Hitler (33 page)

Before dawn on May 1, the patriotic leagues were gathering in Munich at the Oberwiesenfeld, at the Maximilianeum, and at several other key locations throughout the city to quell the socialist coup that was allegedly brewing. Hitler arrived at the Oberwiesenfeld a little later. The place had the look of a military encampment. Hitler, too, looked martial; he was wearing a helmet and his Iron Cross, First Class. His entourage included Göring, Streicher, Rudolf Hess, Gregor Strasser, and Gerhard Rossbach, who was in command of the Munich SA. While the storm troopers began drilling in preparation for orders to launch real attacks, the leaders conferred. Confusion reigned; there was considerable dissension, growing nervousness and dismay, because the expected signal from Röhm had failed to come.

In the meantime, the trade unions and parties of the Left were celebrating their May Day rites on the Theresienwiese. Their slogans were the time-honored revolutionary ones, but the general temper was harmonious and public-spirited. Since the police had cordoned off the side of the Oberwiesenfeld facing the city, the expected clashes did not take place. But Röhm himself was at this moment standing at attention before his commander, General von Lossow, who had learned of the trickery at the barracks and was greatly enraged. Shortly after noon, Captain Röhm, escorted by Reichswehr and police contingents, appeared at the Oberwiesenfeld. He transmitted Lossow's orders: the stolen weapons were to be surrendered on the spot. Strasser and Kriebel urged an immediate attack, reasoning that a civil war situation would bring the Reichswehr over to their side. But Hitler gave in. He found a way to save face by arranging to have his men return the weapons to the barracks. But the defeat was unmistakable, and even the flamboyant language with which he addressed his followers that evening in the Krone Circus could not blot it out.

This would seem to have been the first personal crisis in Hitler's rise to power. True, he had a certain justification for blaming his defeat on the attitude of some of his allies, particularly the squeamish and stiff-necked nationalist organizations. But he must have recognized that the behavior of his partners had also exposed certain weaknesses and mistakes of his own. Above all, he had misread the situation. The Reichswehr, whose might had made him strong and whose co-operation he had counted on, had suddenly turned into an enemy.

It was the first painful reverse after years of steady progress, and Hitler disappeared from public view for several weeks. He took refuge with Dietrich Eckart in Berchtesgaden. Plagued by self-doubt, he only occasionally appeared to give a speech. Once or twice he went to Munich for a bit of distraction. Up to this point he had acted largely instinctively, by hit and miss and imitation. Now, in the light of that disastrous May 1, he conceived the outlines of a consistent strategy: the concept of a “fascist revolution” that takes place not in conflict but in concert with government power—what has been aptly described as “revolution by permission of His Excellency the President.”
⁴³
He put some of his thoughts down on paper. These ruminations were later incorporated into
Mein Kampf.

He had also to contend with the reaction of the public. “It is generally recognized that Hitler and his men have made fools of themselves,” one report put it. Even an “assassination plot” against “the great Adolf” (as the
Münchener Post
had ironically dubbed him), a plot uncovered by Hermann Esser at the beginning of July and described with great fanfare in the
Völkische Beobachter,
could do little to revive Hitler's popularity—especially since similar revelations had been published in April and had subsequently been exposed as fabrications by the National Socialists. “Hitler no longer captures the imagination of the German people,” wrote a correspondent for the New York German-language newspaper
Staatszeitung.
Another shrewd observer noted early in May that Hitler's star seemed “to be waning.”

Currents of this sort cannot have been lost on Hitler, brooding in the solitude of Berchtesgaden. This would help explain his extraordinary retreat, his refusal to try to re-establish contact with Lossow or to inject a new spirit into the leaderless party and the Kampfbund. Gottfried Feder, Oskar Körner, and a few other long-time followers attempted to rouse him, above all urging him to break with “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, who had introduced the virtuous Hitler to “lovely ladies” who went about “in silk underwear” calling for more and more “champagne parties.” But Hitler hardly heard what they were saying. He let himself sink into his old state of lethargy and disgust. Yet he took some interest in the court case growing out of the events of May 1 and now pending before the Munich Landgericht (superior court). If the judgment went against him, Hitler would have to serve the two-month sentence he had received for the Ballerstedt affair. What was worse, Minister of the Interior Schweyer would undoubtedly rule that Hitler had broken his parole and would have him expelled from Bavaria.

Hitler bestirred himself enough to send a petition to the state prosecutor. He knew that he had friends within the power structure. It was to them that he appealed. “For weeks now I have been the victim of savage vilification in the press and the Landtag,” he wrote. “But because of the respect I owe my Fatherland I have not attempted to defend myself publicly. Therefore I can only be grateful to Providence for this chance to defend myself fully and freely in the courtroom.” He menacingly indicated, moreover, that he • was going to hand his petition over to the press.

The implications were clear enough, and the state prosecutor quickly passed the petition on, with an anxious note appended, to Minister of Justice Gurtner. The latter was a strong nationalist who had not forgotten certain old pacts and promises made to the National Socialists. Had he not even referred to them as “flesh of our flesh”? The nation's plight was worsening from day to day, with galloping inflation, general strikes, the battle of the Ruhr, hunger riots, and mounting agitation by the Left. In view of all this, there seemed good reason to show leniency toward a leader of national stature, even if said leader was part of the problem. Without informing the Minister of the Interior, who had several times inquired about the case, Gurtner let the state prosecutor know that he considered it advisable to have the case postponed “until a calmer period.” On August 1, 1923, the investigation was temporarily suspended, and on May 22 of the following year the charges were dropped.

Nevertheless, Hitler's loss of prestige was not easily rectified. That became apparent in early September, when the patriotic organizations celebrated one of their “German Days,” this one on the anniversary of the victory at Sedan, which had ended the Franco-Prussian War. A great parade was held in Nuremberg, complete with flags, wreaths, and retired generals. The attendance ran into the hundreds of thousands, all temporarily ecstatic with the feeling of having overcome national humiliation. The police report of the incident had a highly unbureaucratic, emotional ring: “Roaring cries of
‘Heil!'
swirled around the guests of honor and their entourage. Countless arms with waving handkerchiefs reached out for them; flowers and bouquets rained on them from all sides. It was like the jubilant outcry of hundreds of thousands of despairing, beaten, downtrodden human beings suddenly glimpsing a ray of hope, a way out of their bondage and distress. Many, men and women both, stood and wept....”

According to this report, the National Socialists formed one of the largest contingents among the 100,000 marchers. But at the center of the cheering stood General Ludendorff. Hitler, caught in the sway of the mass demonstration but also aware of the ground he had lost in the recent past, declared himself ready for a new alliance. He joined with the Reichsflagge group under Captain Heiss, and the Bund Oberland under Friedrich Weber, to form the Deutscher Kampfbund—a new version of the older league of nationalist parties. This time, however, there was no longer any question of Hitler's assuming the principal role. What had damaged his status was not so much the defeat of May 1 as his withdrawal from Munich afterward. For as soon as he was no longer on the scene to cause a sensation, his name, his authority, his demagogic powers all faded away. The indefatigable Röhm had to campaign for three weeks before he was able to persuade the leaders of the Kampfbund to relinquish the leadership in political affairs to Hitler.

The turning point came when the national government decided that the struggle at the Ruhr was draining the country's energies to no avail. On September 24, six weeks after becoming Chancellor, Gustav Stresemann called off the passive resistance movement and resumed reparations payments to France. During all the preceding months Hitler had spoken out against the passive resistance, but his revolutionary aims now required him to brand the administration's unpopular step a piece of cowardly, despicable treason and to exploit the situation to the full for the purpose of undermining the government. On the very next day he met with the leaders of the Kampfbund: Kriebel, Heiss, Weber, Göring, and Röhm. In a stormy two-and-a-half hour speech he unfolded his plans and visions, ending with the plea that he be given the leadership of the Deutscher Kampfbund. As Röhm later reported, Heiss was in tears as he, extended his hand to Hitler. Weber, too, was moved, while Röhm himself wept and trembled, as he says, from the depth of his emotion. Convinced that matters were moving toward a climax, he resigned from the Reichswehr the very next day and threw his lot in entirely with Hitler.

Hitler's plan apparently was to make such a show of decisiveness as to overwhelm all skepticism. He immediately ordered his 15,000 SA men on emergency alert. To enhance the prestige of his own organization, all members of the NSDAP were to resign from whatever other nationalist groups they might belong to. He launched a program of hectic activity. As with all his moves, however, the real aim of all the plans, tactics, and commands seemed to be a veritable explosion of propaganda, a turbulent spectacle. He projected no fewer than fourteen simultaneous mass meetings for September 27, with himself making a personal appearance at all fourteen to whip emotions to fever pitch. Certainly the ultimate aims of the Kampfbund were plain enough: liberation “from bondage and shame,” a march on Berlin, establishment of a nationalist dictatorship, and eradication of the “accursed enemies within.” Hitler had flung down the challenge to the government three weeks earlier in his speech of September 5, when he said: “Either Berlin will march and end up in Munich, or Munich will march and end up in Berlin. A Bolshevist North Germany cannot exist side by side with a nationalist Bavaria.” But whether he was planning a putsch at that point or was merely carried away by his own rhetoric has never been clear. There is reason to believe that he intended to take his cue from the effect that he had on the crowds. With his characteristic overestimation of propaganda methods, he must have counted on the government's being swayed by the passion of the masses. “Out of the endless battles of words,” he declared, “the new Germany will be born.” In any case, members of the Kampfbund received secret orders not to leave Munich and were issued the password to be used if a real coup were attempted.

But the Munich government acted before Hitler could. Some specifically Bavarian grievances and separatist tendencies had combined with rumors of an impending putsch and distrust of the “Marxist” national government to produce, for the Bavarian government, an intolerable situation. On September 26 Prime Minister von Knilling declared a state of emergency and appointed Gustav von Kahr as state commissioner with dictatorial powers. Von Kahr, an instrument of the Reichswehr, had briefly headed a right-wing government in Bavaria in 1920. He now declared that he welcomed the co-operation of the Kampfbund but warned Hitler against what he called “private initiatives.” The fourteen rallies could not be permitted. Hitler was beside himself with rage. As head of the Kampfbund, the most powerful paramilitary organization on the scene, Hitler had begun to think himself the equal and partner of the government. With one stroke Kahr had reduced him to a public nuisance. In one of those tantrums later to become so famous, ranting and raving until he almost blacked out, Hitler threatened revolution. That would have meant breaking his own ground rules, which called for moving in concert with the power of the state. Only in the course of an all-night session were Röhm, Pöhner, and Scheubner-Richter able to dissuade him from a
coup d'état.

In any case, events had long since caught up with Hitler's intentions. For in the meantime the cabinet in Berlin, headed by President Ebert, a socialist, had met to discuss the situation. Kahr had been closely identified with the separatist and monarchist trends. He had emphasized the “Bavarian mission of saving the Fatherland,” which would involve the overthrow of the republic, the establishment of a conservative, authoritarian regime, and so much Bavarian autonomy that Bavaria would once more be ruled by a king. Thus it was understandable that the national government should feel considerable concern when Kahr was named state commissioner. With the country in desperate straits, with Communism raising its head in Saxony and Hamburg while separatism gained influence in the west, the harassed government might well see the events in Munich as the signal for total collapse.

In this tense and murky situation, the future of the country depended on the Reichswehr. Its commander, General von Seeckt, was himself often mentioned in rightist circles as a possible dictator. With the composure of one who knows the ultimate power rests with him, he made a late entrance to the cabinet meeting. Asked by Ebert where the Reichswehr stood at this moment, he replied: “The Reichswehr, Mr. President, stands behind me.” For one brief moment the real power relationships were blindingly illuminated. Nevertheless, at this point he displayed loyalty to the political authorities. A nationwide state of emergency was declared, and executive power throughout the Reich was given to Seeckt. In the weeks to come he proved capable of even-handed dealing with the disruptive forces of both Right and Left.