During the following months, the general crisis worsened. In addition to the nationalist mood stoked by the Ruhr invasion, the hyperinflation, which had been developing since the previous year, induced a sense of deep depression. Large sections of the middle class found their savings being wiped out and unemployment rose dramatically. The number of those in Munich receiving welfare benefits went up from 40,000 at the start of the year to 140,000 at the end.64 The widespread hatred of the ‘November criminals’ was given a further boost not only by the entry of the Social Democrats into the new Reich government formed by Gustav Stresemann in August, but also by the growing cooperation between the SPD governments in Thuringia and Saxony and the Communist Party (KPD); in both states communist ministers joined the government.65
In September the SA, Bund Oberland and the Reichsflagge established the Deutscher Kampfbund [German Combat League] at a ceremonial ‘German Day’ in Nuremberg. This alliance had come about largely through the efforts of Ludendorff, who was to exert considerable influence on the Kampfbund as an eminence grise.66 His confidant, Hermann Kriebel, took over the military leadership, while Ludendorff’s ‘political’ advisor ‘on the East’, Scheubner-Richter, ran the organization. On 27 September, a day after the end of passive resistance in the Ruhr, which produced a further wave of nationalist anger,67 Röhm succeeded in securing the political leadership of the Kampfbund for Hitler and now left the Reichswehr, in order to devote himself full time to the Kampfbund. In fact, it was the military, not Hitler the politician, who were in future to make the decisions about the Kampfbund. Meanwhile, concerned about the situation, the Bavarian government now declared a state of emergency, appointing the former prime minister, Kahr, General State Commissioner, in other words, temporary dictator.68
Kahr now tried, on the one hand, to organize a ‘coming together of all patriotic forces’, and, on the other, to introduce concrete economic measures in order to alleviate the impact of the crisis on the masses.69 He fixed bread and beer prices, while attempting to force farmers to make larger deliveries and to reduce the profits of entrepreneurs.70 Moreover, as in 1920, he initiated measures to deport eastern Jews, this time with the excuse of combatting ‘profiteers’ and ‘racketeers’. By 1 November 1923, around thirty people had been deported from Munich alone, evidently with the aim of taking the wind out of the sails of the radical anti-Semites and their agitation.71 Kahr was barely in office when he imposed a ban on all the meetings the NSDAP had planned for 27 September and demanded a declaration of loyalty from the Kampfbund. Hitler responded with the statement that the attitude of the Kampfbund to the General State Commissioner would depend on the attitude that he adopted ‘towards the major questions of our time’.72
The appointment of a strong man with populist policies led to a decline in support for the Kampfbund. At the beginning of October, the Reichsflagge declared for Kahr, prompting Röhm to organize the most radical elements in a new league, the Reichskriegsflagge. Since the Reich government had responded to the new Bavarian state of emergency by declaring a Reich-wide state of emergency, the Reichswehr commander in Bavaria, Otto Hermann von Lossow, was placed in a dilemma. When he refused to obey an order from the Reichswehr minister to ban the Völkischer Beobachter for an article insulting the Reich Chancellor, he was dismissed. However, the Bavarian government immediately reappointed him as Bavarian state commander, assigning him command of the Reichswehr division stationed in Bavaria.73
This conflict provided the background to the development of a vicious rivalry in Bavaria between the conservative Right and the forces of the radical Right, with the so-called Triumvirate of von Kahr, von Lossow, and Hans von Seisser, the chief of the state police, on the one side, and Ludendorff, Hitler, and Röhm on the other. They were both totally committed to bringing down the Reich government, but differed over the means of doing so. The Kampfbund wanted to set up a dictatorship in Munich under Ludendorff and Hitler, crush the socialist governments in central Germany, and then stage a ‘March on Berlin’ in order to seize power in the Reich. Kahr, on the other hand, while wanting to see the Reich government in Berlin replaced by a ‘Directorate’ with dictatorial powers, aimed to achieve this in the form of a cold coup by working together with right-wing circles in north Germany and the Reichswehr. The aim was to put pressure on the Reich President, who would then use his special powers under Article 48 of the Constitution to establish some form of dictatorship.74 In the context of these general preparations for a coup, the Kampfbund was now in danger of simply being used by the Triumvirate. But Hitler was determined to retain his freedom of action; for him retreat was out of the question.
Tension was increased by the fact that the Reichswehr forces stationed in Bavaria and the right-wing leagues in northern Bavaria, supported by the military, were making preparations to mobilize. The state police, which had been reinforced by members of the right-wing leagues, including the Kampfbund and SA, was organizing a ‘border defence force’ under Captain Erhardt, who was still being sought under a Reich arrest warrant. While the pretext was defence against the left-wing governments in Thuringia and Saxony, the aim of the leagues was to use this force for an impending ‘operation’ in the north. The Kampfbund and the SA were both taking part in this mobilization.75 The Reichswehr’s plans were altogether more ambitious, as von Lossow explained to the leagues’ leaders at a meeting on 24 October. The plan was to reinforce the Reichswehr units stationed in Bavaria with members of the leagues with the main aim of establishing a ‘nationalist dictatorship’ in Berlin.76 The representatives who were present concurred, although in many cases with the proviso that their members should not be directly integrated into the Reichswehr but retain their independence. Thereupon the Reichswehr began preparing to expand the single division stationed in Bavaria into three divisions. Since the Nazis were not present at this meeting,77 they had not issued any statement concerning their participation. However, at the end of October, the Reichswehr began rapidly training the SA in its barracks and, according to Hitler’s statements at his 1924 trial, this was with the intention of embarking on a ‘military campaign in the north’.78
During the following days, there was a series of discussions and soundings between the rival parties, though they had the effect, if anything, of intensifying the differences between their respective objectives. Hitler’s most important interlocutors were Lossow and Seisser. On 24 October, when Lossow was meeting the leagues, Hitler subjected Seisser to a four-hour monologue about his aims,79 and then, the following day, this time accompanied by Friedrich Weber, the leader of Bund Oberland, once more arranged to meet Seisser, this time together with Lossow. Now he demanded that the planned Reich Directorate should be composed of himself, Ludendorff, Seisser, and Lossow, which Seisser and Lossow both rejected in view of Ludendorff’s status.80 According to Lossow’s statement at the 1924 trial, during this period he had been subjected to a positive ‘wave’ of visits from Hitler, during which the latter had kept making the same arguments in favour of his plans and had been completely impervious to the objections raised against them.81 On 25 October, Seisser and Lossow also arranged a meeting between Hitler, Ludendorff, and the industrialist Friedrich Minoux, who had been identified as a potential member of the Directorate; but they were unable to reach agreement on how to alter the political situation in Berlin.82
Lossow’s impressions of his meetings with Hitler, which he repeated in the 1924 trial, seem typical of the latter’s way of carrying on a conversation and its supposedly grandiose effects. ‘Hitler’s well-known thrilling and suggestive rhetoric initially had a big effect on me . . . but the more I listened to Hitler . . . the less impressed I became. I noticed that his long speeches almost always made the same points. . . . In general, during such conversations, Hitler is the only one who is allowed to speak. It’s difficult to raise objections and they have no effect.’ Lossow then referred to a statement by Hitler, according to which the latter claimed that, during one of their conversa
tions, Lossow had been ‘very depressed’. Lossow made it clear that his mood had been provoked less by the general political situation and much more by Hitler’s endless talking: ‘May I be permitted to point out that a different conclusion could be drawn, namely that, having been obliged to listen to these remarks on numerous occasions, General Lossow’s patience was more or less exhausted and that, while he did not wish to tell Herr Hitler: “Please, I’ve had enough!”, he did want to indicate that by his demeanour.’83 It is typical of Hitler that he interpreted Lossow’s manner, which indicated that Hitler’s endless talking had worn him out, as dejection, which he then tried to overcome with another torrent of words. Hitler was unable to recognize that he was misinterpreting the situation, but instead exerted all his efforts to try to achieve his increasingly unrealistic goals.
The Putsch: Hitler takes on the role of ‘Führer’
The tide of events during the crisis-ridden year of 1923 gradually removed Hitler’s qualms about taking on the role of ‘Führer’.
The NSDAP only became a mass movement in 1923: between January and November around 47,000 new members joined the Party so that, on the eve of the putsch, there were over 55,000 names (including an unknown number of those who had left) on the membership list.84 A fragment of the list, containing around 4,800 members who joined between September and November, provides a more detailed picture. More than three-quarters of the new members came from south Germany, although by then the Party was no longer concentrated in Munich itself; only 10 per cent were resident in the Bavarian capital. Analysis shows that the organization benefited above all from expanding into the countryside, particularly in Bavaria. More than half of the new members came from rural districts. Craftsmen, white-collar employees, civil servants, the self-employed, and farmers (over 10 per cent) made up the bulk of the membership and so the Party’s profile remained middle-class.85
From April 1923 onwards, ‘our Führer’, became the standard title when Hitler was being referred to in press announcements.86 The fact that he now became universally known as ‘Führer’ within the Party was evidently largely due to the homage paid to Hitler by Eckart, Rosenberg, and Göring in the Völkischer Beobachter on the occasion of his birthday on 20 April. It is unclear from Hitler’s public statements whether he yet envisaged playing this role outside the Party. Thus, while in his speeches during the first half of 1923 there are repeated calls for ‘strong leaders’,87 on the other hand, in his speech in the Circus Krone on 4 May, for example, he was still evading the issue: ‘What Germany needs for its salvation is a dictatorship of nationalist willpower and nationalist determination. That poses the question: Does a suitable person exist? Our task is not to seek this person. He will either be sent by heaven or he won’t be. Our task is to create the sword that this person will need when he arrives. Our task is to give the dictator a nation that is ready for him.’88
In July his ambition was already becoming more obvious: ‘As leader of the National Socialist Party I see my task as being to take over responsibility.’89 From August onwards, he repeatedly demanded the establishment of a dictatorship, an objective that, as the crisis intensified, became widespread within the whole of the Right.90 In an interview with the Daily Mail on 2 October, he drew a significant parallel with Mussolini: ‘If a German Mussolini is given to Germany, he said, people would fall down on their knees and worship him more than Mussolini has ever been worshipped.’91
Gradually, however, he felt himself being pushed by his own supporters into taking on the role of dictator. On 14 October, at a Nazi meeting in Nuremberg, he strongly criticized Kahr, for ‘a true statesman, a real dictator does not depend on anyone; the nation depends on him; he gives it fresh heart and then leads it along the path that he has defined as the right one’. And there were models: ‘three great Germans’ – Luther, Frederick the Great, and Wagner – who were great ‘because they led a truly heroic life in defiance of everybody else’. Simply because ‘they relied exclusively on their great insights all three became pioneers and thus national heroes’. That, Hitler made clear to his supporters at the end of his speech, was what he too was seeking to do: ‘to go on fighting and not to lose sight of the goal I have set myself of being a pioneer of the great German freedom movement that will bring us unity within and without, not relying on anyone else but only on my immense resolve and with it and through it either gaining victory or going down to defeat’.92 His ambition to become ‘Führer’, ‘dictator’, and therefore ‘hero’ must have become clear to his audience. His supporters too had considerable ambitions. If one reads the Völkischer Beobachter during this period, it becomes clear what hopes he had inspired in the meantime. For example, on 1 November, it declared: ‘Then, the black swastika flag will be unfurled over the heads of the cowards and this moribund regime, and, under Hitler’s leadership, will lead us on to victory.’93 These quotations show that, by the autumn of 1923, Hitler had arrived at the point where he was ready to declare himself ‘Führer’ and take on the role of ‘hero’. In the end, if he was not to make a fool of himself, he had no choice but to meet the high expectations of his followers by carrying out the ‘act’ of liberation, his ‘heroic deed’.
However, while psyching himself up to take on his grand role, Hitler completely overlooked the fact that, by the end of October, the chances of carrying out a successful putsch were rapidly disappearing. The Reich government had decided to depose the socialist-communist governments in Thuringia and Saxony and ordered Reichswehr troops to intervene.94 This removed the pretext for the mobilization on the Bavarian border. Moreover, by establishing the Rentenbank in October, the Reich government had introduced an important measure for combatting inflation and then, by creating a new currency, had taken a decisive step towards stabilizing the economy.
The paramilitary leagues in the Kampfbund began to doubt whether Kahr really wanted to launch a coup. On 1 November, there was a further meeting between Seisser, Hitler, and Weber at the latter’s house. Hitler renewed a previous promise not to undertake any action against the Reichswehr and the state police, but at the same time made it clear that he was coming under considerable pressure from his own people and could not afford to wait much longer.95 Seisser, however, having taken soundings in Berlin on 3 November, discovered that the army chief, General von Seeckt, had definitely decided not to move against the Reich government. This effectively scuppered the Triumvirate’s plans for a coup.96 At a meeting of the leagues on 6 November Kahr urgently warned them not take the ‘abnormal’ path towards establishing a dictatorship.97 However, the members of the Kampfbund were afraid that they were in danger of missing the opportunity for a putsch. ‘The Kampfbund people’, Hitler told the prosecutors after his putsch, ‘had been pressing for action; they couldn’t wait any longer; they had been promised that something was going to happen for so long and had been in training for so long, that now they wanted to see some real action. Otherwise, there was a danger that suddenly some group or other (not the Nazis, as Hitler explicitly emphasized!) would act on their own (for example, grab a few dozen Jews and string them up!). That had to be prevented from happening.’ Apart from that, the money had run out, people were discontented, and there was a danger that the Kampfbund would fall apart.98
Too weak to act without the Reichswehr, state police, and the Bavarian government, let alone against them, Hitler and the Kampfbund leadership decided to seize the initiative themselves and drag the hesitant Triumvirate with them. The Triumvirate had announced a mass meeting in the Bürgerbräukeller for 8 November and this appeared to provide the opportunity to act. According to Hitler’s own account, he made the decision on the evening of 6 November in a discussion with two other Nazis, whose names he later refused to reveal; they were probably Scheubner-Richter and Theodor von der Pfordten. The decisive Kampfbund meetings took place on 7 November.99
On the evening of 8 November, Hitler surrounded the beer hall with his Kampfbund units and, adopting a martial pose, made a dramatic entry. At the he
ad of a small group of close associates, including Hanfstängl, Amann, and Hess, he marched into the packed hall, waving a pistol, and interrupted Kahr’s speech. Describing the scene a few months later to the Munich People’s Court, he commented: ‘It’s obvious that one can’t go in waving a palm leaf’. He held his pistol to the head of an officer who approached him. In the meantime, storm troopers put a guard on the entrance and set up a heavy machine gun aimed at the audience.
Hitler now got up onto a chair and, unable to make himself heard, fired a shot into the ceiling. He made a short speech in which he announced that the ‘nationalist revolution’ had broken out and the Munich and Berlin governments had been deposed. He then ordered Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser to follow him into an adjacent room. There, waving his pistol around, he explained to them that they were going to establish a new government in Bavaria under former police chief Pöhner, while Kahr was to be state governor. Bavaria, continued Hitler, was to be the jumping off point for the takeover of power in the Reich; a government would then be established under his leadership, with Ludendorff in charge of the army and Seisser the police.100 Finally, Hitler is supposed to have said: ‘I know that you gentlemen will find it difficult, but we must take this step; we shall have to make it easier for you gentlemen to make the break. Each one of us must take up the position to which he is assigned; if he doesn’t then he’ll have no right to exist. You must fight with me, triumph with me, or die with me. If it all goes wrong I have four bullets in my pistol, three for my collaborators and the last one for myself.’
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