich and placed in cell number 7. Defeated and humiliated, he wanted to see no one; he refused to talk to the interrogators from the state’s attorney’s office; he began a hunger strike. Formal charges of high treason were filed against him, Ludendorff, and several other Nazis. The trial date was set for February 27, 1924. By the time the court was called into session in the new year, Hitler and his Putsch were yesterday’s news. His short-lived political career seemed to be at an end—and by all rights should have been. The Putsch
was almost universally ridiculed as hopelessly amateurish, almost laughable, an Italian comic opera led by a delusional self-important dilettante. But Hitler’s political obituary, as the trial would dramatically prove, was premature.

  The timing and location of the proceedings proved crucial for his political resurrection. The Reichstag elected in June 1920 had been dissolved, and new elections called for May 4, 1924. The campaign was not officially under way when the trial opened at the end of February, but the national press, seeing it as a prelude to the election, descended on the courtroom, giving it front-page coverage for a full month. The venue was just as important. By law, the case should have been tried before the German high court in Leipzig, but in another reflection of the strained relations between Berlin and Munich, the Bavarian government claimed jurisdiction, and the central government relented.

  The trial would be held before the Bavarian People’s Court in Munich. This proved to be of enormous significance. It was Hitler’s home turf, providing him a far more favorable environment than would have prevailed in Saxon Leipzig. And there was another advantage. Throughout the trial and forever after, Hitler, with his inexhaustible penchant for self-dramatization, projected an image of the lonely man of conviction, the upright common man, the front soldier, standing up boldly to the overpowering authority of a treasonous state. It was a self-conscious evocation of Luther at Worms, the simple German monk defiantly speaking his conscience before the combined might of the emperor and the papacy. It was a narrative that became engraved in Nazi legend.