1924: The Year that Made Hitler

by Peter Ross Range

  The years that led to Hitler’s 1923 putsch saw an accumulation of followers, hangers-on, and beer hall bruisers who would become his inner circle, his personal entourage and his fellow-putschists. Hermann Göring was one of its key members. A famous World War I flying ace with twenty-two kills and the Pour le Mérite, Germany’s highest medal, Göring had returned to Germany after a few postwar years as a private pilot and barnstormer in Denmark and Sweden.* He was looking for a new adventure. Though enrolled as a student at the University of Munich, the flashy, large-living Göring was drawn to politics, a world in which he thought he might make a splash. Shopping around the Munich political scene, he finally chose the Nazis, not so much for their program and politics but because he thought he could be a bigger player in a smaller party—and history proved him right.

  Hitler, for his part, was delighted the day the swashbuckling Göring walked into the run-down Nazi Party headquarters and offered his services. Within a short time, Hitler had put Göring in charge of the growing but disorganized Storm Troopers, which the former flier quickly shaped into a formidable force.

  Another University of Munich student named Rudolf Hess, also a World War I airman, had already glommed on to Hitler. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, to a prosperous German businessman and his wife, Hess was under the influence of Professor Karl Haushofer, renowned for his theories of geopolitics. Through Hess, Hitler later incorporated Haushofer’s views into his Lebensraum (“living space”) policies, the justification for his World War II invasion of Russia.15 Good-looking but moody (“I am an odd mixture,” Hess wrote to his fiancée), Hess was involved with the Thule Society, which another attendee described as a wealthy “club of ‘intellectualities’ dealing with Germanic history.”16 Among the Nazis, Hess found his role as Hitler’s personal assistant and amanuensis—a calling which would soon make him Hitler’s closest comrade in prison and, later, deputy Führer of the Nazi Party. In Munich, neglecting his studies, Hess hung around Nazi headquarters and tried to keep the erratic and peripatetic party leader on schedule.

  Hitler’s brain trust also included Max Amann, the former soldier who had been Private Hitler’s commanding sergeant on the western front in World War I. Amann, a “rough fellow” who relished a beer hall brawl, became Hitler’s all-purpose publishing guru. Hitler made him business manager of Völkischer Beobachter and, later, his book publisher; Mein Kampf made millions for both of them. Amann was head of the iron-fisted Reich Press Association, which controlled the press during the Third Reich.

  Besides Dietrich Eckart, the Peer Gynt translator and all-around roué who mentored Hitler, several other men of intellect were drawn to the fiery young orator and his dynamic movement. Alfred Rosenberg, an Estonian-German with a Russian education and pretensions to literary greatness, became a devotee and editor of the Völkischer Beobachter. Hitler read and was influenced by Rosenberg’s anti-Semitic tract, Die Spur des Juden im Wandel der Zeiten (The Track of the Jew Through the Ages). The bald and severe Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, another well-educated German of Baltic origin, also added a touch of urbanity to Hitler’s raw-edged crowd, providing both brainpower and connections to money through the wealthy Russian émigré network. Between them, Rosenberg and Scheubner-Richter strongly influenced Hitler’s growing belief that “a gang of Jewish literary figures”—like Leon Trotsky and other Jewish Bolshevists—were behind the murders of “thirty million” victims of Communism in Russia. Increasingly, Hitler’s anti-Semitism rested on invocations of the Russian horror and his reading of the scurrilous forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, possibly given to him by Rosenberg. “The ‘blood Jew’ introduces a scaffold in the place of a parliament, [brings] the destruction of the intelligentsia and, finally, Bolshevism,” he liked to say.17 Rosenberg later played a key role in shaping the Third Reich’s draconian race laws.

  But Hitler’s personal taste, like his political fascination with moving the masses rather than the elites, often trended socially downward. In his frequent after-hours gatherings in cafés around Munich, Hitler included his bodyguard, Ulrich Graf, a former butcher, and Christian Weber, an overweight former pub bouncer and horse dealer.18 His sometime driver and frequent café companion was a darkly handsome watchmaker from northern Germany named Emil Maurice (who would later be discovered to be of Jewish origin and dropped from the inner circle). A photographer named Heinrich Hoffmann, who understood early that Hitler could be a gold mine for him, became part of Hitler’s Munich rat pack. This merry band, in various mutations, could be seen afternoons or evenings in places like the elegant Café Heck adjoining the Royal Gardens on the Galerienstrasse; the old Café Neumaier in the central city (where Hitler had a regular Monday night table); and at the Osteria Bavaria, an Italian bistro that also served some Alpine dishes, just a couple blocks from the Völkischer Beobachter headquarters in the Schellingstrasse. One thing observers of the group always noted: Hitler did almost all the talking.

  A late but important arrival to the charmed circle around Hitler was Ernst Hanfstaengl. A German-American art book publisher’s son who had attended Harvard, Hanfstaengl stood out because of his height (six feet, four inches), his prognathous jaw, and his air of cultivation. Called Putzi (“little boy”) as an ironic nickname, Hanfstaengl had been asked to attend a Hitler speech in November 1922 by his old Harvard friend Captain Truman Smith. Then deputy military attaché in the American embassy in Berlin, Smith had been in Munich and met personally with Hitler, and the young officer had been impressed with the Nazi leader’s ability to deliver “a full-length speech” every time he was asked a simple question—“as if he had pressed a gramophone switch.”19 Smith wanted Hanfstaengl to find out how Hitler sounded when he gave a real speech. Hanfstaengl attended a Hitler appearance and was overwhelmed: he called it a “masterly performance” with “innuendo and irony I have never heard matched.” Following the speech, Hanfstaengl introduced himself to Hitler, and the two found a quick affinity. “I agree with ninety-five percent of what you said and would very much like to talk to you about the rest sometime,” said Hanfstaengl.

  “I’m sure we shall not have to quarrel about the odd five percent,” replied Hitler. At first, that would be true.20

  Hanfstaengl soon joined Hitler’s inner clique. Since he had leisure and means, he became Hitler’s main walk-around guy in Munich. Because he spent so much time with Hitler, Hanfstaengl had more insights into the leader’s ascetic lifestyle than most. Hitler “lived like a down-at-the-heels clerk” in his tiny rented room in the Thierschstrasse near the meandering Isar River, noted Hanfstaengl. The linoleum-covered floor had a few “threadbare rugs,” but the large anteroom that Hitler shared with his landlady had only one redeeming feature, an upright piano. There, Hanfstaengl, an accomplished pianist, sometimes banged out tunes and learned Hitler’s tastes. “I played a Bach fugue,” wrote Hanfstaengl, with Hitler “nodding his head in vague disinterest.” But when Hanfstaengl switched to Wagner, Hitler’s favorite musical maestro and one of his political heroes, things changed. “I started the prelude to the Meistersinger. This was it. This was Hitler’s meat. He knew the thing absolutely by heart and could whistle every note of it in a curious penetrating vibrato, but completely in tune.” Not surprisingly, Hitler also thrilled to Hanfstaengl’s old Harvard fight songs, ending in “Rah! Rah! Rah!”21

  Hanfstaengl’s relationship with Hitler became so close that the well-connected publishing scion found a way to lend the Nazi Party one thousand U.S. dollars. This was a whopping sum in inflation-racked Germany, and it enabled the Völkischer Beobachter to purchase two broadsheet rotary presses so that it could appear in a broader, more impressive format.22 Hanfstaengl also introduced Hitler to high society, inviting him to dinner and making connections to potential supporters and donors like the family of Fritz-August von Kaulbach, a renowned artistic clan.23 Hitler’s native Austrian charm emerged, and though he was sometimes mildly maladroit (Hanfstaengl caught him putting sugar in his wine), he was generally a hit, espe
cially with the ladies.

  Besides Helene Bechstein, the wife of the piano manufacturer, the women besotted with Hitler included another wealthy spouse introduced to Hitler by Dietrich Eckart. She was Else Bruckmann, the wife of Hugo Bruckmann, a conservative publisher who had a large mansion in Munich’s monument district. Else Bruckmann, by birth a Romanian princess, was a noted salon hostess; an invitation to her soirées was a badge of arrival in Munich society—and Hitler received many, becoming a kind of prize curiosity at her gatherings. Both women, Bechstein and Bruckmann, managed to direct frequent infusions of their husbands’ cash to Hitler. They sometimes found roundabout ways to move assets in his direction. One night at the luxurious Bechstein dwelling in Berlin, Edwin Bechstein rebuffed Hitler’s entreaties over dinner for a new donation; funds were short, he said. Yet as Hitler was leaving, Mrs. Bechstein managed to press upon him some of her glittering jewelry for easy conversion to cash. Later she added pricey paintings from her private collection to her largesse. Though never openly involved with a woman, and unmarried until the last two days of his life, Hitler had a near-mystical appeal to many women.

  By fall 1922, rumors of a Hitler putsch were already bubbling up in Munich, a full year before Hitler actually made his move. The talk of a coup d’état was fanned not so much by anything Hitler had said or done, but by a dramatic event outside Germany. In October 1922, Benito Mussolini and his Fascisti Party had managed to take over the Italian government with a sudden coup that began, people said, with a “march on Rome.” As historians have since pointed out, the march was more symbolic than real and ended with a negotiated takeover. But the myth and vivid imagery of a popular march stuck, especially in Germany, and especially with a would-be revolutionary like Hitler. Viewing Mussolini’s bold stroke as “one of the turning points in history,” Hitler instantly translated the notion of a march on Rome into its German analog: a march on Berlin.24 With dreams of gathering all the military forces in Bavaria behind him—the powerful right-wing paramilitaries plus the Reichswehr’s Bavaria Division and the military-style Bavarian State Police—Hitler would stage a grand march from Munich to Berlin to spark a “national uprising” and take power. He would lead both a military force and a great moral cause—the German “rebirth” he longed for—to the gates of Berlin, toppling all before it. Hitler was a ruthless, brilliant propagandist and a hopeless romantic: The cinematic quality of a march on Berlin appealed to both those instincts. He did not just want to bring down the Weimar Republic, he wanted to replace it in grand style—as Mussolini had done.

  Hitler was also inspired by the example of Kemal Pasha, later called Atatürk, who had mounted a successful coup against the Constantinople government from a provincial base in Ankara. In his own putsch attempt, Hitler would combine Mussolini’s and Pasha’s approaches, starting in the provincial base of Munich but with his sights set on the main prize in Berlin.

  Hitler thought he had reason to feel good about his chances. Only a week before Mussolini’s bold stroke, Hitler had mounted a brazen flanking move of his own. Invited to participate peacefully with a small delegation in a nationalistic celebration in the north Bavarian town of Coburg, Hitler had arrived on a special train with six hundred fifty Storm Troopers and, essentially, taken over the town. His forces violently attacked leftist groups that had also come for the parades, earning Hitler the reputation, for the first time, as “liberator” of a city from “red terror.”25 The heady experience raised Hitler’s confidence to a new high. “From now on I will go my way alone,”26 he declared.

  Though he had made no preparations or given anyone a concrete reason to believe he was ready to strike (losschlagen), Hitler had clearly begun to contemplate the idea of a putsch that included a march on Berlin. “Mussolini showed what a minority can do if it is gripped by a righteous nationalistic drive,” argued Hitler to his followers at a “discussion evening” in November 1922.27 That was enough to get the rumor mill running and discombobulate the Bavarian authorities as 1923 began. Once implanted, the idea of an audacious move took root in Hitler’s mind and became, said one adversary, an “idée fixe.” Hitler’s obsessions almost always were acted upon, sooner or later.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Mounting Pressure

  “If [Hitler] lets his Messiah complex run away with him, he will ruin us all.”

  —DIETRICH ECKART, 1923

  The year that would end with Hitler behind bars—1923—opened with two dramatic events. The first was the January 11 French invasion of the Ruhr region, triggering the Berlin government’s disastrous passive resistance campaign, bloody reprisals by French troops against local saboteurs, and Germany’s catastrophic spiral into hyperinflation. The second, in the same month, was a pivotal confrontation between Hitler and Bavarian authorities over plans for the Nazi Party’s first “national” party convention, scheduled for January 27 to 29 in Munich. Hitler announced a dozen marches and rallies on a single day, with speeches by him at every one; the Nazis would effectively take over Munich for a day, disrupting a city of six hundred fifty thousand. The possibility of major clashes between the Nazis and their archenemies, the Communists and the Socialists, alarmed the commanders of the military and the state police, the ultimate keepers of internal order. General Otto von Lossow, a severe-looking man who commanded the Reichswehr’s Seventh Division—known as the Bavaria Division—was a Prussian-trained Bavarian whose loyalty was more to Munich than to Berlin. Colonel Hans von Seisser, also a product of the Prussian officer class, headed the Bavarian State Police, a division-sized force that included infantry and mobile units. Apart from possible street battles between political adversaries, Lossow and Seisser were most concerned that Hitler might follow Mussolini’s recent example and launch a putsch. They banned Hitler’s twelve rallies.

  All Hitler’s bile, violent instincts, and do-or-die megalomania were aroused by the prohibition. In a stormy confrontation with authorities, Hitler threatened that if the ban were not lifted, he would “march in the first row and take the first bullets” should the army or police try to stop the marches by force. If that happened, he added haughtily, “the Bavarian government would be gone within two hours.”1 Storming out of a meeting with Munich police chief Eduard Nortz, Hitler let fly one of his typically grandiose historical metaphors, shouting: “We’ll meet on the fields of Philippi!”2 (Philippi was the Macedonian battlefield where, in 42 BC, amid unspeakable gore, Mark Antony defeated the forces of Marcus Brutus; Brutus, Caesar’s assassin, then committed suicide. The event was dramatized in Shakespeare’s The Life and Death of Julius Caesar, which Hitler had probably read.)

  In a separate meeting with General Lossow, Hitler argued for lifting the ban and promised, on his “word of honor,” that he had no plans for a putsch.3 In 1920s Germany, a word of honor—Ehrenwort—was taken seriously as a binding promise. On the basis of Hitler’s Ehrenwort, Lossow, Seisser, and Police Chief Nortz backed down, but they tried to preserve a shred of their authority by telling Hitler he could hold six, not twelve, rallies, and that his spectacular planned outdoor ceremony to consecrate the colors of the Storm Troopers must be moved indoors, to the Circus Krone. Hitler accepted this half-loaf, then blithely proceeded with his original plan; he held twelve meetings and an outdoor review of six thousand uniformed Nazis on the Marsfeld parade ground near the Circus Krone. Stunned by Hitler’s audacity, the authorities did not interfere. Faced with the armed power of the state, Hitler had stood his ground and won, and everyone knew it. The stand-down by Lossow and Seisser was a major propaganda victory for Hitler, and an embarrassment for the men in uniform.

  Hitler’s aggressive posture caught the attention of no less a figure than General Hans von Seeckt, commander in chief of the Reichswehr, the German army. Based in Berlin, the country’s top military man wielded huge political influence despite the truncation of the military class by the Treaty of Versailles, which limited Germany to one hundred thousand troops with only four thousand officers—a force thought to be l
arge enough to suppress internal unrest, but not to wage war on Germany’s neighbors. Despite its relatively small size, the Reichswehr under Seeckt gained the reputation of being a “state within a state.”4 In a moment of political turmoil, with the government under threat from restive paramilitaries and rebellious army units, the worried German president, Friedrich Ebert, asked Seeckt whom the Reichswehr stood behind; the unsmiling, monocled general in the stiff gray uniform replied: “The Reichswehr stands behind me.” Seeckt was, in short, the man with the guns.5

  In March 1923, Seeckt was persuaded to meet with the upstart former private who was causing Lossow and Seisser so much heartburn. For four hours, during a visit to Munich, the Prussian officer listened patiently, or stonily, to Hitler’s familiar ravings about the “November criminals,” the perfidious Jews, the need for a great man to take over. According to the accounts of Colonel Hans-Harald von Selchow, Seeckt’s adjutant who was present, the Austrian high school dropout lectured Germany’s top military officer on history and comparisons of Germany’s fate with that of other nations that had saved themselves by drastic action. Swinging into his radical rhetoric, Hitler told Seeckt: “We National Socialists will see to it that the members of the present Marxist regime in Berlin will hang from the lampposts. We will send the Reichstag up in flames, and when all is in flux we will turn to you, Herr General, to assume leadership of all German workers.”6