A far more serious scheme to alter the existing constitution of Germany was being planned, and presumably still meets with the approval of the extreme nationalists.
—LONDON Times, MARCH 13, 1924
The Hitler trial, Vossische Zeitung noted, was reading like a serialized novel. The proceedings, which were supposed to have lasted only two weeks, were now estimated to carry on another three weeks. The prosecution was expected to call around 80 witnesses and the defense another 150. Some newspapers reported an even higher number. France’s Agence Havas topped everyone with its prediction that, thanks to a typo, put it at “more than 2,000.”
On March 7, 1924, Neithardt called the courtroom to order. Karl Kohl’s apology on behalf of his fellow defense lawyers—and probably more than a little help from the minister of justice, Franz Gürtner—had persuaded Stenglein to return to the courtroom. The judge reiterated his desire to conduct the proceedings in a worthy manner and banish all incidents “incompatible with the dignity of the court.” Otherwise, he threatened to try each of the defendants separately. All was soon calm, as L’Écho de Paris noted with amusement, as if the glimmer of blue skies had peeked through the thunderclouds after a storm.
But despite the attempts of judge and lawyers to act as if nothing had happened, several newspapers, such as L’Humanité, detected the whiff of a scandal. The sudden and unexpected harmony suggested that the judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers were closing ranks to prevent the disgraceful trial from being transferred to the state supreme court in Leipzig, which many critics had called a likely and welcome solution to the burlesque of justice at Munich.
The Münchener Post was particularly skeptical that this superficial reconciliation would last. The defense counsel may be forced to make his own humble walk of repentance to Canossa, the reporter said, referring to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, who sought Pope Gregory VII in 1077, only to be kept waiting for three days in a snowstorm, but that did not change the fact that the cards seemed stacked in its favor.
As the presiding judge prepared to call the morning’s first witness, Hitler’s lawyer, Lorenz Roder, offered a suggestion. While recognizing the tribunal’s prerogative to summon witnesses in any order it desired, Roder proposed that the court forgo a series of witnesses who could only testify about what they saw or heard at the beer hall. Instead, Neithardt should call to the stand the three men who could exert significant influence on the trial: Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser. Their testimony would allow the court to discover whether their actions were “sheer hypocrisy” or “serious collaboration,” and, in the process, fulfill the mandate of the People’s Court to reach a verdict as swiftly as possible.
Neithardt ignored the suggestion and called the next witness, as planned.
This was Adolf Schiedt, editor in chief at the Münchener Zeitung, Kahr’s director of the press, and coauthor of the general state commissioner’s speech the night of the beer hall putsch. Roder objected that this man was not impartial. As Schiedt was one of Kahr’s employees, he should be regarded not so much as a witness as an accomplice to the crime of high treason. The judge ignored him a second time.
Schiedt was visibly uncomfortable, speaking haltingly and in a low voice. He justified the meeting at the beer hall on the night of November 8, 1923, as “useful, indeed necessary” to provide Kahr with the opportunity to show his determination to wage a “battle against Marxism.” This event was intended to rally his supporters, many of whom had been frustrated at the lack of progress in establishing a nationalist regime in Berlin.
That evening, however, Schiedt had found the crowd outside the beer hall much larger than he had expected, given the nature of the talk. He had made his way with difficulty to his reserved seat near the front of the banquet room. After Hitler’s arrival and the series of oaths to the new national government, Schiedt feared that he was in fact witnessing a revolution.
Did he think that Kahr had been pretending?
No, he did not, the witness said, though he had begun to wonder, and eventually concluded that he could not explain Kahr’s behavior. When the Storm Troopers finally released the crowd, Schiedt left the beer hall feeling a sense of depression and uncertainty.
Defense counsel Kohl, then using the witness to attack Kahr, asked how the Bavarian leader’s acceptance speech as “viceroy of the monarchy,” could be reconciled with his sworn oath to uphold the constitution of the republic.
Neithardt refused to allow the question, but he was interrupted by three defense lawyers all shouting at once.
“That will not do!” Neithardt said.
Schiedt went on to field a series of questions, or as the foreign correspondent for Le Petit Journal put it, be “harassed by rather unfriendly inquiries of twelve lawyers.” At one point, when the presiding judge asked Schiedt if he had spoken to anyone before planning the rally at the beer hall, the witness hesitated and then flat-out refused to answer. To further surprise, Judge Neithardt accepted the rebuff without hesitation, as L’Humanité noted, suspecting that he was covering up a scandal that went back to Kahr.
The French paper was not the only one to draw this conclusion. In Berlin, Rudolf Breitscheid of the Social Democratic Party stood up in the Reichstag and said that Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser belonged in the dock with Hitler. At the very least, had the Bavarian regime shown a modicum of vigilance and foresight, the beer hall putsch would never have happened. It was essential to investigate the allegations of high-level collaboration to overthrow the German republic.
IN THE MORNING and afternoon session, a total of seventeen witnesses appeared in rapid succession before the court. Most of these were eyewitnesses at the beer hall, and also, clearly, strong supporters of Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser.
The next witness, Gen. Felix Graf von Bothmer, illustrated this pattern. “My impression of the affair,” Bothmer said, speaking of Hitler’s attack, “was that it was a well-prepared, brutal ambush that could not have been thwarted by any preventive measures.” He saw no evidence of any genuine participation on the part of Kahr and the triumvirate, he continued, with a commanding presence that, for once, Le Gaulois noted, the defense did not interrupt.
Professor of history Alexander von Müller, who had been sitting near the stage, disagreed. Not for a minute had he believed that the triumvirate’s participation in the putsch was an act. Nor had anyone else sitting near him. Hitler, Ludendorff, and the Bavarian leaders were far too serious for that. History seemed to be unfolding.
Another witness, Karl Sommer, a senior councilor in the Foreign Ministry and author of several memorandums on the putsch, testified to the terror he felt when Hitler invaded the banquet room. He had first feared that this was an assault from the far left, prompted by Kahr’s anti-Marxist rally.
“The senior councilor appears to be reading out a speech!” Hitler’s lawyer objected.
“I am not reading, but I consider myself justified to make my statements and assist my memory with the help of notes.”
This was not the only document that the witness had read. He also clearly knew the white-blue pamphlet and the confidential memo that had circulated among supporters of Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser. Almost every witness from the military and state police thus far had likewise read them.
Many of them also gave the impression that they were more interested in defending the actions of the Bavarian leaders than answering questions about the case. The result was ambiguity and confusion, as Roder had predicted. The session dragged on until almost eight o’clock, as the correspondent for Le Temps put it, without much interest.
But in fact, the judge’s steering of the questioning sheds light on an important dynamic emerging in the Munich trial. Neithardt has been traditionally portrayed as a nationalist who favored Adolf Hitler. This is not inaccurate, but the presiding judge had another, more important, priority that has been overlooked. He was, it would soon be clear, concerned foremost with protecting Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser—and by extension, the reputations of the Bavarian administration, military, and state police that they had commanded. And it was this shielding of high-ranking authorities that would afford Hitler his extraordinary opportunity at the Munich trial.