The leaders of the National Socialists did not possess the requisite skill for their leadership roles.
—HANS FEIL, MUNICH POLICE REPORT, DECEMBER 18, 1923
Scheubner-Richter was not the only one to express concern over Ludendorff’s decision. This was “sheer madness,” said Hermann Esser, upon arriving outside the beer hall after his speech at the Löwenbräu. “Who let the fellows go? . . . Who is responsible for this nonsense?”
Putzi was also incredulous. He had learned enough from his studies in history to realize that aspiring revolutionaries simply do not allow the leaders of the established government to remain free. He and Esser retreated inside the beer hall, where on Esser’s account, they consoled themselves with another round of drinks.
The banquet room was, by this time, mostly empty, except for the Storm Troopers and Nazi Party members still loitering about drinking beer and munching on remaining sausages. Tables and chairs lay helter-skelter where they had been overturned. Broken glass littered the place. It looked like Munich after the carnival.
A hole in the ceiling was pointed out as the shot that started the German revolution. One party member, Marc Sesselmann, had gathered the shards of the beer mug that Hitler supposedly shattered before storming the stage. The beginnings of a new mythology surrounding the beer hall putsch were already forming.
About eleven p.m., three cars filled with Hitler, Ludendorff, and other conspirators plotting the German revolution left the beer hall to coordinate strategy at the newly seized War Ministry. They still expected the three Bavarian leaders to meet them there and plan the attack on Berlin.
Gustav von Kahr, however, was not headed to the War Ministry. He chose instead to return to his apartment attached to his office in the rambling neo-Gothic structure on Maximilianstrasse, the center of political authority in Munich. He faced a major dilemma.
For six weeks, since his appointment as general state commissioner, a virtual dictator tasked with countering the unprecedented economic turmoil, Kahr had resisted Berlin at times with open defiance. He was not opposed to the overthrow of the republic—he was a notorious monarchist—and at times, he seemed on the verge of joining, if not planning, a coup d’état himself. But this putsch, he feared, would fail. Unfortunately for him, he had supported it in front of a packed beer hall.
Walking up the stairs, he greeted his daughter and handed her his coat. He asked for some tea and, after a quick change of clothes, went to his office in Room 125 on the third floor. Several of his advisers were already rallying forces to resist Hitler.
Kahr appeared shaken. He had had no choice or alternative, he said, explaining his apparent agreement with Hitler at the Bürgerbräu. He then blamed the police for failing to take proper precautions, which was ironic, given that it had been Kahr who instructed them to diminish their presence that night. He had not wanted it to look like he needed to be protected from his own people.
The situation was far from hopeless, said one of his advisers, Eberhardt Kautter, a veteran soldier who led a local unit of the paramilitary Bund Wiking [Viking League], which was a successor to one of the infamous Freikorps groups, the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt. Hitler had acted unwisely, Kautter said, with too narrow a base of support for Bavaria, let alone all of Germany. If Kahr moved quickly, they could still emerge victorious. He had a suggestion.
Kahr should suspend the Weimar constitution and proclaim a dictatorship with himself as a viceroy, or deputy, of the ousted king. He could make the case to the public that this was necessary to combat the Communist threat. Several paramilitary societies would certainly join this cause—he had already mobilized his own Bund Wiking. The people would likewise rally to their side. Hitler and Ludendorff, outmaneuvered, would either have to subordinate themselves to Kahr’s leadership or they would be overtaken by the momentum of the revolution.
As Kahr considered the proposition, he no doubt realized that the top priority was to find out where his colleagues, Lossow and Seisser, stood on the Hitler putsch. The three Bavarian leaders had not had the chance to speak freely without the presence of the Nazis.
During the discussion, the phone rang. It was neither Lossow nor Seisser, but instead Kahr’s vice premier and sometime rival, Franz Matt, the minister of education and culture. Matt had skipped Kahr’s speech at the beer hall that night, allegedly for a dinner party with the archbishop and the papal nuncio in Munich, Monsignor Eugenio Pacelli, who would later become Pope Pius XII.
“What does Hitler actually want?” Matt asked.
“The famous march on Berlin,” Kahr said.
Good luck with that, Matt replied sarcastically. By the end of the conversation, Matt reached the conclusion that Kahr was either committed to Hitler’s plot or unfit to fight it. Either way, he was not to be trusted.
That night, Matt would propose to fellow cabinet members that they should retreat sixty miles north to Regensburg on the Danube. There they could rule as the legitimate government and ensure the integrity of the state. In the chaos of the moment, however, this meant only that there would be yet another faction vying for power.
MEANWHILE, FORCES OPPOSING the putsch were emerging at police headquarters.
At about 9:15 p.m., the state police major Sigmund Freiherr von Imhoff had just wrapped up teaching a class on riot control. He was about to leave the building when a detective ran in “breathless” with news of Hitler’s attack at the beer hall. Rumors often circulated in Munich’s hothouse atmosphere, but Imhoff realized that this was no exaggeration.
Frick was still preventing any significant police action with his rhetoric of caution. Imhoff, realizing where his colleague’s true allegiance lay, pretended to agree, but as soon as Frick left the room, he started working the telephones.
Imhoff placed the entire Landespolizei, or state police (also known as the “Green Police,” given the color of their uniform), on high alert, and he took responsibility for dispatching other units to guard Munich’s telegraph office, the telephone exchange, the central post office, and key government buildings and bridges in case of attack.
The quick action of this state police major would safeguard vital communications centers. What’s more, this feat was accomplished despite the vigilance of Dr. Frick, who kept popping into the office to check on him, while trying in his stiff, awkward way to appear nonchalant.
Imhoff scored another success that night when he managed to reach the commander of the Munich city garrison, Maj. Gen. Jakob Ritter von Danner at his home and inform him of the emergency. Danner came at once to the police station, where he too feared sabotage under Dr. Frick and soon left for his office in the neo-Baroque building that housed the Army Museum. Like Imhoff, he planned to oppose Hitler with all his authority.
As a decorated commander whose career had begun with the German expeditionary force in China during the Boxer Rebellion, Danner abhorred the putsch as an indefensible act against legitimate state authority. He was also angry at his immediate supervisor, General von Lossow, for not only succumbing to the temptations of politics but also failing to put the despicable Nazi rogues in their place. Lossow, he said, was “a sad figure of a man,” and, above all, “a coward.”
When Danner arrived at his office, he realized that the city garrison was not safe either. The War Ministry was already occupied by Röhm’s Reichskriegsflagge, and Storm Troopers had been spotted marching nearby around St. Anna’s Church. Danner decided to set up a new command center for the fight against Hitler outside Munich’s center, in the northwestern part of the city: a wooden communications hut deep inside the 19th Infantry Regiment barracks.
After ordering military reinforcements from Augsburg, Landsberg, Regensburg, Nürnberg, and elsewhere, Danner then gave explicit instructions to each commanding officer: Under no circumstances were they to obey General von Lossow. Without explicitly doubting his commander’s loyalty, Danner said that the general should be regarded as “a prisoner” and all his communications ignored. In other words, commanders should follow orders from Danner personally, or in his name alone.