A series of events then occurred which prevented a return to stability. On 21 February, Eisner was assassinated on his way to the opening of parliament by Lieutenant Arco auf Valley, an anti-democrat and anti-Semite. This led to a second revolution in Munich: the MSPD, USPD, Communist Party [KPD], and the Bavarian Peasant League established a Central Council of the Bavarian Republic and martial law was invoked in the city.12 Eisner’s funeral procession on 26 February turned into a powerful demonstration of the Left; 100,000 people are alleged to have taken part, among them possibly Adolf Hitler. A film and a photograph have survived, both of which show a soldier who could be Hitler, and in fact twenty-five men of Hitler’s battalion and six barracks representatives had been ordered to take part in the procession.13
On 17 March, the MSPD, USPD, and Peasants’ League formed a new government under the Majority Social Democrat, Johannes Hoffmann, which obtained a parliamentary majority. This led to a split in the Central Council, with the radical majority aiming to set up a Räterepublik.14 The barracks councils of the 1st and 2nd Infantry Regiments supported this initiative.15 On 7 April, a Revolutionary Central Council, made up of various council and party representatives, proclaimed a Räterepublik heavily dominated by the USPD.16 On 13 April, the government, which had fled to Bamberg, failed in its attempt to crush the revolutionary regime with the aid of troops stationed in Munich. This led to the establishment of a new communist Räterepublik,17 which the following day won the support of the soldiers’ representatives of the Munich garrison. A new election of representatives was held on 15 April in which Hitler was re-elected by the 2nd Company. He was now a Replacement Battalion councillor. This, however, does not prove that Hitler was a supporter of the council movement during the first months of 1919, any more than do other examples of Hitler’s activity during this period. The fact that he was elected twice by his comrades suggests above all that he wanted to remain in the disintegrating army for as long as possible; as an elected representative he could not so easily be demobilized. In this situation he was obliged to follow the orders of the soldiers’ council and, on certain occasions, to act as the representative of his company, although we cannot know what his own political attitude was.18 This also applies to the brief phase of the communist Räterepublik. Presumably, he behaved much like the other soldiers of his unit, namely waiting to see which way the wind would blow, neither actively supporting the communist regime nor outwardly opposing it.
His own account in Mein Kampf, in which he claims to have actively opposed the communist regime and to have escaped arrest on 27 April only by threatening to shoot, is implausible.19 For there is evidence that, at the time, Hitler did not simply see the MSPD as ‘November criminals’. When, at an NSDAP meeting in July 1921, he was defending his fellow Party member, Hermann Esser, against the serious accusation of being a spy, Hitler dismissed it by saying: ‘We’ve all been Social Democrats at one time or another’.20 Also, various statements in his Table Talk from the years 1941/42 make it clear that, with hindsight, he did not see the role of the MSPD during the revolutionary period in entirely negative terms.21 However, such comments reflected a view of Social Democracy as an anti-revolutionary force, as a force for order that in the spring of 1919 had opposed further left-wing radicalization. For, united in the aim of bringing the revolutionary experiment in Bavaria to an end as quickly as possible, both the Reich government and the government in Bavaria had been led by Majority Social Democrats.
The rapid radicalization of the political situation, leading to the establishment of a communist regime, was supported by only a relatively small minority of the population in Munich. The Reich government declared a state of emergency for Bavaria and, at the beginning of May, had the state capital occupied by a large force of troops; hundreds of citizens, accused of supporting the Räterepublik, were murdered.22 The soldiers of the Munich garrison did not take part in the conflict and were disarmed in their barracks by the invading Reich government troops. According to the orders of the new military authorities, those soldiers who had been resident in Munich before the war, were to be demobilized.23 For Hitler, who had no prospects in civilian life, this would have represented a personal catastrophe. But, once again, he found a way out. Within a week after the end of the Räterepublik he was nominated as a member of a three-man investigation team to look into the behaviour of members of the regiment during the recent events. Had he been using his role as a council representative openly to support the Räterepublik he would not have been picked for this job. As it was, by proving a keen ‘investigator’ he could now refute any accusations that he had compromised himself politically during the Räterepublik. During his appointment to the investigation commission, on 10 May 1919, he was assigned to the ‘Detached Company’ and so, for the time being, remained in the army.24 Hitler’s former superior on the regimental staff, Sergeant-Major Amann, was very surprised when, on his release from the army, he found himself confronted by Hitler in his new role.25 The commission was investigating, in particular, the former barrack councillor, August Klumpf, who in fact had been an opponent of the councils’ regime; the investigation concluded with his complete rehabilitation.26 In another case there is evidence that Hitler was a witness in the court martial of the former chairman of the battalion council of the Demobilisation Battalion, Georg Dufter; he was found not guilty.27
Munich after the crushing of the revolution
Remarkably, conservative Bavaria had been the scene of a socialist revolution that had quickly become radicalized. Now, after the crushing of the councils’ regime, there followed a massive political counter-revolution.
On 11 May 1919, Major-General von Möhl, who had used his troops to crush the Munich Räterepublik at the beginning of the month, established Reichswehr Headquarters 4, and, initially with the aid of a state of siege and martial law, took over full authority in Bavaria. Since the government, which had retreated to Bamberg, and the parliament did not return until August, Möhl dominated the political scene in the Bavarian capital for several months. This resulted in a military regime that completely destroyed the radical Left, largely marginalized the MSPD, and decisively encouraged all right-wing, ‘counter-revolutionary forces’ including the radical ethnic nationalists (Völkische). Public agencies, especially the military and police apparatus, were subjected to a systematic purge and a comprehensive ‘security apparatus’ was constructed. The Reichswehr headquarters established its own ‘information’, that is, intelligence department, whose task was to oversee political life in Bavaria and to influence it in the interests of the counter-revolution. This department in turn worked closely with the press and legal department in the city military headquarters under the control of the later Minister of Justice, Christian Roth, as well as with the new police chief, Ernst Poehner. Poehner had an exceptionally loyal assistant in the shape of the head of the police’s political department and future Nazi Reich Interior minister, Wilhelm Frick. The newly created state police [Landespolizei] provided a force that had been militarily trained and was particularly geared to the suppression of disturbances and uprisings. In addition, in May 1919, not least through the initiative of Reichswehr captain, Ernst Roehm, home guard units [Einwohnerwehren] were established, a largely middle-class citizens’ militia, which, within the space of a few months had a membership of over 200,000. Under right-wing conservative leadership it was considered a reliable guarantee against further revolutionary attempts.28
Thus, the army provided the context for political life during the following months. It was dominated above all by an apparently hysterical fear of revolution, seen as liable to produce a Bolshevik reign of terror; by a resultant excessive desire for security and order at all costs; by a wave of anti-Semitism, as a number of leading representatives of the revolution were Jews; and by frustration with the unexpectedly harsh conditions of the peace treaty revealed on 7 May 1919, which produced defiant nationalist protests. The model form of parliamentary democracy introduced in the Reich in autumn 19
18 in the expectation of a mild peace treaty had now been discredited, particularly among bourgeois, nationalist circles. The heated debate that dominated German domestic politics until the acceptance of the peace conditions by the Reichstag on 23 June 1919 and the campaign against the ‘November criminals’ and the ‘fulfillment politicians’ hardened attitudes towards any left-wing or liberal politics, especially in Munich.
Hostility to socialism, fear of disorder, anti-Semitism, and nationalism were all key attitudes the dominant right-wing conservative circles in Munich shared with the extreme rightist völkisch element in the city. The latter’s radical activities were not new, indeed they pre-dated the war, but, under the post-revolutionary military regime, groups that in the past had been considered marginal sects now acquired political importance.29 This produced the fertile soil that made Munich the ‘birthplace’ of National Socialism. And, it was only in this febrile atmosphere that, as we shall see, Hitler was to become politically engaged.
A dense network of extreme right-wing organizations emerged under the protection of the army and police, with a central role played by the Thule Society. It had been established in the summer of 1918 as a lodge-type association by an already existing anti-Semitic secret society, the Germanenorden. Disguised as a society ‘for Research into German history and the Promotion of German Ways’, it provided the Germanenorden with a public platform and recruitment centre. The founder of the Thule Society and the dominant figure in it was Adam Alfred Rudolf Glauer, who called himself Rudolf von Sebottendorf. Under the leadership of this adventurer the Thule Society established itself during the Räterepublik as the clandestine fulcrum of the counter-revolution. In particular, it assisted in the formation of the Free Corps* Epp and Oberland and placed its headquarters in the prestigious Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten at the disposal of other extreme right-wing groups. When the counter-revolutionary troops marched into Munich in May, the Thule Society, along with other extreme right groups, tried to start its own uprising. A number of its leading activists were shot by supporters of the Räterepublik and from then onwards were regarded as martyrs of the ‘red terror’. After the capture of the city the Thule Society continued to remain in the background, at the heart of the völkisch-extreme right milieu and linking it closely with the right-wing conservative establishment. This elitist, doctrinaire racist society had approximately 250 members.30 However, its newspaper, the Münchener Beobachter, bought by the society in August 1918, was the main mouthpiece of the völkisch movement in post-war Munich.
The Deutsch-völkische Schutz- und Trutzbund [German League for Protection and Defiance] was also of vital importance for Munich’s extreme right-wing scene during 1919. This organization, with its headquarters in Hamburg, had been founded in February 1919 by the extreme nationalist and imperialist Pan-German League as a platform for an anti-Semitic campaign aiming for the broadest possible impact.31 It had a nation-wide organization, was centrally controlled, and flooded Germany with hitherto unprecedented amounts of extreme anti-Semitic propaganda.32 In the summer of 1919, Munich acquired one of its most active local branches, with, in November 1919, 1,500 and, in the summer of the following year, 4,000 members;33 it met in the rooms of the Thule Society. One of its leading figures was Dietrich Eckart, a dynamic figure within the völkisch intelligentsia, who provided it with pamphlet material and offered close cooperation with his – admittedly only moderately effective – Deutsche Bürgervereinigung [German Citizens’ Association], which, in turn, was supported by Sebottendorf’s Münchener Beobachter.34 Eckart acted as a speaker for the Schutz- und Trutzbund, as did the civil engineer, Gottfried Feder, one of the leading figures in the Munich völkisch movement, whose slogan ‘breaking interest slavery’ was adopted by the Schutz- und Trutzbund.35 The publishers, Julius Friedrich Lehmann and Ernst Boepple, as well as the journalists, Erich Kühn and Marc (really Max) Sesselmann, also joined the Munich branch.
Lehmann, who, like Sesselmann, was also a member of the Thule, had a prominent role in the Munich branch of the Pan German League, maintaining the link between this organization, which was now operating more in the background, and the Schutz- und Trutzbund’s activities.36 The Munich branch of the Bayerische Mittelpartei [Bavarian Middle Party], which represented the conservative German Nationalist People’s Party (DNVP) in Bavaria, had close personal links with the Schutz- und Trutzbund. While in its December 1918 programme the party had included a clause clearly rejecting German Jewry, in the second half of 1919 it significantly hardened its anti-Semitic stance. It was now demanding nothing less than the exclusion of German Jews from the ‘direction of all our political, economic, and cultural affairs’.37
In the second half of 1919 the völkisch-extreme right-wing movement in Munich launched an anti-Jewish campaign that resulted in anti-Semitism developing into a dominant political force in the city and the surrounding area. Elsewhere in the Reich the Schutz- und Trutzbund and many other extreme right-wing groups were also active,38 but in Munich the ‘anti-Semitic wave’ (as people quickly called it) that had been unleashed, had a devastating effect. Apart from the high level of engagement on the part of the Munich right-wing extremists, this resulted from the fact that, during spring and summer 1919, the de facto military regime not only tolerated this agitation but actively encouraged it, for example through a systematic policy of expelling ‘Eastern Jews’.39 Also, the extensive suppression of the Left allowed anti-Semitism to spread almost unhindered.
Thus, during these months, anti-Semitic agitation, particularly in Munich, was ubiquitous: Jews were accused of being war profiteers and black marketeers, and of having avoided front-line service during the war; fear of the immigration of eastern Jews was stoked; there were attacks on the ‘Jewification’ of German culture and so on. However, out of this confusion of resentments emerged a particularly potent stereotype as the core idea stoking anti-Jewish feeling: the assertion that the revolution that had just been suppressed had been above all a ‘Jewish’ affair. Was it not the case that numerous leaders of the Soviet and Hungarian revolutions were Jews? And did not Eisner and a number of prominent revolutionaries in Bavaria such as Ernst Toller, Erich Mühsam, Gustav Landauer, or Eugen Leviné have Jewish, in some cases eastern Jewish, roots? Although the Jewish revolutionaries had long since given up their Jewish identity, and the majority of revolutionaries were not Jews, just as the majority of Munich Jews had not been revolutionaries, such objections had little effect. The fear on the part of large sections of the population of a recurrence of revolution could be exploited with the slogan ‘Jewish Bolshevism’. A slogan had been found that appealed to the masses, including many in the political centre, ground and could be linked to all the other anti-Jewish prejudices and attitudes that were so rife in the Bavarian capital at that time.40
‘Take the Jews into protective custody and then there’ll be peace at home!’ was the message that the Schutz- und Trutzbund regularly published in the Münchener Beobachter from spring 1919 onwards, and which continued:
Jews agitate in favour of Spartakism†
Jews whip up the people in the streets
Jews push themselves to the top everywhere
Jews prevent Germans from reaching an understanding with one another
Therefore:
Away with the Jewish profiteers and troublemakers
Germany for the Germans! Let that be the watchword in our struggle for liberation.
Hitler’s indoctrination by the Reichswehr
This massive anti-Semitic campaign and general shift to the Right provides the background to the Reichswehr Information Department’s plan of using political and ideological indoctrination in order to immunize the soldiers of the Munich garrison against socialist and other ‘dangerous’ ideas. In June 1919 the department began holding courses at Munich University. Research has shown that Hitler, who had so far managed to avoid demobilization, took part only in the third course, which lasted from 10 to 19 July.41 Before the start of the course he had been assigned to t
he ‘winding-up unit’, which was demobilizing his old regiment.42 The courses were organized by Captain Karl Mayr, the very active head of the propaganda section within the Information Department, who at this time was a hard line anti-Semite and important supporter of the extreme Right. During the final phase of the Räterepublik he had played a significant role in the coordination of the military activities of the Thule43 and, among other things, was close to Dietrich Eckart.44
This indoctrination took the form of lectures and seminars, which involved discussion and coaching in public speaking. The seminars were led by the writer, Count Carl von Bothmer, who worked for ‘Heimatdienst Bayern’, a propaganda organization established immediately after the crushing of the Räterepublik, with a largely ‘anti-Bolshevist’ agenda.45 Bothmer was on the extreme Right, had known Eckart for a long time and often published articles in the latter’s paper, Auf gut deutsch.46 According to the surviving course programme he was involved in giving two lectures: about the SPD’s Erfurt programme of 1891 and about ‘the connexion between domestic and foreign policy’. Other lecturers spoke on various topics concerning economics and social policy.47 Course III did not follow this programme exactly; for example, it is evident that Gottfried Feder stood in with a lecture on the ‘breaking of interest slavery’.48 Yet even if it is not possible to know the exact content of the third course, it is clear from the overall pattern of the lectures given in the various courses that the indoctrination was composed primarily of anti-Bolshevism, rejection of ‘war guilt’, the encouragement of confidence in future economic developments, and a good dose of nationalism.49 Although the topic was not specifically referred to in the programme, anti-Semitism must also have played a vital role, at least under the surface. Mayr, Bothmer, and Feder were all anti-Semites, and the Munich Reichswehr garrison saw the growth of anti-Semitism in the barracks during the summer as a positive sign, while officially disapproving of its more extreme manifestations.50
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