Clemens von Lengsfeld - Adolf Hitler

“Hitler has to come and weep”. Hitler with handkerchief in orator pose. Photographic postcard (Heinrich Hoffmann), before August 1927. From a series: “Adolf Hitler speaks, 6 photographic moments (…) “.

As Hitler was also regarded as a gifted speaker, his enemies could not say anything against him. Whilst the outside world sank in the chaos of hyperinflation, unemployment, hunger and impoverishment, under the big top one was only too glad to listen to the prophesying baying of this petit bourgeois saviour from the Austrian forests. In the meantime so many people were streaming to the events that they had had to move out of the bierkellers into the largest venue, the Krone circus. In the circus tent packed with 6000 people, on 30 October 1923 Hitler enjoyed rapturous applause until it “ebbed away in solemn silence” as he later wrote.

The Putsch

On 8 November 1923 the “Drummer” also put in an appearance in the packed Bürgerbräukeller that had at one and the same time something clown-like as well as being like a scene from the Wild West. For the right-wing government team von Kahr – interim ruler in Bavaria with dictatorial powers – was speaking – until Hitler and his men brusquely interrupted the speaker 30 minutes later, climbed onto a chair and fired his Walther pistol into the ceiling. The sharp crack ensured that the gunman was able to make sure of the attention of those present. With his characteristic hoarse barking voice, he warned that the meeting’s venue was surrounded by the SA and thus suffocated any possible resistance in the bud. At the conclusion of his address he announced grimly: “ The “national revolution” has broken out.” Hitler had at last come into contact with the right, that is, influential people. They supported him effectively. To these belonged one of the heroes of Tannenberg, Erich Ludendorff. The retired general and puppet master of the Kapp putsch of March 1920 had re-emerged from the ruins and graced the group of putschists with his presence. “ Proclamation to the German people! The government of the November criminals in Berlin has today been declared deposed. A provisional German national government has been formed, this consists of General Ludendorff, Adolf Hitler, General von Lossow, Colonel von Seisser.” 53

The Proclamation of the Putschists of 1923

The Munich putschists now planned the joining together of the Reichswehr units stationed in Bavaria with the antidemocratic militia units, which were still numerous in the state. Tolerated by a right-wing government, which would have really liked to deliver the coup de grace to the hated Weimar Republic without delay, the Bavarian capital city was an El Dorado for the most widely differing “military sports groups”. Unobstructed by the authorities, they were able to march through Munich armed to the teeth and were protected at the highest level. Once the government in power was removed, they were to go on to Berlin in order to, as they put it, “ smoke out this Jew nest” . But still in the same night there was a decisive turn of events when the former ruler of Bavaria, the General State Commissioner Gustav Ritter von Kahr, withdrew his consent to taking part in the putsch, which had only half-heartedly been given. Hitler was stunned when he heard von Kahr on the radio saying that the “declarations extracted with a brandished pistol” were null and void. Von Kahr declared the NSDAP dissolved. Nevertheless, the small troup, led by von Ludendorff, Hitler and Göring, set off at noon the next day in a march in the direction of the Feldherrnhalle. In the meantime the commander of the state police had been instructed to put a wide cordon around the area in the vicinity of the Odeonsplatz. Accompanied by the applause of thousands of sightseers, the troop approached belting out “The Watch on the Rhine” .

They broke through the cordon. Even today it is still not clear who was the first to lose their nerve, the putschists or the police armed with machine guns. The firefight only lasted for a minute but claimed numerous victims, amongst whom were 18 dead. One of the wounded was Göring, who had sustained a deep flesh wound on his hip. The Jewish owners of the house into whose yard he had been driven back, brought him to safety, enabling him to flee to Austria. Hitler dislocated his arm when he fell down and thereupon allowed himself to be taken away in an ambulance belonging to the SA. Ludendorff remained unscathed and marched on ramrod straight as if it were a matter of once again forcing the fortress of Liège to surrender. After they were arrested, the putschists were taken to the fortress of Landsberg, where they awaited their trial for high treason. Hitler romanticised this event in one of his later speeches held in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich in 1939: “Our movement came into being from this complete emergency, and so it also had to take difficult decisions from the outset. And one of these decisions was the decision to revolt of 8/9 November 1923. This decision seemed to have misfired at the time, but it is only as a result of the victims that the Germany’s salvation has really come about.” 54

On the morning of 26 February 1924 the trial for high treason against the ten putschists began, amongst them were the main accused Adolf Hitler and Erich Ludendorff. The press despatched representatives from home and abroad. A total of 368 witnesses were summoned. The state police sent two battalions and a wide area around the venue for the proceedings, the Central Infantry School in Munich, was secured with barbed wire and wooden barriers.

The judge chairing the proceedings against Adolf Hitler was the right-wing conservative Georg Neithardt. General Ludendorff ret. had not been detained. On the days of the proceedings he had himself driven there in a luxury automobile. He was acquitted on the basis of his service in the First World War. Judge Neithardt justified his judgement on 1 April 1924 of only the minimum punishment for Adolf Hitler with the following words: “The court too is of the opinion that in their actions the accused were led by the spirit of the pure love of fatherland and the most noble selfless will. All the accused, who had an accurate view of the matters – and the rest of them let themselves be guided by the co-accused as their leaders and national representatives –, believed to the best of their ability that they would have to act to rescue the fatherland and that they would be doing the very same thing that had shortly before been the intention of leading Bavarian men. This did not justify what they intended to do but it provided the key to understanding their actions. For months, years even, they were of the view that the high treason of 1918 had to be made good again by a liberating action.” 55

The judgement was passed on “ Hitler, Adolf, born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau (Upper Austria), writer in Munich, on remand in this matter since 14 November 1923 due to the crime of high treason ( the accused is sentenced to) five years imprisonment as well as a fine of two hundred gold marks, alternatively to a further twenty days prison for each” .

In his prison cell Landsberg am Lech he now had enough free time to think about his future tactics. He devoted every free minute to his magnum opus, a work in several volumes, which he called “Mein Kampf” .