The rabble has to be scared shitless. I can’t use an officer; the people no longer have any respect for them. Best of all would be a worker who’s got his mouth in the right place . . . He doesn’t need much intelligence; politics is the stupidest business in the world.
—DIETRICH ECKART
At the sound of “Heil!” from the back of the banquet hall, the pro- cession of Bavarian leaders and their National Socialist escorts returned from the side room and made its way to the platform.
Gustav von Kahr was the first to speak in a series of oaths, proclamations, and pledges of loyalty that struck several people in the audience like a call to freedom out of Friedrich Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell. With “heavy heart,” Kahr said, he accepted the call to serve his country in “the hour of its gravest distress” and assume responsibility for “guiding Bavaria’s destiny as viceroy of the monarchy.” The applause was enthusiastic, a police informer in the crowd noted. Professor Müller thought this was by far the loudest and most enthusiastic cheering of the night.
After shaking Kahr’s hand so forcefully, almost yanking or pumping it, Hitler triumphantly announced the new government, to thundering cheers. He then said that he would fulfill the vow he made five years earlier, when he lay in a military hospital at Pasewalk, recovering from a mustard-gas attack: he would “know neither rest nor peace until the November criminals have been overthrown.” He was ready to build on “the ruins of the wretched Germany of today . . . a Germany of power and greatness, of freedom and magnificence.”
Shouts of “Heil Hitler!” roared through the gallery.
Each of the men of the new regime, when signaled, pledged their cooperation, as Hitler put it, to purge Berlin of the criminals whose treason had dishonored the country and slaughtered its people. Ludendorff, speaking briefly in his best “mailed fist” style, repeated his claim to have been surprised at the revolution, but embraced the hour at hand as “the turning point of our history.” Putzi, his large frame standing on a chair, translated the speeches for the foreign correspondents.
Professor Müller watched Hitler, standing on the stage, almost giddy with delight. Ludendorff also looked moved, his face betraying a conviction that this was a profound historical moment and, at the same time, a determination to meet the challenges of the future. The audience burst into a lively rendition of “Deutschland über Alles,” which had been adopted as the national anthem the previous year. Ernst Pöhner, standing on the platform with Hitler’s new government, said that this was the most rapturous applause that he had witnessed since the declaration of war in August 1914.
Not everyone, however, was swept up in the hysteria. A police informer overheard someone in the audience quip that the only thing missing was a psychiatrist.
WITH THE NEW national government proclaimed, Hitler was ready to release the crowd. Everyone wanting to leave the beer hall would first be questioned. Good German patriots would be allowed to go. Those who were not—foreign correspondents, Communists, or anyone suspected of being an enemy of the new regime—would be detained. He asked Göring to oversee the process.
Hitler went to check on Hess and the captive Bavarian prime minister and his cabinet, whom, he suspected, would never support the revolution. He apologized for the “inconvenience” they had experienced and promised them no harm, making a point of not looking at the Bavarian Minister of the Interior, Franz Xaver Schweyer. This man had long opposed the Nazis, denouncing them in public for their “unilateral, unscrupulous, and terroristic nature.” Schweyer was also someone to whom Hitler had given his word the previous year never to make a putsch.
Schweyer approached Hitler “like an angry schoolmaster.” He pecked his finger on Hitler’s chest and admonished him for his broken promise.
Hitler turned and headed to the door without responding.
Then he ordered Hess to take the men away.