Last Stop Vienna

by Andrew Nagorski

  “A deal?” Otto asked.

  “Sure,” Gregor responded. “You won’t regret it, and we’ll get you on board soon enough.”

  —

  So I went to Munich. Admittedly, I was more the exception than the rule, since very few fighters from Berlin were willing to follow Otto’s advice and move south, even on a trial basis. I shared many of their doubts about all this talk of a new movement in Bavaria that could unite nationalists and socialists. “Come on, why should they man the same side of the barricades there when, everywhere else, they’re at each other’s throats?” asked Hermann, my friend and protector. “At least we know what we’re fighting for here in Berlin, but what would we be fighting for there?”

  I guess what swayed me about Otto was that he was honest enough to admit he shared our doubts. He didn’t try to convert us, since he wasn’t fully converted himself. But the heroic aura of Ludendorff was a powerful lure: If he was involved with this crowd, I thought, they had to be serious. And I had heard enough about Gregor—not just from Otto but from others—to be as impressed by him. He was a big, broad-shouldered bull of a man with a disarmingly low-key but decisive manner. With his natural sense of authority, he seemed born to command troops into battle. I believed Germany needed more such men in positions of power instead of the current appalling ranks of weaklings. Besides, the battles in Berlin weren’t getting us anywhere. After the adrenaline rush they induced, we often felt depressed and frustrated. Nothing was really changing.

  Now that I look back at it, however, there was a more important factor: the way Otto treated me. He singled me out as someone with promise who could help this movement. “I want you to be not only a good soldier down there but my eyes and ears,” he said. “I want to know more about this Hitler and his party before I throw in my lot with them, even if Gregor says it’s the right thing to do.” I felt proud to be chosen and emboldened enough to strike out on my own without Hermann’s protective presence.

  Our small contingent from Berlin was put up in a dingy dormitory on the outskirts of town where the local Free Corps was already thoroughly domesticated. We were told that we’d sleep in a long, dark corridor where extra bunks had been deployed, since there was no space left in the rooms. Our new comrades hardly went out of their way to welcome us. They continued playing cards and smoking in their slightly less crowded accommodations, looking very much like the hardened veterans who weren’t about to acknowledge our existence, much less greet us.

  As I was putting away my small bag under my bunk, I felt a sudden shove that sent me sprawling, hitting my forehead on the floor. I slowly pulled myself out from under the bunk and saw a beefy man with stringy brown hair and a flattened nose standing over me.

  “Watch where you’re sticking your ass out next time,” he said. A couple of his companions laughed.

  “You watch where you’re going,” I shot back, my anger overriding any sense of calculation.

  “What did you say, asshole?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Teach the runt a lesson, Uwe,” one of the other men demanded. “These Berliners think their shit don’t smell.”

  Uwe calmly picked me up by the lapels on my jacket and spat in my face. Then, dropping me like a sack on my bunk, he ostentatiously brushed off his hands and turned to leave. I went flying at him, catching him full in the back and propelling him against the wall, his face making loud contact first.

  He roared and turned around, his flattened nose streaming blood. His fist caught me in the solar plexus, taking my breath away. I thought I was finished, but suddenly Erich, Stefan and several other Berliners were all over him—and then the Bavarians were all over them. I found myself entangled in a mass of flailing bodies, absorbing random punches and throwing a few myself.

  “Enough, enough,” I heard someone shouting. “Achtung!”

  Miraculously, the fighting stopped, and we all drew ourselves up into two scraggly lines facing each other, the Berliners on one side and the Bavarians on the other, as a short officer with huge arms tapped a riding crop in his hand.

  “Who started this?” he asked.

  Uwe looked at me defiantly. I kept quiet, and so did everyone else.

  “You’ll get enough action tomorrow night,” the officer continued. “So I don’t want to see any more here. This time, I’ll let it pass.” Looking up and down both rows, he added: “Don’t let it happen again. I warn you.”

  He turned sharply on his heels and marched out.

  Uwe stepped forward, and I tensed. “Not bad for a Berliner,” he said, holding out his hand. I took it and he laughed loudly. “Welcome to Munich. My name is Uwe Passau. You know, Lieutenant Schmidt is right: You and your buddies will get plenty of chances to use your skills here at Hitler’s rallies. That was just a warm-up.”

  Still laughing, he and the other Bavarians tumbled out the door.

  —

  That afternoon I set out with Erich and Stefan to celebrate the fact that we had survived our initiation in the barracks. We also wanted to take a better look at our surroundings. We hiked into town, arriving at the northern end of the famous English Gardens. And then we kept walking. I couldn’t believe how large the gardens were, how well groomed, how elegant even the trees looked. Berlin has its Grunewald, but that’s more a bit of forest with paths, unkempt and wild by comparison.

  When we crossed Prinzregentenstrasse and entered the city center, the contrast was even greater. We walked through the inner city’s huge gates and gaped at the stately palaces, theaters and, of course, the wonders of Marienplatz. I stared at the gold gilded statue of the Virgin and craned my neck to watch the mechanical figures that magically appeared on the clock tower of the imposing New Town Hall when the chimes signaled five o’clock. It seemed like a fairy-tale place, not the gritty Berlin that I had grown up in.

  I wanted to keep walking and looking, but my friends had other plans. “I’m thirsty,” Stefan said.

  “Not yet,” I pleaded. “Let’s see a bit more.”

  We decided to split up. I’d do some more walking, then catch up with them at a beer hall that they pointed to down one of the streets leading off Marienplatz.

  Heading south on Sendlinger Strasse, I did something I hadn’t done in years. I stepped into a small church. Mine was never a religious family, and religion was not a subject I gave any thought to once my father went off to war. Before that, he had taken me a few times to a Protestant church in Berlin, which I remember as barren and cold. Something about the ornate exterior of the small church drew me in that day in Munich, and I was startled by what I saw. The inside was crammed with figurines, gold ornaments and twisting patterns and paintings all the way up to the ceiling. The people who came in to genuflect and make the sign of the cross seemed less awed than comforted by all this commotion. I sat there not knowing what I really felt, thinking that if I had grown up Catholic in a church like this, I would have either loved or hated it, I wouldn’t have been indifferent, as I was to my own church.

  As I walked back in the direction of the beer hall, I was struck by something else: The girls seemed prettier, their clothes lighter and brighter, outlining their curves better, and their faces seemed more animated. Maybe because I felt less inhibited than in Berlin, I found myself smiling at some of them, and—to my surprise—they often smiled back. There were fewer of the hard expressions that many Berliners, including the good-looking women, so often wore on their faces.

  At the beer hall, I pushed my way past rows of long wooden tables crowded with drinkers and dodged the waitresses wielding liter mugs of beer until I found Erich and Stefan planted in a far corner. They were working on their mugs and wearing foam mustaches; a couple of empty mugs on the table made it clear that they were on round two.

  “Hey, what a great place,” I said.

  “You can say that again,” Stefan replied, wiping his upper lip with his sleeve. “But you’d better order quick. You’ve got some catching up to do.”

  We dran
k, and I felt happy to be in this world, happy that I had taken the leap and left Berlin, happy that I was with new friends and sure that I wouldn’t encounter the past that I wanted to leave behind.

  But I should have known not to be too happy. I should have known that Munich was far from a fairy-tale city, that its baroque and rococo facades contained an equally twisted past and present. Within its beauty lurked a history of madness. Only later did I hear the stories about mad King Ludwig who, a half century before, had conversed with imaginary guests in his palace and demanded that his valet wear a bag over his head in the king’s presence. And the madness of the period after the Great War had swept Munich at least as forcefully as Berlin. It, too, had gone through its coups, assassinations and counter-coups. It, too, was seething with an anger that could suddenly transform friendly beer halls into combat zones, with the heavy glass mugs turned into dangerous flying objects.

  —

  We drilled every day, marching until we were in perfect step. Then our instructors made us sprint up and down the field next to our barracks until we were all gasping for breath. We had to drop to the ground for push-ups and sit-ups. We learned new ways to use every weapon in our arsenal—fists, truncheons, guns. At night we washed our uniforms and shined our boots until they gleamed.

  We had recently been named the Sturmabteilung, the SA for short. We wore distinctive armbands with the party symbol, a black swastika enclosed in a white circle. It felt like a promotion from the Free Corps. “Storm Troopers,” our officers would intone, “must be ready to attack at a moment’s notice, without hesitation. When you hear the order, the Storm Troopers must move as one.” Hitler would provide the political rhetoric, we’d provide the muscle.

  It didn’t occur to me to question why the muscle was needed. Berlin had already conditioned me to accept that it wasn’t enough to proclaim a political message. You needed to fight to survive and to be heard. But I hadn’t realized to what extent the Nazis, as Hitler’s movement was quickly dubbed, were intent on not only being heard but silencing even those who had come looking for debate, not physical combat. It was a distinction I didn’t get clear in my own mind until much later. For now I was in my instinctive combat mode and determined to prove to the Bavarians that I was every bit as good a fighter as they were.

  “Private Naumann!”

  I stepped forward out of the inspection line to face the short officer who had stopped the barracks brawl.

  “This is your chance to show that you know how to fight your enemies, not your friends,” he barked. “Join the others on tonight’s detail.”

  I was pleased and nervous. Everyone in the barracks had known that a small detachment would be sent to Munich’s famous beer hall, the Hofbräuhaus, where Hitler was to speak that night, but they had also heard the rumors that the reds and others were preparing to bust up the meeting. That made the evening’s assignment a scary honor.

  We numbered forty-five as we entered the Hofbräuhaus, and we found the Festsaal, the large meeting hall, already packed with people, many of them looking none too friendly. The police were in the process of closing off access, stranding many of Hitler’s supporters outside. What exactly were we supposed to do if the crowd, which consisted of close to a thousand people, turned on us?

  Our squad leader ordered us down into the vestibule. There was a commotion outside, and then the police opened the doors. Dressed in a brown leather coat and pistol belt and holding an imposing whip, Hitler strode into the room, quickly taking us in. He ordered the doors to the meeting hall closed and turned to us, lined up in front of him.

  “Lads,” he said, “these aren’t easy odds, but this is the moment to prove your loyalty to the movement. No matter what happens, we stay in the hall. The only other way any of us will leave is as a corpse. I’m staying and you’re staying. I’m sure you’ll be with me, but if anyone runs, I’ll be sure to tear off his armband personally. And then you can forget about ever serving the movement again. Now, remember, the best defense is a good offense. If anyone in that crowd tries to break up the meeting, if anyone tries anything disruptive at all, you move and you move fast. Understood?”

  “Jawohl,” we responded.

  Apparently satisfied, Hitler led us into the hall. We lined up along both sides, and I surveyed the crowd. What I saw confirmed my worst fears. Entire sections were jammed with mostly young men, factory workers by the look of them, who were pushing the crowd toward the front, where Hitler was preparing to speak. Some of the men were already gathering empty beer mugs. I had little doubt what they planned to do with them. Some looked less dangerous but no less hostile. As soon as Hitler started to speak, they began heckling him.

  At first Hitler managed to ignore the interruptions. I was too intent on watching the people in front of me to listen carefully, but I caught disjointed phrases: “The Versailles government has to be abolished . . . the stab in the back by traitors and Jews . . . fighting for a new Germany . . .” I could see that his odd, jerky body movements and intensifying voice were beginning to work a strange magic on the crowd.

  But his enemies must have become aware of the same thing, and they were becoming increasingly agitated. I saw a few hasty consultations. Then, at a moment when Hitler faltered uncharacteristically in his speech, groping for the right phrase, several voices began shouting.

  A man jumped up on a table. “Freedom!” he shouted.

  “Now!” commanded our squad leader.

  The hall erupted. The mugs flew, and the menacing young men broke chairs apart and attacked the crowd with the jagged pieces. Everybody was screaming. Then many fell silent as they tumbled to the floor, squirming and spitting blood.

  My guts tightened, and I had to suppress a strong urge to turn and run. You’re not running anywhere, I told myself, with more determination than I felt. The signal came to strike, and I was relieved to be surging forward with my comrades around me, with no more time to think about fear. In groups of about six each, we charged at the troublemakers who had started the attack. We swung our truncheons, mowing them down in bursts. I felt warm blood on my face and hands but didn’t know how much of it was from me and how much from the people I was clubbing. I saw a couple of my fellow SA men go down, but most remained on their feet no matter how many blows they absorbed.

  I moved as if in a trance, as if I were watching myself from somewhere above the action, noting with satisfaction that I remained focused on my task and that anyone who dared to stay in my path quickly paid the price. We truly were an army, and my comrades weren’t going to settle for anything short of victory.

  Our opponents saw and felt our determination, and more and more of them fled out the back door. But one group remained in a corner, refusing to accept defeat. A couple of shots rang out, followed by some wild firing. Dragging their wounded, they, too, made for the exit.

  As we began helping our most bloodied fighters and tending their wounds, the chairman of the meeting declared, “The meeting goes on. The speaker has the floor.”

  Hitler, jubilant, resumed his speech. The room wasn’t anywhere near as full as it had been, and we had to dispatch seven of our men to the hospital for broken bones, but there was no doubt about the outcome. We had won.

  And where were the police during all of this? As the chairman was announcing the official end of the meeting, a police lieutenant rushed into the hall, waving his arms. “This meeting is dismissed,” he shouted.

  Hitler gave him a contemptuous smile. “Good job, Lieutenant,” he said.

  Looking nervously around him, the policeman left as hastily and clumsily as he had arrived. So much for law and order in Munich, I thought. We’d obviously be responsible for ensuring Ordnung at our meetings. And we had proven that we were capable of doing just that.

  —

  I emerged relatively unscathed, with a black eye, a few bruises and a swollen left ankle that I only noticed later in the evening back in the barracks. I had been lucky. That night Uwe and his buddies came out i
nto the hallway and handed around a bottle of schnapps. I nearly gagged on a long swallow—it must have been the cheapest crap available. But I felt proud of our victory, relieved to see another sign of our acceptance by the Bavarians and more convinced than ever that I had made the right decision by coming to Munich.

  The next morning, though, I woke up sorer than I had expected. And when I swung my legs off my cot, I was startled by the pain that shot through my left foot. Overnight, my ankle had ballooned and stiffened. Gingerly, I tried to put a bit of weight on it but quickly abandoned that plan and sat back down on the cot.

  One of the Bavarians came over. “That’s a good one. Did you put it in cold water last night?”

  I confessed I hadn’t even thought of it.

  “Well, now I can’t tell how bad it is. You’d better get to a doctor to check it out. Wait, I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He quickly reappeared, carrying a pair of crude, battered crutches. “You’ll need these,” he said, explaining where I should go.

  Uwe volunteered to show me the way. We took the tram a couple of stops, and I hopped along on my crutches for another block until we found ourselves in front of a two-story building. Luckily, the doctor’s office was on the ground floor.

  We knocked and went into a plain room with sterile white walls and no pictures. An elderly couple sat on one side and a young mother with a small child on the other. The receptionist’s desk was empty. I backed slowly into a free seat next to the child, and Uwe remained standing. “I’ll make sure they’ll take care of you here,” he said.

  A young woman in a nurse’s uniform came from the doctor’s office to the desk in the waiting room. Her dark blond hair, not quite shoulder length, was brushed back in a way that accented her high forehead, nose that turned up ever so slightly and blue-green eyes set deep in a face that was both girlish and mature. She was medium height, slender and very well shaped. My eyes briefly scanned her blouse, and just as quickly I made sure they darted away.