The
Beer Hall Putsch was a failed
coup d'état that occurred between the evening of Thursday,
November 8 and the early afternoon of Friday,
November 9,
1923, when the
Nazi party's leader
Adolf Hitler, the popular
World War I General
Erich Ludendorff, and other leaders of the
Kampfbund, unsuccessfully tried to gain power in
Munich,
Bavaria, and
Germany.
Putsch is the German word for "
coup."
Background. The attempted putsch was inspired by
Mussolini's successful
March on Rome. Further, when
Hitler realized
von Kahr either sought to control him or was losing heart (history is unclear), Hitler decided to take matters into his own hands. He planned to use Munich as a base against Germany's
Weimar Republic government in
Berlin. Hitler, along with a large detachment of
SA, marched on the
Bürgerbräukeller, a Munich beer hall where
von Kahr was making a speech in front of 3,000 people.
In the cold evening dark, 600 stormtroopers surrounded the beer hall and a
machine gun was set up pointing at the auditorium doors. Hitler, surrounded by his associates
Hermann Göring,
Alfred Rosenberg,
Rudolf Hess,
Ernst Hanfstaengl,
Ulrich Graf,
Johann Aigner,
Adolf Lenk,
Max Amann,
Scheubner-Richter,
Wilhelm Adam, etc. (some twenty in all) burst through the doors at 8:30 pm, pushed their way laboriously through the crowd, fired a shot into the ceiling and jumped on a chair yelling,
"The national
revolution has broken out! The hall is filled with six hundred men. Nobody is allowed to leave. The Bavarian government and the government at Berlin are deposed. A new government will be formed at once. The barracks of the
Reichswehr and those of the police are occupied. Both have rallied to the
swastika."
At gunpoint, Hitler, accompanied by
Rudolf Hess,
Adolf Lenk and
Ulrich Graf forced the triumvirate of
von Kahr,
von Seisser, and
von Lossow into a side room (previously hired by
Rudolf Hess) and demanded their support for his putsch, or they would be shot. Hitler thought that he would get an immediate response of affirmation from them, imploring
von Kahr to accept the position as Regent of Bavaria.
Von Kahr reasonably pointed out that he could not be expected to collaborate especially as he had been taken out of the auditorium under heavy guard.
During this time, speeches were held in the main hall by
Goering, amongst others, obtaining a temporary calm, whilst no one was allowed to leave, not even to go to the bathroom. Some, however, managed to escape via the kitchen, especially those foreign correspondents eager to file copy. At the same time,
Heinz Pernet,
Johann Aigner and
Scheubner-Richter were dispatched to pick up
General Ludendorff, whose personal prestige was being harnessed to give the Nazis credibility. A phone call was made from the kitchen by
Kriebel to
Ernst Röhm, who was waiting with his
Reichskriegflagge in the
Löwenbräukeller, another beer hall, and ordered him to seize key buildings throughout the city. At the same time, co-conspirators under
Gerhard Rossbach mobilized the students of a nearby Officers Infantry school to seize other objectives.
Hitler became irritated by
von Kahr and summoned
Ernst Poehner,
Friedrich Weber and
Hermann Kriebel to stand in for him whilst he returned to the auditorium to make a speech (as he had promised some fifteen minutes earlier). Flanked by
Rudolf Hess and
Adolf Lenk, Hitler returned to the auditorium to make an extempore speech that changed the mood of the hall almost within seconds. Dr. Karl Alexander von Mueller, a professor of modern history and political science at the University of Munich, a supporter of
von Kahr, was an eyewitness. He reported: "I cannot remember in my entire life such a change in the attitude of a crowd in a few minutes, almost a few seconds ... Hitler had turned them inside out, as one turns a glove inside out, with a few sentences. It had almost something of hocus-pocus, or magic about it."
Hitler started quietly reminding the audience that his move was not directed against von Kahr and launched into his speech ending with:
"Outside are Kahr, Lossow and Seisser. They are struggling hard to reach a decision. May I say to them that you will stand behind them?"
The audience roared its approval. He finished triumphantly:
"You can see that what motivates us is neither self-conceit or self-interest, but only a burning desire to join the battle in this grave eleventh hour for our German Fatherland ... One last thing I can tell you. Either the German revolution begins tonight and the morrow will find us in Germany a true nationalist government, or it will find us dead by dawn!"
To the historian Karl Alexander von Mueller, the histrionics and melodrama were painful. He could not make up his mind whether Hitler was a man consumed, a brilliant showman or another
Machiavelli. Hitler carried all three traits to extremes. Hitler returned to the ante-room, where the triumvirs remained incarcerated, to ear-shattering acclaim which the triumvirs cannot have failed to notice. On his way back, Hitler ordered
Goering and
Hess to take
von Knilling and seven other members of the Bavarian government into custody.
During Hitler's speech,
Poehner,
Weber and
Kriebel had been trying in a conciliatory fashion to bring the triumvirate round to their point of view. The atmosphere in the room had become lighter but von Kahr continued to dig in his heels.
Ludendorff showed up a little before 9 p.m. and, being shown into the ante-room, concentrated on von Lossow and von Seisser appealing to their 'sense of duty'. Eventually the triumvirate reluctantly gave in.
Hitler,
Ludendorff et al moved back into the auditorium, where they gave speeches, shook hands, and then the crowd was allowed to leave. In a tactical mistake, Hitler decided to leave the
Bürgerbräu Keller shortly thereafter to deal with a crisis elsewhere. Around 10:30 p.m.,
Ludendorff released von Kahr and his associates.
The night was marked by confusion and unrest among government officials, armed forces and police units, and individuals deciding where their loyalties lay. Units of the Kampfbund were scurrying around to arm themselves from secret caches, seizing buildings. Around 3 in the morning, the first casualties of the putsch occurred when the local garrison of the
Reichswehr spotted Röhm's men coming out of the beer hall. They were ambushed while trying to reach the Reichswehr barracks and had to fall back. In the meantime, the Reichswehr officers put the whole garrison on alert and called for reinforcements. In a prefiguration of things to come, a list of prominent Jews was made up and squads of SA were sent around to arrest them. Some were taken into custody while others escaped. The foreign attachés were also seized in their hotel rooms and put under house arrest.
In the early morning, Hitler ordered the seizure of the
Munich city council as
hostages. He further sent the communications officer of the
Kampfbund, Max Neunzert, to enlist the aid of
Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria to mediate between von Kahr and the putschists. Neunzert failed in the mission.
By midmorning on the 9th, the realization hit that the putsch was going nowhere and Hitler was desperate. They didn't know what to do and were about to give up. At this moment, Ludendorff cried out "Wir marschieren!" (We will march!) and Röhm's force together with Hitler's (a total of approx. 2000 men) marched out with no plan of where to go. At the spur of the moment, Ludendorff led them to the Bavarian Defense Ministry. However, at the
Odeonsplatz in front of the
Feldherrenhalle, they met with a force of 100 soldiers blocking the way under the command of State Police Senior Lieutenant Baron
Michael von Godin. The two groups exchanged fire, killing four state police officers
[1] and sixteen Nazis. It was here that the
Blutfahne came to be. Hitler and Hermann Göring were both injured, the latter managing to escape while the former was captured shortly thereafter.
The Putsch Police and State Police units were first notified of trouble by two police detectives stationed at the Löwenbräukeller. These reports reached Major
Sigmund von Imhoff of the State police. He immediately called all his "green" police units and had them seize the central telegraph office and the telephone exchange, though his most important act was to notify Major General
Jakob Ritter von Danner, the Reichswehr city commandant of Munich. As a staunch aristocrat, he loathed the "little corporal" and those "
freikorps bands of rowdies." He also didn't much like his commanding officer, Generalleutnant
Otto von Lossow, "a sorry figure of a man." He was determined to put down the putsch with or without von Lossow. General Ritter von Danner set up a command post at the 19th Infantry Regiment barracks and alerted all military units.
Meanwhile Captain
Karl Wild, learning of the putsch from marchers, mobilized his command to guard von Kahr's government building, the "Commissariat", with orders to shoot.
Around 11:00 p.m., Ritter von Danner, along with fellow officers General
Adolf Ritter von Ruith and General
Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, compelled von Lossow to repudiate the putsch.
There was one member of the
cabinet who was not at the Bürgerbräu Keller:
Franz Matt, the vice-premier and minister of education and culture. A staunchly conservative Catholic, he was having dinner with
Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber and the Papal Nuncio, Monsignor Eugenio Pacelli (who would later become
Pope Pius XII), when he learned of the putsch. He immediately phoned von Kahr. When he found the man vacillitating and unsure, Matt decisively began plans to set up a rump government-in-exile in
Regensburg and composed a proclamation calling upon all police, armed forces, and civil servants to remain loyal to the government.
The action of these fews men spelled doom for the putschists.
On Saturday, 4,000 students from
Munich University rioted and marched to the
Feldherrnhalle to lay wreaths. (They continued to riot through Monday until learning of Hitler's arrest.) Von Kahr and von Lossow were called "Judases" and "Traitors."
Counterattack Three days after the putsch, Hitler was arrested and charged with
treason. Some of his co-conspirators were arrested while others escaped to
Austria. The Nazi party headquarters were raided, and its newspaper, the
Völkischer Beobachter ("The People's Observer") was banned.
This, however, was not the first time Hitler had been in trouble with the law. In an incident in September 1921, he and some SA had disrupted a meeting of the
Bayernbund, and the Nazis who had gone there to cause trouble were arrested as a result. Hitler ended up serving a little over a month of a three-month jail sentence. Presiding Judge Georg Neithardt was the same judge in both Hitler cases. Due to his war service and connections, Ludendorff was acquitted. Both Röhm and Dr.
Wilhelm Frick, though found guilty, were released. Göring, meanwhile, suffered bullet wounds in his leg, which led him to become increasingly dependent on
morphine and other painkilling drugs.
Though Hitler failed to achieve his immediate stated goal—and in fact there seems to be no turn of events which could have caused this rather poorly organized coup
not to fail—the event did give the Nazis their first exposure to national attention and a
propaganda victory. It was while serving his prison sentence at
Landsberg am Lech that he and
Rudolf Hess wrote
Mein Kampf. Also, the putsch changed Hitler's outlook on violent revolution to effect change. From then on he thought that, in order to win the German heart, he must do everything by the book,
strictly legal, since Germans obviously frowned on not following the rules. He decided to manoeuvre it so that the German
Volk would
choose him as dictator. Later on, the German people were calling him "
Adolf Legalité" or "Adolf the Legal One."
The process of
combination, where the conservative-nationalist-monarchist group thought that they could piggyback onto and control the National Socialist movement to garner the seats of power, was to dangerously repeat itself ten years later in 1933 when
Franz von Papen would "legally" ask Hitler to form a government.
Trial and prison Felix Alfarth Andreas Bauriedl Theodor Casella William Ehrlich Martin Faust Anton Hechenberger Oskar Körner Karl Kuhn Karl Laforce Kurt Neubauer Klaus von Pape Theodor von der Pfordten Johann Rickmers Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter Lorenz Ritter von Stransky Wilhelm Wolf Bavarian police who died in the putsch The sixteen fallen were regarded as the first 'blood martyrs' of the
NSDAP, and were remembered by Hitler in the foreword of
Mein Kampf as martyrs. The Nazi flag which they carried,, which in the course of events was stained with the blood, came to be known as the the Blutfahne (blood flag), was bought out for the swearing in of new recruits in front of the Feldherrnhalle when Hitler was in power.
Shortly after coming to power a memorial was placed at the south side of the Feldherrnhalle crowned with a swastika. The back of the memorial read 'Und Ihr Habt Doch Gesiegt!'
("Yet victory was yours"). Behind it flowers were laid, and either policemen or the SS stood guard in between a lower plaque. Passers-by were required to give the Hitler salute. The putsch was also commemorated on three sets of stamps. Mein Kampf was dedicated to the fallen and in the book Ich Kampfe (given to those joining the party circa 1943) they are listed first even though the book lists hundreds of other dead. The header text in the book read 'Though They Are Dead For Their Acts They Will Live On Forever'. The army had a division named the Feldherrnhalle regiment and there was also an SA Feldherrnhalle division.
Every year (even during the war up to 1942) a commeration, attended by Hitler, took place in Munich, the centrepiece of which was usually a recreation of the march, from the Burgerbraukeller to the south side of the Feldherrnhalle but also throughout every Gau was expected to hold a small remembrance ceremony. As material given to propagandists said, the sixteen fallen were the first losses and the ceremony was an occasion to commemorate everyone who had died for the movement.
On November 9, 1935 the dead were taken from their graves and to the Feldherrnhalle. the SA and SS carried them a few minutes down to the Konigplatz where two Ehrentempel (Honour Temples) had been constructed. In each of the structures eight of the martyrs were interred in a sarcophagus bearing their name.
In June 1945 the
Allied Control Commission removed the bodies from the Ehrentempel and contacted their families. They were given the option of having their loved ones buried in Munich cemeteries in unmarked graves or having them cremated, common practice in Germany for unclaimed bodies. On January 9, 1947 the upper parts of the structures were blown up.
Martyrdom Supporters of the Putsch Rudolf Hess,
Hermann Goering,
Erich Ludendorff,
Hermann Kriebel,
Friedrich Weber,
Ernst Röhm,
Max Scheubner-Richter,
Ulrich Graf,
Julius Streicher,
Hermann Esser,
Ernst Hanfstaengl,
Gottfried Feder,
Josef Berchtold,
Ernst Poehner,
Emil Maurice,
Max Amann,
Heinz Pernet,
Wilhelm Brueckner,
Lt. Robert Wagner Key supporters Heinrich Himmler,
Edmund Heines,
Gerhard Rossbach,
Hans Frank,
Julius Schaub,
Walter Hewel,
Dietrich Eckart,
Wilhelm Frick,
Julius Schreck,
Josef 'Sepp' Dietrich,
Philipp Bouhler,
Franz Pfeffer von Salomon,
Adolf Lenk,
Hans Kallenbach,
Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg,
Adolf Wagner,
Jakob Grimminger,
Heinrich Trambauer,
Karl Beggel,
Rudolf Jung,
Rudolf Buttmann,
Hans Ulrich Klintzsche,
Heinrich Hoffmann,
Josef Gerum,
Capt. Eduard Dietl,
Hans Georg Hofmann,
Matthaeus Hofmann,
Helmut Klotz,
Adolf Huehnlein,
Max Neunzert,
Michael Ried Other notable supporters In the vanguard were four flag bearers followed by
Adolf Lenk and
Kurt Neubauer,
Ludendorff's servant. Behind those two came more flag bearers then the leadership in two rows.
Hitler was in the centre, slouch hat in hand, the collar of his trenchcoat turned up against the cold. To his left in civilian clothes, a green felt hat and a loose
loden coat was
Ludendorff. To Hitler's right was
Scheubner-Richter. To his right came
Alfred Rosenberg. On either side of these men were
Ulrich Graf,
Hermann Kriebel,
Friedrich Weber,
Julius Streicher,
Hermann Goering and
Wilhelm Brueckner.
Behind these came the second string of
Heinz Pernet,
Johann Aigner (
Scheubner-Richter's servant),
Gottfried Feder,
Theodor von der Pfordten,
Wilhelm Kolb,
Rolf Reiner,
Hans Streck and
Heinrich Bennecke,
Brueckner's adjutant.
Behind this row marched the
Stosstrupp, the SA, the Infantry School and the
Oberlaender.
At the front of the march Left to Right:
Heinz Pernet,
Dr. Friedrich Weber,
Wilhelm Frick,
Hermann Kriebel,
General Erich Ludendorff,
Adolf Hitler,
Wilhelm Brueckner,
Ernst Roehm,
Lt. Robert Wagner Note only two of the defendants,
Hitler and
Frick, were dressed as civilians.
Chief defendants in the 'Ludendorff-Hitler' Trial On
November 8,
1939, Hitler narrowly escaped an
assassination attempt while celebrating the 16th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich.
American newspaper reporters are partly responsible for transferring the originally Italian application "Fascists" to the Nazis.
- "FASCISTI MOBILIZE IN BAVARIAN HILLS", The New York Times, November 3, 1923.
"BAVARIAN FASCISTI IMPATIENT", "...the Bavarian military dictator Dr. von Kahr is experiencing difficulty in his efforts to hold the Bavarian Fascisti in leash..." The New York Times, November 7, 1923.
The political disparity of von Kahr and Adolf Hitler is elucidated when the editor of the staunchly royalist newspaper and speech writer for Von Kahr, Paul Egenter, questions Pöhner while locked in the beer hall: "Isn't there a basic contradiction between von Kahr's monarchistic and Hitler's republican-dictatorial aims?" Munich 1923, pg 168.
- The gloss over of this discrepancy shows itself in NY Times headlines: "MONARCHIST FORCES REPORTED MARCHING ON BERLIN", "LUDENDORFF LEADS ROYALIST ARMY."
The date of the putsch being crushed was claimed as the inspiration for the name of the British neo-Nazi group the November 9th Society. Miscellany
The Beer Hall Putsch and the subsequent arrest and trial of Adolf Hitler was portrayed in the anime movie Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa.
See also
Dornberg, John Munich 1923,(whew) The Story of Hitler's First Grab for Power, Harper & Row Publishers, NY, 1982
Gordon, Harold J., Jr. Hitler and the Beer Hall Putsch, Princeton University Press, 1972
_______ The Hitler Trial Before the People's Court in Munich University Publications of America, 1976
Large, David Clay Where Ghosts Walked, Munich's Road to the Third Reich, W.W. Norton & Co., 1997
Louis Leo Snyder Hitler and Nazism, Franklin Watts, Inc., NY, 1961
Notes
Deployment
Education and early career
Lefthit