Becoming Hitler
Page 35
On October 12, the Central Committee of the KPD formally approved the decision made in Moscow. It decided that on November 9 it would proclaim that all power had passed to a new Workers’ and Peasants’ Government.2 As the KPD was part of a coalition government in both Thuringia and Saxony, of which Brandler ran the office of Minister-President Erich Zeigner, members of two German state governments now were plotting to bring the world revolution to Germany.
In response to a worsening of the political and economic crisis in Saxony, the Central Committee decided on October 20 that the revolution could no longer wait until November 9 but needed to be moved forward to the following day. The plan was that the committee would proclaim a general strike and thus trigger revolution. But the revolution was stillborn, largely due to incompetence and dilettantism. For instance, the committee’s decision was not communicated to Valdemar Roze, even though Roze was supposed to serve as the military head of the German revolution. Within hours, the Communist leadership of Germany felt it had to abort its plan.3
The attempt to embark on a Communist revolution in October 1923 should not be dismissed as insignificant because it lacked majority support in Germany.4 The success or failure of revolutions seldom depends on majority support. As events in the north German metropolis of Hamburg demonstrate, at the very least, the attempted Communist revolution could have triggered civil war in Germany, had it been carried out more efficiently and had communication been improved between Communist groups across Germany.
As the original order of October 20, but not the subsequent message that the revolution had been called off, reached Hamburg, Communist groups there occupied thirteen police stations on the morning of October 22, setting up barricades in the district of Barmbek and manning them with 150 men. Only after two and a half days, and only after having repeatedly been subjected to fire by policemen, sailors, and army units, which resulted in the death of seventeen policemen and twenty-four Communists, did the revolutionaries give up.5
The attempted revolution in Hamburg provides a taste of what would have happened if similar events had occurred simultaneously in all major German cities. Moreover, it took about four times longer to put down the Communist coup in Hamburg than it would take to end the putsch that would take place on November 9 in Munich, the day originally earmarked for Germany’s Communist revolution.
The communist unrest in Germany has to be seen against the background of a development that had been under way since 1921, when the entire country had gone into crisis mode. War reparations, the humiliation of the reduction of the army and navy, the loss of territories, the French occupation of the Rhineland and of Germany’s industrial heartland on the Ruhr as well as the passive resistance that the government encouraged to combat it, and the hyperinflation reigning in Germany all brought the country to the brink. Collapse of state authority in Berlin and elsewhere ensued. By mid-October 1923, the government had taken drastic actions to bring matters under control. For instance, the old currency was replaced by a new one, the Rentenmark, to try to tamp down inflation. Yet in the short term the introduction of a new currency made the crisis worse, as it produced a wave of bankruptcies.
The events taking place in Saxony, Thuringia, Hamburg, and elsewhere—for instance, separatists in the Rhineland proclaimed a Rhenish Republic—brought the preexisting economic, political, and social crisis to a boil, creating the conditions Bavarian sectionalists (Bavarians who put the interest of Bavaria above everything else) and National Socialists had been waiting for. Both viewed the situation as an opportunity to present themselves as saviors from Communism, in case they decided to launch a coup of their own. From the perspective of the Bavarian establishment, a situation had finally emerged that provided a very real chance to change the constitutional setup of Germany in a way that would make Bavarians masters in their own home again. Hitler, meanwhile, hoped that, similar to Mussolini’s march on Rome of the previous year, it would be possible to pull off a march from Munich to Berlin meant to liberate Germany. He therefore advocated embarking on such a march as a preemptive defensive move. As he told an American journalist working for the United Press news agency in October, “If Munich won’t march on Berlin if the moment is right, Berlin will march on Munich.”6
What fueled the escalating crisis further was the hyperinflation that held Germany in its grip in the autumn of 1923. It devoured savings, often literally overnight. For instance, after a friend of Helene Hanfstaengl was forced to sell her share of a big mortgage, she was only able to buy six breakfast rolls from the profit the following morning. As Heinrich Wölfflin concluded on October 25, 1923, “The immediate future will be terrible.” The Swiss art historian teaching at Munich University noted, “Prices don’t rise from day to day but from hour to hour.” Things went from bad to worse. On November 4, Wölfflin reported, “A pound of beef cost 99 billion marks yesterday.”7
What made things even worse and more volatile was the return of Gustav von Kahr to the driver’s seat of Bavarian politics at the end of September. This time the right-wing technocrat did not become minister-president again but was appointed general state commissioner; in other words, he held a position similar to that of a dictator in the times of the Roman Republic—i.e., his powers were those of a dictator with a time limitation. Kahr’s appointment by the Bavarian government had been triggered by the occupation of Germany’s industrial heartland on the Ruhr by French and Belgian troops, as, in September, the German government had decided that it had no choice but to abandon support of resistance to the occupation. In response to that decision, the Bavarian government had claimed that the conditions under which it was allowed to declare a state of emergency under Article 48 of the German Constitution had been fulfilled. The Bavarian People’s Party (BVP)–backed Bavarian government then had appointed Kahr as general state commissioner, thus transferring to him any executive power necessary to restore order in Bavaria. In theory, the power he held was meant to be used to uphold the constitutional order in Germany’s most southern state. Yet that power could be used just as easily to prepare a national revolution.
In the autumn of 1923, Munich was thus awash with political actors on the right who were plotting an overthrow of the political status quo. Yet it was astonishing how uncoordinated their respective plans were and how almost everybody overestimated his own power and influence.
Just as during his time as minister-president, Kahr believed that he could control Bavaria’s various nationalist and conservative groups. Further, he thought that he could bring sectionalist and Pan-German forces together under one umbrella. In Hitler, he saw nothing but a figure whom he could use to further his own interests.8 It did not cross his mind that by treating Hitler as his tool, he had opened a Pandora’s box and would no longer be able to control him. Kahr would have to pay with his own life for his miscalculation. In early 1934, Hitler’s henchmen would liquidate him.
Hitler, meanwhile, had fooled himself by the autumn of 1923 into believing that he was more than a tactical instrument in the hands of the Bavarian establishment. He was confident that he already had enough of a national profile and that he, together with retired general Erich Ludendorff, was sufficiently powerful to carry out a revolution in Bavaria and subsequently to spread it all across the country. But he failed to realize that it was unimaginable that Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria and his supporters would join forces with Rupprecht’s nemesis Ludendorff.
Hitler did not listen to any warnings he received that the goals of the Bavarian establishment and of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) were irreconcilable. National Socialist activists in northern Bavaria, for instance, had repeatedly sent letters to party headquarters in Munich, describing how heterogeneous the region’s right-wing political groups and paramilitary organizations were and concluding that those people would be unlikely to support the NSDAP. When the former did not receive any response from Munich, one of them, Hans Dietrich, took a train to Munich. The aim of his trip was to tell Hi
tler that he could not rely on the support of local militias and the Bavarian police. But Dietrich’s warnings went unheeded, as Hitler had convinced himself that the political Right stood united behind him. Michael von Faulhaber’s sermon of November 4 should have told Hitler that the Bavarian establishment was politically not on the same page as he was, for, in his sermon, Munich’s archbishop criticized the persecution of Jews in Germany.9
When on the urging of Wilhelm Weiß, the editor in chief of the right-wing weekly Heimatland, Hans Tröbst returned to Munich in late October to support plans that were afoot in Bund Oberland, as the Freikorps Oberland was now called, he was surprised to see how much mistrust existed between the different groups that were preparing for a putsch. As the veteran of the Turkish war of independence must have realized, Hitler had not even liaised sufficiently yet with several of the most important potential putschists. When Tröbst arrived in Munich, political chaos reigned in the city.10
As a result of the growing hatred for the federal government among nationalist and Bavarian sectionalist circles in Munich, various hurried plans—which at times overlapped, complemented, were coordinated, competed, or openly clashed with each other—were afoot, aiming at overthrowing the status quo in Germany. There was uncertainty and disagreement—not just between the nationalist and sectionalist factions, but also within them—as to who would lead the movement that was to overthrow the political system; likewise, they could not agree on what would follow that overthrow. They even differed in opinion as to whether the current Bavarian government was part of the problem or part of the solution to the crisis.
As Tröbst learned soon after his arrival in Munich, Weiß had summoned him to Bavaria in the belief that, amid this chaotic competition of ideas and plans, his presence would strengthen the cards of Weiß and his coconspirator Captain von Müller, one of the battalion commanders of Bund Oberland. Weiß and Müller briefed Tröbst that their plan was to overthrow the government rather than to bully it into cooperation. Tröbst was most excited at the prospect of the seemingly imminent takeover of Bavaria and ultimately of Germany, as well as a subsequent war with the victor powers of the First World War. He hoped that this crisis would facilitate a resurrection of his career as an officer.11
As Weiß and Müller told him on the afternoon of October 31, they had planned a putsch for the night of November 6/7: The men of Bund Oberland would pretend to carry out a nighttime exercise and then occupy military installations in Munich at 3:00 a.m. Two hours later, at 5:00 a.m. sharp, five arrest squadrons would apprehend simultaneously Kahr; Minister-President Eugen von Knilling; Minister of Agriculture Johannes Wutzlhofer; and a number of other politicians and leaders of the police, take them to the Pioneer Barracks by 5:20 a.m., demand the immediate signing of their resignation papers, and, in case of noncooperation, execute Wutzlhofer in front of the eyes of everyone else five minutes later. Kahr would then be supposed to appoint Ernst Pöhner, Munich’s former nationalist police president, as his successor, and a new government under Pöhner would be formed that very same day—to include Ludendorff and Hitler as well.12
A few hours after the briefing, as night fell in Munich, Weiß, Müller, and Tröbst jointly visited Friedrich Weber, the political leader of Bund Oberland and son-in-law of Pan-German publisher Julius Friedrich Lehmann, to share their plan with him. Initially, the gaunt Oberland leader remained unconvinced of its merits. For one thing, Weber still did not know what to make of Hitler and his party and remained distrustful of the National Socialist leader; for another, Weber still thought that he could get Kahr on board to support the putsch and thus make the Bavarian government a part of the solution to the problem.13
But then things unexpectedly tilted in favor of the visitors when Adolf Hitler suddenly showed up unannounced. Tröbst noticed that he looked nervous and clearly “very displeased.” As it turned out, the distrust between the Oberland leaders and Hitler had been mutual. Even though for months Hitler had tried to become the head of the nationalist camp in Munich and elsewhere, he clearly was well aware that his ambitions did not match the realities (yet) and that he still had a reputation for nothing but empty words. Also clearly worried that the window of opportunity for a coup would not remain open much longer, he had decided that he would either have to raise the stakes or lose everything. He told Weber and his visitors, “I barely know what more to tell the people who come to our meetings. I’m pretty sick of this rubbish.”
Hitler’s gamble to raise the stakes paid off. As it turned out, he and the Oberland leaders alike would have preferred to spring into action earlier, but each had been unsure of the others’ sentiments and intentions. Once they realized that they all wanted the same thing—a removal of the existing political settlement sooner rather than later—Hitler laid out his own plan late into the evening.14
The distrust between Friedrich Weber and Hitler almost certainly had been fueled by the latter’s reluctance to engage closely with Lehmann and other Pan-Germans. The legacy of Hitler’s grudge against Karl Harrer and those supporting a Thule vision for the DAP/NSDAP had prevented earlier cooperation and hence had stood in the way of better and more realistic planning for the putsch. Only in the following year—1924, while the two were incarcerated together—would Friedrich Weber become Hitler’s friend.15
Tröbst enjoyed finally being able to observe Hitler at close quarters, making up for September’s missed meeting with him. He was excited that Hitler would join their cause.16 Two days later, on Friday, November 2, Tröbst encountered Hitler again at a meeting of Oberland leaders at the office of Captain von Müller, who owned a small film company in Munich. Hitler urged them to act without further delay because, as Tröbst recounted three months later, “he himself [i.e., Hitler] had hardly any strength left; his people were about to collapse and his party’s finances were almost exhausted.” By early November, Hitler was driven in equal measure by megalomania and desperation. Tröbst, meanwhile, could not help but feel that “Hitler was being motivated somewhat by personal interests, because all at once he declared, ‘You needn’t think that I will just get up and leave; something is going to happen first!’”17 As so often before and subsequently, Hitler presented a situation he faced as an all-or-nothing proposition and urged the conspirators not to hedge their bets, but to put all their money on exploiting the moment. And even now, Hitler’s old fear of again being a nobody who had nowhere to go shone through in his statements made that evening in Müller’s office.
Tröbst realized that Hitler was trying to manipulate him, but he did not mind at all, as the plan of the leader of the NSDAP “fed perfectly into our own plan, which was refined during the course of the day.” That is, Tröbst and his coconspirators did not see Hitler as their leader but instead as a perfect means to further their own goals. Tröbst was particularly impressed by Hitler’s talent for oratory: “It was a delight to listen to him,” he recounted three months later. “Images and similes just came to him, and I suddenly understood what Ludendorff meant when he said that in Hitler we had Germany’s most brilliant and most successful agitator. His image of the ‘drunken fly’ really was brilliant: an intoxicated fly that lies on its back and flounders about and cannot get up again—that fly was the imperial government in Berlin.”18
Hitler still did not trust Weber, Tröbst, Weiß, and Müller enough to disclose to them that two days later, on Sunday, November 4, a coup planned by Erich Ludendorff, pro-Nazi nationalist leader Hermann Kriebel, and himself was to take place during the dedication of the monument to the thirteen thousand men from Munich killed during the World War, which had been erected next to the Army Museum behind the Hofgarten. The event would feature all Munich-based military units, paramilitary groups, and student groups, as well as the political elite of Bavaria.
The plan was for Hitler to run up the stairs of the museum after all official speeches had been given and to confront the members of the Bavarian government. The idea was that he would ask Kahr, for everyone to hear, why it was impos
sible to buy bread anywhere, even though bakeries were full of flour. In the ensuing chaos, Ludendorff, Kriebel, and Hitler were supposed to approach the military and paramilitary groups present and have them arrest the government and proclaim a new government there and then.
But on November 4, things turned out differently: Munich’s population responded neither in the kind of patriotic fashion that the government had in mind nor with the spirit that the putschists expected. Tröbst was surprised how few people in Munich had put up flags outside their houses despite having been urged to do so. At the memorial event, too, the public already was venting its own discontent. Tröbst heard people say, “Well, if the dead hear all these speeches, they’ll turn in their graves.” Others said, “Why can’t Kahr finally get bread for everyone, rather than engage in celebrations all the time!”19
Also, and more important, Ludendorff, to the surprise of everyone, was not present. Either by design or by coincidence, the Bavarian State Police had not picked him up for the event as arranged.20 It did not cross the mind of the would-be putschists that the behavior of the State Police might have been a litmus test of how the Bavarian police stood toward a possible putsch. The conspirators, convinced they still had the support of everyone who mattered, decided not to abandon their plans for a coup and to try again on another day.