1924: The Year that Made Hitler

by Peter Ross Range

  Kriebel, too, the sharp-elbowed Kampfbund military leader, related his role in the putsch but also recalled the 1918 capitulation in World War I that started him down the nationalistic, right-wing path. As one of the German officers who had to serve at war’s end in the Armistice Commission in Spa, Belgium, Kriebel was the object of the “most uncouth, lowest humiliations” imaginable, he said. Describing the German military delegation’s final departure by train after the armistice was settled, he said a “drunken, worked-up crowd threw stones and cursed us without mercy.” Kriebel, in response, leaned out of the train’s window and shook his fist at his tormentors. Not knowing how prophetic his words would be, he shouted: “Auf Wiedersehen! We’ll see you again in a few years.”

  Kriebel’s feisty testimony became more emotionally laden as he recalled the events of the long night and morning of the putsch, especially the final march to Odeon Square. Kriebel had marched in the first row with Hitler, as well as with Scheubner-Richter, who had been killed. “There was deep breathing in the courtroom as Colonel Kriebel haltingly described the details,” wrote one observer. “Nobody, not even the presiding judge or the prosecutor, made an objection when one of the defense attorneys rose and spoke the fearsome word, ‘Murder!’”

  The seemingly limitless range of Hitler’s testimony, coupled with Kriebel’s angry statements, had by the trial’s third day led some observers to wonder what the whole affair was really all about, since nobody was boring in on the defendants’ allegedly treasonous actions. “If the public sessions are to be merely devoted to anti-French and anti-Belgian speeches, as was the case today, there must be little reason why the proceeding should be continued at all,” complained the London Times.2

  Kriebel had, surprisingly, supplied one of the trial’s most memorable emotional moments. Yet it was Hitler who once again seized an opening he could exploit to even greater advantage. Deputy Prosecutor Ehard asked him to “briefly explain” how he had planned to pull off a big march on Berlin. What about the logistics of food, accommodation, clothing, “and such things”? And what about a march’s foreign policy implications?

  In reply, the star defendant rose from his chair and launched into a classic Hitlerian disquisition on foreign policy, world history, and high treason. His “answer,” which lasted for twenty-two minutes without interruption, began with a slash at England’s historical balance-of-power politics and France’s ambitions to dominate Europe. “France desires only the dismemberment of Germany so it can achieve hegemony for itself,” he said. To Hitler, France was Germany’s ultimate blood enemy.3 In his opening-day rant, he had said, “I’d rather hang from a lamppost in a Bolshevized Germany than live happily under French domination.”4

  And his swipe at France was merely a springboard for a tour through national uprisings in Spain, Italy, Turkey, and the greatness of the Bismarckian “revolution” in late-nineteenth-century Germany. He painted a glorious vision of the “national uprising” that was supposed to flow from his planned march on Berlin. “In Munich, Nuremberg and Bayreuth there would have been indescribable joy, a wave of enthusiasm would have swept the Reich,” he declaimed. People would have seen “that German suffering is coming to an end, that salvation comes through uprising.” And again a derogation of majority rule: “I was asked if I thought I had a majority behind me.… Germany wasn’t founded by the decisions of majorities, but through the willpower and resolution of individual personalities, often enough against the will of the majority. Germany is the product of a hero [Bismarck], not of a majority.”

  Hewing to his cardinal belief in the power of repetition, repetition, and repetition, Hitler pivoted to treason, reprising his earlier statement that “high treason is the only crime that is punished for failing.” As a counter-example he took, once again, Bismarck. “In the opinion of people on the left wing, Bismarck committed treason and staged a coup,” said Hitler. “The Frankfurter Zeitung called it high treason when Bismarck dissolved the Prussian parliament.… Bismarck’s treason was later legalized because the German Reich was created from it. The [1918] act of high treason has never been legalized because all that’s left of the German Reich is German suffering.”

  These assertions might not withstand careful historical scrutiny, but they made great polemics. Hitler was on his usual roll. He evoked his sense of the near-miss grandeur of his putsch attempt; he even began putting a positive spin on the coup’s failure, seeding a legend he would later nurture. “I am convinced that we were on the verge of changing Germany’s destiny, but then our effort foundered.… Sometimes fate intervenes in unexpected ways. When I look at today’s developments, I conclude that it’s perhaps a good thing that more time has passed.” This was also an early hint of Hitler’s shifting view of whether to pursue power in Germany by revolution or by politics.

  But Hitler could not pass up the chance, during this impromptu speech, to invoke the judgment of the ages. “You should not think that this trial will destroy us,” Hitler told the court. “You can certainly lock us up. But the German people will not destroy us. Our prisons will open and there will come a time when the accused become the accusers.… Future generations will acquit us and say that we were the only ones with the courage to stand up against the ongoing high treason [of 1918].” Closer to earth, Hitler for good measure lashed out at his nemesis, Kahr. “If he is in charge, it is a catastrophe,” he concluded.

  Hitler was ranting and perhaps even panting by now. When he finished, Deputy Prosecutor Ehard said: “I simply wanted to ask Mr. Hitler a calm and sober question.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you,” said Hitler.

  EHARD: Excuse me—I don’t even think of being offended. I just mean that it might not have been necessary to reply in such a polemical way.

  HITLER: Nothing of the sort. But my temperament is somewhat different from that of a state’s attorney.

  EHARD: Probably a good thing in this case.5

  Not a word about clothing, food, accommodation, or any of the logistics to which the question referred. Not a peep of objection from the chief prosecutor, Stenglein. Not a hint of a reprimand from the judge on the relevance of the testimony. Not a moment of doubt as to who was on stage and in charge. The trial had effectively become Hitler’s political showcase. “Hitler presented his calling card as the next Bismarck,” noted a German news service, “and gave Herr Kahr a few kicks.”6

  The defense attorneys, meanwhile, were not above using the proceedings for some lawyerly grandstanding that aroused prickly feelings among the trial’s participants. Karl Kohl, a blustery lawyer, gratuitously insulted Stenglein, suggesting that the chief prosecutor was not “a respectable person” if he did not believe in the complicity of Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser. As mild as those words might sound to modern ears, such language came close to a serious personal offense in the Munich of the 1920s. Kohl was forced to retract, but Stenglein did not forget the slight.

  Besides Hitler’s testimony, no appearance was more keenly anticipated than General Ludendorff’s. Until Prosecutor Ehard had declared Hitler the “soul” of the putsch, Ludendorff had been regarded in some quarters as equal to Hitler in political and symbolic importance. Ludendorff was, after all, the former commanding general (with Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg) of all German forces in World War I. Though he had a nervous collapse and fled from the field at the war’s end, Ludendorff was still widely regarded as the embodiment of Germany’s onetime military greatness. Some newspapers, like the New York Times and Berliner Tageblatt, had often headlined the event as the “Ludendorff-Hitler trial.” But Ludendorff’s standing in the drama was already on shaky legs. Rumors circulated that a deal might have been cut at the highest levels to make sure the war hero was acquitted. Hitler had clearly established himself as the celebrity defendant and chief orchestrator of the offense in question. Now came the aging general’s chance to show where he stood in the firmament of nationalist coup-makers. Though only fifty-eight, Ludendorff looked and seemed older.

&nbs
p; Ludendorff’s chauffeured car had gotten stuck in the snow on Thursday, so his testimony was moved to Friday—and took all afternoon. For nearly three hours, he spoke in the stern style of the soldier that he was.7 But he was all over the map, reading from letters, quoting Bismarck, talking about separatist tendencies in the Rhineland, dwelling on his longed-for restoration of the monarchy, and becoming fixated on what he considered the near-betrayal of Germany by the Catholic Church. Ludendorff managed gratuitously to offend Catholic-dominated Bavaria and to prove himself the loosest of cannons on the witness stand. Bavarians who had always suspected Ludendorff of not having South Germany’s interests at heart—he was a Prussian transplant from the North—felt confirmed in their doubts.8

  Worse, some people wondered if Ludendorff was losing touch with reality; his ramblings seemed nearly senile. He denied any prior knowledge of the putsch on the night it happened, assigning himself an exceptionally passive role in the whole business, though most historians believe he was well informed.9 (Later Ludendorff even claimed, “Hitler misled me and lied to me,” and called the Nazi leader “only a sloganeer and an adventurer.”10) “Ludendorff seemed like a man from another planet,” wrote the New York Times. “Never did Ludendorff prove his political incompetence so conclusively.… [He is] an old man not only physically but mentally.” Vorwärts, the Social Democratic Berlin newspaper, took the opportunity to excoriate the general as “totally lacking in political judgment” and “no better than what clear-sighted subordinates knew him to be during the war, an ‘insane cadet.’”11 Despite politically calculated warm words about Ludendorff in his opening oration (“I worshipped him”), Hitler would not have been bothered by these cutting remarks about the man. The “firebrand” was already trying to figure out how to distance himself from the unpredictable old general.

  The trial had its share of odd moments. During the first week, several defense lawyers began a round of symbolic fisticuffs with the outside world, as represented by the press. The first attorney complained to Judge Neithardt that the München-Augsburger Abendzeitung had misstated the attorneys’ position on holding secret sessions. While the defendants seemed eager to avoid endangering state secrets through open sessions, wrote the newspaper, “the same cannot be said of the defense lawyers” since they had strongly resisted the idea of holding the entire trial in camera. “I object in the name of all the lawyers here,” huffed the attorney. He also cited a report in the Nazi-friendly Völkischer Kurier based on an unnamed source. The article read:

  Someone told us the following story: “I was by chance sitting in a streetcar next to two sketch artists whom I had noticed in the courtroom because of their sneering grins. They were showing each other their drawings. One of them, apparently a Bulgarian or Hungarian, in any case a typical Slav, showed a triangular caricature of one of the lay judges. The other one, a Jew, triumphantly showed a really nasty cartoon of Ludendorff, looking crushed, gaunt and staring fearfully ahead like a shrew.”

  The attorney asked Judge Neithardt to ban “such people” from covering the trial, to which the judge readily agreed. “Necessary measures have already been taken to remove these kind of people,” said the judge.

  But the lawyer wasn’t finished. He needed to have a go at the foreign press as well. One foreign newspaper reported that the defendants didn’t seem to be taking the charges against them very seriously and were “putting on an act,” said the attorney. He continued: “The accused are real German men who represent a holy idea with the purest of motives. Of course they don’t come into court tearing their hair and rending their garments. In a German courtroom we should strictly prohibit such rough treatment by a foreign publication.” Ludendorff’s attorney took great exception to an article in the New York Herald, which had called the general in its headline the “Leader of the Beer Revolution.” This lawyer, too, asked the judge to prevent “such misuse of visitor’s rights.”

  State’s Attorney Stenglein couldn’t stand it; he had to get his say, too. “One newspaper claimed that during Herr Hitler’s defense statement, everyone was quite serious except the state’s attorney, who had a smile of condescension on his face the whole time. That is completely untrue! I reject any suggestion that the state’s attorney behaved inappropriately during Hitler’s speech.”12

  Such lawyerly ravings highlighted the politicized nature of the Hitler trial as well as the crucial role of newspapers in the public and national life of the 1920s.

  Hitler’s co-putschists offered varying versions of the same events, but all fit neatly into the script Hitler had laid out on the first day. Each emphasized the coup attempt’s high-flung goals and struck patriotic notes that echoed Hitler’s claim of salvationist purpose. They also picked up on Hitler’s occasional dark hints at conducting politics “with a sword.” Wilhelm Brückner, leader of the Hitler Shock Troop that had played a key role during the putsch, ranted on the witness stand that “Germany needs men who have a burning love of the fatherland and a sense of fanatical hate,” including a willingness to commit violence, like saboteurs in the Ruhr region who had switched from passive to active resistance.13

  The prosecution was outgunned. Hitler’s side had ten defendants and eleven lawyers.14 It also had the big names—Hitler and, in theory, Ludendorff. The prosecution, by contrast, had exactly two people, Stenglein and Ehard. Even though they had the power of the state behind them, the two attorneys seemed singularly unaggressive, politically neutralized, and tame in their tactics. At no point, for example, had Stenglein objected to either the length or the content of the tendentious testimony by the accused.

  Having nine co-defendants and a roomful of mouthy lawyers was a considerable advantage for Hitler; he did not have to carry all the water. It was neither Hitler nor his attorney, Lorenz Roder, who threw down the first legal gauntlet in the trial—an official request for the arrest of Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser. Instead, it was Attorney Kohl, Brückner’s lawyer, who struck first. Adding to growing tension over the triumvirate’s role in fomenting a coup attempt, Kohl called for the “immediate arrest” of the trio. Kohl was one of the most aggressive figures in the trial and, given a newspaper’s reference to his embonpoint, one of its weightiest.* Short and stolid, with drooping eyes and a drooping mustache, Kohl looked like a small cannon. “The defense brought its heavy guns into position,” noted the Münchener Post, tongue only slightly in cheek.15

  That Hitler and his Nazis had been working closely with the Bavarian State Police and Reichswehr was by now well established. That they were also being sheltered by the Munich City Police Department—the so-called blue police because of the color of their uniforms—was less well known until defendant Wilhelm Frick, Pöhner’s former chief political adviser and now a defendant, stood to testify. Frick and Pöhner had run the police from 1919 to 1922. With its powerful political section, the police department had played a secret role in nurturing the infant Nazi movement. “We could have easily suppressed it in 1919 and 1920,” said Frick. “But we realized that this little National Socialist movement should not be crushed” because they saw in the Nazis “the germ of a rebirth of Germany,” said Frick, sounding like Hitler’s speechwriter, if he had had one. Just like Hitler, the two bosses of the Munich police wanted to roll back the Marxist tide they saw washing over the labor movement, luring workers back into the nationalist camp. “We held a protective hand over the National Socialist German Workers’ Party [Nazi Party] and Herr Hitler,” confessed Frick.16

  As the coup attempt unfolded, Frick and Pöhner had been assigned to seize control of the Munich police apparatus. Instead, they ended up being arrested at the police headquarters. Frick put on a pitiful display of ducking and dodging as Judge Neithardt confronted him with a stream of evidence about his prior knowledge and central role in the putsch. None of that seems to have bothered Hitler; he later appointed Frick the Third Reich’s interior minister, where he played a central role in the crimes of the regime.

  By the trial’s second week, the m
ood in the converted Infantry School courtroom was turning tense. Judge Neithardt’s unwillingness to cap the loose language and sometimes toxic insinuations was beginning to irritate. “One feels a thunderstorm brewing,” noted a column in the München-Augsburger Abendzeitung. Even a Paris newspaper, Le Temps, described the courtroom temper as “orageuse” (stormy).17 Supporters of the Weimar Republic “declare that the trial is the most scandalous ever conducted in Germany,” wrote the New York Times.18

  The political establishment was also beginning to feel uneasy. After Hitler’s opening blast put them on the defensive, there was considerable wringing of hands on March 4 at a meeting of Bavaria’s Council of Ministers—effectively the government cabinet. The chief target of their dismay was Neithardt’s behavior on the bench; he became the object of derision and complaints. Dr. Franz Schweyer, the interior (police) minister, said he had received steady complaints from the Reichswehr and Bavarian State Police that courtroom slanders against them had gone unchallenged by the judge. One minister noted that Neithardt had said Ludendorff was the best thing Germany had—leading to the assumption that the judge wanted Ludendorff acquitted. It is obvious, said one minister, “that the judge is one-sided.” The accused, it was noted, were being allowed excessive freedoms. Their rooms were always open, they dined in style, they had two hours per day in the courtyard, and they received visitors whenever they wished. Weber had even been granted a “Sunday vacation” and given the run of Munich for a day. Finally, the justice minister, Dr. Franz Gürtner, admitted that he had met several times with Neithardt and let him know people were uneasy about his allowing Hitler “to speak for four hours.”19 (Despite his reservations about the trial, Gürtner went on to become Hitler’s justice minister in the Third Reich.)