Challenging the Powers that Be

For me and for all of us, setbacks have been only the whiplash which drove us onward with more determination than before.

Adolf Hitler

 

Hitler had planned a party rally in Munich for the end of January, 1923. He meant to turn it into an intimidating demonstration of his own power. Five thousand SA men had been summoned to Munich from all over Bavaria. They would parade before their Führer on the Marsfeld, or Field of Mars, on the outskirts of town, forming the honor guard for the first solemn dedication of the standards. Concurrently, mass meetings were to be held in no fewer than twelve halls in the city. To increase the popular appeal, the party had hired bands, folk-dance ensembles, and the comedian Weiss Ferdl. The sheer size of the affair, combined with the rumors of a Nazi putsch that had been circulating for weeks, underlined Hitler’s mounting importance as a political figure.

The way the Bavarian authorities reacted to Hitler’s defiant and challenging proclamations revealed their growing perplexity vis-à-vis the Nazi party. The party’s rise had been so rapid that the exact nature of it as a force on the political scene remained undefined. On the one hand, it did assume a nationalist stance and manifested laudable energy in its antagonism to the Left. Yet, at the same time, it had no respect for authorities and was constantly violating the public order that it claimed to desire above all else. In 1922 the authorities sentenced Hitler to three months’ imprisonment—partly because they were determined to show him that there were limits which they would not allow him to breach. He and his followers had disrupted a meeting of the Bayernbund (Bavarian League) and given its leader, the engineer Otto Ballerstedt, a severe beating. Hitler served only four weeks of the sentence. When he made his first public appearance after his release, he was “carried to the podium amidst applause which seemed as if it would never end.” The Völkische Beobachter called him “the most popular and most hated man in Munich.” The situation involved risks that even Hitler must have found difficult to calculate. The year 1923 was characterized by his repeated efforts to clarify his relationship to the power structure. He tested it from a number of angles, at times taking a wooing tone, at times a threatening one.

The authorities did not know how to deal with this man who was at once somewhat suspect and gratifyingly nationalistic. They finally struck a compromise with their own ambivalence: they issued a ban against the outdoor ceremony of dedicating the standards and forbade half the mass meetings already announced by Hitler. Conversely, they also banned the rally that the Social Democrats had called for the preceding day. Yet Eduard Nortz, who had replaced the Nazi sympathizer Ernst Pöhner as police commissioner, remained unmoved when Hitler pleaded that the ban would be worse than a heavy blow to the nationalist movement, that it would be a disaster for the entire fatherland. Nortz, gray-haired and cool, answered that even patriots had to bow to the government’s decrees. Hitler flew into a rage and began to shout that he would hold the SA march anyway, that he was not afraid of the police, that he himself would march at the head of the column and let himself be shot. But the commissioner did not give way. Instead, he hastily convened a session of the Council of Ministers, which proclaimed a state of emergency. That automatically banned all the activities planned for the party rally. The time had come to remind the leader of the National Socialists of the rules of the political game.

Hitler was in despair. It seemed to him that his whole political future was at stake. For one of the rules as he understood them was that he might challenge the government with impunity, since his demands were only a radical extension of the government’s own wishes.

At this point the Reichswehr, which had stood by the party since Drexler’s time, entered the picture. Röhm and Ritter von Epp had finally succeeded in persuading the Bavarian Reichswehr commander, General von Lossow, to meet with Hitler. By now nervous and unsure of himself, Hitler was prepared to make considerable concessions. He promised Lossow that he would “report to his Excellency” on January 28, immediately after the party rally. Lossow, who had been rather put off by Hitler’s eccentric manner, finally agreed to inform the government that he would consider “the suppression of the nationalist organizations unfortunate for security reasons.” The ban was then in fact lifted. To save face, however, Nortz requested the leader of the NSDAP at a second meeting to reduce the number of meetings to six and to stage the dedication of the standards not on the Marsfeld, but inside the nearby Krone Circus. Hitler, realizing that he had won this match, vaguely indicated compliance. Then, under the slogan of Deutschland erwache! (“Germany, awake!”), he held all twelve mass meetings. The dedication of the standards, which he himself had designed, took place on the Marsfeld after all, in the presence of 5,000 storm troopers. There was a driving snowstorm. “Either the National Socialist German Workers’ Party is the coming movement in Germany,” Hitler thundered, “in which case not even the devil can stop it, or it is not, and deserves to be destroyed.” Battalions of exuberant SA men marched past walls and kiosks covered with proclamations of the state of emergency. With them marched several military bands, and the storm troopers roared out their songs defaming the “Jew Republic.” When they reached Schwanthalerstrasse, Hitler reviewed the units, most of whom now wore uniforms.

It was a telling triumph over governmental authority, and it prepared the ground for the conflicts of the following months. Many observers saw these events as proof that Hitler’s rhetorical gifts were matched by his political adroitness. Moreover, his nerves seemed tougher than those of his adversaries. For a long time people had merely smiled at his furious intensity. Now they began to be impressed, and the party’s ranks, so long made up of the resentful and the naive, began to be swelled by people with a keen instinct for the wave of the future. Between February and November, 1923, the National Socialist Party enrolled a good 35,000 new members, while the SA grew to nearly 15,000. The party now had assets of 173,000 gold marks.³⁷ An intensive program of propaganda and activities covering all of Bavaria was developed. From February 8 on, the Völkische Beobachter began appearing as a daily. The name of Dietrich Eckart, who was overworked and ill, remained on the masthead for a few more months, but by the beginning of March the real editor of the newspaper was Alfred Rosenberg.

Hitler had found both the civil and military authorities all too accommodating. Their attitude may be traced in part to the troubles that had recently gripped the country. In the first half of January, France, still full of hatred and suspicion for her neighbor, had insisted on claiming its rights under the Treaty of Versailles and had occupied the Rhineland. Germany was at once plunged into full-scale economic crisis, which had been threatening the country since 1918. The unrest of the early postwar period, the heavy burden of reparations, the general flight of capital, and especially the lack of any reserves, had made it extremely difficult for the economy to recover from the war. To make matters worse, the behavior of the radical rightists and leftists had repeatedly undermined what little confidence other countries might have had in Germany’s stability. It was no coincidence that the mark took its first dramatic plunge in June, 1922, after Walther Rathenau, the German Foreign Minister, was assassinated. But now the French occupation set off that mad inflationary spiral that made life so grotesque and destroyed everyone’s surviving faith in the social order. People grew used to living in an “atmosphere of the impossible.” The inflation meant the collapse of an entire world, with all its assumptions, its norms, and its morality. The consequences were incalculable.

For the moment, however, public interest centered primarily on the attempt at national self-assertion. The paper money, whose value was ultimately to be measured by mere weight, seemed only a fantastic underscoring of events in the Rhineland. On January 11 the government issued a call for passive resistance. German government employees were instructed not to obey orders from the occupation authorities. French troops advancing into the Ruhr encountered huge crowds of Germans grimly singing “Die Wacht am Rhein.” The French answered the challenge with a series of well-chosen humiliations. Occupation courts meted out Draconian punishments for acts of defiance. Many clashes heightened the anger on both sides. At the end of March French troops fired into a crowd of workers demonstrating on the grounds of the Krupp plant in Essen. Thirteen demonstrators were killed and over thirty wounded. Almost half a million persons joined in the funeral for the victims. A French military tribunal tried and convicted the head of the firm and eight of his principal subordinates and imposed prison sentences of fifteen to twenty years.

Episodes of this sort produced a sense of common purpose such as had not been felt in Germany since 1914. But beneath the cloak of national unity the divergent forces attempted to turn the situation to their own advantage. The outlawed paramilitary organizations seized the opportunity to come out into the open and supplement the program of passive resistance with direct action. The radical Left made a strong bid to regain the positions it had lost in Saxony and Central Germany, while the Right fortified its power base in Bavaria. These were the times in which armed proletarian companies faced units of the Ehrhardt Free Corps with leveled weapons on the borders of Bavaria. In many of the larger cities food demonstrations took on the character of riots. In the meantime the French and Belgians were exploiting the disarray in the west to encourage a separatist movement which, however, soon collapsed for want of a clear rationale. The republic, created only four years earlier under adverse circumstances and never more than precariously maintained, seemed on the point of breakdown.

Hitler expressed his new self-confidence in a bold and provocative gesture: he withdrew the NSDAP from the front for national unity and warned his bewildered followers that anyone who took active part in the resistance against France would be expelled from the party. Some such expulsions were actually carried out. To members who objected he gave this explanation: “If they haven’t caught on that this idiocy about a common front is fatal for us, they’re beyond help.” Although he was aware of some of the questionable aspects of this stand, his particular perspective and his sense of tactics told him that he must not line up with the others. The Nazi party could not make common cause with members of the bourgeoisie, Marxists, and Jews; it could not afford to be submerged in the anonymity of the national resistance movement. Hitler feared that the struggle for the Ruhr would unite the people behind the government and strengthen the regime. But he could also hope that his obstructionist tactics would sow confusion and thus further his long-range ambitions for a takeover: “As long as a nation does not drive out the murderers within its own borders,” he wrote in the Völkische Beobachter, “success in its dealings with other countries remains impossible. While spoken and written protests are hurled against the French, the real enemy of the German people lurks within its gates.” With remarkable inflexibility, considering the popular mood, and even in the face of Ludendorff’s overwhelming authority, he went on insisting that Germany had first to come to grips with the enemy within. Early in March the army chief of staff, General von Seeckt, inquired whether Hitler would be willing to attach his forces to the Reichswehr if a policy of active resistance were adopted. Hitler replied curtly that first the government would have to be overthrown. Two weeks later he made the same point to a representative of German Chancellor Cuno: “Not down with France, but down with the traitors to the Fatherland, down with the November criminals; that must be our slogan!”

It has become standard to see Hitler’s behavior as totally unscrupulous and unprincipled. But here is an instance in which he stood steadfastly by his principles, even though this meant exposing himself to unpopularity and misunderstanding. He himself saw this stand as one of the crucial decisions of his career. His allies and backers—people of prestige and staunch conservatives—always looked upon him as one of their own, as nationalist and conservative as themselves. But in his very first political decision of any magnitude Hitler brushed away all the false alliances, from Kahr to Papen, and showed that when the chips were down he would act like a true revolutionary. Without hesitation he took a revolutionary posture rather than a nationalistic one. Indeed, in later years he never reacted any differently. As late as 1930 he asserted that if the Poles invaded Germany, he would give up East Prussia and Silesia temporarily rather than aid the existing regime by helping to defend German territory. To be sure, he also asserted that he would despise himself if “the moment a conflict broke out he were not first and foremost a German.” But in actual fact he differed from his adherents in that he remained cool and consistent and did not allow his own patriotic tirades to shape his strategy. He turned his scorn against the passive resistance movement which, he said, proposed to “kill the French by loafing.” He also ridiculed those who thought France could be overcome by sabotage: “What would France be today,” he shouted, “if there were no internationalists in Germany, but only National Socialists? What if we had no weapons but our fists? If sixty million people were as one in passionately loving their Fatherland—those fists would sprout guns.”

Hitler was certainly no less incensed against the French than the other forces and parties in Germany. What he objected to was not the resistance per se but the fact that it was only passive and therefore a halfway measure. There were also the other political factors already mentioned that determined his refusal to go along with the other nationalist parties. Underlying his stand was the conviction that no consistent and successful foreign policy could be pursued unless a united and revolutionary nation stood behind it. This view reversed the whole political tradition of the Germans, for it asserted the primacy of domestic rather than foreign policy. When the passive resistance began to crumble, Hitler made a passionate speech describing what a true resistance campaign would have been like. The drastic tone of his suggestions anticipates the kind of orders he was to give in March, 1945, for “Operation Scorched Earth”:

 

What matter that in the present catastrophe industrial plants are destroyed? Blast furnaces can explode, coal mines be flooded, houses burn to the ground—if in their place there arises a resurrected people: strong, unshakable, committed to the utmost. For when the German people is resurrected, everything else will be resurrected as well. But if the buildings all remained standing and the people perished of its own inner rottenness, chimneys, industrial plants and seas of houses would be but the tombstones of this people. The Ruhr district should have become the German Moscow. We should have proved to the world that the German people of 1923 is not the German people of 1918. . . . The people of dishonor and shame would once again have become a race of heroes. Against the background of the burning Ruhr district, such a people would have organized a life-or-death resistance. If this had been its course, France would not have dared to take one more step. . . . Furnace after furnace, bridge after bridge blown up. Germany awakes! Not even the lash could have driven France’s army into such a universal conflagration. By God, things would be very different for us today!³⁸

 

Few of Hitler’s contemporaries understood his decision not to participate in the struggle over the Ruhr. The decision lent plausibility to the rumor that French funds were behind the NSDAP’s conspicuous expansion of its organization. For it was obvious to everyone that the party was increasing its propaganda and outfitting its members with new uniforms and arms. But no concrete proof of such French backing has ever been found—and, in fact, it is still hard to specify which political or economic interests were trying to exert influence over the growing party. Nevertheless, the party’s lavish expenditures, especially after Hitler took over the leadership, were so conspicuously out of all proportion to its numbers that there was every reason to look around for financial backers. Suspicions of this sort are not merely traceable to the “devil theory” of the Left, which could explain its defeat by “counter-historical National Socialism” only by positing a grim conspiracy of monopoly capitalism.

 

The National Socialists themselves lent encouragement to the most fantastic theories by practicing a psychotic form of secrecy concerning their financial resources. Throughout the Weimar years there was a series of libel cases springing from various charges; after 1933 the records of these cases were spirited away or destroyed. From the very beginning it was an unwritten law of the party that no records should be kept of contributions. Financial transactions were rarely noted in the journal of the party business office; when they were, there would usually be a note: “To be handled by Drexler personally.” In October, 1920, Hitler, presiding over a meeting in the Münchener Kindl-Keller, issued strict orders against anyone’s making notes on the details of a transaction he had just described.³⁹

There is no doubt that the party’s basic income derived from membership dues, small donations, the sale of tickets for Hitler’s speeches, or collections made at rallies, which might often amount to several thousand marks. Some of the early party members, like Oskar Körner, owner of a small toy store, who was killed in front of the Feldherrnhalle on November 9, 1923, all but ruined themselves in the interest of the party. Shop owners offered special discounts to the party, while others made gifts of jewelry or works of art. Spinster ladies who attended evening rallies were sometimes so emotionally shaken by the personality of Hitler that they made the National Socialist Party the beneficiary under their wills. Prosperous well-wishers like the Bechsteins, the Bruckmanns, or Ernst Hanfstaengl sometimes came forth with sizable gifts. The party also found ways to coax more funds out of its membership than just the regular dues. It floated interestfree loan certificates that the members were supposed to buy and sell to others. According to police records, no fewer than 40,000 loan certificates, each for ten marks, were issued in the first half of 1921 alone.⁴⁰

Nevertheless, the party suffered from a chronic shortage of funds during the early years. Even as late as the middle of 1921 it could not afford to hire a treasurer. According to the story of an early member, the poster brigades could not even buy the necessary paste. In the fall of 1921 Hitler had to cancel plans for a major rally in the Krone Circus for lack of funds. The financial predicament began to improve in the summer of 1922, when the party’s feverish activity brought it more into the forefront. Henceforth the party could count on a wide circle of financial benefactors and supporters, not party adherents in the strict sense, but rather representatives of the wealthy middle class, which felt vulnerable to the threat of Communist revolution. These people were ready to support any anti-Communist group, from the Free Corps and nationalist leagues on the right to the crank causes that proliferated within protest journalism. It would probably be correct to say that they were less interested in giving Hitler a boost than in promoting the most vigorous antirevolutionary force they could find.

Hitler owed his connections with the influential and monied segments of Bavarian society to Dietrich Eckart and Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter. Another such sponsor was probably Ludendorff, who himself received considerable sums from industrialists and large landowners and doled this money out among the militant nationalist-racist organizations as he saw fit. While Ernst Röhm was mobilizing funds, weapons, and equipment for the Reichswehr, Dr. Emil Gansser, a friend of Dietrich Eckart’s, put Hitler in touch with a group of big businessmen and bankers belonging to the Nationalist Club (Nationalklub). In 1922 Hitler had his first chance to present his plans to them. Among the principal contributors to the party’s funds were the locomotive manufacturer Borsig, Fritz Thyssen of Consolidated Steel (Vereinigte Stahlwerke), Privy Councilor Kirdorf, and executives of the Daimler Company and the Bavarian Industrialists Association (Bayrischer Industriellenverband). Support from Czechoslovak, Scandinavian, and Swiss sources was also forthcoming for this dynamic party that was attracting so much attention. In the fall of 1923 Hitler went to Zurich and allegedly returned “with a steamer trunk stuffed with Swiss francs and American dollars.”⁴¹ The mysterious and ingenious Kurt W. Luedecke obtained considerable sums from as yet undetermined sources, and among other things set up his “own” SA company consisting of fifty men. Cash flowed in from persons in Hungary as well as from Russian and Baltic-German émigrés. During the inflation some party functionaries were paid in foreign currencies. Among these were Julius Schreck, the SA staff sergeant who was later to be Hitler’s chauffeur, and the SA Chief of Staff Lieutenant Commander Hoffmann. Even a bordello on Berlin’s Tauen-tzienstrasse did its bit for the nationalist cause. At the urging of Scheubner-Richter, it had been set up by a former army officer; the profits went to swell the party till in Munich.⁴²

The motives behind these contributions were highly diverse. It is true that without this support Hitler could not have launched his expensive spectacles after the summer of 1922. But it is also true that he made no binding commitments to any of his backers. The aggrieved leftists never believed in the anticapitalist stance of the National Socialists. It was all too inarticulate and irrational. And, in fact, Nazi anticapitalist ranting against usurers, speculators, and department stores never went beyond the perspective of superintendents and shopkeepers. Nevertheless, the Nazis’ sense of outrage was all the more convincing because of their lack of any impressive system. They objected to the morality rather than the material possessions of the propertied classes. This passage from one of the early party speechifiers indicates the psychological effectiveness of the irrational anticapitalist appeal to the desperate masses: “Be patient just a little longer. But then, when we sound the call for action, spare the savings banks, for they are where we working people have put our pennies. Storm the commercial banks! Take all the money you find there and throw it into the streets and set fire to the huge heaps of it! Then use the crossbars of the streetcar lines to string up the black and the white Jews!”

Hitler made similar speeches, similarly emotion-laden, against the grim background of mass suffering caused by the inflation. Again and again, he inveighed against the lies of capitalism, even while his funds were coming from big business. Max Amann, the party’s business manager, was interrogated by the Munich police shortly after the putsch attempt of November, 1923. He insisted, not without pride, that Hitler had given his backers “only the party platform” in return for their contributions. This may seem hard to credit; nevertheless, there is reason to think that the only agreements he made were on tactical lines. For the concept of corruption seems strangely alien to this man; it does not accord with his rigidity, his mounting self-confidence, and the force of his delusions.

The National Socialists had emerged victorious from their showdown with the government at the beginning of January. They found themselves top dog among the radical rightist groups in Bavaria and celebrated by a wave of meetings, demonstrations, and marches even rowdier and more aggressive than those of the past. The air was thick with rumors of coups and uprisings. With impassioned slogans Hitler fed a general expectation of some great change impending. At the end of April he gave a speech urging the “workers of the head and the workers of the fist” to close ranks in order to create “the new man. . . of the coming Third Reich.” Anticipating the imminent test of strength, the NSDAP had struck up an alliance in early February with a number of militant nationalist organizations. The new partners included the Reichsflagge (Reich Banner), led by Captain Heiss; the Bund Oberland (Oberland League); the Vaterländischer Verein München (Munich Patriotic Club); and the Kampfverb and Niederbayern (Lower Bavarian League of Struggle). Joint authority was vested in a committee known as the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der vaterländischen Kampfverbände (Provisional Committee of the Patriotic Leagues of Struggle), with Lieutenant Colonel Hermann Kriebel in charge of military co-ordination. The arrangements had been worked out by Ernst Röhm.

The National Socialists had thus created a counterpoise to the existing coalition of nationalist groups known as the VW, Vereinigte Vaterländische Verbände Bayerns (Union of Bavarian Patriotic Associations). Under the leadership of former Prime Minister von Kahr and the Gymnasium Professor Bauer, the VVV united the most disparate elements: Bavarian separatists, Pan-Germans, and various brands of racists. On the other hand, the black-white-red Kampfbund (League of Struggle) led by Kriebel represented a more militant, more radical, more “Fascist” group, which took its inspiration and its goals from Mussolini or Kemal Pasha Atatürk. However, Hitler was soon to learn how dubious it was to gain outside support at the price of what had been absolute personal control. The lesson came on May 1 when, impatient and drunk with his latest success, Hitler attempted another showdown with the government.

His attempt to impose a program on the Kampfbund had already met with failure because his partners’ slow-moving soldier mentality could not follow his wild flights of fancy. In the course of the spring he had been forced to look on as Kriebel, Röhm, and the Reichswehr pried the SA away from him. He had created the SA as a revolutionary army directly responsible to him, but now Kriebel and Röhm were trying to turn the SA into a secret reserve for the so-called Hundred Thousand Man Army (the Treaty of Versailles limited the official German army to 100,000 men). They were drilling the standards (as the three regiment-sized units were called) and staging night maneuvers or parades. Hitler appeared at these affairs only as an ordinary civilian, sometimes giving a speech, but virtually unable to assert leadership. He noted with annoyance that the storm troops were being stripped of their ideological cast and downgraded to mere military reserve units. A few months later, in order to regain authority, Hitler instructed his old fellow soldier, former Lieutenant Josef Berchtold, to organize a kind of staff guard to be named Stosstrupp (Shock Troop) Hitler. This was the origin of the SS.

At the end of April Hitler and the Kampfbund decided that the annual May 1 rallies by the leftist parties were to be taken as a provocation and should be stopped by any and all methods. They themselves would organize their own mass demonstrations for that day, and celebrate the fourth anniversary of the crushing of the Munich soviet republic. The vacillating Bavarian government under von Knilling would seem to have learned nothing from its experience in January. It half yielded to the Kampfbund’s demand. The Left would be allowed to hold a mass meeting on the Theresienwiese but forbidden all street processions. Hitler therefore staged one of his tried-and-true fits of rage and, repeating his ruse of January, tried to play off the military authorities against the civilian government. By April 30 the situation had become almost unbearably tense. Kriebel, Bauer, and the newly appointed leader of the SA, Hermann Göring, lodged a vigorous protest with the government and demanded that a state of emergency be declared in the face of leftist agitation. Meanwhile Hitler and Röhm once more went to General von Lossow and insisted not only that the Reichswehr intervene but also that, as prearranged, weapons belonging to the patriotic associations be distributed to them. (These weapons were now stored in the government armories.) To Hitler’s astonishment, the general curtly refused both requests. He knew his duty to the security of the state, he declared stiffly. Anyone stirring up disorder would be shot. Colonel Seisser, the head of the Bavarian Landespolizei (state police) took a similar line.

Hitler had once more worked himself into an almost hopeless position. His only choice seemed to be to back down on the whole issue. But, true to his character, he refused to concede defeat. Instead, he doubled his stake. He had already warned Lossow that the “Red rallies” would take place only if the demonstrators marched “over his dead body.” Some of this was histrionics, but there was always a measure of dead earnest in Hitler’s statements. He was ready to cut off his escape routes and face up to the alternatives of all or nothing.

At any rate, Hitler had the preparations intensified. Weapons, munitions, and vehicles were collected feverishly. Finally, the Reichswehr was tricked by a sudden coup. In direct defiance of Lossow’s orders, Hitler sent Röhm and a small group of SA men to the barracks. Explaining that the government feared leftist disorders on May 1, they helped themselves to carbines and machine guns. Such open preparations for a putsch sowed alarm among some of Hitler’s nationalist allies. There were open clashes within the Kampfbund, but in the meantime events had caught up with the actors. Obeying Hitler’s announcement of an emergency, party stalwarts from Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Freising had arrived in Munich. Many of them were armed. A group from Bad Tolz came with an old field cannon hitched to their truck. The units from Landshut, led by Gregor Strasser and Heinrich Himmler, brought along several light machine guns. All these groups were acting in anticipation of the revolutionary uprising they had been dreaming of for years and which Hitler had repeatedly promised them. They were expecting a “wiping out of the November disgrace,” as the grim slogan had it. When Police Commissioner Nortz issued a warning to Kriebel, the answer was: “I can no longer turn back; it is too late. . . whether or not blood flows.”

Before dawn on May 1, the patriotic leagues were gathering in Munich at the Oberwiesenfeld, at the Maximilianeum, and at several other key locations throughout the city to quell the socialist coup that was allegedly brewing. Hitler arrived at the Oberwiesenfeld a little later. The place had the look of a military encampment. Hitler, too, looked martial; he was wearing a helmet and his Iron Cross, First Class. His entourage included Göring, Streicher, Rudolf Hess, Gregor Strasser, and Gerhard Rossbach, who was in command of the Munich SA. While the storm troopers began drilling in preparation for orders to launch real attacks, the leaders conferred. Confusion reigned; there was considerable dissension, growing nervousness and dismay, because the expected signal from Röhm had failed to come.

In the meantime, the trade unions and parties of the Left were celebrating their May Day rites on the Theresienwiese. Their slogans were the time-honored revolutionary ones, but the general temper was harmonious and public-spirited. Since the police had cordoned off the side of the Oberwiesenfeld facing the city, the expected clashes did not take place. But Röhm himself was at this moment standing at attention before his commander, General von Lossow, who had learned of the trickery at the barracks and was greatly enraged. Shortly after noon, Captain Röhm, escorted by Reichswehr and police contingents, appeared at the Oberwiesenfeld. He transmitted Lossow’s orders: the stolen weapons were to be surrendered on the spot. Strasser and Kriebel urged an immediate attack, reasoning that a civil war situation would bring the Reichswehr over to their side. But Hitler gave in. He found a way to save face by arranging to have his men return the weapons to the barracks. But the defeat was unmistakable, and even the flamboyant language with which he addressed his followers that evening in the Krone Circus could not blot it out.

This would seem to have been the first personal crisis in Hitler’s rise to power. True, he had a certain justification for blaming his defeat on the attitude of some of his allies, particularly the squeamish and stiff-necked nationalist organizations. But he must have recognized that the behavior of his partners had also exposed certain weaknesses and mistakes of his own. Above all, he had misread the situation. The Reichswehr, whose might had made him strong and whose co-operation he had counted on, had suddenly turned into an enemy.

It was the first painful reverse after years of steady progress, and Hitler disappeared from public view for several weeks. He took refuge with Dietrich Eckart in Berchtesgaden. Plagued by self-doubt, he only occasionally appeared to give a speech. Once or twice he went to Munich for a bit of distraction. Up to this point he had acted largely instinctively, by hit and miss and imitation. Now, in the light of that disastrous May 1, he conceived the outlines of a consistent strategy: the concept of a “fascist revolution” that takes place not in conflict but in concert with government power—what has been aptly described as “revolution by permission of His Excellency the President.”⁴³ He put some of his thoughts down on paper. These ruminations were later incorporated into Mein Kampf.

He had also to contend with the reaction of the public. “It is generally recognized that Hitler and his men have made fools of themselves,” one report put it. Even an “assassination plot” against “the great Adolf” (as the Münchener Post had ironically dubbed him), a plot uncovered by Hermann Esser at the beginning of July and described with great fanfare in the Völkische Beobachter, could do little to revive Hitler’s popularity—especially since similar revelations had been published in April and had subsequently been exposed as fabrications by the National Socialists. “Hitler no longer captures the imagination of the German people,” wrote a correspondent for the New York German-language newspaper Staatszeitung. Another shrewd observer noted early in May that Hitler’s star seemed “to be waning.”

Currents of this sort cannot have been lost on Hitler, brooding in the solitude of Berchtesgaden. This would help explain his extraordinary retreat, his refusal to try to re-establish contact with Lossow or to inject a new spirit into the leaderless party and the Kampfbund. Gottfried Feder, Oskar Körner, and a few other long-time followers attempted to rouse him, above all urging him to break with “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, who had introduced the virtuous Hitler to “lovely ladies” who went about “in silk underwear” calling for more and more “champagne parties.” But Hitler hardly heard what they were saying. He let himself sink into his old state of lethargy and disgust. Yet he took some interest in the court case growing out of the events of May 1 and now pending before the Munich Landgericht (superior court). If the judgment went against him, Hitler would have to serve the two-month sentence he had received for the Ballerstedt affair. What was worse, Minister of the Interior Schweyer would undoubtedly rule that Hitler had broken his parole and would have him expelled from Bavaria.

Hitler bestirred himself enough to send a petition to the state prosecutor. He knew that he had friends within the power structure. It was to them that he appealed. “For weeks now I have been the victim of savage vilification in the press and the Landtag,” he wrote. “But because of the respect I owe my Fatherland I have not attempted to defend myself publicly. Therefore I can only be grateful to Providence for this chance to defend myself fully and freely in the courtroom.” He menacingly indicated, moreover, that he • was going to hand his petition over to the press.

The implications were clear enough, and the state prosecutor quickly passed the petition on, with an anxious note appended, to Minister of Justice Gurtner. The latter was a strong nationalist who had not forgotten certain old pacts and promises made to the National Socialists. Had he not even referred to them as “flesh of our flesh”? The nation’s plight was worsening from day to day, with galloping inflation, general strikes, the battle of the Ruhr, hunger riots, and mounting agitation by the Left. In view of all this, there seemed good reason to show leniency toward a leader of national stature, even if said leader was part of the problem. Without informing the Minister of the Interior, who had several times inquired about the case, Gurtner let the state prosecutor know that he considered it advisable to have the case postponed “until a calmer period.” On August 1, 1923, the investigation was temporarily suspended, and on May 22 of the following year the charges were dropped.

Nevertheless, Hitler’s loss of prestige was not easily rectified. That became apparent in early September, when the patriotic organizations celebrated one of their “German Days,” this one on the anniversary of the victory at Sedan, which had ended the Franco-Prussian War. A great parade was held in Nuremberg, complete with flags, wreaths, and retired generals. The attendance ran into the hundreds of thousands, all temporarily ecstatic with the feeling of having overcome national humiliation. The police report of the incident had a highly unbureaucratic, emotional ring: “Roaring cries of ‘Heil!’ swirled around the guests of honor and their entourage. Countless arms with waving handkerchiefs reached out for them; flowers and bouquets rained on them from all sides. It was like the jubilant outcry of hundreds of thousands of despairing, beaten, downtrodden human beings suddenly glimpsing a ray of hope, a way out of their bondage and distress. Many, men and women both, stood and wept. . . .”

According to this report, the National Socialists formed one of the largest contingents among the 100,000 marchers. But at the center of the cheering stood General Ludendorff. Hitler, caught in the sway of the mass demonstration but also aware of the ground he had lost in the recent past, declared himself ready for a new alliance. He joined with the Reichsflagge group under Captain Heiss, and the Bund Oberland under Friedrich Weber, to form the Deutscher Kampfbund—a new version of the older league of nationalist parties. This time, however, there was no longer any question of Hitler’s assuming the principal role. What had damaged his status was not so much the defeat of May 1 as his withdrawal from Munich afterward. For as soon as he was no longer on the scene to cause a sensation, his name, his authority, his demagogic powers all faded away. The indefatigable Röhm had to campaign for three weeks before he was able to persuade the leaders of the Kampfbund to relinquish the leadership in political affairs to Hitler.

The turning point came when the national government decided that the struggle at the Ruhr was draining the country’s energies to no avail. On September 24, six weeks after becoming Chancellor, Gustav Stresemann called off the passive resistance movement and resumed reparations payments to France. During all the preceding months Hitler had spoken out against the passive resistance, but his revolutionary aims now required him to brand the administration’s unpopular step a piece of cowardly, despicable treason and to exploit the situation to the full for the purpose of undermining the government. On the very next day he met with the leaders of the Kampfbund: Kriebel, Heiss, Weber, Göring, and Röhm. In a stormy two-and-a-half hour speech he unfolded his plans and visions, ending with the plea that he be given the leadership of the Deutscher Kampfbund. As Röhm later reported, Heiss was in tears as he, extended his hand to Hitler. Weber, too, was moved, while Röhm himself wept and trembled, as he says, from the depth of his emotion. Convinced that matters were moving toward a climax, he resigned from the Reichswehr the very next day and threw his lot in entirely with Hitler.

Hitler’s plan apparently was to make such a show of decisiveness as to overwhelm all skepticism. He immediately ordered his 15,000 SA men on emergency alert. To enhance the prestige of his own organization, all members of the NSDAP were to resign from whatever other nationalist groups they might belong to. He launched a program of hectic activity. As with all his moves, however, the real aim of all the plans, tactics, and commands seemed to be a veritable explosion of propaganda, a turbulent spectacle. He projected no fewer than fourteen simultaneous mass meetings for September 27, with himself making a personal appearance at all fourteen to whip emotions to fever pitch. Certainly the ultimate aims of the Kampfbund were plain enough: liberation “from bondage and shame,” a march on Berlin, establishment of a nationalist dictatorship, and eradication of the “accursed enemies within.” Hitler had flung down the challenge to the government three weeks earlier in his speech of September 5, when he said: “Either Berlin will march and end up in Munich, or Munich will march and end up in Berlin. A Bolshevist North Germany cannot exist side by side with a nationalist Bavaria.” But whether he was planning a putsch at that point or was merely carried away by his own rhetoric has never been clear. There is reason to believe that he intended to take his cue from the effect that he had on the crowds. With his characteristic overestimation of propaganda methods, he must have counted on the government’s being swayed by the passion of the masses. “Out of the endless battles of words,” he declared, “the new Germany will be born.” In any case, members of the Kampfbund received secret orders not to leave Munich and were issued the password to be used if a real coup were attempted.

But the Munich government acted before Hitler could. Some specifically Bavarian grievances and separatist tendencies had combined with rumors of an impending putsch and distrust of the “Marxist” national government to produce, for the Bavarian government, an intolerable situation. On September 26 Prime Minister von Knilling declared a state of emergency and appointed Gustav von Kahr as state commissioner with dictatorial powers. Von Kahr, an instrument of the Reichswehr, had briefly headed a right-wing government in Bavaria in 1920. He now declared that he welcomed the co-operation of the Kampfbund but warned Hitler against what he called “private initiatives.” The fourteen rallies could not be permitted. Hitler was beside himself with rage. As head of the Kampfbund, the most powerful paramilitary organization on the scene, Hitler had begun to think himself the equal and partner of the government. With one stroke Kahr had reduced him to a public nuisance. In one of those tantrums later to become so famous, ranting and raving until he almost blacked out, Hitler threatened revolution. That would have meant breaking his own ground rules, which called for moving in concert with the power of the state. Only in the course of an all-night session were Röhm, Pöhner, and Scheubner-Richter able to dissuade him from a coup d’état.

In any case, events had long since caught up with Hitler’s intentions. For in the meantime the cabinet in Berlin, headed by President Ebert, a socialist, had met to discuss the situation. Kahr had been closely identified with the separatist and monarchist trends. He had emphasized the “Bavarian mission of saving the Fatherland,” which would involve the overthrow of the republic, the establishment of a conservative, authoritarian regime, and so much Bavarian autonomy that Bavaria would once more be ruled by a king. Thus it was understandable that the national government should feel considerable concern when Kahr was named state commissioner. With the country in desperate straits, with Communism raising its head in Saxony and Hamburg while separatism gained influence in the west, the harassed government might well see the events in Munich as the signal for total collapse.

In this tense and murky situation, the future of the country depended on the Reichswehr. Its commander, General von Seeckt, was himself often mentioned in rightist circles as a possible dictator. With the composure of one who knows the ultimate power rests with him, he made a late entrance to the cabinet meeting. Asked by Ebert where the Reichswehr stood at this moment, he replied: “The Reichswehr, Mr. President, stands behind me.” For one brief moment the real power relationships were blindingly illuminated. Nevertheless, at this point he displayed loyalty to the political authorities. A nationwide state of emergency was declared, and executive power throughout the Reich was given to Seeckt. In the weeks to come he proved capable of even-handed dealing with the disruptive forces of both Right and Left.

On September 29 there was a rising of the “Black Reichswehr,” the illegal reserve of the regular army. Threatened with suppression since the end of the struggle for the Ruhr, the Black Reichswehr now tried to stage a coup which would trigger an action by the entire Right, including the legal Reichswehr. The operation was hasty and poorly co-ordinated, and Seeckt quickly put an end to the rebellion. With that threat out of the way, Seeckt took resolute steps to stamp out leftist unrest in Saxony, Thuringia, and Hamburg. Then he turned to the test of strength with Bavaria.

 

In Bavaria, meanwhile, Hitler had after all managed to bring Kahr nearly over to his side. Seeckt had demanded that the Völkische Beobachter be banned for publishing an incendiary and libelous article. But neither Kahr nor Lossow made the slightest move against the newspaper. Nor did they obey an order to arrest Rossbach, Captain Heiss, and Naval Captain Ehrhardt. Lossow was thereupon stripped of his office; but in open defiance of the Constitution, State Commissioner von Kahr promptly named him regional commander of the Bavarian Reichswehr. Kahr went on to sharpen the challenge and bring the strife between Bavaria and the central government to a head. A warrant for the arrest of Captain Ehrhardt, the former Free Corps leader, had been issued by the Reichsgericht (federal court). Not only was he not arrested, but Kahr summoned him from his Salzburg hiding place and directed him to accelerate preparations for a march on Berlin. The date set was November 15.

These provocative gestures were accompanied by strong words. Kahr himself denounced the Weimar Constitution for being totally un-German and described the administration as a “colossus with feet of clay.” He represented himself as the embodiment of the nationalist cause in the decisive battle with the internationalist-Marxist-Judaic front. The situation played directly into Hitler’s hands, for now the power holders in Bavaria had aligned themselves on the side of the extremist they had tried to curb. When Seeckt demanded Lossow’s resignation, all the nationalist organizations placed themselves at Hitler’s disposal for the final reckoning with the government in Berlin.

Hitler saw himself presented with great and unexpected opportunities. In an interview with the Corriere d’Italia he predicted that the winter would bring a decision. He went several times in rapid succession to see General von Lossow, with whom he now could take an easy tone; they had common interests and common enemies, he happily declared, while Lossow in his turn assured the rabble-rouser that he “agreed completely with Hitler on nine out of ten points.” Somewhat against his will, the commander of the Bavarian Reichswehr found himself caught up in a conspiracy. As an unpolitical soldier, he was unhappy in this role. Hitler, who soon had to propel the general the way he wanted him to go, could perceive the dilemma: “A military leader with such far-reaching powers who disobeys his commander-in-chief must be ready either to face the ultimate consequences or to remain a common mutineer and rebel,” he later declared.

Coming to an agreement with Kahr proved more difficult. Hitler could not forget the injury he had received from the state commissioner on September 26, whereas Kahr was aware that he had been appointed partly to bring this hothead “to blue-and-white [i.e., Bavarian loyalist] reason.” Indeed, throughout his dealings with Hitler he remained on the lookout for the proper moment to issue the talented troublemaker “orders to withdraw from politics.”

Despite the tensions on both sides, the confrontation with the federal government brought the two men together. When they disagreed, it was over the question of leadership and the timing of the attack. Kahr, who soon joined Lossow and Hans von Seisser, chief of the Bavarian state police, in a “triumvirate” of legal power holders, tended to be cautious in spite of his bold words. But Hitler was pressing for action. “The German people are asking only one question: ‘When do we strike?’ ” he raved, and went on to describe the coming action in almost apocalyptic terms:

 

Then the day will have come for which this movement was created. The hour for which we have fought all these years. The moment in which the National Socialist movement will launch its triumphal march for the salvation of Germany. Not for an election were we founded, but to leap into the breach in time of greatest need, when this people in fear and trembling sees the red monster advancing upon it. . . . Our movement alone holds the key to salvation—that is already perceived by millions. That has become almost a new article of faith.⁴⁴

 

Both factions devoted the month of October to preparing for the fray. The atmosphere was heavy with secrecy, intrigue, and deep mutual distrust. Councils of war were held almost continuously, plans of action forged, passwords coined. In a more serious vein, weapons were collected and military exercises staged. By the beginning of October the rumors of a Hitler putsch had become so persistent that Lieutenant Colonel Kriebel, the military commander of the Kampfbund, felt it necessary to address a letter to Bavarian Prime Minister von Knilling denying any intentions of overthrowing the national government. Walls bloomed with slogans and counterslogans, and “the march to Berlin” became a magic formula that seemed to promise an end to all problems. Hitler fanned the flames with his own brand of rhetoric: “This November Republic is nearing its end. We begin to hear the soft rustling which heralds a storm. And this storm will break, and in it this Republic will experience a transformation one way or another. The time is ripe.”⁴⁵

Hitler seemed fairly sure that Kahr could be relied on. But he suspected the triumvirate of intending to launch the operation without him or of meaning, to replace his revolutionary slogan of “On to Berlin!” with the Bavarian separatist cry of “Away from Berlin!” At times he must have feared that there might be no action at all. There is some evidence that he started thinking early in October of ways to force his partners to attack and have himself put in command of the assault. But he never doubted that the people would follow him rather than Kahr once the fight was on. He despised the members of the so-called ruling class, their bland assumption of superiority, their inability to move the masses, whom he could so masterfully sway. In an interview he referred to Kahr as a “feeble prewar bureaucrat.” True, the triumvirate officially held power, but he, Hitler, had on his side the “national commander” Ludendorff, “the army corps on two legs,” whose political obtuseness Hitler had quickly recognized and learned to exploit. By now his self-confidence tended to go beyond all bounds. He compared himself to the French statesman Gambetta and Mussolini; it did not matter that his partners treated him as a laughable figure or that Kriebel explained to a visitor that of course Hitler could not be considered for a leadership position, since he had nothing in his head but his own propaganda. Hitler, on the other hand, told one of the high officers close to Lossow that he felt himself called to save Germany, although he would need Ludendorff to win over the Reichswehr. “In politics he will not interfere with me in the slightest. . . . Did you know that Napoleon also surrounded himself with insignificant men when he was setting himself up as consul?”

By the second half of October the plans for a march on Berlin began to take more definite shape. On October 16 Kriebel signed an order for strengthening the border guard to the north; this was represented as a security measure in response to the disturbances in Thuringia. The actual directive, however, was cast in military terminology: there are references to “deployment areas” and “opening of hostilities,” “offensive morale,” “spirit of pursuit,” and “annihilation of the enemy forces.” The directive in fact was tantamount to a mobilization order. The volunteers meanwhile were using a map of Berlin as the basis of their war games. Speaking to the cadets of the Infantry Academy, Hitler told them: “Your highest obligation under your oath to the flag, gentlemen, is to break that oath.” The speech received thunderous applause. To put further pressure on their partners, the National Socialists called upon members of the state police to join the SA. Hitler later noted that from sixty to eighty mortars, howitzers, and heavy artillery pieces had come out of hiding and been added to the common arsenal. At a debate at the Kampfbund on October 23 Göring presented details for the “Offensive Against Berlin,” and recommended, among other things, that blacklists be drawn up: “The most vigorous forms of terror must be employed; anyone who creates the slightest obstruction must be shot. It is essential that the leaders decide now which individuals must be eliminated. As soon as the decree is issued at least one person must be shot immediately as an example.”

On October 24 Lossow summoned representatives of the Reichswehr, the state police, and the patriotic organizations to a meeting at District Headquarters, so that he could present the Reichswehr’s plans of mobilization for the march on Berlin. The code name of the operation was Sunrise. He had also invited Hermann Kriebel, the military leader of the Kampfbund, but Hitler had been omitted, along with the leadership of the SA. In response, Hitler promptly staged a “grand military review,” of which we have a contemporary description: “All over the city the beat of drums and peals of band music could be heard from early in the morning. As the day wore on, one saw uniformed men everywhere with Hitler’s swastika on their collars. . . Kahr must have understood the implications, for he issued an announcement “in order to put down the many rumors in circulation” that he totally refused to enter into any negotiations with the present national government.

The only question seemed to be who would strike first and thus receive “the victor’s laurel at the Brandenburg Gate” from the redeemed nation. Even while the excitement mounted, a certain regional quality gave the whole thing a comic cast, a dash of cowboy-and-Indian gamesmanship. Seemingly forgetful of issues, the protagonists blustered that the time had come “to march and finally solve certain problems in the manner of Bismarck.” Others hailed the Ordnungszelle Bayern (“Bavaria as the mainstay of public order”) or the “Bavarian fist” that would have to “clean up that Berlin pigsty.” The image of Berlin as a great Babylon was often invoked; it had a cozily familiar ring, and many a speaker won the hearts of his listeners by promising the “sturdy Bavarians a punitive expedition to Berlin, conquest of the apocalyptic Great Whore, and perhaps a bit of a fling with her.” A reliable informant from the Hamburg area let Hitler know that “on the day of reckoning millions of North Germans” would be on his side. There was widespread confidence that once Munich had led the way, all of Germany’s tribes and regions would join in and that a “springlike uprising of the German people like that of 1813” was just around the corner. On October 30 Hitler withdrew his pledge to Kahr not to press forward on his own.

Even now Kahr could not make up his mind to act. Perhaps he had never meant, any more than Lossow, to attempt to overthrow the government by force. It seems far more likely that the triumvirate encouraged the bellicose preparations in order to prod Seeckt and the conservative nationalist “gentlemen from the North” into imposing their own dictatorship. If the venture went well, the Bavarians would then join in and see to it that Bavarian interests were given their due. Early in November Kahr and Lossow sent Colonel Seisser to Berlin to feel out the situation. His report, however, proved disappointing: no action was to be hoped for, and Seeckt especially had responded very coolly.

Thereupon the triumvirate called in the leaders of the patriotic organizations on November 6 and peremptorily informed them that they, the heads of government, were directing the forthcoming operation and would smash any private initiatives. This was their final attempt to regain control. Hitler was excluded from this meeting as well. That same evening the Kampfbund resolved to seize the next opportunity for striking, thus bringing the triumvirate and as many of the undecided as possible to join in a contagious rush on Berlin.

This decision is often cited as proof of Hitler’s theatrical, overwrought, megalomaniac temperament. There is a tendency to make the operation seem ridiculous by the use of such terms as “Beer-hall Putsch,” “Political Fasching,” and so on. To be sure, the undertaking had its comic aspect. Nevertheless, it also reveals Hitler’s knack for sizing up a situation, his courage, and his tactical consistency.

In actual fact Hitler no longer had a choice on the evening of November 6. Since the defeat of May 1, from which he had barely recovered, the call to act was almost unavoidable. Otherwise he would jeopardize the very quality that made him unique among the profusion of parties and politicians: the radical, almost existential seriousness of his sense of outrage. It was his unyieldingness and refusal to compromise that made him impressive and credible. As leader of the Kampfbund he had acquired command over a striking force whose will to act was no longer fragmented by collective leadership. And finally, the storm troopers themselves were impatiently pressing for action.

Their restlessness had various causes. They were professional soldiers, who after weeks of conspiratorial preparations were all keyed up for action. Some of the paramilitary organizations, which had been on battle alert for weeks, had taken part in the “fall maneuvers” of the Reichswehr, but now all their funds had been used up. Hitler’s treasury was also exhausted, and the men were going hungry.

The pressures on Hitler become the more apparent from the statement made by Wilhelm Bruckner, the commander of the Munich SA regiment, at a secret session of the subsequent trial:

 

I had the impression that the Reichswehr officers were dissatisfied too, because the march on Berlin was being held up. They were saying: Hitler is a fraud just like the rest of them. You are not attacking. It makes no difference to us who strikes first; we are going along. And I myself told Hitler: one of these days I will not be able to hold the men back. Unless something happens now, the men will take off on you. We had many unemployed in the ranks, fellows who had sacrificed their last pair of shoes, their last suit of clothing, their last penny for their training and who thought: soon things will get under way and we’ll be taken into the Reichswehr and be out of this mess.⁴⁶

 

In a discussion with Seisser at the beginning of November, Hitler himself said that something had to be done immediately or the troops of the Kampfbund would be driven by economic necessity into the Communist camp.

Hitler had not only to worry about the morale of his troops; the mere passage of time also had its dangers. The revolutionary discontent threatened to evaporate; it had been strained far too long. Meanwhile, the end of the struggle for the Ruhr and the defeat of the Left had brought a turn toward normality. Even the inflation seemed about to be checked, and the spirit of revolution seemed to be vanishing along with the crisis. There was no question that Hitler’s effectiveness was entirely bound up with national distress. So to hesitate now would be fatal, even if certain pledges he had made stood in his way. These did not trouble him so much as a flaw in the plan: contrary to his principles he would have to venture on the revolution without the approval of the Prime Minister of Bavaria.

Nevertheless, he hoped that sufficient boldness on his part would extort this approval, and even the Prime Minister’s participation. “We were convinced that action would only come if desire were backed up by will,” Hitler later told the court. The sum total of significant reasons for action was thus counterweighed only by the risk that the coup might fail to ignite the courage of the triumvirate. It would seem that Hitler gave little thought to this danger, for he felt that he would only be forcing the triumvirate into something it had been planning in any case. In the end the entire undertaking foundered on this one point. The episode showed up the weakness of Hitler’s sense of reality. He himself, to be sure, never accepted this charge; on the contrary, he was always somewhat proud of his disdain for reality. He quoted Lossow’s statement that he would take part in a coup d’état only if the odds were 51 to 49 for a successful outcome as an example of hopeless enslavement to reality.

Yet there were other reasons besides the calculable ones that spoke in favor of action; in fact, the course of history has shown Hitler to have been right in a broader sense. For the undertaking that ended in debacle nevertheless turned out to be the decisive breakthrough on Hitler’s way to power.

 

At the end of September, in the midst of all the hectic preparations and maneuverings for position, Hitler had staged a “German Day” in Bayreuth and used the occasion to present himself at Wahnfried, the home of the Wagners. Deeply moved, he had gone through the rooms, sought out the Master’s study, and stood a long time before the grave in the garden. Then he was introduced to Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who had married one of Richard Wagner’s daughters and through his books had been a formative influence on Hitler. It was a poor sort of interview with the partially paralyzed, speechless old man; yet Chamberlain sensed the quality of the visitor. Writing to him a week later, on October 7, he lauded Hitler not as the precursor for someone greater, but as the savior himself, the key figure of the German counterrevolution. He had expected to meet a fanatic, he wrote, but now his instinct told him that Hitler was of a higher order, more creative and, despite his palpable force of will, not a man of violence. The meeting, Chamberlain added, had set his soul at rest, for “the fact that in the hour of her greatest need Germany should produce a Hitler is a sign that she is yet alive.”⁴⁷

To the demagogue at that very moment facing a crucial decision, those words came as the answer to his doubts, as a benediction from the Bayreuth Master himself.