[A century after Adolf Hitlers first attempt to seize power in
Germany by force, it is worth remembering the economic and political
conditions that gave the Nazis momentum in the first place.]
[[link removed]]

THE NAZIS’ FIRST TRY  
[[link removed]]


 

Mark Jones
November 3, 2023
Project Syndicate
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ A century after Adolf Hitler's first attempt to seize power in
Germany by force, it is worth remembering the economic and political
conditions that gave the Nazis momentum in the first place. _

, Keystone/Getty Images

 

_A century after Adolf Hitler's first attempt to seize power in
Germany by force, it is worth remembering the economic and political
conditions that gave the Nazis momentum in the first place. In an era
of recrudescent nationalism and chauvinism, such historical lessons
have gained new urgency._

DUBLIN – This month marks an instructive centenary. On the morning
of November 9, 1923, a 34-year-old Adolf Hitler led a column of 2,000
armed men through central Munich. The goal was to seize power by force
in the Bavarian capital before marching on to Berlin. There, they
would destroy the Weimar Republic – the democratic political system
that had been established in Germany during the winter of 1918-19 –
and replace it with an authoritarian regime committed to violence.

Marching alongside Hitler was a 50-year-old Bavarian regional court
judge, Baron Theodor von der Pfordten, who carried a legal document
that would have become the basis for the constitution of the new
state. It included provisions to justify the mass execution of the
Nazis’ political opponents, as well as especially drastic measures
targeting Germany’s Jews, who accounted for around 1% of the
population. Jewish civil servants were to be immediately dismissed and
any non-Jewish German who tried to help them was to be punished with
death.

The march was led by men carrying Swastika flags and included at least
one truck with a machine gun mounted on its back. Standing at the
front was Hitler, who wore civilian clothing, whereas everyone else
had donned military or paramilitary uniforms.

Inspired by Benito Mussolini, who had been appointed Italy’s prime
minister following the Italian Fascists’ “March on Rome
[[link removed]]”
in October 1922, the Nazi coup d’état had actually begun the
previous evening. At about 8 p.m. on November 8, Hitler and his armed
supporters had stormed into a political rally at a large Munich beer
hall. As they entered, one of them fired a pistol in the air, while
others trained their guns on the crowd to prevent them from leaving.
Hermann Göring, commander of the _Sturmabteilung_ (Storm Troopers),
then took the stage, telling the irate audience that it should calm
down, because at least everyone still had their beer.

The disrupted rally had been organized by Gustav Ritter von Kahr, the
key figure in a triumvirate alongside Otto von Lossow and Hans Ritter
von Seißer, the heads of the Reichswehr (armed forces) and the police
in Bavaria, respectively. This triumvirate had ruled Bavaria since the
end of September, having come to power as a reaction to the multiple
crises that had enveloped Germany since the start of 1923.

By the autumn of that year, many feared that Germany was on the brink
of civil war. Soldiers and paramilitaries from the conservative
anti-democratic south were taking up arms against working-class
militias and pro-democratic forces from the more liberal north.
Germany was on a knife-edge, and everyone knew it.

FUEL ON THE FIRE

The political spiral had begun on January 11, 1923, when France and
Belgium sent troops to occupy Germany’s coal-producing Ruhr
district, which was the engine of the German economy. French Prime
Minister Raymond Poincaré had ordered the occupation as a means of
ensuring France’s future security and economic prosperity. By the
summer of 1922, he had become so frustrated with Germany’s refusal
to pay its World War I reparations at the rate that the victors
demanded that he decided to take matters into his own hands.

With Belgium’s support, Poincaré sent in French engineers and
technicians to seize German coal and coke, so that they could forcibly
take “reparations in kind.” To complete this initial mission, the
occupation consisted of some 100,000 soldiers, who took up residence
in local schools, state buildings, and homes.

While France’s wartime ally, Great Britain, stayed out of the
matter, Poincaré had widespread support at home. WWI, after all, had
laid waste to a Netherlands-sized area of France, and the reality of
the peace had not lived up to French expectations. Poincaré promised
that French soldiers would deliver what the peace treaties had not.1

The occupation confronted the Weimar Republic with an existential
crisis. Without a functioning army capable of resisting the French and
Belgians, German Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno – a businessman with no
party affiliation, who had been appointed by Germany’s Social
Democratic President Friedrich Ebert the previous winter – declared
that Germany would respond with “passive resistance.” France’s
occupation plans would fail because German miners would stop going
into the pits to extract coal, and German railways would cease to
function. It was the first nationalist strike of any significance in
modern German history.

To pay for the economic consequences of shutting down the Ruhr
economy, the German central bank began printing money, an economic
tool that it had used since 1914, first to finance its war effort, and
then in response to various crises during the early years of the
Weimar Republic. Reichsbank President Rudolf Havenstein calculated
that Germany had enough financial reserves – including precious
metals that it had hoarded during WWI – to prop up the value of the
German mark in currency markets.

But Havenstein had assumed that the occupation would last for only a
few weeks. In the event, the prospect of de-escalation soon faded as
French and Belgian soldiers carried out atrocities – including an
unknown number of mass rapes – against German civilians. In one
incident on March 31, 1923, 13 protesting workers were shot dead at
the Krupp works. Under such circumstances, there could be no cooling
of hostilities.

Tensions were heightened further by German “active resistance,”
most of it carried out by small groups of former spies and explosives
experts, with the secret backing of the military and political
leadership. They initially engaged in what we today would call
economic terrorism, by bombing railway lines at critical points of the
network.

But when the secret operatives went beyond the state’s goal of
hitting economic targets and began killing civilians and targeting
French soldiers, the campaign was wound down in the summer of 2023,
angering right-wing German political activists. Germany, they
complained, had once again been “stabbed in the back,” as had
supposedly happened to its armed forces in November 1918.

Meanwhile, the occupiers retaliated against German resistance by
depriving the Ruhr of food imports from unoccupied Germany and forcing
German civilians to travel on trains as human shields. Children
suffered especially, because the closure of the border reduced the
supply of milk to keep newborns and toddlers alive. The fear that many
would die of starvation became so great that the German state
organized mass transportation of children out of the occupied zone
(which was already home to some of the poorest working-class
neighborhoods in the country).

Nor were children the only ones to leave the occupied district. As
relations between occupier and occupied worsened, the French military
expelled hundreds of thousands of German state employees and their
families from the Ruhr, often at gunpoint. Though the initial intent
was to help pacify the district, these expulsions also served
France’s later goal of partial annexation of the territory.

France’s behavior elicited shock internationally. Even in Britain,
there was growing sympathy for the plight of German civilians. By the
summer, Poincaré knew that the occupation was not producing the
results he wanted. At the end of May 1923, he instructed his soldiers
in the Ruhr to execute a German prisoner, Albert Leo Schlageter, who
had been caught during the campaign of active resistance. Germans were
outraged. In Munich, Hitler was among the leaders who stood in front
of mourning crowds condemning Poincaré. For the rest of the summer,
he urged Germans to become a nation of Schlageters – resisters.

CATALYTIC INFLATION

For his part, Havenstein decided to continue printing money to pay for
the campaign of passive resistance. In its first half-year, this
policy cost the Weimar state an extra trillion marks a month, on
average. Then, on April 18, 1923, the central bank’s efforts to prop
up the mark’s exchange rate came to an end, after a sudden increase
in demand for pounds sterling in Berlin made further intervention
impossible.

A livid Havenstein blamed special interests for putting their profits
ahead of Germany’s national survival; but there was little he could
do. From that point on, the value of the mark plummeted. Germans spent
the summer of 1923 adding zeros to all prices. By mid-August, the
American Consul in Cologne estimated that an average family of four
would need 21 million marks per week to survive. It was the first
instance of hyperinflation in a modern industrial state.

Cuno was the first to go. On August 12, 1923, he lost a no-confidence
vote and resigned, to be replaced by Gustav Stresemann, who would
later be described by his biographer as Weimar’s “greatest
statesman
[[link removed]].”
Yet even though Stresemann knew that he had to end passive resistance
and restore stability to the economy, his first crucial decision as
chancellor was to maintain the status quo.

Since the summer, Britain had seemed poised to shift in favor of
Germany. In early August, British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon told
the French directly that the occupation of the Ruhr was illegal. As
Stresemann saw it, a change in British policy could open the door to a
German-British alliance, and that prospect was reason enough to wait.

But it wasn’t to be. On September 19, British Prime Minister Stanley
Baldwin met with Poincaré in Paris, where the two declared that they
were in complete unity. Only then did Stresemann decide finally to
raise the white flag. Passive resistance would cease. Poincaré had
his victory.

Stresemann’s decision pushed Weimar Germany closer to the edge of
the abyss. For opponents of the Republic, the time to act had come.
The Communists were the first to move against it, and the first to
fail. With workers rioting over hyperinflation, the German far left
hoped that it could follow in the footsteps of Lenin’s Bolsheviks
and seize power. But even in the heartlands, working-class Germans
were against them. Most workers wanted stability, not revolution. The
Communists’ plans for a German “October” were soon abandoned.

True, one exception was Hamburg, where a workers’ uprising on
October 23 resulted in around 100 deaths. But the absence of similar
mobilizations across Germany meant that the rebellion could be quickly
repressed. There were also separatist uprisings in the Rhineland,
where French- and Belgian-supported armed militias seeking to create a
breakaway republic fought with German nationalists. On September 30,
at least ten people were killed in clashes between separatists and
police in the center of Düsseldorf.

Like the violence in Hamburg, these battles took place in the open.
Far more threatening to the survival of Weimar democracy was the
scheming behind closed doors. For example, a clique around Reichswehr
General Hans von Seeckt conspired to overthrow the Republic, but
ultimately refrained, owing to the strength of military factions that
still supported democracy.

Hitler was connected to this group, but he was not one of its
important figures. And, unlike the other conspirators, he could not
step back. At the start of the year, his party had around 8,000
members, mostly in Bavaria. By November, that figure had swelled to
around 50,000. This political breakthrough owed much to his promise to
use violence to destroy the Republic. One of his allies even publicly
declared that murdering 50,000 Jews would be sufficient to resolve the
Ruhr crisis.

STREET FIGHTING MAN

By October 1923, Hitler was determined that the time had come to fight
the state. In the first week of November, he set November 11 (the
anniversary of the Armistice) as the date for what became the Munich
putsch, before bringing it forward to November 8 when he learned of
Kahr’s plans for an assembly in the beer hall.

Within moments of entering the beer hall, Hitler and his supporters
had forced Kahr, Lossow, and Seißer into a side room. Threatening
them, he promised that they would either assist in Germany’s rebirth
or ensure their own deaths. Soon after, he led the three men back into
the hall, where they declared that they had joined forces. This news
was met with wild rejoicing from the largely pro-nationalist,
anti-Republican crowd, many of whom believed they were witnessing the
rebirth of the nation after five years of suffering.

But then Hitler miscalculated. Leaving Kahr, Lossow, and Seißer in
the hands of Erich Ludendorff, the former wartime general who had
joined the putschists, the Nazi leader marched his men into the center
of Munich, where he intended to seize control of the levers of power.
This was the turning point: while Hitler’s men were trying, but
failing, to occupy central Munich, Ludendorff agreed to let the
triumvirate go. Released from captivity, they changed sides again.

By the early morning hours on November 9, word had gone out that all
forces associated with the Bavarian state were to resist the
putschists. Contrary to Hitler’s wishes, Bavarian soldiers did not
switch sides, and the putschists soon realized that they had lost the
momentum. To regain it, they decided to march through the center of
Munich, with the hope that a critical mass of the people would join
their ranks.

They encountered their first test of strength at the Ludwig Bridge,
where a Bavarian Army patrol had rushed to create a checkpoint during
the night. Its commander probably had enough firepower to defeat the
putschists militarily. But he dithered and his men were overwhelmed.
Witnesses on a nearby tram later described how the first putschists
– members of Hitler’s “Assault Troops,” a precursor to the SS
– overpowered the soldiers and took their weapons.

The next challenge was not so easily overcome. At the Odeonsplatz (a
large public square), Hitler and his supporters exchanged fire with
the police and the army. While no one ever established with certainty
which side fired first, there was never any doubt about the outcome.
After just two minutes, four policemen and 14 putschists lay dead
(another two putschists were shot dead soon after in a nearby
barracks).

One of the dead was Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, who had been at the
front of the march, his arm linked with Hitler’s. When the first
shots were fired, the two men fell to the ground together. If the
bullet that killed Scheubner-Richter had just been a few inches to the
right, historian Ian Kershaw has pointed out
[[link removed]],
Hitler’s name today would be unknown.

But the future Führer survived.

UNHALLOWED GROUND

Ten years later, Hitler returned to the same spot as chancellor of
Germany. Surrounded by adoring crowds, there was total silence when he
bowed his head in a moment of remembrance. It was the first time that
the Third Reich commemorated the putsch, an event that the Nazis later
celebrated as their movement’s first “blood sacrifice.” The
ceremony became an annual event. In 1935, the Nazi authorities in
Munich even exhumed the bodies of the dead putschists so that they
could be reburied in a specially constructed temple at Munich’s
Königsplatz, following a spectacular all-night ceremony. The temple
was blown up by the Americans in 1947.

At the end of 1923, few liberal supporters of German democracy could
have foreseen Hitler’s return. Marking the new year, the liberal
journalist Erich Dombrowski even predicted
[[link removed]] that
“our descendants will shrug their shoulders and sneer in contempt
when they think about the nationalism and chauvinism of our times.”
Others thought openly about a future of European integration.

The contrast between their expectations and subsequent history ought
to weigh heavily on our understanding of the putsch’s significance a
century later. When it happened, it lasted only 20 hours, and
Hitler’s forces were easily defeated. But it was an illusory victory
for supporters of Weimar democracy. The most destructive political
movement in European history was just getting started. If the
institutions of liberal democracy are shaken and weakened, even a
shambolic insurrection may not remain a failure for long.

_MARK JONES is Assistant Professor of History at University College
Dublin and the author of 1923: The Forgotten Crisis in the Year of
Hitler’s Coup
[[link removed]] (Basic
Books, 2023)._

_Support High-Quality Commentary_

_For more than 25 years, PROJECT SYNDICATE has been guided by a
simple credo: All people deserve access to a broad range of views by
the world's foremost leaders and thinkers on the issues, events, and
forces shaping their lives. At a time of unprecedented uncertainty,
that mission is more important than ever – and we remain committed
to fulfilling it._

_But there is no doubt that we, like so many other media organizations
nowadays, are under growing strain. If you are in a position to
support us, please subscribe now._

_As a subscriber, you will enjoy unlimited access to our On Point
suite of long reads, book reviews, and insider interviews; Big Picture
topical collections; Say More contributor interviews; Opinion Has It
podcast features; The Year Ahead magazine, the full PS archive, and
much more. You will also directly support our mission of delivering
the highest-quality commentary on the world's most pressing issues to
as wide an audience as possible._

_By helping us to build a truly open world of ideas, every PS
subscriber makes a real difference. Thank you._

_SUBSCRIBE NOW [[link removed]]_

* Fascism
[[link removed]]
* History
[[link removed]]
* Germany
[[link removed]]
* democracy
[[link removed]]
* Insurrection
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]