1924: The Year that Made Hitler

by Peter Ross Range

  Incredibly, Hitler and his eager putsch-planners had overlooked one of the first rules of any modern revolution: capture the communications system. Despite von der Pfordten’s detailed plan for seizing the Munich telephone and telegraph exchange, no one was deputized to do the job; Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser were able to communicate freely with their allies outside Munich and in Berlin. Even at the lowest level—at the switchboard inside the district military headquarters that Röhm had seized—the putschists left the military in charge of the telephones for several hours, a move they would come to regret.

  His political coat now turned twice in a single night, Kahr was at pains to erase from history the Bürgerbräukeller drama of the previous evening, especially the emotion-laden scene at the end, with its sincere handshakes and emotional rendition of “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.” He ordered all Munich newspapers to refrain from reporting the event. Some, like the nationalistic Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, Munich’s biggest paper with a circulation of one hundred thirty thousand, would have been happy to comply—but it was too late. More than twenty thousand copies of the next day’s edition had already gone out, its front page filled with detailed stories from the Bürgerbräukeller. Another newspaper, the Münchener Zeitung, was only able to insert a short version of the triumvirate’s latest statement atop its long story on the putsch and its political implications. Kahr’s remarks on the previous evening were quoted in boldface type: “With a heavy heart… and for the good of our beloved homeland, Bavaria, and the German fatherland, I accept the position of regent for the monarchy.” There was no erasing history, and Kahr’s ambivalent role on this night would haunt him in the months and years to come.

  Back at the Bürgerbräukeller beer hall, dawn was breaking on a morning-after scene of despair and petty destruction—smashed beer mugs, broken furniture, and garbage. “Cigarette smoke, nighttime dust, and fatigue hung in the air as men sat around tables or lay on pushed-together chairs,” recalled a young putschist named Hans Frank.23 Hitler was eating two eggs and a slice of meat loaf with tea.24 Ludendorff sat silently, “like a raging war god on his throne,” sipping red wine for breakfast.25 Curiously, the podium was stacked with 14,605 trillion26 German marks—money that Hitler had had “appropriated” from two printing houses that printed money for the government. The Nazi thieves duly signed a receipt for the funds stolen from Parcus Brothers, a Jewish-owned printer, though none of it was ever repaid. Hitler claimed the money was taken “as a reminder of the [1918] revolution that confiscated hundreds of billions in gold from the German people.”27 Hitler used the cash to pay some of the Kampfbund troops—about two dollars per man. Each also received two liters of beer (more than half a gallon), no unusual amount in Bavaria. On the bandstand, a paramilitary band, working unhappily under direct orders, squeaked out halfhearted marches in a vain effort to raise spirits.

  The hopelessness of the situation was sinking in on Hitler. Earlier in the evening, with typical melodramatic overreach, he had said to Ludendorff and other co-conspirators: “If this works out, fine. If not, we’ll all hang ourselves.” Politics, and life, was an all-or-nothing game for Hitler. He thought only in terms of monumental success or dismal failure. With this Manichean worldview, Hitler frequently spoke in either-or terms, always outlining “only two possibilities.” Thus the exalted grandeur of his initial goal—an audacious march on Berlin supported by a heroic “national uprising”—and the abjectness of the alternative: total failure and suicide. Hitler could now glimpse the abyss. Besides Röhm’s now-useless takeover of Lossow’s headquarters building, Hitler could chalk up only one other accomplishment: the mutiny of the Infantry School. Led by Lieutenant Rossbach, almost all the officer cadets enthusiastically joined what they had been told was the liberation of the fatherland. After putting the school’s commander under house arrest, they formed up into a large company and were rechristened the Ludendorff Regiment. Their military band playing, they marched across town in a light snowfall to the Bürgerbräukeller. The smart young cadets in their neat uniforms cut a sharp contrast to the disarray at the beer hall. Arriving at first light, they were ceremoniously reviewed and saluted by Ludendorff. Hitler, as always, knew a captive crowd when he saw one; he gave a short but impassioned speech, ending with a quick ceremony in which the young officers took an oath to Ludendorff. Then they marched off again, this time to attempt a takeover of Kahr’s still unoccupied headquarters in the Maximilianstrasse.

  The glow of this momentary success didn’t last. Hitler, Ludendorff, and the other putsch leaders sat around like beaten dogs in an upstairs room at the Bürgerbräukeller, contemplating their options. Reports poured in of Reichswehr and Bavarian State Police units taking up strategic positions all around Munich, including on the Ludwig Bridge over the Isar River just a few hundred feet west of the beer hall. The bridge was the only thing that stood between the Bürgerbräukeller and the rest of Munich. Someone suggested retreating in the opposite direction, toward Rosenheim, a small Nazi-leaning town about forty miles away. Ludendorff angrily rejected the notion: “The movement must not end as street filth in a ditch,” he barked. Hitler had something else in mind. Ever the propagandist, he reached for his very last card: public support. If the coup-makers could somehow rally the public to their cause, they could perhaps face down the coup-stoppers by sheer force of numbers and popular enthusiasm. It was a variation on Hitler’s march-on-Berlin fantasy. The best way forward, it seemed, was to carry the cause to the people, straight into the heart of Munich. Yet resistance from the Bavarian State Police was almost certain. Though Ludendorff’s safety was a concern, when Hitler warned the general that he should perhaps stay out of harm’s way, Ludendorff replied with finality: “We’ll march!”28

  By late morning all the Kampfbund units called from the countryside had made their way to the Bürgerbräukeller. A long parade column began forming up outside the beer hall. Twelve or sixteen abreast, they shaped into three companies according to their paramilitary affiliation—the Bund Oberland on the right, Storm Troopers in the center, and the Hitler Shock Troops on the left.29 Most men were armed, though some were not. Hitler claimed to have ordered that all weapons be unloaded—though that is disputed by other evidence. One firearm was surely loaded and later used—a machine gun mounted atop a truck in the middle of the march. Festooned with flags from all participating Kampfbunders, the truck bristled with armed men positioned on its roof.

  In addition to fighters, the march initially included many of the hostages taken during the night. The hapless prisoners were placed in the march line by Göring, who viewed them as both shields and targets. Besides the government officials and random Jews hauled in overnight, Göring’s Shock Troops had staged a morning raid on city hall, taking hostage the Social Democratic mayor and seven Socialist and Communist city council members for refusing to fly the swastika on the city hall tower. They were thrown into the parade, too. “The first time a shot comes from the other side,” blustered Göring, “we will execute the hostages.” This order was quickly changed; the city councilmen should “have their heads smashed in with rifle butts” instead. Hitler initially supported Göring’s move, but Ludendorff did not like it at all. He ordered the hostages removed from the march.30 Some were later taken by Shock Troopers Berchtold and Maurice to a forest outside Munich, where they expected to be shot. Instead, several were forced to disrobe and give their clothes to their captors, who wanted to return in disguise to Munich. The hostages were eventually set free.31

  At noon the march began. Stepping off slowly from the Bürgerbräukeller, the long parade resembled a ragtag mix of out-of-step militiamen, some in uniform, some not. “It looked more like a funeral procession than a military march,” remarked one observer. But somehow the parade smartened up as old soldiers and new recruits found their military cadence. The column was led by a line of flag bearers carrying the swastika and other banners, accompanied by armed skirmishers. Then came the show row: Hitler, Ludendorff, Scheubner
-Richter, Göring, Kriebel, Dr. Weber, and von der Pfordten.32 Hitler later claimed the leadership intentionally led the marchers so they would be among the first ones hit if shooting broke out.33 This row, if any, was the one that would sell. As they lined up, and Scheubner-Richter linked his arm in Hitler’s, he remarked: “This will be our last walk together.”

  But sell it did. After a rough scuffle on the Ludwig Bridge against a police line that yielded, the long march wound its way into the inner city. Up the Tal, a tight street aimed straight at the city hall, the march entered the famed Maria Square (Marienplatz), with its St. Mary statue and the giant glockenspiel in the city hall tower high above. To the delight of the marchers, the Nazi flag was now flying atop city hall, raised by Shock Troops who had taken over the building. A noisy Nazi rabble-rouser from Nuremberg, Julius Streicher, was speaking to a large crowd. The marchers were now singing patriotic songs.34 Hitler’s ploy seemed to be working: the crowds on the sidewalks were cheering. Feeling confident, Hitler thought: “The people are behind us.… The people are ready to settle accounts with the November criminals.”35 The public was throwing support behind the putsch, or at least behind the two thousand men marching through their streets. “It was clear that the feeling of the crowd was all for Hitler,” reported the English consul general to London.36

  Turning right at city hall, Ludendorff impulsively decided to march toward the Reichswehr district headquarters, still held by Röhm. After a zigzag turn, Ludendorff led the procession into the Residenzstrasse, the street beside the sprawling royal palace. Behind him, marchers were belting out “O Deutschland hoch in Ehren” (“O Great and Honorable Germany”37). But as the narrowing Residence Street debouched into the Odeon Square, beside the famous Italianate Field Marshals’ Memorial (Feldherrnhalle), the march suddenly confronted a new line of Bavarian State Police; they formed a blocking cordon. Unlike the weak detachment on the Ludwig Bridge, these policemen did not seem inclined to yield. But the putschists, emboldened by their earlier success at breaking through a police line, did not slow down. “After the encounter at the Ludwig Bridge, we did not even consider the possibility of being stopped by the state police,” said Dr. Weber.38

  “Halt!” yelled a police commander as a line of his men knelt into firing position. The marchers continued, their rifles held at port arms. “Don’t shoot!” shouted someone in the march. Ulrich Graf, Hitler’s bodyguard, who had been marching directly behind Hitler and Ludendorff, stepped forward and, pointing with his right hand at Ludendorff, yelled directly at the police troops: “Ludendorff! Do you want to shoot your own general?”39 In the background, said Graf, he could hear marchers singing, “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.” Then fighting and chaos broke loose.

  As marchers and policemen closed in on one another, hand-to-hand combat began—the marchers using rifles with fixed bayonets, the police using rifle butts and nightsticks. According to Lieutenant Michael Freiherr von Godin, who commanded the police line, a shot was fired. “A Hitler man who stood one half step left of me fired a pistol at my head,” he reported. “The shot went by my head and killed Sergeant Hollweg behind me. For a fraction of a second my company stood frozen. Then, before I could give an order, my people opened fire, with the effect of a salvo. At the same time, the Hitler people commenced firing, and for twenty or thirty seconds a regular firefight developed.”

  The half-minute of violence left four policemen dead. The damage was worse in Hitler’s ranks. Next to him, Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, Hitler’s bright, intellectual star, had taken a fatal shot in the chest; two feet to one side and the bullet would have struck Hitler instead. As Scheubner-Richter fell, his arm tightly linked with Hitler’s, Scheubner-Richter had jerked the Nazi leader to the hard pavement; Hitler’s shoulder was severely dislocated. In the same row, Theodor von der Pfordten, the Bavarian Supreme Court judge who carried a copy of Hitler’s new constitution in his coat pocket, was also killed. Göring took a severe wound to the thigh. Hitler’s bodyguard, Ulrich Graf, covered Hitler’s prone body and was struck multiple times by bullets that would otherwise have found Hitler. Graf survived. Besides the four policemen, thirteen of Hitler’s men and one bystander were shot to death. The putsch was over. Hitler had stormed the gates and failed.

  Ludendorff, despite the hail of fire, was unscathed. When the shooting ended, he was walking directly into the arms of the police, who arrested him on the spot. Pompously outraged, the giant of the German officer corps sputtered: “I’ll never respect a German officer’s uniform again.”

  With help from some of his followers and “looking deathly pale,” said Hermann Esser,40 the injured Hitler made it toward the back of the march, which had scattered in all directions. He was taken into a yellow car driven by Dr. Walter Schultze, a Nazi sympathizer and physician who had joined the parade for just such an eventuality.41 Even as Schultze drove away with his newest patient—Hitler was moaning in pain—Göring was, ironically, being treated in a house near the Odeon Square by a Jewish physician who may have saved his life. Göring was later spirited out of Munich and, after briefly being arrested and hospitalized in the Bavarian Alps, made his escape into Austria, where many of the putschists had taken refuge.

  Did Hitler consider fleeing to Austria? It was the easy and obvious way to go, though slipping through some unguarded border crossing in the woods or mountains could have been difficult with his injured shoulder. But if the idea of fleeing to Austria crossed Hitler’s mind, it may just as quickly have left it. Austria was, after all, not exile for him, but his country of origin. Once back in his homeland, he might not so easily get out again. Worse, exile to the little rump republic of the former Austro-Hungarian empire could spell political oblivion to the man who thought of himself as a modern Napoleon.

  It seems more likely that Hitler was considering the ultimate exile, suicide, rather than cross-border exile; suicide was always Hitler’s plan B. As his rescuer drove south toward the Alps, Hitler asked him to turn off toward the tiny town of Uffing on Lake Staffel. There, he knew, Hanfstaengl had recently bought a villa. When Dr. Schultze knocked on the door, Hanfstaengl didn’t open it—he, too, had fled to Austria—but his wife did.

  Helene Hanfstaengl was one of the joys, and frustrations, of Hitler’s life. A striking beauty of German-American extraction, Helene had met Putzi Hanfstaengl while he was running the family art book business on Fifth Avenue in New York (and taking his meals at the Harvard Club, where Franklin Roosevelt also dined); Hanfstaengl had brought her back to the land of her forefathers.42 During the period that Hanfstaengl was showing Hitler around Munich’s high-society scene, he often invited him to his Munich home for meals, and Hitler developed a special affection for Helene. Hanfstaengl once walked into the living room to find Hitler laying his head in Helene’s lap and saying, “If only I had someone like you to take care of me.” Helene gently rebuked Hitler and removed his head. She swore to her husband later that Hitler was no man for any woman: “Believe me, he is an absolute neuter.”43

  Now, Helene had another chance to take care of Hitler, at least briefly. She could hardly turn away a friend in severe pain. Only dimly aware of events in Munich, she installed Hitler in an attic bedroom, where he spent the next two days and nights under two “English travelling rugs”—thick blankets—that Hanfstaengl had bought as a student. Helene warned Hitler that the police would surely come looking for him there, and he was trying to arrange for pickup by his other wealthy friends, the Bechsteins. But on Sunday evening, the police arrived. Already deeply depressed, Hitler now went into a frenzy, according to Helene. Hitler “pulled out his revolver with his good hand and shouted, ‘This is the end. I will never let those swine take me. I will shoot myself first.’” But Helene was quicker, wresting the pistol from Hitler and throwing it into a nearby flour bin. Unable to do much because of his dislocated shoulder, Hitler gave up. Accepting the fact that he was about to go away, perhaps for a long time, he began writing instructions for Helene to pass on to his c
onfederates.44 One of the most surprising and, for the Nazi Party, most portentous was to Alfred Rosenberg, the unruly intellectual who was editor of the Völkischer Beobachter: “Dear Rosenberg, From now on you will lead the movement.”45

  Still in his white pajamas, his painful left arm in a sling, his Iron Cross First Class medal pinned to his coat, he descended the stairs and greeted Lieutenant Rudolf Belleville of the Bavarian State Police Weilheim station. Belleville apologized to Hitler but said he had to do his duty. Hitler responded, according to some sources, with a handshake, according to another with a tongue-lashing.46 Either way, Belleville had to look around for a driver for his police van to ferry Hitler forty miles away to Landsberg Prison. He finally found a local beer-truck driver willing to do Sunday afternoon service; the man was, the police report noted, “a Social Democrat.” Belleville loaded his prisoner into the van and trundled him off to the year that would change his life, his strategy, and his sense of self.