4

The March to the Hitler Putsch

In summer 1922 the conflict between Bavaria and the Reich broke out again with renewed bitterness. The murder of Reich Foreign Minister, Walther Rathenau by members of the Organization Consul, on 24 June 1922, prompted the Reich to pass a ‘Law for the Protection of the Republic’, which seriously impinged on the responsibilities of the federal states. The Bavarian government responded by replacing the Reich law with a state decree, whereupon the Reich President demanded the withdrawal of the decree. When Prime Minister Lerchenfeld subsequently worked out a compromise with the Reich and, in August, finally withdrew the decree, he found himself confronted with a broad front of right-wing groups accusing him of having sacrificed Bavarian interests. Anti-Prussian and anti-socialist sentiments were being exploited once again.¹ During the following months Hitler was able to profit from these bitter conflicts.

The agitation against the Reich government and Lerchenfeld’s policy came to a head on 16 August with a major demonstration of the right-wing leagues on the Königsplatz in Munich. The NSDAP took part in this event as a distinct formation, with Hitler, the second speaker, receiving warm applause from the crowd.²

Another major demonstration, arranged for only a few days later, was banned by the police because of rumours about a putsch. In fact, Pittinger, who was trying to unite the most important paramilitary leagues under the umbrella of his organization Bayern und Reich, wanted to use this opportunity to proclaim Kahr dictator. However, Georg Heim, the Bavarian peasant leader, as well as a number of Reichswehr officers who were in the know, refused to join in prompting Pittinger to approach Hitler. In the event, relatively few demonstrators came to the Königsplatz (most of them were Nazis) and the police cleared the square, forcing Pittinger to cancel the operation.³ Finally, instead of the demonstration taking place on the Königsplatz, around 5,000 demonstrators made their way to the Kindlkeller, where Hitler found he had no alternative but to follow police instructions and order his followers peacefully to disperse. The evening had turned into a fiasco for Hitler. One thing had become clear: the more the NSDAP became involved in the complicated relationship between government, army, and paramilitary leagues, the greater the danger of being used by others for their own purposes.⁴ Hitler interpreted the botched ‘Pittinger putsch’ as confirmation of his previous policy of maintaining the NSDAP’s independence at all costs.

These highly fraught political confrontations were taking place against the background of an increasingly precarious economic situation brought about by the rapid devaluation of the currency. For during the summer of 1922 the steady deterioration in the value of the Mark that had been going on since the war turned into hyperinflation. A memorandum from the Bavarian state government to the Reich Chancellor from September 1922 stated: ‘The wave of price increases that is currently sweeping through the country, which in size and extent far exceeds all previous ones, has created a situation that poses a threat to the economy, to the state, and to society in equal measure.’⁵

In October 1922, Hitler accepted an invitation from the Schutz- und Trutzbund for his Party to attend the German Day in Coburg, a gathering of völkisch supporters from all over the Reich. It was the first time that Hitler had mobilized his Party supporters in any numbers for an event outside Munich. It is claimed that 800 SA men travelled on 14 October to the town in Upper Franconia in northern Bavaria. Despite a police ban, they marched through the town in tight formation with flags flying and a band playing. The provocation had the desired effect. There were numerous fights with socialist counter-demonstrators, culminating in a street battle. By the end, the SA had provided an exemplary demonstration of how to conquer the streets.⁶ A few days later, Hitler achieved another triumph, this time in Middle Franconia. On 20 October, the members of the Nuremberg branch of the Deutsche Werkgemeinschaft (mainly previous supporters of the DSP) were ceremoniously received into the NSDAP. At the beginning of the month, after a row with Otto Dickel, the founder and leader of the Werkgemeinschaft, the branch leader, Julius Streicher, who was a school teacher and rabid anti-Semite, had agreed to throw in his lot with Hitler. The fact that the Munich Party was prepared to take on his newspaper, the Deutscher Volkswille, and pay off its debts, which were in his name, provided an additional incentive. By the end of 1922, the march through Coburg and Streicher’s joining the NSDAP with his supporters had significantly increased the Party’s support in Middle and Upper Franconia.⁷

In total, by the end of 1922, 8,000 people had joined the Party since its foundation, of whom half had joined during the second half of 1922, although, in view of the high degree of fluctuation, the actual number of members was probably significantly lower.⁸ Moreover, the number of local branches had markedly increased. Their number rose from 17 at the beginning of 1922 to 46 by the end of the summer and, finally, to 100 at the end of the year. This also shows that the NSDAP’s expansion occurred mostly during the last months of 1922.⁹ The main focus of the Party organization continued to be Bavaria, where its presence could no longer be ignored. Whereas the NSDAP was banned in Prussia in November 1922, the political situation in Bavaria moved in the Party’s favour. Lerchenfeld was replaced as prime minister in November, and his successor, Eugen von Knilling, who was a right-wing conservative, once more tried to link the extreme right-wing forces more closely to the government. Knilling’s attitude to the NSDAP was ambivalent. He tried to limit its extremism, but believed the Party’s potential could be utilized for a nationalist initiative coming from Bavaria. Thus, in November, only a few days after Knilling’s arrival in office, the NSDAP was included in the re-founded Vereinigte Vaterländische Verbände, a relatively broad umbrella organization, containing both civilian and paramilitary, moderate and radical right-wing groups. Apart from the Nazis, it included Pittinger’s Bayern und Reich, the Bayerische Ordnungsblock, the Wehrverband Reichsflagge, the Verband der Vaterländischen Bezirksvereine Münchens as well as the Pan-German League and the Schutz- und Trutzbund.¹⁰

At the same time, the Party demonstrated that it was quite capable of acting on its own. In November 1922, rumours were circulating that Hitler was planning a putsch, rumours that increased during January.¹¹ They seemed to be entirely justified by the NSDAP’s aggressive behaviour, for, before the end of the year, the SA engaged for a second time in a massive operation outside Munich. In December 1922 a large group of SA men turned up in Göppingen in Württemberg and engaged in a bloody confrontation with socialist opponents.¹² Moreover, on 13 December, the NSDAP organized ten mass meetings running in parallel in Munich, with the slogan ‘Jews and Marxists: the True Gravediggers of the German Nation and the German Reich’.¹³ A few days later Hitler held an SA parade in the Munich Hofbräuhaus. In front of an audience of – the police estimated – 2,800, Hitler, referring to the violent events in Göppingen, demanded that the SA show ‘loyalty unto death and beyond, as the Führer himself also pledges loyalty unto death’.¹⁴

From ‘drummer’ to ‘Führer’

The growth in support for the NSDAP in autumn 1922 marks the point at which the image and self-image of Hitler as ‘Führer’ began to develop within the Party. During the post-war period, the call for a ‘Führer’ was common within the German Right, but not only the Right. In politics, literature, journalism, the humanities, the youth movement, and also within the Protestant Church there was a widespread longing for an exceptional personality, the ‘one’, to appear and lead the nation out of its humiliation and back to honour and national glory. This call from multiple voices was religiously, or rather pseudo-religiously, charged to a high degree. For many this anticipated hero could only be one sent by God. The longing for a national saviour figure was so ubiquitous and so intense that, for many, the numerous prophecies of a messianic redeemer had almost become a certainty.¹⁵

Such expressions of anticipation of a ‘Führer’ can also be shown to have been present in the milieu within which Hitler gradually emerged as ‘Führer’ between 1919 and 1923. In September 1919, in other words at the moment when Hitler first attended a DAP meeting, Scheubner-Richter’s newsletter, Aufbau, published a poem by Emanuel Geibel (‘German Laments from the Year 1844’),¹⁶ which contains the following lines:

We need a man, a scion of the Nibelungs,

To take control of our madly galloping age

With iron fists and thighs.

In December 1919, Dietrich Eckart, Hitler’s mentor in the DAP, published a poem ‘Patience’, in which the last verse reads:

He waits silently, the hero to whom we look;

Only now and then the sword clinks in his scabbard,

Then all around, with dreadful groans and howls

That progeny of hell, the Huns.

He waits in silence, his eyes fixed on one object:

The countless crimes others have committed against us –

Already a bright dawn seems to be breaking

. . .

Patience! Patience!¹⁷

During 1922, Hitler was usually referred to as Adolf Hitler or ‘Pg. (Party comrade) Hitler’ in the announcements of his speeches in the Völkischer Beobachter. From spring 1922 onwards, however, increasingly the term ‘our leader Pg. Adolf Hitler’ is used. When, at the end of October 1922, the Italian Fascists secured Mussolini’s take-over of power with their ‘March on Rome’ this boosted the NSDAP’s prestige among right-wing groups and in particular Hitler’s role as political leader. ‘What a group of courageous men managed to do in Italy’ announced Esser in a speech on 3 November in the Löwenbräukeller, ‘we can do in Bavaria as well. We too have Italy’s Mussolini. He’s called Adolf Hitler’.¹⁸ On 6 December, the Völkischer Beobachter wrote about a meeting which had taken place a few days before: ‘Wherever Hitler went the cheering went on and on; it was for the man who through his boundless enthusiasm, determination to reach his goals, and uncompromising energy embodies what today millions long for, hope for, and indeed foresee.’¹⁹

At the same time Rudolf Hess gave a boost to the Hitler cult in his own particular way. At the end of 1922, he won a competition organized by the University of Munich for an essay with the title ‘What kind of a man will restore Germany to greatness?’ Hess’s prize-winning essay²⁰ did not name names, but it is clear to whom he is attributing the exceptional abilities he describes. He argued that the ‘German dictator’ – as far as he was concerned there could be no other title for the future leader – had ‘first to reawaken and train up’ national consciousness. And he continued: ‘Profound knowledge in all areas of the life of the state and of history, and the ability to learn lessons from it, belief in the righteousness of his cause and in final victory, and immense will power will enable him to give thrilling speeches and win the applause of the masses. In order to save the nation he will not shrink from using the weapons of his opponents – demagogy, slogans, street demonstrations. Where all authority has vanished, popularity is the only source of authority. Mussolini has demonstrated that. The deeper the dictator is rooted in the broad mass of the people, the better he will know how to handle them psychologically. . . . He himself has nothing to do with the masses; he, like every great man, is entirely himself. Through strength of personality he radiates a certain something, a compelling quality that draws more and more people to him.’ Finally, he quoted from a poem by Eckart, published in December 1919:

Storm, storm, storm,

Rings the bell from tower to tower,

Rings for the men, the old ones and young ones,

Awakens the sleepers from their beds,

Rings the serving girls down the narrow staircases,

Rings the mothers away from their cribs.

It must boom and peal through the air,

Rush, rush in the thunder of revenge,

Ringing the dead from their tombs.

Germany awake!²¹

Hess’s essay shows that heroic myths and effusive redemption poetry were the ingredients that in undiluted form shaped the image of the future ‘Führer’ in the eyes of those close to him.

As the Party grew in numbers and prestige, Hitler managed to secure more sources of finance.²² This was vital because, apart from anything else, in 1923 the Reichswehr began increasingly to concentrate on transferring the payments previously made to the NSDAP to the SA.²³

Gansser continued to play an extremely important role in negotiating donations to the NSDAP. In summer 1923, in particular, he secured a loan of 60,000 Swiss francs from Richard Franck, a malt coffee manufacturer, which were used to support the Völkischer Beobachter.²⁴ On Hitler’s instructions, Amann deposited jewellery in a bank as security. It probably came from Helene Bechstein, who together with her husband Erwin, the piano manufacturer, had already been introduced to Hitler by Eckart in 1920; the couple regularly made contributions to the Party.²⁵ Between April and December 1923, on at least six occasions, Gansser spent lengthy periods in Switzerland, where he secured large donations from sympathizers in Swiss francs, which were much sought after during the hyperinflation. Hitler himself is alleged to have returned from one trip to Switzerland during 1923 with 33,000 francs. Hitler’s chauffeur, Julius Schreck, stated after the Munich putsch that his boss had often been paid in Swiss currency.²⁶ Gertrud von Seidlitz, a doctor’s widow who joined the NSDAP in 1921 and shortly afterwards got to know Hitler personally, assisted the Party by securing currency from Finland.²⁷ Heinrich Becker, a Swabian underwear manufacturer from Geislingen, was another donor.²⁸

Figure 1. Dietrich Eckart’s poem ‘Storm’ became the inspiration for an early NSDAP anthem. In 1922 Hans Gansser, the brother of the successful fundraiser Emil Gansser, set the poem to music and dedicated it to Adolf Hitler. First performed in 1923 at the first Party Rally, the song later lost its pre-eminence because it was too difficult to sing.

Source: SZ Photo/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo

Kurt Lüdecke, a 32 year-old adventurer, globetrotter, and businessman, came into contact with Hitler in summer 1922. He possessed foreign exchange in various denominations, some of which he clearly placed at the disposal of the NSDAP. However, his main role in the Party was to arrange foreign contacts. He claimed to have met Mussolini during 1922, even before the March on Rome, in order to inform him about the NSDAP.²⁹ In 1923 he went on another foreign trip, this time to Budapest and Italy, where he once more visited Mussolini, who had come to power in the meantime. However, according to Lüdecke, the ‘Duce’ showed no interest in his report on the impending conflicts between Munich and Berlin,³⁰ and Lüdecke’s independent actions soon alienated the Party leadership. At the beginning of 1923, following a tip-off from Hitler, the police began investigating Lüdecke on the grounds of espionage.³¹ He was arrested and held on remand for two months. After his release he continued to work for the Party, but in future Hitler and the Party leadership regarded him with suspicion.³²

Ernst Hanfstängl, a partner in an important fine art publishing house, joined the NSDAP in 1922 following his return to Munich in 1919 after a ten-year stay in the United States. Hitler was a frequent guest in his flat in the bohemian district of Schwabing and, especially during these visits, Hanfstängl was able to provide him with important introductions to the Munich upper-middle class.³³ In 1923 Hanfstängl gave Hitler an interest-free loan of 1,000 dollars that he had acquired from sales in America; during the hyperinflation this represented a serious amount of money and contributed a great deal towards ensuring that, from February 1923 onwards, the Völkischer Beobachter could appear as a daily paper. However, Hanfstängl recalled that it proved very difficult to secure the repayment of the loan.³⁴

The rise of the Party ensured that, by the end of 1922, Hitler had gained increased access to Munich high society. He associated with the Hanfstängls, with the Bechsteins, who, during their visits to Munich, stayed in the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, and with the Görings (the famous World War fighter ace had moved to Munich at the beginning of 1923). Despite their being impressed by him, many stories were told in these circles about Hitler’s lack of social graces, his poor table manners, his unsuitable clothing, his uncivilized behaviour, his impossible taste, and his gauche manner, all of which betrayed his lower-middle-class origins. However, it was precisely this enigmatic aura he conveyed that made him such a social hit. But Hitler’s behaviour changed; among other things, his growing success was reflected in his choice of ever more luxurious motorcars. In February 1923 he exchanged the Selve, which had been seriously damaged in an accident, for a larger six-seat car, also a Selve, and in September he treated himself to a shiny red Benz, also a six-seater.³⁵

However, Hitler continued to dress in a style that was, by contemporary standards, eccentric, an eccentricity summed up by the fact that he always carried a riding crop. In 1936 the writer, Friedrich Percyval Reck-Malleczewen, recalling a private visit by Hitler to a cultured family in Munich in 1920, noted that with his ‘riding boots, riding crop, Alsatian dog and floppy hat’ he had appeared on the scene like a ‘cowboy’ wanting to take over the conversation and preach ‘like a military chaplain’.³⁶ The historian, Karl Alexander von Müller, also reported how, when arriving at a soirée at the Hanfstängls, in the hall Hitler ‘had put down his riding crop, taken off his trench coat and leather hat, and lastly unbuckled a belt with a revolver attached, and then hung them all on a clothes peg. It looked weird and reminiscent of Karl May’.^* While at this point Hitler had already had some public success, according to Müller ‘there was still something gauche about him and one had the unpleasant feeling that he felt that himself and resented the fact that people noticed it’.³⁷ In his anecdotal memoirs even Hanfstängl cannot help repeatedly commenting with a certain smugness on the contrast between his own cultivated milieu and the shabbily dressed petty bourgeois, Hitler, with his philistine behaviour and lack of education.³⁸ It is no longer possible to check the truth of these anecdotes, but they clearly show that the members of the Munich upper-middle class, who sought to associate with or support Hitler, were also concerned to emphasize their social superiority to this ‘phenomenon’.

Around 1922, Hitler’s intimate circle was joined by Heinrich Hoffmann, the owner of a Munich photographic studio in Schellingstrasse 50. Hoffmann had been a member of the Party since 1920. The fact that it took two years for him to become closely acquainted with the Party leader was probably for professional reasons: at the start of his career Hitler refused to be photographed. Hoffmann made some attempts to overcome this taboo and gradually, through invitations, lengthy discussions about the artistic interests they had in common and so forth, he managed to win Hitler’s trust. In fact, in September 1923, he was permitted to publish the first studio photograph authorized by Hitler and taken only a few days after a press photographer had succeeded in snatching a photo of Hitler at the German Day in Nuremberg. From now onwards, Hoffmann became Hitler’s official and exclusive photographer, possessing a monopoly of the pictures authorized by Hitler, and in the process becoming a rich man.³⁹

Hitler’s initial refusal to allow himself to be photographed was not, as has been often imagined, one of his clever propaganda ideas to create an aura of mystery around him; the advantages of such a strategy of concealment would undoubtedly have been outweighed by its disadvantages. A more plausible explanation would be that he wanted to remain incognito outside Bavaria in order to avoid the police – on occasions there were arrest warrants out for him – and the attentions of his political opponents.⁴⁰ Hitler’s unwillingness to be photographed and his policy, from autumn 1923 onwards, of controlling published pictures of himself through Hoffmann also point to Hitler’s fears that the self-image he had created of a heroic political fighter could be damaged or revealed as a farce by other photographs. For the rest of his life he was haunted by the fear of being made to look ridiculous by unsuitable photographs.⁴¹ Now that he could no longer avoid public interest in how he looked, he ensured that pictures of him were widely distributed in a series of standard poses: holding himself stiffly with a determined, indeed grim facial expression. In later years, Hoffmann and Hitler expanded the repertoire, but this does not alter the basic fact that, with Hoffmann’s help, Hitler was himself largely responsible for devising and controlling the image we have of him to this day.

Under Hitler’s leadership the rapidly expanding NSDAP remained remarkably unstructured; it developed into a real Führer party, in which Hitler assigned tasks to confidants on an ad hoc basis. He did not have a deputy who could really represent him; there was no executive committee meeting regularly that might have been able to control Hitler; the Party bureaucracy under Amann was intentionally kept weak and had no means of contesting Hitler’s claim to absolute power. Hitler was the unchallenged chief propagandist, was in charge of the most important local branch, Munich, and prevented the emergence of any strong Party organization outside Munich from which competition might have arisen. In 1922/23 his informal circle included Amann (Party manager), Rosenberg (editor of the Völkischer Beobachter and link man to the Baltic Germans), Esser (propagandist), Scheubner-Richter (link man to Ludendorff ), Hanfstängl and Lüdecke with their social contacts, the ‘bodyguards’ Graf, Weber, and Maurice, although the last two increasingly took on organizational tasks, the two early mentors, Feder and Eckart, and Hoffmann as court photographer. Significantly they did not meet in formal sessions, but mainly in cafés, in Café Heck,⁴² and later in Café Neumayr near the Viktualienmarkt,⁴³ or in Hitler’s favourite restaurant, the Ostaria Bavaria in Schellingstrasse.

Membership of this group depended on Hitler’s favour, and acquiring and maintaining it required the willing subordination of the person concerned to the Party leader. Anyone who lost Hitler’s confidence, such as Eckart and Lüdecke, soon found themselves consigned to the political wilderness. The former had to give up the editorship of the Völkischer Beobachter in 1923, presumably because he was not efficient enough. When Hitler’s former mentor returned to Munich in October 1923 after six months’ absence – he was lying low in Berchtesgaden because of a Reich arrest warrant – he found that he was completely isolated within the NSDAP and that Hitler no longer consulted him.⁴⁴ The deep ‘friendship’ that Hitler, in later years, repeatedly claimed existed between the two men⁴⁵ did not last.

The SA represented an important exception to this informal structure. It was organized hierarchically along military lines. Its position within the Nazi movement depended not so much on the personal connections of its leaders with Hitler, but rather it was heavily dependent on its links to the Reichswehr and the other paramilitary leagues. Apart from that, as an armed force it represented a power factor sui generis, which was to become clear during the turbulent year of 1923.

1923: The crisis year

On 11 January 1923 Belgian and French troops marched into the Ruhr in response to arrears in German reparation payments. The Berlin government replied with a declaration of passive resistance and the growing number of confrontations between the Ruhr population and Belgian and French troops during the following weeks and months produced another serious political crisis. The general outcry of national anger provided further food for Nazi agitation. At the same time, Hitler was fully aware that the new situation also contained risks. For as a result of the NSDAP becoming incorporated into a broad nationalist front – in November 1922 it had already joined the Vereinigung der Vaterländischen Verbände – the Party and, in particular, its leader threatened to lose their distinctiveness. From Hitler’s point of view, it was vital for the NSDAP to retain its independence so that he could maintain the role that, over the previous three years, he had established for himself on the Munich political stage. He found a way out by ensuring that the NSDAP did not, like other right-wing groups, direct its agitation against the hated French but instead, in the first instance, against those ‘November criminals in Berlin’, as he put it in a Nazi meeting, who were to blame for Germany’s humiliation. In this way he hoped the NSDAP could use the crisis to sharpen its image. Consequently, he declined to attend a protest meeting intended to unite all the right-wing organizations in a common struggle.⁴⁶

Instead of that, he concentrated on a series of spectacular events with which the NSDAP tried to distinguish itself from the numerous ‘nationalist’ protest rallies. They began at the end of January with the NSDAP’s first ‘Reich Party Rally’. Originally, the Bavarian government had wanted to limit its scope. In his negotiations with the police chief Hitler began by issuing wild threats: ‘The government could shoot them down; he would be in the front row. They could shoot him too, but the one thing he would say was: the first shot would unleash a blood bath and they would see what would happen then: within two hours of the first shot being fired the government would’ve fallen.’⁴⁷ Two days later, his approach to the police chief was much more restrained; he was humble and in despair. According to his interlocutor, he ‘requested on bended knees that no more difficulties be created for him. As a result of the constant changes of decision, his supporters and guests were almost going wild and if the programme were changed it was inevitable that there would be serious and unavoidable repercussions’.⁴⁸ Thus, while acting as supplicant, Hitler was simultaneously making a veiled threat. Finally, prompted by Röhm, the Reichswehr intervened with the Bavarian government and, despite the state of emergency that had been declared in the meantime, secured the removal of the various conditions that had been imposed.⁴⁹ On the evening of 27 January, Hitler made brief appearances at twelve meetings in Munich beer halls⁵⁰ and, the following day, there was a parade of 6,000 SA men on the Marsfeld, where Hitler ‘dedicated flags’.⁵¹ Afterwards, the actual meeting of Party delegates took place with 300 chairmen of local branches, followed by a general membership meeting at which Hitler was unanimously confirmed as Party chairman.⁵²

Röhm used the difficulties associated with the Party rally to break with Pittinger’s Bayern und Reich, blaming its leader for the restrictions imposed by the government.⁵³ Shortly after this, he founded the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der vaterländischen Kampfverbände [Working Group of Patriot Combat Leagues], to which, apart from the SA, Röhm’s own paramilitary league, the Reichsflagge, as well as Bund Oberland, the Vaterländische Vereine Münchens [Patriotic Clubs of Munich], and the Kampfbund Niederbayern [Combat League of Lower Bavaria] all belonged. The Arbeitsgemeinschaft had its own military high command; its members received military training from and were supplied with weapons by the Reichswehr. In setting it up Röhm had brought together the radical völkisch leagues with the clear aim of opposing the moderate conservative Bund Bayern und Reich.⁵⁴ At the same time, Röhm did what he could to protect the NSDAP against unwelcome attentions from the police.⁵⁵

In addition, at the beginning of 1923, the retired Captain Hermann Göring, a highly decorated fighter pilot and former commander of the famous Richthofen squadron, was appointed the new commander of the SA. Göring, who had some private means through his Swedish wife, Carin, and enjoyed a high reputation in nationalist and military circles, interpreted his new role primarily as a representational one. However, many simple Party members took offence at the exaggerated and pompous way in which he performed it.⁵⁶ His villa in Obermenzing became a meeting place for the political Right, and Hitler was often to be found there with his entourage. According to Carin Göring’s official biographer, writing in 1934, it was here that, surrounded by the rustic decor of the large basement room, ‘after the serious discussions . . . they spent relaxed and enjoyable times together’.⁵⁷ Under Göring’s leadership the SA increasingly changed from being a Party strong arm squad to becoming a paramilitary league, with its own high command and military structure, independent of the Party’s local branches. In other words, the military wing – Röhm and Göring – were gaining the upper hand within the NSDAP.⁵⁸

On 26 February 1923, Ludendorff called a meeting of the leaders of the important paramilitary leagues in Berlin and demanded their support for the existing government in the event of war. However, they were unwilling to allow their men to be incorporated into the Reichswehr as reservists, insisting that they should only be attached to the army as separate units. Hitler, who also claimed to have been in Berlin at the time, maintained at his 1924 trial that he had been willing to put his men at Ludendorff’s disposal.⁵⁹ According to Hitler, in the course of these negotiations there had been a lengthy discussion with the army chief, General Hans von Seeckt, whom he had urged to take military action against the Ruhr occupation – without success.⁶⁰

Shortly afterwards, Röhm’s Arbeitsgemeinschaft began a campaign of provocation against the Bavarian government by holding big military parades and similar events. On 1 May 1923, the labour movement’s traditional annual day of celebration and also the fourth anniversary of the crushing of the Munich Räterepublik, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft decided to mount a challenge. Together with the Vereinigte Vaterländische Verbände, it sent an ultimatum to Prime Minister von Knilling demanding that the planned demonstration by the SPD and the trade unions be banned. When the government refused, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft assembled thousands of their men in Munich, some of whom had acquired weapons from Reichswehr stores, despite the fact they were only supposed to receive them in the event of war. However, when the police and the army made it clear that they were not going to back down in the face of the threat, the men returned their weapons and departed. This represented a major loss of prestige for the Arbeitsgemeinschaft and not least for Hitler, whose dependence on the Reichswehr had been clearly exposed.⁶¹ That evening at the Circus Krone Hitler celebrated the ‘alliance of defence and defiance’ represented by the leagues united in the Arbeitsgemeinschaft, although in fact the Vereinigte Vaterländische Verbände had pulled out at the last minute. But he could not conceal the fact that he had suffered a major defeat.⁶²

Hitler’s behaviour had in fact offered the Bavarian judicial authorities the opportunity of starting proceedings against him and revoking the suspension of his three-month prison sentence, of which he had served over a third the previous year. Hitler, however, sent the prosecuting authorities a memorandum in which he threatened to expose the secret cooperation between the Reichswehr and the paramilitary leagues in the event of his being charged. In response, the Bavarian minister of justice decided to postpone the case and it was never proceeded with.⁶³

During the following months, the general crisis worsened. In addition to the nationalist mood stoked by the Ruhr invasion, the hyperinflation, which had been developing since the previous year, induced a sense of deep depression. Large sections of the middle class found their savings being wiped out and unemployment rose dramatically. The number of those in Munich receiving welfare benefits went up from 40,000 at the start of the year to 140,000 at the end.⁶⁴ The widespread hatred of the ‘November criminals’ was given a further boost not only by the entry of the Social Democrats into the new Reich government formed by Gustav Stresemann in August, but also by the growing cooperation between the SPD governments in Thuringia and Saxony and the Communist Party (KPD); in both states communist ministers joined the government.⁶⁵

In September the SA, Bund Oberland and the Reichsflagge established the Deutscher Kampfbund [German Combat League] at a ceremonial ‘German Day’ in Nuremberg. This alliance had come about largely through the efforts of Ludendorff, who was to exert considerable influence on the Kampfbund as an eminence grise.⁶⁶ His confidant, Hermann Kriebel, took over the military leadership, while Ludendorff’s ‘political’ advisor ‘on the East’, Scheubner-Richter, ran the organization. On 27 September, a day after the end of passive resistance in the Ruhr, which produced a further wave of nationalist anger,⁶⁷ Röhm succeeded in securing the political leadership of the Kampfbund for Hitler and now left the Reichswehr, in order to devote himself full time to the Kampfbund. In fact, it was the military, not Hitler the politician, who were in future to make the decisions about the Kampfbund. Meanwhile, concerned about the situation, the Bavarian government now declared a state of emergency, appointing the former prime minister, Kahr, General State Commissioner, in other words, temporary dictator.⁶⁸

Kahr now tried, on the one hand, to organize a ‘coming together of all patriotic forces’, and, on the other, to introduce concrete economic measures in order to alleviate the impact of the crisis on the masses.⁶⁹ He fixed bread and beer prices, while attempting to force farmers to make larger deliveries and to reduce the profits of entrepreneurs.⁷⁰ Moreover, as in 1920, he initiated measures to deport eastern Jews, this time with the excuse of combatting ‘profiteers’ and ‘racketeers’. By 1 November 1923, around thirty people had been deported from Munich alone, evidently with the aim of taking the wind out of the sails of the radical anti-Semites and their agitation.⁷¹ Kahr was barely in office when he imposed a ban on all the meetings the NSDAP had planned for 27 September and demanded a declaration of loyalty from the Kampfbund. Hitler responded with the statement that the attitude of the Kampfbund to the General State Commissioner would depend on the attitude that he adopted ‘towards the major questions of our time’.⁷²

The appointment of a strong man with populist policies led to a decline in support for the Kampfbund. At the beginning of October, the Reichsflagge declared for Kahr, prompting Röhm to organize the most radical elements in a new league, the Reichskriegsflagge. Since the Reich government had responded to the new Bavarian state of emergency by declaring a Reich-wide state of emergency, the Reichswehr commander in Bavaria, Otto Hermann von Lossow, was placed in a dilemma. When he refused to obey an order from the Reichswehr minister to ban the Völkischer Beobachter for an article insulting the Reich Chancellor, he was dismissed. However, the Bavarian government immediately reappointed him as Bavarian state commander, assigning him command of the Reichswehr division stationed in Bavaria.⁷³

This conflict provided the background to the development of a vicious rivalry in Bavaria between the conservative Right and the forces of the radical Right, with the so-called Triumvirate of von Kahr, von Lossow, and Hans von Seisser, the chief of the state police, on the one side, and Ludendorff, Hitler, and Röhm on the other. They were both totally committed to bringing down the Reich government, but differed over the means of doing so. The Kampfbund wanted to set up a dictatorship in Munich under Ludendorff and Hitler, crush the socialist governments in central Germany, and then stage a ‘March on Berlin’ in order to seize power in the Reich. Kahr, on the other hand, while wanting to see the Reich government in Berlin replaced by a ‘Directorate’ with dictatorial powers, aimed to achieve this in the form of a cold coup by working together with right-wing circles in north Germany and the Reichswehr. The aim was to put pressure on the Reich President, who would then use his special powers under Article 48 of the Constitution to establish some form of dictatorship.⁷⁴ In the context of these general preparations for a coup, the Kampfbund was now in danger of simply being used by the Triumvirate. But Hitler was determined to retain his freedom of action; for him retreat was out of the question.

Tension was increased by the fact that the Reichswehr forces stationed in Bavaria and the right-wing leagues in northern Bavaria, supported by the military, were making preparations to mobilize. The state police, which had been reinforced by members of the right-wing leagues, including the Kampfbund and SA, was organizing a ‘border defence force’ under Captain Erhardt, who was still being sought under a Reich arrest warrant. While the pretext was defence against the left-wing governments in Thuringia and Saxony, the aim of the leagues was to use this force for an impending ‘operation’ in the north. The Kampfbund and the SA were both taking part in this mobilization.⁷⁵ The Reichswehr’s plans were altogether more ambitious, as von Lossow explained to the leagues’ leaders at a meeting on 24 October. The plan was to reinforce the Reichswehr units stationed in Bavaria with members of the leagues with the main aim of establishing a ‘nationalist dictatorship’ in Berlin.⁷⁶ The representatives who were present concurred, although in many cases with the proviso that their members should not be directly integrated into the Reichswehr but retain their independence. Thereupon the Reichswehr began preparing to expand the single division stationed in Bavaria into three divisions. Since the Nazis were not present at this meeting,⁷⁷ they had not issued any statement concerning their participation. However, at the end of October, the Reichswehr began rapidly training the SA in its barracks and, according to Hitler’s statements at his 1924 trial, this was with the intention of embarking on a ‘military campaign in the north’.⁷⁸

During the following days, there was a series of discussions and soundings between the rival parties, though they had the effect, if anything, of intensifying the differences between their respective objectives. Hitler’s most important interlocutors were Lossow and Seisser. On 24 October, when Lossow was meeting the leagues, Hitler subjected Seisser to a four-hour monologue about his aims,⁷⁹ and then, the following day, this time accompanied by Friedrich Weber, the leader of Bund Oberland, once more arranged to meet Seisser, this time together with Lossow. Now he demanded that the planned Reich Directorate should be composed of himself, Ludendorff, Seisser, and Lossow, which Seisser and Lossow both rejected in view of Ludendorff’s status.⁸⁰ According to Lossow’s statement at the 1924 trial, during this period he had been subjected to a positive ‘wave’ of visits from Hitler, during which the latter had kept making the same arguments in favour of his plans and had been completely impervious to the objections raised against them.⁸¹ On 25 October, Seisser and Lossow also arranged a meeting between Hitler, Ludendorff, and the industrialist Friedrich Minoux, who had been identified as a potential member of the Directorate; but they were unable to reach agreement on how to alter the political situation in Berlin.⁸²

Lossow’s impressions of his meetings with Hitler, which he repeated in the 1924 trial, seem typical of the latter’s way of carrying on a conversation and its supposedly grandiose effects. ‘Hitler’s well-known thrilling and suggestive rhetoric initially had a big effect on me . . . but the more I listened to Hitler . . . the less impressed I became. I noticed that his long speeches almost always made the same points. . . . In general, during such conversations, Hitler is the only one who is allowed to speak. It’s difficult to raise objections and they have no effect.’ Lossow then referred to a statement by Hitler, according to which the latter claimed that, during one of their conversations, Lossow had been ‘very depressed’. Lossow made it clear that his mood had been provoked less by the general political situation and much more by Hitler’s endless talking: ‘May I be permitted to point out that a different conclusion could be drawn, namely that, having been obliged to listen to these remarks on numerous occasions, General Lossow’s patience was more or less exhausted and that, while he did not wish to tell Herr Hitler: “Please, I’ve had enough!”, he did want to indicate that by his demeanour.’⁸³ It is typical of Hitler that he interpreted Lossow’s manner, which indicated that Hitler’s endless talking had worn him out, as dejection, which he then tried to overcome with another torrent of words. Hitler was unable to recognize that he was misinterpreting the situation, but instead exerted all his efforts to try to achieve his increasingly unrealistic goals.

The Putsch: Hitler takes on the role of ‘Führer’

The tide of events during the crisis-ridden year of 1923 gradually removed Hitler’s qualms about taking on the role of ‘Führer’.

The NSDAP only became a mass movement in 1923: between January and November around 47,000 new members joined the Party so that, on the eve of the putsch, there were over 55,000 names (including an unknown number of those who had left) on the membership list.⁸⁴ A fragment of the list, containing around 4,800 members who joined between September and November, provides a more detailed picture. More than three-quarters of the new members came from south Germany, although by then the Party was no longer concentrated in Munich itself; only 10 per cent were resident in the Bavarian capital. Analysis shows that the organization benefited above all from expanding into the countryside, particularly in Bavaria. More than half of the new members came from rural districts. Craftsmen, white-collar employees, civil servants, the self-employed, and farmers (over 10 per cent) made up the bulk of the membership and so the Party’s profile remained middle-class.⁸⁵

From April 1923 onwards, ‘our Führer’, became the standard title when Hitler was being referred to in press announcements.⁸⁶ The fact that he now became universally known as ‘Führer’ within the Party was evidently largely due to the homage paid to Hitler by Eckart, Rosenberg, and Göring in the Völkischer Beobachter on the occasion of his birthday on 20 April. It is unclear from Hitler’s public statements whether he yet envisaged playing this role outside the Party. Thus, while in his speeches during the first half of 1923 there are repeated calls for ‘strong leaders’,⁸⁷ on the other hand, in his speech in the Circus Krone on 4 May, for example, he was still evading the issue: ‘What Germany needs for its salvation is a dictatorship of nationalist willpower and nationalist determination. That poses the question: Does a suitable person exist? Our task is not to seek this person. He will either be sent by heaven or he won’t be. Our task is to create the sword that this person will need when he arrives. Our task is to give the dictator a nation that is ready for him.’⁸⁸

In July his ambition was already becoming more obvious: ‘As leader of the National Socialist Party I see my task as being to take over responsibility.’⁸⁹ From August onwards, he repeatedly demanded the establishment of a dictatorship, an objective that, as the crisis intensified, became widespread within the whole of the Right.⁹⁰ In an interview with the Daily Mail on 2 October, he drew a significant parallel with Mussolini: ‘If a German Mussolini is given to Germany, he said, people would fall down on their knees and worship him more than Mussolini has ever been worshipped.’⁹¹

Gradually, however, he felt himself being pushed by his own supporters into taking on the role of dictator. On 14 October, at a Nazi meeting in Nuremberg, he strongly criticized Kahr, for ‘a true statesman, a real dictator does not depend on anyone; the nation depends on him; he gives it fresh heart and then leads it along the path that he has defined as the right one’. And there were models: ‘three great Germans’ – Luther, Frederick the Great, and Wagner – who were great ‘because they led a truly heroic life in defiance of everybody else’. Simply because ‘they relied exclusively on their great insights all three became pioneers and thus national heroes’. That, Hitler made clear to his supporters at the end of his speech, was what he too was seeking to do: ‘to go on fighting and not to lose sight of the goal I have set myself of being a pioneer of the great German freedom movement that will bring us unity within and without, not relying on anyone else but only on my immense resolve and with it and through it either gaining victory or going down to defeat’.⁹² His ambition to become ‘Führer’, ‘dictator’, and therefore ‘hero’ must have become clear to his audience. His supporters too had considerable ambitions. If one reads the Völkischer Beobachter during this period, it becomes clear what hopes he had inspired in the meantime. For example, on 1 November, it declared: ‘Then, the black swastika flag will be unfurled over the heads of the cowards and this moribund regime, and, under Hitler’s leadership, will lead us on to victory.’⁹³ These quotations show that, by the autumn of 1923, Hitler had arrived at the point where he was ready to declare himself ‘Führer’ and take on the role of ‘hero’. In the end, if he was not to make a fool of himself, he had no choice but to meet the high expectations of his followers by carrying out the ‘act’ of liberation, his ‘heroic deed’.

However, while psyching himself up to take on his grand role, Hitler completely overlooked the fact that, by the end of October, the chances of carrying out a successful putsch were rapidly disappearing. The Reich government had decided to depose the socialist-communist governments in Thuringia and Saxony and ordered Reichswehr troops to intervene.⁹⁴ This removed the pretext for the mobilization on the Bavarian border. Moreover, by establishing the Rentenbank in October, the Reich government had introduced an important measure for combatting inflation and then, by creating a new currency, had taken a decisive step towards stabilizing the economy.

The paramilitary leagues in the Kampfbund began to doubt whether Kahr really wanted to launch a coup. On 1 November, there was a further meeting between Seisser, Hitler, and Weber at the latter’s house. Hitler renewed a previous promise not to undertake any action against the Reichswehr and the state police, but at the same time made it clear that he was coming under considerable pressure from his own people and could not afford to wait much longer.⁹⁵ Seisser, however, having taken soundings in Berlin on 3 November, discovered that the army chief, General von Seeckt, had definitely decided not to move against the Reich government. This effectively scuppered the Triumvirate’s plans for a coup.⁹⁶ At a meeting of the leagues on 6 November Kahr urgently warned them not take the ‘abnormal’ path towards establishing a dictatorship.⁹⁷ However, the members of the Kampfbund were afraid that they were in danger of missing the opportunity for a putsch. ‘The Kampfbund people’, Hitler told the prosecutors after his putsch, ‘had been pressing for action; they couldn’t wait any longer; they had been promised that something was going to happen for so long and had been in training for so long, that now they wanted to see some real action. Otherwise, there was a danger that suddenly some group or other (not the Nazis, as Hitler explicitly emphasized!) would act on their own (for example, grab a few dozen Jews and string them up!). That had to be prevented from happening.’ Apart from that, the money had run out, people were discontented, and there was a danger that the Kampfbund would fall apart.⁹⁸

Too weak to act without the Reichswehr, state police, and the Bavarian government, let alone against them, Hitler and the Kampfbund leadership decided to seize the initiative themselves and drag the hesitant Triumvirate with them. The Triumvirate had announced a mass meeting in the Bürgerbräukeller for 8 November and this appeared to provide the opportunity to act. According to Hitler’s own account, he made the decision on the evening of 6 November in a discussion with two other Nazis, whose names he later refused to reveal; they were probably Scheubner-Richter and Theodor von der Pfordten. The decisive Kampfbund meetings took place on 7 November.⁹⁹

On the evening of 8 November, Hitler surrounded the beer hall with his Kampfbund units and, adopting a martial pose, made a dramatic entry. At the head of a small group of close associates, including Hanfstängl, Amann, and Hess, he marched into the packed hall, waving a pistol, and interrupted Kahr’s speech. Describing the scene a few months later to the Munich People’s Court, he commented: ‘It’s obvious that one can’t go in waving a palm leaf’. He held his pistol to the head of an officer who approached him. In the meantime, storm troopers put a guard on the entrance and set up a heavy machine gun aimed at the audience.

Hitler now got up onto a chair and, unable to make himself heard, fired a shot into the ceiling. He made a short speech in which he announced that the ‘nationalist revolution’ had broken out and the Munich and Berlin governments had been deposed. He then ordered Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser to follow him into an adjacent room. There, waving his pistol around, he explained to them that they were going to establish a new government in Bavaria under former police chief Pöhner, while Kahr was to be state governor. Bavaria, continued Hitler, was to be the jumping off point for the takeover of power in the Reich; a government would then be established under his leadership, with Ludendorff in charge of the army and Seisser the police.¹⁰⁰ Finally, Hitler is supposed to have said: ‘I know that you gentlemen will find it difficult, but we must take this step; we shall have to make it easier for you gentlemen to make the break. Each one of us must take up the position to which he is assigned; if he doesn’t then he’ll have no right to exist. You must fight with me, triumph with me, or die with me. If it all goes wrong I have four bullets in my pistol, three for my collaborators and the last one for myself.’

Hitler then returned to the hall and gave a second speech announcing the composition of the new Bavarian and Reich governments.¹⁰¹ Shortly afterwards, Ludendorff entered the Bürgerbräukeller and he and Hitler now tried to put moral pressure on the Triumvirate. Finally, the three declared their agreement with the coup, returning to the hall to proclaim their ‘unity’. Then, in brief speeches, Kahr, Lossow, Seisser, and Pöhner all announced they had agreed to participate in the coup d’état.

Meanwhile, the putschists had been trying to occupy government buildings and army barracks in the city, although in most cases meeting resistance and failing to achieve their objectives.¹⁰² When Hitler left the Bürgerbräukeller late in the evening in order to find out why they had failed to occupy the pioneer corps barracks, Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser seized the opportunity to leave the beer hall and immediately began taking steps to crush the putsch.¹⁰³ In the meantime, Prime Minister von Knilling, various Bavarian ministers, and the Munich police chief, who were present in the hall, had been taken hostage by the putschists and were kept prisoner throughout the following day.¹⁰⁴ During the night, various armed groups had also taken captive a number of mainly upper-middle-class Jews and taken them off to the Bürgerbräukeller.¹⁰⁵ The next morning, following Göring’s orders, storm troopers forced their way into the town hall and took hostage the deputy mayor and seven city councillors belonging to the KPD, SPD, and USPD; all were freed the following day.¹⁰⁶ In addition, the putschists ‘confiscated’ a large quantity of paper money from two printers, in order to pay the troops. Legally, this was clearly theft.¹⁰⁷

As became clear during the night, the Reichswehr and the paramilitary state police remained loyal to the existing government, which meant that the putsch was doomed to fail.¹⁰⁸ During the morning, the putschists assembled in the Bürgerbräukeller decided to make a final attempt to turn the tide: they began a demonstration march aiming to go through the centre of the city towards the military district headquarters, which Röhm had occupied with his Reichskriegsflagge. Shortly before reaching the building, at the Feldherrnhalle, the roughly 2,000 putschists came up against a barricade manned by the state police. Suddenly a few shots rang out – those responsible were never identified – leading to an exchange of fire during which four policemen, thirteen putschists, and a bystander were killed; two further putschists were killed as a result of an exchange of fire at the military district headquarters. Among the dead were Scheubner-Richter, who, marching arm in arm with Hitler, had pulled the latter to the ground as he fell. Hitler escaped in the fleeing crowd with a dislocated shoulder. Göring, who was also able to escape, had a bullet wound. Streicher, Frick, Pöhner, Amann, and Röhm were all arrested at the Feldherrnhalle; Ludendorff, who had marched towards the police cordon oblivious to the shooting, was also arrested.¹⁰⁹

Hitler succeeded in making his way to Hanfstängl’s house in Uffing on the Staffelsee, where he was found by the police two days later in a desperate and depressed state and taken into custody. In Hanfstängl’s house Hitler composed a ‘political testament’, appointing Rosenberg Party chairman and making Amann his deputy.¹¹⁰

^* Translators’ note: Karl May (1842–1912) was a popular author, known mainly for his Wild West stories, of which Hitler was a fan.