Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 (28 page)

The last-minute scheduling of Kahr’s meeting convinced Hitler that Kahr was trying to head him off at the pass. He even suspected that the general state commissar might try to reinstate the Wittelsbach dynasty—rumours to that effect had been circulating in Munich since the beginning of November. Hitler was dead set against the restoration of the monarchy. “Never,” he had dictated to his secretary Fritz Lauböck in late September, “will the National Socialist German Workers’ Party accept any attempt to move the utterly degenerate Houses of Hohenzollern and Wittelsbach and their repulsive courts to again take over the government of our German people.”
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So Hitler decided to move the putsch forward to 8 November. If his supporters succeeded in seizing the Bürgerbräukeller, they would have the unique opportunity to bring the entire political class of Munich under their control. The plan was to leave the triumvirate with no other option by presenting them with a fait accompli. “We have to force them to get involved and then they won’t be able to turn back,” Hitler told Ernst Hanfstaengl.
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At his trial, he declared that he had wanted to give the three hesitant leaders “a push from behind…so that they would finally jump into the water they always found too cold.”
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Over the course of 8 November, the leaders of the Fighting Association received their orders, in part by motorcycle courier. The circle of those in the know was kept small in an attempt to preserve the element of surprise.
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Early that morning, Hitler secured the support of Ernst Pöhner, his former patron in the police force, whom he promised the office of Bavarian president in the post-putsch government. Pöhner was surprised by Hitler’s plan, but he welcomed the fact that someone was taking action. “When Hitler asked me, I answered without hesitation: ‘Yes, I’m with you,’ ” Pöhner testified at Hitler’s trial.
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At 9 a.m., Hitler summoned Hess by telephone and tasked him with arresting all the members of the Bavarian government present in the Bürgerbräukeller. “I assured him with a handshake of my complete discretion, and we parted ways until the evening,” Hess wrote afterwards.
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Around noon, Hitler marched into the offices of the
Völkischer Beobachter
, “with his riding crop in hand—the very picture of grim determination,” and told the astonished Rosenberg and Hanfstaengl: “The time to act has come…But don’t reveal a word of this to any living soul.” Hitler told them to come to the Bürgerbräukeller that evening and to make sure to bring their pistols.
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In this fashion, the inner circles of the conspiracy were gradually informed about the putsch. Having been pushed forward, the entire undertaking was hasty and improvised. There was no time for intensive preparations, which would be one main reason why the putsch failed.

Even before the official start time of 8 p.m. the Bürgerbräukeller was filled beyond capacity. Outside the doors crowded hundreds of people who had failed to get in. Shortly after Kahr had begun his speech, Hitler rode up in his Mercedes with Alfred Rosenberg, his bodyguard Ulrich Graf and Anton Drexler, who was only told then what was in store. “Best of luck,” the honorary NSDAP chairman is supposed to have remarked drily.
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Seeing the unexpectedly large crowds before the Bürgerbräukeller, Hitler began to fret that his storm troopers would not be able to follow him without inciting a panic that could have doomed the whole endeavour. Spontaneously, Hitler went up to the policemen on duty in front of the venue and ordered them to clear the street. Thus it was that, in the words of Konrad Heiden, “the police cleared the way, on Hitler’s command, for Hitler’s putsch.”
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Soon the first trucks full of armed SA men arrived, and the “Stosstrupp Hitler,” a special troop about one hundred men strong, secured the entrance to the beer hall and surrounded the building. Hitler, dressed in a dark suit for the occasion, entered the foyer, where he paced nervously.
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Finally, at around 8:45 p.m., he smashed a beer glass Hanfstaengl had handed him on the floor, drew his pistol and stormed into the beer hall proper, while at the entrance SA men under the command of Göring took up positions with machine guns. “Obviously you couldn’t just go in with a palm frond,” Hitler said during his trial in an attempt to justify his martial posturing.
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“Pale, a dark lock of hair hanging down his forehead, and with a pistol-wielding storm trooper on either side,” Hitler began to negotiate the clogged way to the stage.
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When he was ten steps away from Kahr, he got up on a chair and fired a shot into the ceiling to quiet the tumult. Then he took the stage and proclaimed excitably: “National revolution is under way. The hall is under the control of 600 heavily armed men. No one is allowed to leave. If things don’t immediately quieten down, I will have a machine gun posted on the gallery. The Bavarian government has been deposed. The Reich government has been deposed. A provisional government has been formed.”
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Hitler then asked Kahr, Lossow and Seisser to accompany him into an adjoining room, guaranteeing their safety. In his unpublished memoirs, Kahr described feeling “anger and disgust,” but he hoped that the police would soon put an end to the entire spectacle. Kahr was playing for time. As they left the main hall, Lossow had whispered “Play along,” and the three men had exchanged glances, agreeing to do precisely that.
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At least that was their official version afterwards. In fact, it is doubtful that the triumvirate spontaneously agreed to play along with Hitler in order to turn on him later. Much to his surprise and despite being as persuasive as he could, Hitler met with resistance in the adjoining room. Sweating, foaming at the mouth and waving his pistol about in excitement, Hitler declared: “No one gets out of this room alive without my permission.” Then he calmed down and apologised for having taken this drastic step, saying he had no choice. “What’s done is done,” Hitler said. “There’s no turning back.” He explained briefly the future make-up of the Bavarian and Reich governments: “Pöhner becomes president with dictatorial powers. You [indicating Kahr] will be Bavarian administrator. Reich government: Hitler. National army: Ludendorff. Seisser: minister of police.” Hitler said he knew how difficult it was for the three men to agree to this plan, but he wanted to make it easier for them to “take the plunge.” He followed that up with a threat: he had four bullets in his gun, three for them and one for himself. Kahr, who was outraged at being treated in such fashion, responded coolly: “You can arrest me, have me shot or shoot me yourself. I don’t care whether I live or die.”
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Ten minutes passed without Hitler making any progress whatsoever.

Outrage was also spreading throughout the beer hall. Many of the respectable Munich citizens in attendance were shocked by what they were experiencing and called out “theatre,” “South America” and “Mexico” to express their dissatisfaction.
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In an attempt to calm things down, Göring took to the stage and told the crowd with his booming military drone that the action was not directed against Kahr. On the contrary, they hoped Kahr would join them. And in any case, Göring added, the people had their beer so they had every reason to be satisfied.
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That snotty remark only enraged the crowd all the more.

Hitler returned to the hall, and what happened next still dumbfounded one of the eyewitnesses, the historian Karl Alexander von Müller, more than forty years later when he wrote his memoirs. Hitler, who had seemed insane to most of the audience only a few minutes before, suddenly mastered the situation. In a short speech—“an oratorical masterpiece that would have done any actor proud,” as Müller described it—Hitler completely turned the mood in the beer hall. “It was like someone turning a glove inside out,” the historian wrote. “It was almost like a bit of hocus-pocus, like a magic trick.” When he was certain he had people on his side, Hitler asked the crowd: “The Herren Kahr, Lossow and Seisser are outside. They’re wrestling with their decision. Can I tell them that you stand behind them?” “Yes! Yes!” Müller reported the crowd echoing from all sides. With a triumphal voice, Hitler got in one last, theatrical line: “Tomorrow will see a German nationalist government, or it will see us dead.”
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At that moment, Erich Ludendorff—accompanied by cries of “Heil!”—appeared on the scene. Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter had been instructed to bring him by car to the Bürgerbräukeller, although it is unlikely that the general would not have been informed in advance about the attempted putsch. A few hours previously, at 4 p.m., he had turned up unannounced at Kahr’s office and declared in the presence of Lossow and Seisser that “everything demanded a decision.” Kahr invoked the well-known plan to establish a directory and had once again dismissed the idea of a right-wing dictatorship proceeding from Bavaria. Ludendorff took his leave with the thinly veiled threat that “the people may take matters into their own hands in the end.”
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By contrast, that evening he acted as though he had been surprised by Hitler’s action. “Gentlemen, I’m just as astonished as you are,” he said. “But the step has been taken, and the fatherland and our great national cause are at stake, so I can only advise you: come with us and do as we do.” Ludendorff’s appearance immediately altered the atmosphere in the adjoining room. The pistols were put away, and both sides seemed to want to discuss the matter “like civilised people.” Lossow was the first to give in after Ludendorff appealed to him as a fellow military man, and Seisser followed. Only Kahr held out. But in the end, he relented in the face of united insistence, telling the others: “I am prepared to take over directing Bavaria’s fate as the placeholder of the monarchy.” Hitler had no intention whatsoever of restoring the monarchy, but he needed Kahr’s support, so he replied: “There’s nothing standing in the way of that.” He himself, Hitler said, would inform Crown Prince Rupprecht that the uprising was not directed against the House of Wittelsbach, but aimed to redress the injustice that had been done to it in November 1918. With simulated subservience, Hitler promised: “Your Excellency, I assure you that from now on I will stand behind you as loyally as a dog.”
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Hitler now demanded that the others return with him to the hall to publicly seal their agreement. Again Kahr resisted, objecting that he could not re-enter a space from which he had been led in such humiliating fashion. Hitler reassured him: “You’ll be received with great applause—they’ll kneel before you.” In the end they all retook the stage to thunderous acclaim from the audience. His face an iron mask, Kahr spoke first, telling the crowd that he saw himself as a “placeholder of the monarchy” and had only decided with a heavy heart, and for the good of Bavaria and Germany, to support the uprising. Hitler shook his hand for a long time with an expression of “gleaming, completely open, almost childlike joy,” as Müller recalled. After the tension of the initial hour of the putsch, Hitler found himself in a state approaching euphoria. With quasi-religious fervour, he once again addressed the crowd:

In the coming weeks and months, I intend to fulfil the promise I made myself five years ago to the day as a blind cripple in an army hospital: never to rest or relax until the criminals of November 1918 are brought to the ground! Until a Germany of power and greatness, of freedom and majesty, has been resurrected on the ruins of Germany in its pathetic present-day state! Amen.

Afterwards Ludendorff, “sallow with suppressed internal excitement,” declared that he was placing himself “at the disposal of the German national government.” Lossow and Seisser also stated their support after being bidden by Hitler to the lectern.
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Hitler triumphantly shook their hands as well. He—and not Ludendorff—was the star of the evening. The “drummer” had discarded his mask and impressively underscored his ambition to lead the “national revolution.”

Hardly anyone in the beer hall would have suspected that this fraternal-looking ceremony was a calculated put-on. “We were all more deeply moved than rarely before,” Hitler himself later said, describing the atmosphere.
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Most of the people in attendance shared the sentiment that they were witnessing a historic moment. Many were unable to join in the German national anthem, which was sung at the end, because they were so overcome with emotion. Before the crowd dispersed, as arranged, an SA commando under Hess arrested all the members of the Knilling cabinet in the audience. They were taken to the villa of the pan-Germanic publisher Julius F. Lehmann.

It was at that point, just as he seemed to have succeeded in his surprise offensive, that Hitler made his decisive mistake. Having received news that the seizure of the military barracks housing pioneer units had run into difficulties, he decided to go there with Friedrich Weber, the head of the Bund Oberland paramilitary group. That left Kahr, Lossow and Seisser under Ludendorff’s supervision. When Hitler returned, he discovered to his horror that the general had allowed the triumvirate to leave the beer hall with only a promise that they would stick to the agreement they had made. When Hitler expressed his scepticism, Ludendorff responded sharply that he would tolerate no doubts being cast upon a German officer’s word of honour.
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