Hitler and his God

A Putschist in Tail Coat

“The three vons”, State Commissioner Gustav von Kahr, General von Lossow, commander of the Bavarian Reichswehr, and Colonel von Seisser, head of the state police, formed a triumvirate with practically unlimited power in Bavaria. As rightist reactionaries they did not hesitate to further intensify the confrontation with the Weimar Republic and declared Bavaria “a stronghold of threatened Germanhood”. The Bavarian army had to swear an oath not to the constitutional central government but to the State. The triumvirate justified most of its rebellious actions as measures against the communist threat in adjacent Thuringia, but nobody doubted that they were planning another rightist coup against the Weimar Republic and that they were looking for support from nationalist circles anywhere in the country, even in Berlin. They were, however, not only separatists but also monarchists, who wanted to bring the Wittelsbach dynasty back on the Bavarian throne in the person of Crown Prince Rupprecht, as a field marshal the former commander of the Bavarian army during the war and still “enjoying an almost mystical respect”. Rupprecht was now pulling all possible strings to re-enter the royal palace in Munich which his father had hurriedly left in the middle of that November night in 1918.

There was no love lost between “the three vons” and Adolf Hitler. The ultra-rightist Hitler was, as a fanatical Pan-German, an arch-opponent of Bavarian separatism, with a deep resentment against royalty and nobility in general. The triumvirate, for its part, looked down on the Austrian ex-corporal who, in their eyes, was “a pretentious young man of obscure origin who seemed somewhat cracked”. 213 Ernst Hanfstängl will bear witness to the fact that “Hitler’s fight against this attitude [of disparagement] was to take him years.” 214 Writers on Hitler’s life usually mention some of his remarkable achievements, e.g. redeeming the economy, rebuilding the German army or the masterly strategy of the invasion into France; seldom, though, does one read about his fight against the social prejudices and obstacles during his climb to power. Yet it was this tenacity that made all the rest possible and that must have been rooted in an extremely powerful conviction, or inspiration, or vision, to take him where he ultimately arrived.

Kahr and his two acolytes did everything in their power to block Hitler’s ambitions, prohibiting some Nazi manifestations or occasionally the publication of his paper, the Völkische Beobachter. “The brown phalanx”, the SA, was expanding rapidly, as was the membership of the NSDAP, and rumours of a putsch were rife, still more so after Mussolini had become Duce of Italy as a consequence of the “March on Rome”. Who in Germany knew in those days that this “march” was largely mythical? And who took into consideration that the social and political circumstances in Germany differed totally from those in Italy? One has only to cast an eye on the map of Germany and consider the geographical distance between Munich and Berlin, plus the fact that Seeckt’s disciplined Reichswehr could easily halt whatever Bavarian phalanxes might move northwards, to ask oneself how the triumvirate as well as Hitler could possibly dream of marching on Berlin. But troubled times hatch troubled schemes.

Besides, Hitler had painted himself into a corner. He had accepted and exploited the comparison with Benito Mussolini and allowed himself now generally to be called Führer, i.e. leader, duce, of the Nazis. (Soon this designation will become obligatory in the NSDAP, and former acquaintances who habitually addressed him as “Herr Hitler” will incur his wrath when continuing to do so.) The growing ranks of the SA, now mostly recruited among the unemployed, had to be fed and kept occupied. Many of them, although enjoying the comradeship and the intimidating swastika armbands and uniforms (if they had one), were no idealists: they were just hungry and penniless. They could not forever be kept marching and chanting in the streets or collecting money for the Party – while doing a little mischief on the side, for instance beating up an old Jew. They were looking forward to what was promised to them – power, food and money – and this not in the long term but as soon as possible.

“Hitler had already for some time become the hostage of his own propaganda, in which he himself had announced time and again that he would soon settle accounts with the ‘November criminals’. If he did not risk the putsch now, he would be a boaster and vacillator in the eyes of his followers and sooner or later be overtaken by the dynamics of the situation.” (Ralph Reuth 215) “The storm troopers were impatiently pressing for action. Their restlessness had various causes. Many of them 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 manoeuvres’ of the [Bavarian] Reichswehr, but now all their funds had been used up. Hitler’s treasury was also exhausted, and the men were going hungry.” (Joachim Fest 216)

The Hitler Putsch on 8 and 9 November 1923 was one of the worst prepared, most amateurish and even comical events (except for the shooting) in German history. Hitler and his cronies tried to hijack, on the evening of 8 November, a meeting in the Bürgerbräukeller organized by Kahr, Lossow and Seisser, fearing that the trio might beat him to the putsch and proclaim an independent Bavaria under king Rupprecht. From the start everything went wrong.

Hitler, at the head of the helmeted and armed Shock Troop Hitler, appeared in the overcrowded beer hall in tail coat, which made him look like a head waiter. (Nobody has found out where he got the idea of donning this original dress to conduct a coup.) Brandishing his pistol, he silenced the crowd with a shot into the ceiling. “The national revolution has begun!” he shouted. He announced that a new national government had been formed with himself at the helm and Ludendorff as chief of the army (an arrangement about which Ludendorff had not been consulted and which he will never forgive). Hitler forced the triumvirate to swear an oath of collaboration with him, which they broke as soon as he made the mistake of leaving them, going somewhere else where he was not needed. They fled from the beer hall, declared all initiatives of the Nazis illegal and started organizing the suppression of the putsch. After a long and indecisive night in which many more blunders were committed and many a litre jug of beer (at a billion marks apiece) emptied, the Nazis, on Ludendorff’s initiative, started on a march towards the city centre around 11 am on 9 November.

“Most marchers wore ragged uniforms from old army stocks, combined with articles of civilian dress such as felt hats and shawls. One of the participants got the impression that he and his comrades looked ‘like a defeated army that had not been doing battle’. Another asked himself if these shabby figures would actually make an impressive effect on the population. But who could have expected more? None of the participants had known beforehand that they were to execute a propaganda march through the city, and in the bygone night they had slept little and drunk much beer. Many suffered from a nasty hangover.” (David Large 217)

Hitler marched in the front row, behind the flags and banners, with Ludendorff on his left and Scheubner-Richter on his right; also in the front row were Göring as head of the SA, Kriebel, commander of the Kampfbund, Rosenberg, and Hitler’s bodyguard Ulrich Graf (butcher, wrestler and great brawler). Then there followed, in three columns side by side, the Shock Troop Hitler, the veteran Munich SA and the Bund Oberland, with behind them “the motley collection of men”, all together some two to three thousand.

Having arrived at the Marienplatz, Munich’s central square with the Gothic Townhall, Hitler proved again incapable of taking a decision and it was again Ludendorff, “in full regimentals”, who continued marching, this time in the direction of the Feldhernhalle, a famous Renaissance monument near Odeon Square. But the narrow street the marchers engaged into was blocked by a cordon of state police. Nobody knows who fired the first shot. When the exchange of fire ended after thirty seconds – a long time under fire – fourteen of the Nazi marchers and four policemen lay dead. Killed by one of the first shots was Scheubner-Richter next to Hitler. Graf had thrown himself on his prostrate Führer and was hit no less than eleven times. (He survived.) This is one of the many occasions on which Hitler was protected by Destiny, or whatever one cares to call it. He escaped with a dislocated left shoulder to Hanfstängl’s newly built villa in Uffing, in the countryside. There he tried to commit suicide, but was prevented from doing so by Hanfstängl’s wife, the beautiful Helene, who wrestled the pistol from his hand.

The day he “fell on his face” or “fell from the tightrope”, as he himself would say later, will remain a painful memory for Hitler throughout his life. It was also the day on which the learning phase in his political life came to an end. He would switch to completely different political tactics: the attainment of power by legal means.

Historians are still writing that the November putsch was an improvised occurrence. Brigitte Hamann in her book on Hitler and Winifred Wagner, however, makes us think otherwise. Hitler visited Haus Wahnfried in Bayreuth for the first time on 1 October 1922, a month before the putsch. All present were touched by his solemn first contact with the place where the revered Richard Wagner had lived, worked, and lay buried. “It is certain that Hitler told the Wagners also about the planned putsch”, asserts Hamann. “He had obviously planned his visit to Wahnfried with great care and went there at a time when he was already regarded as a special personality, even as the future ‘saviour of Germany’ who was awaited everywhere, and when he already occupied a leading position in the nationalist German associations. That he went there precisely at this moment, shortly before the putsch and the expected assumption of power, had the effect of something like a consecration. As religious people go on a pilgrimage before making an important decision, thus Hitler went to obtain the blessings of [Houston] Chamberlain and of the departed Master, Richard Wagner.” 218 Rumours were abroad, plans were made, the tail coat was rented, and the whole affair turned into a resounding fiasco – which made Hitler a figure of national importance.