By 1923, the prevailing hyperinflation and the many strikes had resulted in economic and social chaos throughout Germany. Hitler now realized that the time was ripe for a coup. The French Ruhrock occupation had ignited the Germans’ national feelings, especially in Bavaria, where Hitler was.
Hitler at the beer cellar Sterneckerberäu
Adolf Hitler returned to Munich in 1919. He got a job with his old regiment because his captain thought he had mental problems and felt sorry for him.
Here Hitler came to act as an agent for the Swedish Armed Forces’ political intelligence. His duties included keeping control of various extreme political organizations. On September 19, 1919, he was asked to visit an odd little group called the National Socialists, which was based in a beer cellar. It was Hitler’s first visit to the Sterneckerberäu beer cellar.
There in a small room a meeting was held. With frothy beer mugs, the guests listened to various speeches. The sails were pounded on the table in applause or thrown at the speaker at will. The group’s leader, Anton Drexler, gave him a written booklet. The mood was chaotic, but it suited Hitler. He was seized by the speeches and the content of the scripture. The ideas seemed to be consistent with his own somewhat hazy thoughts of hatred and conspiracy. The audience shouted in agreement and slammed the sails on the table.
For the guests in the beer cellar, Hitler’s speech was nothing new. They had – like millions of other Germans – heard the same opinions several times before. What was new to the audience was Hitler’s art of speech and the way he presented his arguments. He expressed exactly what everyone felt in a simple but very captivating way.
Here in a worn Bavarian beer cellar, Hitler thus, through the irony of fate, had his thoughts confirmed and he was thereby carried on towards his later takeover.
Hitler soon joined Drexler’s group. In his propaganda , Hitler demanded that everyone who was of “German blood” be gathered in a Greater Germany. The peace of Versailles was to be torn up. In addition, he made many promises to the workers, to the small business owners, to the anti-Semites. But all Jews would lose their German citizenship. They would not be allowed to be employed in the public sector. The goal was for all Jews to be deported from Germany.
Hitler and Rosenberg
The time was now ripe for Adolf Hitler’s actions. He spoke of the “November Criminals” (those who accepted the Treaty of Versailles) against Germany and the vengeful demands of the Allies. His anger was directed at the Bolsheviks, but above all at the Jews. He was convinced that the Jews were to blame for everything.
Another man also appeared in the arena. His name was Alfred Rosenberg. He came from Estonia and was a fanatical anti-Semite and anti-Marxist (anti-communist). He was an architect by profession and, like Hitler, artistically oriented.
Rosenberg became the party’s foremost theorist and formulated its racial ideology : “the superiority of the Germanic race and its inherited right to rule; the sacred beauty of violence and war; the biological and spiritual inferiority of the Jews”.
In his obscure and contradictory work Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts , Rosenberg emphasizes the struggle between a good and an evil principle. The good principle is embodied in the “Nordic race” and the evil principle in the “Jewish race”. According to Rosenberg, throughout history there has been opposition between the Aryans and the Semites. He blindly believed in the superiority of the Nordic race and in the danger of racial mixing. Foreign racial elements must be removed from the German people and the Jews were, in Rosenberg’s conceptual world, a foreign element in Europe. Every German belongs forever to the German race or simply the people, “das Volk”.
The question of race is thus fundamental to National Socialist ideology . “The racial core of a nation constitutes its characteristic, original and unchanging destiny.” The laws of the race were in the blood, in the “race soul”, of each individual. According to the Nazis, race is a biological concept. A human being is born a German or a Jew or belongs to another race. She can never change this fact. According to the Nazis, a society that does not exist based on race cannot exist.
Hitler as a speaker and demagogue
The soil was thus good in interwar Germany for movements with a German national and anti-Semitic orientation. Hitler managed with his fiery speech art and fanatical fervor to win many supporters of the German Labor Party. A contemporary observer says that no intellectual clarity can be expected from Hitler. But he is honest in the way that he himself believes what he says. That does not stop him from saying one minute with glowing faith and claiming something else the next minute with the same fanaticism. In his speeches, he moves rigidly from one phrase to another. After a while he gets up to speed. Eventually he reaches that stage, when he does not know what to say. Then he interrupts the speech and shouts “Heil Deutschland!” or “Victory! Victory!”.
Hitler put forward only a few theses at a time. Even the most obvious lie can appear to be true if it is repeated only often enough. His motto was: Never hesitate, never nuance, never suggest that the opponent’s opinion may have any value or even be reasonable. Attack, attack, attack! He also framed his speeches with marching music, singing, chanting choirs and large, colorful flagpoles. In addition, he made sure to make dramatic entrances. It was common to let someone else start a speech, and when Hitler appeared at the door, the speaker interrupted in the middle of a sentence. During the audience’s “Heil-rop”, Hitler slowly stepped up to the podium. His speeches were intended for the masses, not for a small intimate audience.
Hitler managed to exert a hypnotic power on the audience. An eyewitness says that the masses rose as a person and shouted “Heil” when Hitler appeared. His pale face expressed an inner fanaticism. Hitler himself said of his ability to enchant the masses: “The mass is a woman. He who does not understand the female character of the mass can never be a good speaker. Ask yourself what a woman expects from a man. Clarity, determination, power, action. “
The beer cellar coup 1923
In 1923, Hitler considered the time was ripe for a coup in the Weimar Republic. Inflation had resulted in economic chaos . The French Ruhrock occupation had ignited the Germans’ national feelings, especially in Bavaria. The leaders there, Gustav von Kahr and von Lossow, were right-wing nationalists and had connections with the free unions and also with Hitler’s National Socialists.
The coup was to begin on the evening of November 8 at Bügerbräukeller. That is when von Kahr would speak there at a large public meeting. It was snowing outside and the wind was biting. Hitler himself had headaches and toothaches. But that was it. By telephone, Hitler had informed the SA leaders to keep their men on standby (read about SA in part 3 of the article series). They wore their field-gray uniforms with swastika bracelets and revolver belts.
Alfred Rosenberg was on the editorial board of the newspaper Völkischer Beobachter . Suddenly the door slammed open and a pale excited Hitler in a trench coat rushed in. The hour had come. Tonight it was going to happen. They were to take pistols and meet at seven o’clock outside Bügerbräukeller. Then Hitler and General Ludendorff left in their respective cars. Hitler bought himself some beer while impatiently waiting for the armed SA men to arrive. At nine o’clock they came and surrounded the room.
In the middle of von Kahr’s speech, the armed SA men stormed in. Hitler fired a pistol at the roof, declaring that the national revolution had begun. To many present, Hitler made a drunken and ridiculous impression. Göring and his men also streamed in, all armed.
Hitler managed to get von Kahr and von Lossow out into a side room where he tried to persuade them to take part in a coup against the national government. They were intimidated by the desperate Hitler and pretended to support him. But as soon as they escaped from Hitler, they called the National Guard to help quell the uprising. Ludendorff, however, clung to Hitler.
At ten o’clock, trucks arrived with men in the national army’s green uniforms and armed with heavy machine guns. When the coup plotters discovered the “betrayal” of Kahrs and Lassow, they left the Bügerbräukeller to seek support for their cause among the people on the streets of Munich. Hitler, Ludendorff, Göring and Streicher marched in the lead for a few thousand men along Residenzstrasse.
The Swedish National Guard approached and fired a shot. The merchants responded to the fire and panic broke out among the marchers. Some say that Ludendorff stood up while Hitler threw himself down and took cover. Other eyewitnesses believe that both Ludendorff and Hitler threw themselves on the ground to try to sew away the bullet rain. Ludendorff, however, marched to the police who arrested him. Hitler fled pale in the face and with an injured arm. Göring was lying on the street with a bullet in the abdomen. He was carried to Residenzstrasse 25 and one of the coup plotters rang the doorbell. The owner opened and promised to provide help and protection to the injured. “But I want to draw your attention to the fact that this is a Jewish house,” he said. Göring was carried up the stairs and given first aid. He was then allowed to remain until his friends picked him up.
The coup was over but the victorious National Guard was met by shouts such as “Jewish defender”, “traitor to the fatherland”, “bloodhounds” and “Heil Hitler” …
Did you know that:
- Hitler is often described as short, but he was of normal height. He was 173 cm tall and weighed about 70 kg. The surroundings thought from the beginning that his mustache was outdated and they suggested that he let it grow to the sides. But he replied: “If short mustaches are not popular now, they will be later, because I wear one.”
- After the failed coup attempt in Munich in 1923, Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison. Before he was imprisoned, he tried to take his own life, but one of his friends, Helena Hanfstaengl, twisted the revolver out of his hand and stopped him. Hitler only needed to serve nine months of his sentence.
Also Read: Hitler Road to Power Part I
Also Read: Adolf Hitler’s Short Biography
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Also Read: World War I History
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