1924: The Year That Made Hitler (9 page)

Four days later, Seisser was back in Munich. General Seeckt, he reported, had dismissed the idea of a march on Berlin out of hand. While the old general favored takeover by a right-wing directorate, he would support it only if it followed “the legal path”—a declaration by President Ebert under Article 48 of the Weimar constitution. This was, to the triumvirate, confirmation of the slippery ways of the Berlin leadership. Lossow had earlier expressed his frustrations in dealing with the men in the capital: “If there are only eunuchs and castrati in Berlin who are too cowardly to make a firm decision, then Germany cannot possibly be saved by Bavaria alone!”
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Strong words, but still no action.

By now, the external pressures on Hitler to act had become nearly irresistible. For months, the men in the paramilitaries and the Storm Troopers had been primed for action—trained, indoctrinated, and given hope of a historic role in “chasing out that gang in Berlin” and restoring German national pride. But pressure was also building from within, and Hitler was highly responsive to his own inner needs.

After four years of ranting against the “November criminals” in Berlin, after continuously forecasting the imminent doom of the nation, Hitler had essentially nothing to show for his bombast. By strictly forbidding Nazi Party participation in elections—since he opposed parliamentary rule—he had made even small victories impossible, apart from beer hall altercations. Though it had a growing membership, the party could not point to growing
voter
support or elected representatives. This political stagnation, combined with
his restless personality, kindled in Hitler a burning compulsion to act.

When faced with high-risk situations, Hitler’s instinct was almost always to take the leap. Action was his aphrodisiac, his catnip, his default. His impetuosity often overwhelmed all other considerations, as the world would later learn, to its horror and sorrow. Hitler had whipped his audiences, as well as himself, into a frenzy of expectation. His increasingly grandiose self-image demanded that he go for the bold stroke. He had recently compared himself to Martin Luther, Frederick the Great, and Richard Wagner, his heroes and role models: “I will fight on and never lose sight of the goal I’ve set myself to be the pioneer of the great German liberation movement,” he said.
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In another conversation, Hitler had even styled himself as a latter-day Napoleon. “He identified himself with Napoleon’s march on Paris from the Isle of Elba, which also began with a small following but won all of France,” said Colonel Otto Freiherr (Baron) von Berchem, General Lossow’s chief of staff. “He wanted Bavaria’s military might brought against Berlin, which we all considered hopeless. We rejected it out of hand.”
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Finally, there was the pressure from above. Hitler began to sense that the triumvirate might, somehow, get its act together and make a move—but without him. Whether by putsch or by negotiation, the Bavarian threesome might maneuver itself into a position to grab the reins of power in Germany. Hitler’s fears were confirmed by a meeting Commissioner Kahr called in his office on Tuesday, November 6, to which he invited all the paramilitary chiefs with one big exception: the Nazis. Neither Hitler nor Göring was present. But the Kampfbund leaders—Colonel Kriebel, Dr. Weber, and others—were there; Kahr knew they would make a beeline for Hitler as soon as his meeting ended. The ostensible purpose of the meeting, Kahr said, was to put full brakes on the rumored plans of
the paramilitaries, including Hitler’s Storm Troopers, to make a premature move against the Communists in Thuringia.
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Yet in the meeting—which included all three members of the triumvirate—Kahr was more focused on Berlin: he declared that any move to create a dictatorial directorship had to be carefully prepared and had to include some strong figures from North Germany who had not yet been found. “The key point was that we would have a nationalistic government in Berlin, free of parliamentary interference,” reported Max Kühner, a factory owner who was present. “Dictatorship was the most important thing. Stresemann’s administration had to be fought. Liberation from the [1918] revolution and all its effects. Liberation from the unions and the trusts.”
²⁴

To accomplish regime change in Berlin, Kahr told the group assembled in his office, there were two choices: the “normal path” and the “abnormal path.” The normal path ran through Article 48 of the Weimar constitution, allowing President Ebert to declare an emergency and create a directorate. This seemed unlikely, especially in view of Seisser’s unsuccessful overtures to General von Seeckt. “Therefore, the abnormal path is prepared,” continued Kahr, meaning an armed takeover: “the preliminaries are done.” Then, sounding like the man of eternal preparations that Göring called him, Kahr added: “But action can be taken only according to a unified and meticulously worked-out plan.” And such a plan had to be led by Kahr himself. “Only I will give the order to begin,” he said. The commissioner hinted that it might happen within two weeks.
²⁵

Lossow added, “The Bavaria Division is ready.”
²⁶

All these details reached Hitler’s ears within hours. Finally, he realized, Kahr seemed serious about acting—but not yet quite ready to
losschlagen.
Still, Hitler was beginning to feel outflanked. Kahr seemed to be trying to neutralize him into inaction by
waiting. Meeting that evening with Scheubner-Richter and Theodor von der Pfordten, Hitler told the men their moment had come. He had made his decision: after four years of dreaming about revolution, they were finally going to get one, and it would carry them to the pinnacle of power.

First, they would seize power in Munich. By usurping the Bavarian instruments of control—the government, the military, and the Bavarian State Police—Hitler could establish an unassailable power base in Bavaria. He would then proclaim a new national government and march to the German capital. Modeled on Napoleon’s 1815 trek from the Isle of Elba to Paris, Hitler’s march would trigger a “national uprising,” he believed. But the undertaking could succeed militarily, Hitler knew, only if he forced Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser into his corner. Hitler intended to capture the Bavarian triumvirate at gunpoint and make them his co-conspirators, pushing them to finally do what they had been saying they would do: march on Berlin. He wanted to “help them make the leap,” as he put it. Colonel Kriebel described it as “giving them a little push into the water.” The plan was bold, complicated, oddly inspired—and highly risky. The penalty for failure could be death.

Following his meeting with Scheubner-Richter and von der Pfordten, Hitler planned his storming of the barricades for the coming weekend, November 10 and 11. “All the people in the administration are then away from their offices and the police are only at half strength. That is the time to strike,” Hitler told Hanfstaengl.
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Colonel Kriebel suggested announcing night exercises by Kampfbund forces on Saturday, with troops then marching into the city on Sunday morning, their bands playing—all common enough occurrences in Munich. Those smartly marching troops would then turn into coup makers, seizing key government buildings, police stations,
and communication centers. But as Hitler and other Kampfbunders discussed this plan on Wednesday morning, November 7, news arrived that dramatically altered the timetable, shifted the order of battle, and may have determined the outcome of events. Hitler learned that Commissioner Kahr would be making a speech on the following night, Thursday, in the Bürgerbräukeller, a large beer hall where Hitler had often spoken. Kahr was hardly a rabble-rouser, but beer halls were the venues of choice in 1920s Munich, as much public meeting places as drinking and eating establishments. Though “few other places are so democratic” as a Munich beer hall, wrote one American visitor in 1909,
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the capacious watering holes could of course become scenes of nasty brawls among political factions. Many a skull had been cracked with a flung beer stein. Drinking, like 1920s politics in Bavaria, was a contact sport. For the last few years, Hitler had been cutting his teeth on just such confrontations. But no fireworks were to be expected on this Thursday night.

Organized by a nationalistic Munich businessman to shore up support for Kahr, the meeting was meant to give the new commissioner a chance to rail against the Bolshevist threat while explaining his economic program, which had so far failed to bring relief to Bavaria.
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Even the prices of beer and bread—the two economic issues that the government could directly influence and that were uppermost in Bavarians’ minds—were out of control.
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Last-minute invitations to Kahr’s speech were delivered by hand to all the Munich elite: the business community, leading politicians, city officials and parliamentarians, academics, the top newspaper editors. Bavarian governor Eugen von Knilling, who supported giving his executive powers to Kahr, was coming. So were Justice Minister Franz Gürtner, Baron von Berchem, and Count Soden, a representative of the deposed, but still widely respected, Wittelsbach royal house of Bavaria. Among the business elite, of course, were Jews like
Ludwig Wasserman, a factory owner. The Bavarian Industrialists Association sent notices to its members with a comment: “This gathering is intended to be a historically significant moment.”
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The meeting would feature the establishment talking to the establishment.

Best of all, Hitler was told, both General Lossow and Colonel Seisser would be present. Under one roof, in one hall, at one time—the triumvirate would be there for the grabbing. He could finally act on a line he’d often said to Hanfstaengl: “We have to compromise people into joining our cause.”
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The Bürgerbräukeller was like a theater waiting for a play, and Hitler was going to be its star. On Wednesday morning, he moved the putsch up from the weekend to the very next day, Thursday, November 8. He had to move fast.

For two days, November 7 and 8, Hitler and his closest confederates were in a whirl of secret preparations. They held war councils and dashed around Munich. The Kampfbund’s assorted armed units, including many outside Munich, needed to be put on alert without knowing what for. Hitler insisted, for good reason, on tight secrecy; any leak of his putsch plans could foil the plot. Only a handful of fellow schemers were drawn into the circle of secrecy. One of those was Röhm, the former World War I army captain (and future head of the Storm Troopers), who headed the Reichskriegsflagge paramilitary. Röhm was told to invite his three hundred men to a “comradely evening” of drinking and singing at the cavernous Löwenbräukeller on the Stiglmaierplatz and await a signal from Hitler’s men in the Bürgerbräukeller. If the initial putsch succeeded, the code words for the night would be:
“Glücklich entbunden”
(a charming but ambiguous phrase meaning “happily relieved” or “baby successfully delivered”). Röhm’s beery social evening would then turn into an attack on key buildings in Munich.

Even as he was giving these orders, Hitler did not know that General Lossow was making his own preparations for the possibility of an uprising in the coming days. On November 7, Lossow ordered all the Reichswehr unit commanders in Bavaria to Munich, informing them that “a Hitler-Ludendorff Reich dictatorship” was brewing and that their troops should be put on highest alert. Lossow told the commanders he had let Hitler know that if he prematurely staged a putsch, “he would have the Bavarian Reichswehr against him.” He added: “We’re not going to be part of this craziness.”
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While Lossow was girding his forces for trouble, however, others were paving the way for Hitler’s success. One of the key military institutions in Munich was the Reichswehr’s Infantry School—the training academy for future infantry officers. A hulking, four-story edifice with its own drilling grounds in the Blutenburgstrasse, not far from the Löwenbräukeller, the Infantry School had about five hundred cadets. The place was a hotbed of youthful enthusiasm, nationalist sentiment, and Nazi leanings. Speakers like Ludendorff and Captain Hermann Ehrhardt, the former Kapp putschist and Organisation Consul leader, had lured the cadets toward the
völkisch
movement. In one speech, Ludendorff had called Hitler a “fabulous person.”
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One Infantry School officer, Lieutenant Gerhard Rossbach, was secretly a member of the Nazi Party and did not hesitate to spread his beliefs through the school’s humming grapevine.
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Rossbach’s spadework would pay off on the night of the putsch.

On November 8, the day of the planned putsch, Hitler moved through Munich trying to make preparations without making noise. Von der Pfordten had worked out a detailed plan for takeover of Munich’s main telephone exchange—“six men enter the Residenzstrasse door, take the stairs to the right, arrest Director Wild on the second floor.”
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At midday, Hitler showed up at the cramped offices of the
Völkischer Beobachter
and told its editor, Rosenberg,
the disorganized Baltic German, what was up. “Tonight we strike,” he said. Hanfstaengl was there, too. Hitler told both men to meet him at eight o’clock in the evening at the Bürgerbräukeller—“and don’t forget to bring your pistols.”

Hitler made a quick visit to Hermann Esser, the slightly unsavory member of Hitler’s inner clique whose bullying style alienated many, though Hitler found it useful. Esser lay sick with jaundice, but Hitler persuaded him to rise from his bed. “I need you tonight,” he insisted. Esser, the good soldier, pulled himself up and hurried to join Röhm at the Löwenbräukeller.