limits of democracy, outlawed fringe parties and clamped down. Hitler retreated from the scene that summer and considered his options.
The time for someone to strike was ripe. In January 1923 the French had occupied the industrial Ruhr valley, combining further Gallic humiliation with a crushing economic blow. The German government, backed in a secret and cynical effort by the industrialists, was busy printing marks like so many strudels in order to pay off the reparation debt owed to the Allies. The resulting massive hyperinflation had the unfortunate side effect of wiping out the bank accounts of most ordinary Germans. The despised democratic government took the blame, of course.
In Munich, the protoführer von Kahr and the other right-wing-leaders-to-be had been meeting with Hitler about extending von Kahr’s Munich dictatorship over all of Germany. But to Hitler’s exasperation, everyone kept dickering over the details, including, most importantly, who would become the Big Leader. Kahr wanted to reinstall the monarchy; Röhm wanted to turn his Freikorps into a real military threat and pined for a replacement dictatorship; von Seisser, the Bavarian police chief, liked Hitler but not as much as the Freikorps and could not decide whom to support; von Lossow, the Bavarian army chief, who supported the dictatorship model of governing, also liked Hitler but knew that supporting the pushy young wannabe dictator would displease his superiors in Berlin. So he also sat on the fence.
Hitler, impatient to start dictating, met with all of them throughout the fall. He had given von Kahr, von Lossow, and von Seisser his word that he would not start the counterrevolution without them. But time, it seemed, was quickly running out for the impatient future führer. When von Kahr announced a big speech in Munich’s Bürgerbräukeller, slated for November 8, Hitler panicked and, not wanting to get left behind in the führer race, quickly cooked up a plan and made his move. He met with his minions the night before, and they plotted well past midnight. Their jury-rigged plan depended on the unproven organizational genius of Goering leading the Nazi’s SA fighters and the participation of the unassailable General Ludendorff.
WHAT HAPPENED: OPERATION “CAN’T ANYONE HERE THROW A REVOLUTION?”
To Hitler, mesmerized by his own fanatical beliefs, as were his growing army of followers, the organization and planning of the coup had been an afterthought. The plan was simply to pull the leaders of Bavaria aside before von Kahr’s speech, convince them to join Hitler’s putsch then and there, declare the revolution, and march on Berlin immediately. With Hitler, of course, in the lead.
Hitler got to the beer hall early and conspicuously loitered in the lobby waiting for Goering and his personal bodyguards. As planned, von Lossow and von Seisser, as well as virtually all of the other Munich power figures, arrived at the Bürgerbräukeller to hear von Kahr’s speech. While von Kahr was speaking, Goering and the guards drove up in trucks, barged in, and set up a machine gun right in the lobby of the cavernous beer hall. On a signal from Hitler, the door was thrown open; Hitler, at the center of a flying wedge of troopers, pushed through the crowd waving his pistol like the Lone Ranger while Goering indulged his over-the-top flair by dramatically brandishing a sword. They pushed their way onstage, and Hitler quieted the crowd with a pistol shot into the ceiling. The revolution was on.
Angry that Hitler had broken his promise not to putsch without them, the three leaders, Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser, refused to move. Hitler, livid at their intransigence, dragged them into a side room and stuck his pistol in their ears. They still balked. Hitler ranted but was forced to return to the auditorium where Goering was trying to calm the restless crowd by telling them to relax and joking that “after all, you have your beer!”
Hitler strode onstage, announced the lineup of the new government, including the roles Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser would play, and swayed the crowd to his side. He strutted back into the side room triumphantly, knowing that he had forced their hand. But the balky triumvirate was only warming to the idea. Then Ludendorff, the World War I hero who had lost the war, entered. He was Hitler’s closer, but his effect at first was less than fully Prussian because he was dressed for a weekend of hunting in a bad suit instead of his impressive uniform, to preserve the flimsy fiction that his involvement was a spur of the moment kind of thing.
Now the triumvirate realized things were flowing against them. Under Ludendorff’s spell, Lossow and Seisser agreed to join up, but Kahr kept holding out for the restoration of his beloved monarchy. He finally caved when Hitler told him the perfect lie: that the putsch is what the Kaiser would have wanted. Hitler would be in charge, of course, with Lossow and Seisser receiving plum roles; the unemployable Ludendorff would get to run the army again, and Kahr would stay on as governor of Bavaria. After taking over Munich, everyone would march on Berlin and complete the revolution.
The deal signed, they all marched back onstage where everyone pledged to join Hitler’s revolution. The crowd went wild.
Outside, the night had finally arrived for the rowdy fighters of the SA battalions to prove their worth to the Nazi revolution on the cold streets of Munich. They gathered in the city’s beer halls, drinking and awaiting word to pounce on the levers of government and attack anyone who resisted the revolution.
Veteran Freikorps leader Gerhard Rossbach had been given six troopers and tasked to capture the Infantry School. The cadets gladly turned themselves over to the popular Rossbach, a hard-fighting Freikorps legend. Rossbach’s new cadets marched out with weapons toward the Marienplatz, the center of town, across the river from Hitler’s putsch hall.
Elsewhere in Munich, the putsch was having less success. SA troopers failed to trick soldiers at the Nineteenth Infantry regiment barracks armory into handing over their weapons. Other SA troopers got locked inside another armory by an army officer determined not to get putsched without explicit orders.
Meanwhile, Ernst Röhm, waiting for word that the putsch had launched, had formed up his SA battalion at the upscale Löwenbräukeller under pretense of a fun night out with a brass band and a speech by Hitler. Himmler was there, clutching the Nazi flag, his major accomplishment of the putsch. When they got the call that the revolt was on, Röhm announced it to the crowd and everyone formed up in the street, suddenly sporting firearms, courtesy of the master arms-stasher Röhm. The armed troopers marched off to the Bürgerbräukeller to join forces with Hitler, led by a brass band and picking up hidden arms along the way. Himmler, flag in hand, marched along proudly, finally getting his chance to storm into war.
The plot then started to spring leaks. In the confusion at the Bürgerbräukeller, a police inspector slipped out the side door and sounded the alarm. Word reached senior police officers, who dispatched police to protect the telegraph and phone exchanges. With von Lossow, the head of the army in Munich, trapped at the beer hall, the police called the ranking army officer in the city, Major General von Danner, a monarchist who hated the Nazis. He immediately rushed over to help.
Another police officer, alerted by shouting in the streets that the national revolution had started, rushed out in his house in slippers to quickly secure von Kahr’s governmental office. The strutting, disorganized putschists were getting beaten on all sides by a handful of quick-acting middle managers.
Röhm’s noisy parade bloodlessly conquered the war ministry for Ludendorff and von Lossow, but inadvertently neglected to secure the telephone exchange inside the building where loyal officers called around and found that Röhm, despite being a top military officer in Munich, should not be trusted.
When Hitler, basking in his glorious moment of newfound dictatorship, learned about the problem at the Nineteenth Infantry barracks, he rushed out of the putsch hall to fix the situation. He left Ludendorff there in charge of the captive Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser. Hitler’s convoy then ran into Rossbach with his infantry cadets. He stopped to treat his new recruits to a fiery speech and then swung by the war ministry to congratulate Röhm. His convoy passed citizens out in the streets proudly strutting their officially licensed Nazi wear and the red-black- white of the old German monarchy. The putsch-friendly carnival atmosphere filled the cool night air, which was exhilaratingly free of gunfire. The putsch was succeeding brilliantly it seemed. Hitler beamed.
Hitler finally arrived at the barracks, but the stubborn gatekeeper refused to allow him in. Sensing a glitch in the momentum, Hitler circled back to the putsch hall and delegated the barracks problem to von Lossow to untangle.
While Hitler was away, Ludendorff grew impatient to finally retake his position atop the army and decided to release the triumvirate of vons — Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser. He, of course, received their absolute, Prussian-bound assurance that they would continue to support the putschers. The other putschers disagreed vehemently but
