Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
This is part 8 of the Adolf Hitler story. You can start listening here, or find parts 1 to 7 in season 2 of Real Dictators. It's November the 9th, 1923. A cold, crisp evening in the southern German city of Munich. Flurries of snow swirl in the air. A young man staggers through the cobbled backstreets, panting hard, right hand clutching his injured left shoulder.
Behind him, cracks of gunfire ring out. There's been a vicious street battle. It's now entered its death throes. At its crescendo, under a hail of bullets, he managed to make his escape. He's lucky to be alive, and he knows it. Over the afternoon, a mob of armed thugs, around 3,000 of them, clashed with the Bavarian State Police and local army units. Those thugs are this man's devoted followers, the Sturmabteilung, the SA.
Brown shirts, as everybody calls them, due to their distinctive tan uniforms. They are the paramilitary wing of his political organization, the National Socialist German Workers Party, Nazis for short. Together they've attempted to stage a revolution, to prompt the overthrow of the German government, and it's failed. What this man has committed is an act of treason, a capital offense. He's running not just for safety, he's running for his life.
His name is Hitler. Adolf Hitler. There are two men with Hitler: Walter Schulz, a tall young doctor, the SA's chief medical officer, and an old first aid orderly named Frankel. They usher Hitler to a street corner where a car waits. His grey, open-topped silver 620, a rather clunky vehicle. Its motor is idling, driver at the ready. The doctor eases Hitler onto the back seat, while Frankel climbs in up front.
The driver hits the accelerator and the car hares through the maze of medieval byways. With sporadic gunfire still, and roadblocks on the bridges, they are forced to make evasive maneuvers. Soon the getaway vehicle is winding onto the highway south, heading out of the city toward the Alps. Hitler has been quiet till now, but, grimacing with pain, he informs Schulz of what they all fear: he has been shot. Schulz does his best to examine Hitler.
In the dark, in a moving vehicle, it's impossible. If they keep going for another 40 miles, they can get across the border into Austria. They can tend to him there. But now, another problem. The car. It's breaking down. They pull off the main road and lurch to a halt on a country track. While the driver gets out and prods under the bonnet, Schulz lays his healing hands on Hitler. He removes his leather coat, his tie, and pulls open his shirt.
There's good news and bad news. Hitler hasn't been shot. He's dislocated his shoulder. It's something that can be fixed. I'm not here. The bad news is the car. The driver wipes oily hands and shakes his head. Hitler has a moment of inspiration. He growls out new instructions. They're a few miles from a lake, the Staffelsee. On it lies the village of Uffing. He has friends, a wealthy family, the Hamstengels. They have a villa.
If they yomp across the mountains, through the forest, they can hole up there. The car is a giveaway anyway. Better that they hide it and get off the beaten path. The driver stays. He'll take care of the vehicle. The others help Hitler up. He assures them he can make it. He's a single-minded man but a curious one, this Adolf Hitler. Determined, angry, embittered, humorless, puritanical, largely friendless, the Hamstengels being a rare exception.
As an Austrian in Germany, he's also something of an outsider. At 34 years of age, he has no real home, no family, no sweetheart, no career. He rarely drinks, he doesn't smoke, he's socially awkward. As a revolutionary, he's also demonstrably inept. Yet, in just over nine years time, this doer foreigner, this wounded fugitive, this criminal, will defy the odds to become not only the leader of Germany,
but one of the most evil, murderous men in the history of our planet. This is Hitler's rise to power and this is Real Dictators. In the bitter mountain cold, stumbling through the trees in the dark, it's tough going, especially for the wounded Hitler. After several hours the party descends toward the hamlet of Uffing. As dawn breaks, they watch smoke waft lazily from the chimneys. The picture book Bavarian village seems tranquil, inviting.
But they are marked men, in daylight it's too risky, so they hide out for the rest of the day, frozen, exhausted, hungry, till the sun starts to set. Only then, at around 4pm do they approach the villa, a stone chalet-style building near the village church. Putzi Hamstengel, a wealthy Nazi businessman, had been with Hitler during the uprising. He is currently fleeing too, on his way to Salzburg.
But Hitler knows that Helene, his American-born wife, was dispatched here to their weekend retreat out of harm's way. A housemaid answers the door. She calls her mistress. The concerned Helene Haumstengel takes them in. Dr. Schulz and Helene help Hitler to a first-floor bedroom. His arm is now so swollen that it's going to be impossible to pop back into its socket.
Frankl, after warming up and grabbing some food, returns to Munich to seek out allies. To plot another escape route. He's inconspicuous enough. And then come the questions: What the hell happened? In the scheme of things, the events of the past few hours are not wildly out of place in modern Germany. Amidst the upheaval of the Weimar Republic, the system of governance instituted in the wake of the First World War, political murders and pitched battles have become a regular occurrence.
This is the era of bloody clashes between communists and fascists. Multiple states, including Bavaria, have experienced or are experiencing revolutions. Germany teeters on the brink of civil war. Dr Chris Dillon is senior lecturer in modern German history at King's College London. There was always the prospect of street violence, particularly at tense moments in the extremely busy Weimar electoral cycle.
So if a group of Nazi paramilitaries encountered, by chance or design, a group of leftist paramilitaries, violence was very likely.
Sometimes Nazis would seek out violence by raiding taverns that were known to be used by communists. Large events and parades also showed a good chance of flashing out activists from the other side, unless the police could prevent it. And the police are engaged in a game of whack-a-mole in this respect. This was basically a politics of hooliganism. He who controls the streets can also control the masses.
Eschewing the democratic tradition, speeches and debates, in southern Germany especially, are conducted before the baying crowds that throng the region's vast beer halls. On Friday night, at Munich's cavernous Bürgerbräukeller, the Bavarian State Commissar was addressing just such a meeting, until Hitler, audaciously, burst in and hijacked it, firing his pistol into the ceiling. He was staging a coup, he announced, known colloquially as a "Putsch."
The Bavarian leader and his deputies were now under his command. His stormtroopers were occupying strategic points across the city. Hitler was seizing Bavaria by force. It was the start of a Nazi revolution. Inspired by the Italian fascist Mussolini, who'd led a mass march on Rome, Hitler had then intended to lead his loyalists north to the capital, Berlin. The harebrained scheme had been given credibility by the presence of a national military hero, General Erich Ludendorff.
A talismanic figure, Ludendorff had been, towards the end of the war, the old Kaiser's right-hand man. The general's endorsement of Hitler had raised the enticing possibility that the army, or units of it, might even swing over to their side, or at least refuse to shoot at them. But the Munich putsch ended in farce. Thomas Weber is professor of history and international affairs at the University of Aberdeen.
They assemble, they march through the city center. I think half driven by a hope that they can still change things, that somehow if they march through central Munich, people and military units will join them. But I think also half driven by a realization that they have lost the push, but at least that they want to go down in flames.
They walk north towards the former royal palace and just as they reach the square, police start shooting on them. In the main square, Odeonsplatz, the insurgents were gunned down. It was a shambles. There is insult to add to Hitler's injury. That dislocated shoulder is far from heroic. It happened when someone pulled him to the ground out of harm's way. Someone who copped the bullet with Hitler's name on it.
Hitler's spin doctors will later go into overdrive, alleging, with melodramatic license, that Hitler was crocked while saving a baby. But the uncomfortable facts speak otherwise. While his comrades were grappling to the death, Hitler did a runner. At times during this story you might not believe your own ears. With many dictators, the details are hard to come by.
But several of Hitler's contemporaries, interviewed after the Second World War, were able to provide blow-by-blow accounts of some of the most dramatic episodes in Hitler's life. As a result, we can paint an amazingly clear picture of certain scenes, this aftermath of the Munich Putsch being one of them. Hitler remains stranded deep in the Bavarian countryside, in Ufing. Over the next few hours, news filters back. Hermann Göring, Hitler's unofficial deputy, was shot in the groin.
His wife, Karin, using her aristocratic connections, has managed to smuggle him out of the country. Ernst Röhm, the SA's founder, and Dietrich Eckart, the Nazi writer, are currently in custody. As too is General Ludendorff. The army, as correctly anticipated, had refused to fire upon him. As a further kick in the teeth, radio reports are already recording events as the Ludendorff Putsch. Hitler, its architect, doesn't get a name check.
And so Hitler sits there, brooding, his friend Putzi's blue dressing gown draped around his shoulders. There's something Freudian about this scene. Hitler, though he'll never admit it, has long been enamoured of Helene Halbstengel, an elegant New Yorker of German descent. She is 29 years old, blonde, slim and tall. She'd met her Munich-born husband in the States, where he was a graduate of Harvard. When they married, he brought her back to Bavaria.
The closest Hitler can get to Helene has come in the form of ingratiating himself in her family. In this, his hour of need, it's telling that he's come running to her and is now in her boudoir, signaling his impotence, dressed up in her husband's robe. The Hamstengel's son, Egon, appears. An energetic three-year-old, he loves his uncle Dolph, and for a moment Hitler lightens up as he plays with the little boy.
A little boy, it turns out, who in 1941 will enlist in the United States Army Air Corps. But Hitler's dark funk soon returns. In considerable pain, still, he endures an uncomfortable night. When he wakes, next morning, it's Sunday, November 11th, Armistice Day. A day of infamy in every Nazi's book. The day of national betrayal. And a new betrayal is happening right now. As the hours wear on, it's becoming obvious that there will be no rescue.
Not this time. Hitler has been hung out to dry. It's fascinating to speculate what would have happened if they had reached Austria, because in a way they would have probably never allowed Hitler to return to Germany. But their car breaks down, they make it to the country home of one of Hitler's associates, where a few days later they are arrested. Sure enough, around 5pm, a telephone call comes from Helene's mother-in-law, who lives nearby. The police are on their way over.
It's no use. The game is up. Hitler paces. He rants. He despairs, facing at best a lengthy prison sentence. He makes plans for his beloved Nazi party, for his legacy. Then he snatches up his revolver and rams it to his temple. "This is the end," he cries. "I will never let these swines take me." Who knows how seriously to take this threat of suicide?
Perhaps this could have been the moment of Hitler's end, before it all began, sparing the world everything to come. But Helena pleads with him, "Think of all your followers who believe in you," she soothes. Tenderly she prizes the gun from the distraught Hitler's fingers. She hides it in the kitchen, squirreling it away in a barrel of flour.
He almost certainly tried to commit suicide, or at least he was in a kind of suicidal mood at that time. He thinks all is lost. But Puzi Hammerstrangl's wife really kind of calms him down. She says, look, all is not lost. Let's get on with things. Hitler calms down and he then starts to give orders to those Nazis who still haven't been arrested yet.
An hour later, the police draw up. Weapons raised, Alsatians straining at the leash. Officers climb the stairs and apprehend Hitler. Resistance, as they say, is futile. As they lead Hitler away, he rails against them, against Weimar, against the traitors who have soiled his sacred fatherland. They afford him one dignity. When his leather coat is placed over the dressing gown, they allow him to pin his iron cross to it, an old soldier's privilege.
In the lobby, little Egon runs up and starts slapping at the policeman. "What are you bad, bad men doing to my Uncle Dolph?" Uncle Dolph smiles proudly. He pats the little scamp on the cheek before shaking hands solemnly with the Hanfstengel's domestic staff, saving the final farewell for Helene. Then he strides out of the door to his fate. The small town of Landsberg on the Lech River is about an hour west of Munich. The prison there is new.
Built in an Art Nouveau style, however, it blends tastefully with the Bavarian surroundings. It looks more like an old country estate than a freshly constructed repository for 800 criminals. Landsberg Fortress, as it's known, has a special wing for political prisoners. They're kept separately from the general inmates. There are certain perks: no uniforms, no work programs, no exercise restrictions, decent food.
Prisoner 45, Adolf Hitler, is given cell number 7 on an upper floor. His new quarters are reasonably comfortable, better than some of the digs he's inhabited in Munich. It's a big room with an iron bedstead, a writing desk, a wicker chair, double windows, albeit barred, that look out across the treetops. Not that Hitler's got much time for the comforts at present. First, there's that shoulder to sort out. Turns out that it's broken, as well as dislocated.
The prison medics soon fix him up. More importantly, there's a protest to continue. Everything for the cause. After his rather clumsy suicide threat, this time Hitler goes on hunger strike.
He still thinks again that all is lost. He's in a state of depression. He doesn't want to eat. He again seems to be suicidal. Nothing seems to be going his way. So it really takes a while before he even kind of manages to kind of move on. He survives for nearly two weeks without food, till Anton Drexler, his old political sponsor now banged up in Landsberg 2, talks him out of it.
The arrival of letters from the fragrant, if unattainable, Helena also gives Hitler something to live for. Soon Hitler's eating heartily again. It's the Christmas season, after all. For a man who was once living in flophouses, even sleeping on park benches, he's faring rather well. Piling on the pounds, shoulder healing, Hitler is passed fit medically to stand trial. A court date is set for February.
Though some of his comrades are being held elsewhere, most of the Nazi top brass are now also in residence at Chateau Landsberg. On his floor, Hitler has immediate neighbours in Hermann Kriebel and Dr Friedrich Weber. Kriebel, a retired colonel, was part of the armistice delegation in 1919. His parting remarks to the Allied negotiators had been, rather presciently as it will turn out, "See you again in twenty years." Friedrich Weber, meanwhile, is a Nazi vet.
An actual one, an animal doctor. Downstairs are Drexler, Eckart, Max Amann, Hitler's old company sergeant, now the Nazi Party's publisher, Emil Moritz, Hitler's rough-hewn minder and dog's buddy, plus Julius Streicher, a propagandist whose frothing anti-Semitism exceeds even Hitler's. They will soon be joined by a dutiful party functionary, Rudolf Hess.
Dietrich Eckart, Hitler's ailing mentor, the one who house-trained him politically, does not last long inside. The exertions of the putsch have pretty much finished him off, body ravaged by alcoholism and a morphine addiction. He is released on compassionate grounds and will die on Boxing Day. As for Ludendorff, no one dares incarcerate the dear old general. He remains under house arrest while the authorities figure out how to handle that rather delicate situation.
There is another absence, Max von Schöpner Richter. He is the most notable casualty of the 16 Nazis killed in Odiansplatz, the one who died pulling Hitler out of harm's way. His widow, Matilda, visits Hitler nonetheless. She is the first of many women beguiled by the overwrought little Austrian. She assures him that he still has her support. Her husband's death wasn't his fault. He mustn't give up. And so they sit there,
This ragtag bunch of failed revolutionaries. These impassioned National Socialists. Men who not long before had fancied themselves the stewards of a brand new Germany. A brand new Reich. And then comes the daily airing of grievances. Against the Communists. Against the accursed Treaty of Versailles. And especially against the Jews. They are the last desperate outpourings. For Hitler, for the Nazis, it's the end.
Or at least it would seem to be. So how did it come to this? How did we get here? When we were last in Hitler's company in this show, we had charted his rise from sullen schoolboy to struggling Viennese artist to Munich street agitator. In 1914, like millions of young men all over Europe, Hitler had been swept up in a patriotic frenzy. With the drums beating, he'd rush to enlist, to serve his country and the war to end all wars. In this case, Germany.
There is a slight problem here, for Hitler is not, nor ever has been, a German citizen. Though in the mass recruitment drive no one seemed too bothered. Hitler served on the Western Front. He spent most of the conflict running messages to and from the trenches. Hitler will go on to depict himself as having been a valiant hero at the front. In fact, his comrades scorned him for being an etappenschwein, a rear echelon pig, not a hardened frontline soldier.
That's not to say Hitler was a coward. Records show he suffered a shrapnel wound to the thigh at the Battle of the Somme, the action that won him his Iron Cross. He was later a casualty of a suspected gas attack. There is evidence to suggest he may well have suffered a nervous breakdown. Hitler was in a military hospital in November 1918, recovering from its effects, when word came in of the ceasefire, the dreaded armistice, followed in ensuing months by the Treaty of Versailles.
Versailles, instigated by the Allied war leaders, was unequivocal in its verdict. They were the victors. Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Central Powers were the vanquished and the guilty. The terms placed upon Germany have been severe: loss of territory,
the surrender of its overseas empire, military disarmament, alongside the forced payment of massive financial reparations. As a guarantee, French and Belgian troops currently occupy the industrial heartland of the Ruhr. It has led rapidly to an implosion in the German state, revolutions, the overthrow of the monarchy, along with severe economic hardship, culminating in hyperinflation and mass unemployment.
To millions of young Germans who fought in the war, a war they believed they were waging in self-defense, this outcome, this surrender, is illogical. Unlike the military decision-makers who could see the clear inevitability of defeat, many German citizens viewed things differently. Their Western frontiers were never breached. In the East, they'd seen off the Russians, whose own army got sucked into the Bolshevik Revolution. How is that a loss?
Reconstituted as a republic, post-war Germany has weathered the indignities as best it can. But just four years on from Versailles, those grievances fester. If Germany was not defeated from without, the thinking goes, then surely its downfall was engineered from within. A myth has built up of the stab in the back of those at home who betrayed the heroes of the front, the traitors, selling out Germany's honor
Liberal politicians? Financiers? Marxists? Jews? Hitler is fully subscribed to this theory. Nicholas O'Shaughnessy is Emeritus Professor of Communication at Queen Mary University of London.
The stab in the back, the Duncan Gloss, was entirely self-serving mythology perpetuated to get the military off the hook. They must at some level have known that it was a total fabrication and a complete lie. Part of it was, if you like, ethno-nationalist, a belief in German exceptionalism, the greatness of the German army, which had triumphed over France in 1870.
And of course, the people responsible for the stab in the back could be accused of being the liberals, Jews and so forth. So it was actually a way of castigating those ideologically weaker elements in German society, the subversives. The National Socialist German Workers' Party, molded in Hitler's image, was one such attempt to package this bundle of grievances, to give voice to the disaffected.
With its trademark swastika symbol and its brown-shirted paramilitaries, it had been on the rise, appealing to the working class and the disgruntled, drawing support away from a multitude of rival parties on the right and left. Hitler, meanwhile, had been honing his skills as an impassioned demagogic speaker. But then, the fateful misstep, more than that, the catastrophe that was the Munich Putsch,
Ensconced in Landsberg Fortress, awaiting their day in court, the Nazi prisoners bicker amongst themselves. All except Hitler, who is formulating a strategy. The impending trial. He can show contrition, perhaps mitigate the severity of any sentence placed upon him. Or he can go down swinging. Might as well be hung for a sheep, as they say, than for a lamb. It's February the 24th, 1924. The courtroom is a makeshift one.
set up in the infantry training school on Munich's Blutenbergstrasse. Bavaria is currently in a state of emergency. People's courts like this, adjudicated by magistrates, have replaced the process of trial by jury. Released from their holding cells, the prisoners enter the dock. The selected Putsch ringleaders, including Hermann Kribel, Ernst Röhm, General Ludendorff, and, of course, Adolf Hitler. As they shuffle in, they absorb their surroundings. The place is packed out.
The public gallery crammed. The press benches overflowing. It's immediately apparent that this trial has captured not just Bavaria's, but Germany's imagination. Maybe even the world's. There are foreign reporters here too. There have been, Hitler learns, vigils and protests held in his honor. All rise as the judge and three lay justices enter. They take their places at the bench. The witnesses are summoned.
They are Gustav Ritter von Kahr, the Bavarian State Commissar, alongside General von Lossow and Colonel von Seyser. These three men had constituted Bavaria's ruling triumvirate, the triumvirate abducted in the beer hall by Hitler. As the charge of high treason is read, as witness testimony is recounted, it only underscores the magnitude of mounting any kind of defense. Hitler has been caught bang to rights, and yet, yet...
There are already hints that maybe, just maybe, things might swing Hitler's way. That he has friends in high places, sympathizers, ones who have influence within the judiciary. Take the venue. A trial for treason should, in theory, be heard in the city of Leipzig, where the Supreme Court of Germany sits. But its removal to here, deep in the Nazi heartland, means Hitler will be playing to a home crowd.
The status of political prisoner affords Hitler good presentation too. He appears well fed, healthy. He's dressed in a smart dark blue suit. His iron cross is pinned on for all to see. He looks not like a jailbird, not like a deranged revolutionary, but someone quite honourable, respectable. And there's another bizarre decision. The councils of both sides have agreed not to refer to the central events of the Munich Putsch. All that nastiness and killing?
It will not form any part of the debate. This makes no legal sense. Could it be the judge is a Nazi sympathizer too? It turns out Judge Georg Neidhart and Hitler are not strangers. When Hitler was convicted on a previous charge of political violence three years earlier, it was Neidhart who presided. Hitler received a lenient one month in jail. There's a strong argument that Neidhart shouldn't be here in the case at all.
He's even on record as calling the Munich Putsch a national deed. That said, for Hitler, this is still his toughest gig yet.
As Hitler is facing trial, he knows that he has committed a capital offence, a potentially capital offence. He has committed high treason. In the worst case, that could mean that he would be punished to death. In the best case, he initially probably thinks this would entail a very long prison sentence. It only dawns upon him after quite some time that that is not necessarily what the judges want to do. This really should have taken place
in Leipzig. And there he would have almost certainly received a very severe punishment. But the Bavarian authorities really want to avoid this from happening because, of course,
They had prior knowledge of what was going on. Some of them had plans for putches of their own, and they have no interest whatsoever of those plans to be revealed in Leipzig. This is really why they then kind of find a way, find a trick, find a kind of constitutional trick to conduct the trial in Bavaria. So once the trial starts, Hitler knows that things
are probably not going to be quite as bad as he had initially feared that they would be. In actuality, the Munich Putsch was not that original. It had been a copycat of a right-wing coup attempt in Berlin in 1920, the Kapp Putsch. The tactic of the defendants at that trial had been to enter pleas of innocence, protestations that they were simply following orders. Hitler has no time for such craven shenanigans.
Not only was he responsible for the Munich Putsch, he will declare he is bloody well proud of it. Emboldened by a sense that the dice just might be loaded in his favor, he goes for broke. He will not merely refute the charge of treason, he will contest the very legitimacy of the system that has brought him here. To the court he proclaims, I cannot declare myself guilty. True, I confess to the deed, but I do not confess to the crime of high treason.
There can be no question of treason in an act that aims to undo the betrayal of this country in 1918. I consider myself not a traitor, but a German who desired what was best for his people. He isn't a German, remember? But why let the facts get in the way of a good diatribe? Suddenly, the crowd are on their feet, cheering him on. And if there's one man who complains at the gallery, it's Uncle Dolph.
Claudia Kuhns is Professor Emeritus of History at Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Duke University. And here again we see Hitler's astute ability to read the situation and decide what it offered to him. And so he snatched victory from failure.
He looked at his judges. All of them were staunch right-wing nationalists. And all of the other men on trial, all of the other conspirators on trial for treason said, oh, no, no. Oh, no, we didn't mean exactly that. We were not going to betray our country. Our ideals were very high. Their defense was, I didn't do it.
Hitler alone stood tall. He looked at his judges. He always addressed them, your honor. He said, I do not deny my responsibility. My goal is
in conquering Bavaria was to begin the liberation of my country, my people. He always said my people, folk, not my nation. That sounds French and foreign. Hitler spoke about his people. So he stood there and he said, I am responsible. If you think that that makes me guilty, then so be it.
That made Hitler the object of an enormous amount of press coverage. Hitler has pulled the rug from under the whole judicial process. It's not about him, he protests. Heaven forfend. It's about the whole rotten system. Those November criminals. The ones who signed away Germany at Versailles. Hitler is now on the offensive.
The court stands accused. The state prosecutor flusters, scrambling to protect the honor of the Bavarian triumvirate, to prove that Kahr, Lossoff and Saisa are the ones who aren't guilty. There is an irony here, for Kahr was a supporter of the kaputsch. He also has his own designs on installing a nationalist dictatorship in Berlin. Philosophically, he cannot disagree with a word Hitler is saying. He's being tied up in knots.
We have to bear in mind, Hitler is someone who's only just entered the national stage. It was only earlier in 1923 that Hitler had finally allowed himself to be photographed, that he finally started to talk about his own life. So people all over Germany had started to hear that there was this...
guy in Bavaria, but people didn't quite know who he was. In terms of his survival, I mean, personal survival, he would have realized pretty quickly that his life is not in jeopardy. But in terms of political survival, it doesn't really make that much of a difference whether you're being put away for a year, for five years or 10 years or 20 years, because generally the expectation is that
Once you're out of the limelight, someone else will take your spot. So Hitler ultimately suddenly endorses being blamed for everything because he realizes, look, for one, I will probably get a lenient prison sentence. And for another, this trial will really make me famous. So it was really the trial that made Hitler famous.
The spectators love it. This is pure theatre, pantomime. They roar, they laugh, they boo, they hiss, and Hitler is chewing up the scenery. As one Bavarian cabinet minister sighs, "The court had never yet shown itself to be on any side but that of the defendants." Hitler is given carte blanche by Judge Neidhart.
He can set the court's agenda, he can cross-examine witnesses, he can rant uninterrupted, barking away in his distinctive Bavarian dialect, music to the ears of his supporters. His opening statement alone lasts for four hours. If Ludendorff was the marquee name on the night of the putsch, they should be under no illusion as to who is box office now. Ludendorff is hardly ever there.
Occasionally chauffeured in in his luxury limo, dressed in his military uniform, he is now very much second fiddle. Hitler will be damned if some general is going to steal his thunder. It was he who called the shots in the Putsch. He was its leader. He utters the immortal words. Its Fuhrer. And a magnanimous one at that. "I believe the hour will come," he bellows.
arms reaching out to clasp the air before him, "When the masses who stand today in the street with our swastika banner will unite with those who fired upon them." At one point in the proceedings, the prosecution produced a psychiatrist to demonstrate that Hitler considers himself the German Mussolini, that he is a man with an alarming messiah complex. But Hitler shouts them down. He has never once ruled out for being in contempt of court. His tirades are merciless.
He is a hellfire and brimstone preacher, and the dock is his pulpit. There is, observers note, not a shred of the anti-Semitism which ordinarily works its way into every utterance. Hitler has judged his audience. Eventually, even the prosecutor, who received numerous threats just for taking on the case, concedes Hitler's unique gifts as an orator and lauds, for no particular reason, his impeccable private life.
If he had a towel, he would have thrown it in. On March 27th, Hitler builds to his big finale. The Munich Putsch was far from a failure, he claims. It was the first step to a bright new tomorrow. "The army we have formed is growing from day to day. I nourish the proud hope that one day the hour will come when these rough companies will grow to battalions, the battalions to regiments, the regiments to divisions,
that the old cockade will be taken from the mud, that the old flags will wave again, that there will be a reconciliation with the last divine judgment, which we are prepared to face." He turns to the judges and intones solemnly, "For it is not you, gentlemen, who pass judgment on us. That judgment is spoken by the eternal court of history.
You may pronounce us guilty a thousand times over, but the goddess of the eternal court of history will smile and tear to tatters the brief of the state prosecutor and the sentence of this court, for she acquits us. On April 1st, when Hitler returns to court to be sentenced, he leaves behind not just a prison wing bedecked with flowers and gifts, but a visitor's book bursting with signatures, an awful lot of them inscribed in a female hand.
One woman turns up that day, pleading to strip naked and wallow in Hitler's bathtub. At the courthouse, the verdict handed down is not too far removed from the judgment of the eternal court of history that Hitler described in his closing remarks. Despite the judge's hint that they should make some token nod to punishment, the three justices have to be persuaded to even reach a verdict of guilty, firing squad be damned.
Hitler is given a mere five years in prison, with deductions for time served, and the assurance that he will be eligible for parole in just six months, plus a fine of 200 marks. It's the same for all but one of his co-conspirators. General Ludendorff is acquitted to avoid embarrassment as much as anything else. For Hitler, it's the proverbial slap on the wrist. More than that, it's a green light to chance his arm again.
One of the judges was caught on tape, I think.
saying to another judge, oh, this Hitler fellow, this Hitler fellow is quite something, isn't he? Reporters flocked from North Germany. And for the first time, Hitler had name recognition. For the first time, he emerged out of his Bavarian following and became a national figure and was absolutely seen as a hero who may have failed, but as a man who would risk his life
risk his reputation for the sake of his nation. Technically, Hitler should be deported on completion of his sentence. He is still an Austrian, but instead the court pays tribute to his military service. It will serve no dishonor upon, quote, a man who thinks and feels in such German terms. There is no mention in sentencing that in the Munich Putsch, four policemen were killed.
or that during the battle 15 billion paper marks were looted from government offices, or that Hitler had kidnapped Bavaria's political leaders, or that he was still on probation for good behaviour after another breach of the peace back in 1922. To the crowds gathering, Hitler waves from the courthouse window. The recovery of his appetite and the absence of an energy-sapping speaking schedule has added inches to his waistline. Landsberg has been the equivalent of a spa vacation.
one he must now return to. Fearing a scene, the police hurry Hitler away from the court. Now, not just in Germany, but across the globe: London, Paris, Rome, New York, from Sydney to San Francisco, Trondheim to Tokyo, Adolf Hitler is the household name. In the next episode of Real Dictators, Adolf Hitler, now a national figure, begins his sentence proper in the cushy confines of Landsberg prison.
Besieged by well-wishers, he has faith that his time here will be short. To keep the Nazi flame burning, he decides to write a book, another one: "My Struggle, Mein Kampf". But how will it sit in the new, thriving Germany? A fatherland changing from the one he left behind? That's next time on Real Dictators.