The beer hall putsch

Following World War One, Germany was a proving ground for just about any political party or theory one might want to espouse. By early 1921, Hitler was becoming an amazingly effective speaker, and he mostly went around attacking all these dopey parties, especially the Socialists. He was very dramatic, his followers showing up in uniforms and swastikas and passing out propaganda to the disgruntled crowds. Soon his party was a force to be reckoned with.

Munich, Hitler's stomping grounds, became a hotbed of fervent German nationalism. Munich calls to mind beer and Octoberfest, and much of Hitler's speaking and rabble rousing took place in beer halls. Munich beer halls of the time held hundreds, sometimes thousands of people. Basically, the idea is to get people, who are downtrodden and dissatisfied with the government, drunk and rowdy and then scream at them over and over and over about how change was needed, change they could believe in. Then one would begin ranting at the scapegoats: socialists, traitors, inefective government, Treaty of Versailles, and, of course, Jews.

Hitler's Nazi party grew and grew. There was no end of destitute Germans looking for a messiah. Ummm... make that savior. The disgruntled teabaggers grew until they were a force to be reckoned with. Early followers included Rudolf Hess; former air force pilot Hermann Goering; future leader of the party's paramilitary "protection" organization (the SS Storm Divison) army captain Ernst Rohm. And, very importantly, former general of the German Army Erich Ludendorff. Ludendorff's presence gave Hitler the appearance of legitimacy. The crowds grew. The rhetoric escalated. The party grew larger.

By 1923, Hitler and the party leadership had determined to form their own government. With the tacit support of Bavaria's ruler, Gustav von Kahr, Hitler and his boys, and Ludendorff, along with the Bavarian police and army, waited for the right time.

On 8 November, 1923, Kahr was holding a meeting at a large Munich beer hall. Hitler and the SA stormed the meeting and demanded, at gunpoint, that Kahr and the local military establishment support a march on Berlin, for the destruction of the Berlin government. Kahr got cold feet and refused. The police and military wouldn't go against him. When Hitler and his followers marched on the Bavarian ministry the next day to take over, they were repulsed. 16 of Hitler's followers were killed. Hitler was arrested and put on trial for treason.

Unfortunately, during Hitler's trial, he was given almost limitless time to speak. His popularity soared as he reiterated his nationalist sentiments in his famous defense speech. What had been merely a thorn in the side of a local government suddenly became a national figure. Nonetheless, Hitler was convicted and sentenced to 5 years at Landsberg Prison.

While imprisoned, Hitler wrote most of volume one of Mein Kampf. He received favored treatment from the prison guards. He was a hero. He received much fan mail. In the end, he was pardoned due to public pressure and served little more than a year of his sentence. From that point forward, Hitler did everything by the book. Legal Hitler.

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The beer hall putsch.

A putsch is simply German for a coup, or governmental takeover attempt.

Beer halls in Germany were (and the tradition continues) places where political and social debates were held - even political rallies. One of the largest beer halls in Munich was the Burgerbraukeller. That is where Hitler tried his putsch.

Von Kahr, the Bavarian commissioner, was making a speech in front of 3000 people when Hitler and his brownshirts marched into the beer hall. No one was allowed to leave (a machine gun was set up pointing at the auditorium doors.)

The three Bavarian leaders, commissioner von Kahr, Bavarian state police head, colonel von Sessier, and general Otto von Lossow, were taken into a side room by Hitler and his party leaders (including Rudolf Hess) and given a chance to come out openly to their side. During this time, speeches were held in the adjoining hall, by Goering and others. No one was allowed to leave, not even to go to the bathroom. Hitler was irritated when von Kahr refused, but left the room to speak to the crowd, as he had promised them 15 minutes earlier.

Within seconds, the mood of the crowd changed over to Hitler. Dr. Karl Alexander von Mueller, professor of modern history and political science at the University of Munich, a supporter of von Kahr, was an eyewitness:

"I cannot remember in my entire life such a change in the attitude of a crowd in a few minutes, almost a few seconds. Hitler turned them inside out, as one turns a glove inside out, with a few sentences. It had almost something of hocus-pocus, or magic about it."

Hitler knew the exact buttons that needed to be pressed. He pressed them.

After the war

Much has been written about Adolf Hitler's political views and the formation of his theories, as well as his transformation into a charismatic speaker and political leader. In my own opinion, there were two things that seemed to guide him and motivate him. First was his belief that Germany had been betrayed from within, and the belief that betrayal had come largely from International Jewry. Second was a rage against the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the degrading condition of the German people, and a conviction that they must be led out of this condition by a person who was willing and able to take charge and effect Germany's resurrection; and a growing belief that he was that person.

There were a lot of political parties in Germany in the early 1920's. Hitler supported the DAP, and in 1920 became that party's minister of propaganda. That same year he engineered a name change of the party to the NSDAP - National Socialist German Worker's Party or "Nazi" from the first two syllables. At the same time he adopted a swastika as the party's emblem (a good luck charm often used in the past) and incorporated the Roman Salute used by Italian Facists. Never underestimate the power of symbolism.

Hitler met, and found a mentor in, Dietrich Eckart. If you would know Hitler's thinking and his rise to power, in my opinion, you must study Deitrich Eckart, The Nordic connection and Peer Gynt, Buddist "Maya", Indo-Aryan philosophy and... ooooooEEEEEEooooo... The Thule Society. Learn about those things, and read about Dietrich Ekart, and you will come to know Adolf Hitler a lot better. I don't think Hitler was really into the occult though. I think he got the swastika from his brief time with the Thule Society.

In what might be called an almost magical transformation, Hitler became a hypnotic speaker and expert crowd manipulator. People became transfixed and ecstatic when he spoke, surrounded by symbolism. I attribute much of this to Dietrich Ekart. Hitler rose in the party. He began to meet some important people.

In 1924, Hitler and his crew tried a violent takeover of the country but failed and was sent to prison for treason. This takeover attempt (The Beerhall Pusch) is interesting and I will write about it tomorrow. While in prison he wrote the two-volume book "Mein Kampf."

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Dietrich Ekart

The Great War leaves Germany ripe for revolution

Hitler served in WWI on the Western Front, France and Belgium, as a runner. A runner meant carrying messages along the line, and it was dangerous. He was the equivalent of a Private First Class in American army terms (Lance Corporal, British.) Runners get shot at a lot.

Hitler participated in several of the major battles along the Western Front, including Ypres. Ypres saw 40,000 men killed in 20 days. Hitler was decorated for bravery twice, winning both the iron cross second class and the iron cross first class - very unusual for such a low-ranking soldier. However, he was never promoted to full corporal because regimental command thought he lacked leadership skills.

Let me repeat that. Hitler was about 27 years old now, and he had not exhibited leadership skills.

Later in this series of posts I will contend that Hitler became a charismatic people magnet almost overnight. I believe I can show evidence to support that unlikely statement. But for now, remember that during the war, he didn't exhibit any of these talents.

Some have said he wasn't promoted simply because he wasn't (yet) a German citizen. I don't believe that. You can, if you want.

Although Hitler's job was dangerous, at least it brought him often to regimental headquarters. In between runs he worked on his artwork, drawing cartoons and illustrations for an army newspaper.

Eventually, Hitler's luck ran out and he was shot. This was in 1916 at the Battle of the Somme, but he returned to the front in 1917. He was shot in the left thigh (some say "thigh" was a euphemism and that he was really shot in the groin, which might lend some credence as to why he never married until the end, or had children, and why he was never a ladies man. Just speculation. He was never a ladies man before the war either.) He received his wound badge later that year. His time at the front at least gave him some understanding of the military.

As the war was coming to a close, in October of 1918, Hitler was gassed. He was admitted to a field hospital, temporarily blinded by mustard gas. For the life of me, I can't make the connection, but Hitler was to say later it was during this time in the hospital waiting for his sight to return that he first became convinced that his life purpose was to "save Germany." Maybe YOU can figure out what the two things have to do with one another. I am more concerned that his gassing gave him the seed of an idea; in his book Mein Kampf there is a short passage that goes by quickly but makes me blink:

"At the beginning of the Great War, or even during the War, if twelve or fifteen thousand of these Jews who were corrupting the nation had been forced to submit to poison gas... then the millions of sacrifices made at the front would not have been in vain."

Historians say that Hitler's decision to mass exterminate Jews and other "undesireables" didn't happen until 1941, maybe even 1942. But Mein Kampf was written in 1925. You tell me.

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When Germany surrendered in November of 1918, many Germans, including Hitler, felt betrayed by what they considered a backstabbing government, marxists and socialists and general traitors to Germany (they called these people who surrendered Germany before defeat the "November Criminals".) who caved in even though the army was not defeated, while they still held foreign territory, in fact. I think it is important to consider a great number of Germans were not loyal to this "government of betrayal" following the war; there was always an undercurrent of revolution, I think, with "underground" resistance groups and opposition political parties. I think history bears this out.

The Treaty of Versailles was brutal to Germany. They lost much of their territory. They lived under humiliating restrictions. The size of their army could not be more than 100,000 and their navy restricted to just a handful of ships. In other words, they couldn't fight back, no matter what the victors decided to do to them. They were levied an oppressive amount of war reparations, and when they could no longer pay, the French and Belgians occupied the Ruhr (Germany's most productive industrial region) and, when strikes and protests ensued, France began killing the protestors. The treaty "re-created" Poland, which outraged even moderate Germans.

When the government began printing money to cover debts, hyper-inflation occurred and German money became worthless. At one time, they were printing 50-million mark notes. These were worth about $1 American for a while and then nothing. People used to write grocery lists on the backs of million mark notes - ironically, since they couldn't buy groceries. Soon it cost too much to print money.

In the above description, I am touching only on the highlights to give an overview of the German despair following WWI, and, admittedly, I am giving the point of view of the Germans who believed in the "stabbed-in-the-back" theory: Hitler and his friends, for example. Obviously the victors had a different point of view. The allies felt the German army was defeated (and it was, according to Western history books). France had suffered great damage and had lost 1.5 million dead, so they NEEDED reparations to rebuild.

As an American, I do not share the "stabbed-in-the-back" theory; I think Germany started the war and that its Empire and aristocracy got almost what it deserved. I say "almost" because the Kaiser spent his last days in comfort at his country estate in the Netherlands. But I write the account so you can see the way Hitler and thousands of other Germans felt.

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Next: We learn a new word: Putsch.