Ed Strosser - Stupid Wars - A Citizen's Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous Revolutions

When Hitler had arrived back at the putsch hall, he didn’t realize the seriousness of Ludendorff’s blunder in releasing the von trio. He still believed they would support him and could not fathom that anyone did not yearn for him to become dictator. What concerned him more were the SA troopers hanging around the beer hall snacking instead of conquering key government buildings.

Hitler had completely lost the diabolical focus that had brought him to the point of near victory. His head was al­ready swimming in the newfound glory of an apparent vic­tory. When Rossbach and his infantry cadets arrived at the putsch hall and wanted to pass in triumphant review, Hitler obliged and trotted out to treat them to a little speech with Ludendorff watching proudly. Then the soldiers trundled inside for beer and sausages.

Ludendorff, his innate Prussianness awakening, finally left for the war ministry, guarded by Röhm. He sat down in his outer office to wait for von Lossow to show up so they could start planning the march on Berlin. But Lossow never showed: he had headed for the infantry barracks. And it wasn’t until another hour or two later that Ludendorff, the naïve revolutionary, started to get suspicious — but not suspi­cious enough. In other rooms in the war ministry, Röhm’s delay in securing the telephones meant that resistance to the putsch was being organized as Röhm and Ludendorff sat waiting for the one man who they thought would control the fate of the putsch. But he had already turned against them.

Ludendorff, cooling his heels in von Lossow’s anteroom, finally started thinking like a soldier again and rousted Rossbach’s lounging infantry cadets from the putsch hall to take over the state government offices, all of which were now guarded by the state police. It was to be the first clash of the night. The police cordon outside the offices politely informed Rossbach’s troops that the trio had switched sides. Rossbach refused to budge. Finally Seisser popped out to tell Rossbach personally. Sides were now being taken. The approximately one hundred police officers were facing down over four hun­dred armed infantry cadets.

Rossbach, the fiery Freikorps leader, knew that revolu­tions required blood, and he ordered his troops to open fire. But the soldiers, many of whom knew one another and all wanted a right-wing revolution of some flavor, were reluc­tant to end the carnival atmosphere by shooting one another. At this point, the confused putsch leadership weighed in to sink their chances even further. Suddenly, a murky message appeared from the putsch hall ordering Rossbach’s troops to guard the train station. Once the cadets took off, Kahr and Seisser were free to escape and met up with von Lossow at the infantry barracks. Hitler’s opposition was now united.

The night, however, was quickly becoming a comic “who’s on first?” scenario, Prussian army style. Nobody wanted to make a move without knowing first what the other guy was going to do. Loyal-but-sympathetic soldiers refused to shoot putschers but also refused to join them. They didn’t have orders! A German soldier couldn’t be expected to join a rev­olution without orders!

The SA company that had been frustrated at the barracks had marched back to the putsch hall. The men sat down in the hall, waiting for orders, stuffing their faces with free beer and sausage. Some started to bunk down under the tables, sensing it was going to be a long night. Some of them had to get up in the morning to go to their regular jobs.

The putsch had turned into an uncoordinated circus. Goering was worried about his ailing wife. Instead of occupying the power centers of the city, random attacks on the Nazis’s favorite targets became the order of the day. The hotel where the Allied army officers were lodged was attacked; the French and British arms control officers were accosted in their pajamas; the hotel staff was able to convince the Nazis to let them stay in the hotel. Enemies of the Nazis, including the usual Jews and Commies, were attacked and fifty-eight prisoners dragged back to the putsch hall.

By midnight, the alarmed President Ebert in Berlin, by now well versed in crushing challenges to his government from both the left and right, turned to his head coup-crusher, General Hans von Seeckt, and told him to handle it. When nervously asked by the ministers where the army stood, the icy von Seeckt replied “Behind me.” Von Seeckt wasn’t about to let Germany’s rebirth be hijacked by a rookie like Hitler. He ordered the army on a midnight march to Munich to bol­ster the tiny army force in the city.

From the safety of their secret lair in the barracks, Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser issued a message repudiating the putsch and ordered posters to be printed and circulated. But in actu­ality they were badly outgunned. There were only a thousand state police and a handful of loyal army troops who could be relied upon to fight against the thousands of SA troopers roaming the streets. Hitler and Ludendorff still had the upper hand, but it was slipping out of their grasp. Even after waiting in von Lossow’s office in vain Ludendorff had wasted yet more time phoning around the various ministries to find him. Lossow’s aides put off the dupable Ludendorff by either not picking up the phone or telling him that von Lossow was still en route from somewhere to somewhere else.

When dawn arrived on November 9, the fifth anniver­sary of the Kaiser’s abdication, Hitler and Ludendorff fi­nally realized that the von trio — Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser — had betrayed them. It had taken them almost seven hours to comprehend this fact. Almost all of the key installations were still under the control of the police and army: infantry barracks, telegraph and phone exchanges. Reconvening at the putsch hall they argued bitterly over their next steps while the troopers milled about the smoky, dank beer cellar. Goering’s contribution was to find a band to roust the tired troops out of their morning daze while Hitler frantically planned his next moves. The sleepy band played without their breakfast or pay and under threat of a good kicking.

To further boost the troops, Hitler sent two SA command­ers, including Ludendorff’s stepson, both of whom happened to be experienced bank clerks, and a couple dozen toughs in beer trucks to rob the presses where government officers were up all night printing money to keep up with inflation. The troopers each received a couple trillion marks for their night’s service, just enough to cover the night’s beer bill.

Then Hitler, in a crazed, desperate gambit, dispatched a drinking buddy of the deposed crown prince of Bavaria to plead with him to join the coup and order monarchy-adoring Kahr to obey Adolf.

The good news for Hitler was that SA battalions were making their way back to the putsch hall, and reinforcements from outside the city were arriving. Kahr had finally allowed word to leak out about his government’s resistance to the coup. But Hitler’s finely tuned propaganda machine beat them to the punch. Posters and papers blared headlines that the revolution was on, and Hitler and Ludendorff were leading it.

Around 11 a.m., a detachment of state police was finally sent to guard the bridge that led from the putsch hall into the heart of the city. Their orders were crafted as if for a column of schoolchildren: if confronted by the putschers, they were not to resist actively but only to politely ask them to please take another route. Everyone was still on the fence.

Baron Michael von Godin was one of the sensible, moral, and nameless middle managers in the sea of German radicalism who put his life on the line to try to stop Hitler and the fascists. A senior lieutenant in charge of the company of Bavarian state police that faced down Hitler and Ludendorff in the Odeonplatz, he gave the order to fire upon them, ending the putsch. For this act, the Nazis hounded him until he retired in 1926 and was forced to leave the country. When he returned in May 1933, he was captured and tor­tured by the Nazis for eight months before he was finally allowed to leave again, due to some hiccup in the Nazi horror apparatus. After World War II he became the chief of the Bavarian police.