The Drummer
In the seething beer
cellars, heavy with smoke, the agitator who had now risen to be the party's
‘recruiting chief’ slowly talked his way upward; the record of a meeting in October
1920 states that there were almost five thousand listeners. It was probably at this
time that Hitler decided to become a politician.
The party's name was
changed; it was now called - on the basis of existing groups, but also in
response to an as yet inarticulate, but widespread need - the National
Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei: NSDAP). By the end of 1920 it numbered some three thousand members,
and six months later the prolonged and bitter struggle for the leadership ended
with total victory for Hitler. On 7 December 1921 the Volkische Beobachter for
the first time called him the “leader of the NSDAP.”
The poet Dietrich Eckart,
who had joined Drexler's party before Hitler and had contacts with all the
rightist circles, introduced him to Munich society, and the half curious, half
repellent figure had its effect in the traditionally liberal stratum with its weakness
for oddities. All accounts describe Hitler as awkward, fawningly polite, “noteworthy
for his hasty greed when eating and his exaggerated bows.” His lack of confidence
remained for a long time, and his sometimes eccentric efforts to show off mirrored
the irreparably disturbed relationship to polite society of the former occupant
of the charity ward and inmate of the men's hostel. He is reported to have made
a habit of arriving late and leaving early; loud, ostentatious outbursts
against Jews or political opponents alternated abruptly with phases of
introspective withdrawal.
It was in Munich society
that he made the acquaintance of a large proportion of his closest followers,
among them Hermann Goring, the last commander of the Richthofen Fighter
Squadron; the stiff, admiration-hungry Rudolf Hess, the Baltic German architect
Alfred Rosenberg; and Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, who died on 9 November
1923, outside the Feldherrnhalle; all of these, and the many adherents of the
second rank, were not workers, as the party's name implied, but representatives
of an intellectual Bohemia, members of a middle class economically affected or
mentally disorientated by the war.
The country's growing
misery helped his rise, and he was already a leading figure in Bavarian
politics when, in 1923, Germany was overwhelmed by crises. In North Germany
there was a quickly repressed military putsch; in the Rhineland the separatist
movement gained fresh impetus; in the Rhur, France's narrow-minded policy
provoked a struggle for that region; Saxony and Thuringia came increasingly under
the influence of the radical left; and as the value of the mark plunged hunger riots
broke out everywhere. A revolutionary situation had arisen, charged with the moods
and expectations of civil war.
In the mistaken belief
that Kahr was ready to strike, he [Hitler] attempted a dramatic coup on the
evening of 8 November, seeking to place himself at the head of all
antirepublican groups in the Bavarian capital. Brandishing a pistol, he burst
into the midst of a gathering of dignitaries, leading politicians and picked
citizens of the province, who had been invited by Kahr to the Burgerbraukeller.
After firing a shot into the ceiling he announced the National Revolution, declared
the Bavarian government deposed, and proclaimed a provisional Reich government
under his own leadership.
But the attempt failed.
Hitler was torn between rage, despair and nervous breakdown. His sequence of
hysterical moods foreshadowed the later convulsions and fits of frenzy of the
defeated war leader and clearly demonstrated the failure of a basically unstable
neurotic in a critical situation. . . .
On the following day (9
November) he placed himself, together with Ludendorff, at the head of a growing
crowd that finally numbered several thousands. In the Odeonplatz, directly
beside the Feldherrnhalle, there was an exchange of fire with a numerically
weak police cordon. Hitler and the majority of his companions in the front rank
fell or threw themselves to the ground; only Ludendorff, trembling with rage,
walked on with heedless heroism and was arrested. Hitler then fled, leaving behind
a few thousand followers and sixteen dead. The legend, obviously put about later
by himself, that he had carried a helpless child out of the firing line - he
even produced the child in support of his statement - has been proved false. .
. .
The course of the ensuing
trial, which began on 25 February 1924, was determined by the tacit agreement
of all those taking part not to “touch upon the ‘essence’ of those events,” so
that the hearing was reduced to a farce in which Hitler unexpectedly ceased to
be the accused and became the accuser.
The verdict of the Munich
people’s Court, as has been aptly remarked, corresponded almost exactly to the
heavenly verdict predicted by Hitler. The president of the court had the
greatest difficulty in persuading the three lay judges to find him guilty at
all.
They agreed only on his
assuring them that Hitler would unquestionably be granted an early pardon. The
sentence, the preamble to which once more emphasized the accused’s “purely
patriotic spirit and noblest intentions,” was the minimum punishment of five
years' imprisonment with the prospect of serving the term on probation after
six months in prison. . . After this
Hitler showed himself to the cheering crowd from a window of the law courts.
This failure [the failure
of November 1923] was the starting point for a struggle for power in entirely
new conditions and by new methods. Of decisive importance in this struggle was
Hitler’s realization that force was not the way to capture the modern state
apparatus, that power could be seized only on the basis of the Constitution
itself. This certainly did not mean that he accepted the Constitution as a
binding limitation on his future efforts; it meant that he resolved, and rigorously
held to his decision throughout the rest of his struggle for power, regardless
of dissensions within the party and revolts by the impatient, to steer towards
illegality under the protection of legality.
The unsuccessful putsch
marked the end of Hitler’s political apprenticeship. The understanding of power
that enabled him to rise during the following years was based on an ability to
adapt to those in power, adroit handling of tactical compromises, and growing
familiarity with the techniques of psychological domination and the principles
of party organization. This last he increasingly directed towards his own person,
elevating himself from the role of drummer to the pseudometaphysical concept of
the `Fuhrer.'
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