Stupid Wars : A Citizen's Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous Revolutions

by Ed Strosser

  Adolf Hitler, a complete nobody at the end of the war, with a war record blemished solely by his own survival, also landed in Munich, where his army regiment put him to work haranguing returning soldiers against the evils of Commu­nism. Marked down as a promising intelligence officer, he was assigned to keep tabs on the burgeoning right-wing rev­olutionary scene, which resulted in his visit to the tiny, na­scent Nazi party in a beer hall on September 12, 1919. Impressed by his ability to shout down the half-dozen mem­bers of the party, they invited Adolf to join them. A week later he signed up.

  Feeling inspired for the first time since the end of the war, Hitler honed his raw haranguing power; through hard work and dedication he grew the party with his message that Ger­many’s woes were due to the Jews and the Communists. Hit­ler’s rhetorical pictures of a racial fantasyland, where honor and order would be restored to the proud Germans, proved much more popular than the bad watercolors he had sold on the streets before the war. The growing masses who attended his beer-hall speeches soon made him a local celebrity.

  By 1922 Hitler had attracted two of his main cohorts who were to prove instrumental in bringing him to power and then crashing the world into World War II. Hermann Goering, after a war in which he had taken over the famed Richthofen squadron from the Red Baron in 1918, had moved back into his mom’s apartment in Munich. A bigger humilia­tion, however, was the open contempt he received from the left-wing revolutionaries who often stripped the medals off the chests of soldiers in public.

  Goering often vented his anger at beer-hall rallies. He was soon window-shopping for a radical party to join that was as bitter and determined to avenge the defeat as he was. He quickly found Hitler in the fall of 1922. When Goering heard Hitler’s harangue about the injustices of the Versailles Treaty, it was love at first rant.

  Hitler instinctively knew the dashing, decorated former war ace was a great addition to the still-small party. Goering possessed the rare combination of a common touch covering a ruthless cunning. Shortly after their first meeting, Hitler handed him command of the SA (Sturmabteilung), Hitler’s street brawlers.

  Meanwhile, Heinrich Himmler, the son of a middle-class devoutly Roman Catholic Munich family, joined the team as an anonymous peon. While not the usual background for a grand terrorist-in-the-making, Himmler was overly influenced by his history-obsessed father. He nurtured dreams of the good old days when racially pure Teutonic knights ruled the forests of Prussia with nary a Jew or Communist to mar the vision.

  Little Heinrich always strived to be the best in whatever he did, and as a German youth he craved to serve his country by joining the futile slaughter of World War I. But the German army was very strict in denying non-nobles the op­portunity to become officers and direct the carnage. The rules changed only when the ranks of young noblemen started to grow thin at the end of the war.

  Heinrich finally landed his officer post, but to the dismay of millions of his future victims he missed all the action and failed to achieve the ultimate sacrifice for his country. Back home in one piece he set his hopes on tilling the soil of a far-flung Prussian outpost like a knight from his juvenile Teu­tonic fantasies. He joined a Freikorps but narrowly missed out on the bloodletting as his unit failed to join the thrashing of the Reds in 1919. After a year of chicken farming in 1921 in preparation for tilling his Prussian fantasyland, he met Ernst Röhm at a weekend Teutonic fantasy camp. Röhm, another embittered veteran, was an active army officer whose main job was to hide weapons from the Allied soldiers who were haplessly trying to control the growing chaos in Ger­many. Röhm was in a position to help any political group he favored by giving them access to the stashed weapons. He soon took a shining to Hitler’s promising little group of Nazis. As the Nazis grew in popularity, they needed brawlers to control their raucous beer-hall meetings, and Röhm nur­tured the fledgling SA by providing it with men and weap­ons. Himmler, part of one of Röhm’s groups, tagged along and was soon sucked into the growing vortex of the Nazi party.

  After Munich had been brutally cleansed of its Bolshevik-styled government a few years earlier, it became the focal point of a right-wing revolution, its streets and beer halls bubbling with fascistic energy. In the evenings the Freikorps leagues kept themselves in trouble and prepared for the next day of unemployment by battling each other for control of the streets. In their quieter moments, they crowded into the beer halls to discuss the various violent methods of over­throwing the elected government. Like blood and beer mixing in the gutters, the right wingers, Communists, and socialists could agree on only one thing: anything had to be better than the democracy they were suffering under.

  The Prussian generals were determined to keep the rowdy Freikorps under their control, and they kept a wary eye on Munich. Gustav von Kahr had installed himself as Bavaria’s right-wing dictator in Munich. Kahr was amenable to any right-wing government, but particularly enamored of monar­chy, and still pined for the recently scuttled Wittelsbachs, one of the minor royal families who had been tossed back on the monarchical scrap heap after their seven-hundred-year inter­lude of ruling Bavaria.

  By 1923, Hitler was in full control of the Nazi party. He gave his buddy Röhm the task of staffing up the violence bureau, and he brought in the angriest of the Freikorps row­dies. Hitler’s first big speech as a politician had been in Feb­ruary 24, 1920, in the Hofbräuhaus before 2,000 people. Now his little party had almost 100,000 members, including 15,000 SA brawlers, and was recognized as a real threat by the government and the Prussian officers who really con­trolled the country. Determined not to invite retaliation by the French before the German army was slowly rebuilt into its former Europe-stomping glory, the government, still struggling with the obscure limits of democracy, outlawed fringe parties and clamped down. Hitler retreated from the scene that summer and considered his options.

  The time for someone to strike was ripe. In January 1923 the French had occupied the industrial Ruhr valley, combin­ing further Gallic humiliation with a crushing economic blow. The German government, backed in a secret and cyni­cal effort by the industrialists, was busy printing marks like so many strudels in order to pay off the reparation debt owed to the Allies. The resulting massive hyperinflation had the unfortunate side effect of wiping out the bank accounts of most ordinary Germans. The despised democratic govern­ment took the blame, of course.

  In Munich, the protoführer von Kahr and the other right-wing-leaders-to-be had been meeting with Hitler about ex­tending von Kahr’s Munich dictatorship over all of Germany. But to Hitler’s exasperation, everyone kept dickering over the details, including, most importantly, who would become the Big Leader. Kahr wanted to reinstall the monarchy; Röhm wanted to turn his Freikorps into a real military threat and pined for a replacement dictatorship; von Seisser, the Bavarian police chief, liked Hitler but not as much as the Freikorps and could not decide whom to support; von Lossow, the Bavarian army chief, who supported the dicta­torship model of governing, also liked Hitler but knew that supporting the pushy young wannabe dictator would dis­please his superiors in Berlin. So he also sat on the fence.

  Hitler, impatient to start dictating, met with all of them throughout the fall. He had given von Kahr, von Lossow, and von Seisser his word that he would not start the counterrevo­lution without them. But time, it seemed, was quickly run­ning out for the impatient future führer. When von Kahr announced a big speech in Munich’s Bürgerbräukeller, slated for November 8, Hitler panicked and, not wanting to get left behind in the führer race, quickly cooked up a plan and made his move. He met with his minions the night before, and they plotted well past midnight. Their jury-rigged plan depended on the unproven organizational genius of Goering leading the Nazi’s SA fighters and the participation of the unassailable General Ludendorff.

  WHAT HAPPENED: OPERATION “CAN’T ANYONE HERE THROW A REVOLUTION?”

  To Hitler, mesmerized by his own fanatical beliefs, as were his growing army of followers, the organization and plan­ning of
the coup had been an afterthought. The plan was simply to pull the leaders of Bavaria aside before von Kahr’s speech, convince them to join Hitler’s putsch then and there, declare the revolution, and march on Berlin immediately. With Hitler, of course, in the lead.

  Hitler got to the beer hall early and conspicuously loitered in the lobby waiting for Goering and his personal body­guards. As planned, von Lossow and von Seisser, as well as virtually all of the other Munich power figures, arrived at the Bürgerbräukeller to hear von Kahr’s speech. While von Kahr was speaking, Goering and the guards drove up in trucks, barged in, and set up a machine gun right in the lobby of the cavernous beer hall. On a signal from Hitler, the door was thrown open; Hitler, at the center of a flying wedge of troop­ers, pushed through the crowd waving his pistol like the Lone Ranger while Goering indulged his over-the-top flair by dramatically brandishing a sword. They pushed their way onstage, and Hitler quieted the crowd with a pistol shot into the ceiling. The revolution was on.

  Angry that Hitler had broken his promise not to putsch without them, the three leaders, Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser, refused to move. Hitler, livid at their intransigence, dragged them into a side room and stuck his pistol in their ears. They still balked. Hitler ranted but was forced to return to the au­ditorium where Goering was trying to calm the restless crowd by telling them to relax and joking that “after all, you have your beer!”

  Hitler strode onstage, announced the lineup of the new government, including the roles Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser would play, and swayed the crowd to his side. He strutted back into the side room triumphantly, knowing that he had forced their hand. But the balky triumvirate was only warm­ing to the idea. Then Ludendorff, the World War I hero who had lost the war, entered. He was Hitler’s closer, but his effect at first was less than fully Prussian because he was dressed for a weekend of hunting in a bad suit instead of his impressive uniform, to preserve the flimsy fiction that his in­volvement was a spur of the moment kind of thing.

  Now the triumvirate realized things were flowing against them. Under Ludendorff’s spell, Lossow and Seisser agreed to join up, but Kahr kept holding out for the restoration of his beloved monarchy. He finally caved when Hitler told him the perfect lie: that the putsch is what the Kaiser would have wanted. Hitler would be in charge, of course, with Lossow and Seisser receiving plum roles; the unemployable Ludendorff would get to run the army again, and Kahr would stay on as governor of Bavaria. After taking over Munich, everyone would march on Berlin and complete the revolution.

  The deal signed, they all marched back onstage where ev­eryone pledged to join Hitler’s revolution. The crowd went wild.

  Outside, the night had finally arrived for the rowdy fight­ers of the SA battalions to prove their worth to the Nazi rev­olution on the cold streets of Munich. They gathered in the city’s beer halls, drinking and awaiting word to pounce on the levers of government and attack anyone who resisted the revolution.

  Veteran Freikorps leader Gerhard Rossbach had been given six troopers and tasked to capture the Infantry School. The cadets gladly turned themselves over to the popular Rossbach, a hard-fighting Freikorps legend. Rossbach’s new cadets marched out with weapons toward the Marienplatz, the center of town, across the river from Hitler’s putsch hall.

  Elsewhere in Munich, the putsch was having less success. SA troopers failed to trick soldiers at the Nineteenth Infantry regiment barracks armory into handing over their weapons. Other SA troopers got locked inside another armory by an army officer determined not to get putsched without explicit orders.

  Meanwhile, Ernst Röhm, waiting for word that the putsch had launched, had formed up his SA battalion at the upscale Löwenbräukeller under pretense of a fun night out with a brass band and a speech by Hitler. Himmler was there, clutching the Nazi flag, his major accomplishment of the putsch. When they got the call that the revolt was on, Röhm announced it to the crowd and everyone formed up in the street, suddenly sporting firearms, courtesy of the master arms-stasher Röhm. The armed troopers marched off to the Bürgerbräukeller to join forces with Hitler, led by a brass band and picking up hidden arms along the way. Himmler, flag in hand, marched along proudly, finally getting his chance to storm into war.

  The plot then started to spring leaks. In the confusion at the Bürgerbräukeller, a police inspector slipped out the side door and sounded the alarm. Word reached senior police of­ficers, who dispatched police to protect the telegraph and phone exchanges. With von Lossow, the head of the army in Munich, trapped at the beer hall, the police called the rank­ing army officer in the city, Major General von Danner, a monarchist who hated the Nazis. He immediately rushed over to help.

  Another police officer, alerted by shouting in the streets that the national revolution had started, rushed out in his house in slippers to quickly secure von Kahr’s governmental office. The strutting, disorganized putschists were getting beaten on all sides by a handful of quick-acting middle man­agers.

  Röhm’s noisy parade bloodlessly conquered the war min­istry for Ludendorff and von Lossow, but inadvertently ne­glected to secure the telephone exchange inside the building where loyal officers called around and found that Röhm, de­spite being a top military officer in Munich, should not be trusted.

  When Hitler, basking in his glorious moment of newfound dictatorship, learned about the problem at the Nineteenth Infantry barracks, he rushed out of the putsch hall to fix the situation. He left Ludendorff there in charge of the captive Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser. Hitler’s convoy then ran into Rossbach with his infantry cadets. He stopped to treat his new recruits to a fiery speech and then swung by the war ministry to congratulate Röhm. His convoy passed citizens out in the streets proudly strutting their officially licensed Nazi wear and the red-black-white of the old German mon­archy. The putsch-friendly carnival atmosphere filled the cool night air, which was exhilaratingly free of gunfire. The putsch was succeeding brilliantly it seemed. Hitler beamed.

  Hitler finally arrived at the barracks, but the stubborn gatekeeper refused to allow him in. Sensing a glitch in the momentum, Hitler circled back to the putsch hall and dele­gated the barracks problem to von Lossow to untangle.

  While Hitler was away, Ludendorff grew impatient to fi­nally retake his position atop the army and decided to release the triumvirate of vons — Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser. He, of course, received their absolute, Prussian-bound assurance that they would continue to support the putschers. The other putschers disagreed vehemently but couldn’t sway the aging general. And so von Kahr, von Lossow, and von Seisser saun­tered out, and the putsch unknowingly received a deathblow at the hands of its ace in the hole. Once freed from the putschers’ clutches, the von trio, who controlled virtually all the legal channels of power in the region, decided they didn’t want to work for young Adolf. They set off to save their own hides, and if necessary, sink the putsch.

  Kahr bolted to his office where a representative from a Freikorps brigade told him that if Kahr declared himself dictator, the brigade’s 15,000 troops would invade Bavaria to support him. The cautious Kahr declined the invitation to kick-start a civil war. At the same time Seisser scuttled off to a local police command post and issued orders for the state police to protect themselves. Hedging his bets like almost everyone else at this point — to not move yet against the putsch — Seisser then set out for Kahr’s offices.

  When Hitler had arrived back at the putsch hall, he didn’t realize the seriousness of Ludendorff’s blunder in releasing the von trio. He still believed they would support him and could not fathom that anyone did not yearn for him to become dictator. What concerned him more were the SA troopers hanging around the beer hall snacking instead of conquering key government buildings.

  Hitler had completely lost the diabolical focus that had brought him to the point of near victory. His head was al­ready swimming in the newfound glory of an apparent vic­tory. When Rossbach and his infantry cadets arrived at the putsch hall and wanted to pass in triumphant revie
w, Hitler obliged and trotted out to treat them to a little speech with Ludendorff watching proudly. Then the soldiers trundled inside for beer and sausages.

  Ludendorff, his innate Prussianness awakening, finally left for the war ministry, guarded by Röhm. He sat down in his outer office to wait for von Lossow to show up so they could start planning the march on Berlin. But Lossow never showed: he had headed for the infantry barracks. And it wasn’t until another hour or two later that Ludendorff, the naïve revolutionary, started to get suspicious — but not suspi­cious enough. In other rooms in the war ministry, Röhm’s delay in securing the telephones meant that resistance to the putsch was being organized as Röhm and Ludendorff sat waiting for the one man who they thought would control the fate of the putsch. But he had already turned against them.

  Ludendorff, cooling his heels in von Lossow’s anteroom, finally started thinking like a soldier again and rousted Rossbach’s lounging infantry cadets from the putsch hall to take over the state government offices, all of which were now guarded by the state police. It was to be the first clash of the night. The police cordon outside the offices politely informed Rossbach’s troops that the trio had switched sides. Rossbach refused to budge. Finally Seisser popped out to tell Rossbach personally. Sides were now being taken. The approximately one hundred police officers were facing down over four hun­dred armed infantry cadets.

  Rossbach, the fiery Freikorps leader, knew that revolu­tions required blood, and he ordered his troops to open fire. But the soldiers, many of whom knew one another and all wanted a right-wing revolution of some flavor, were reluc­tant to end the carnival atmosphere by shooting one another. At this point, the confused putsch leadership weighed in to sink their chances even further. Suddenly, a murky message appeared from the putsch hall ordering Rossbach’s troops to guard the train station. Once the cadets took off, Kahr and Seisser were free to escape and met up with von Lossow at the infantry barracks. Hitler’s opposition was now united.