Beer Hall Putsch
Hitler attempted to seize Bavaria from a beer hall in Munich in November 1923 and was in prison by the following spring. The circumstances were the best he ever had. The currency was collapsing hour by hour, the French were in the Ruhr, Saxony and Thuringia had communist governments, and Bavaria was governed by a triumvirate that was itself in open defiance of Berlin. The plan was to force those three men to lead a march on the capital, on the model of Mussolini's a year earlier. Some 600 SA men surrounded the Bürgerbräukeller on the evening of 8 November while the state commissioner was addressing a meeting; Hitler fired a shot into the ceiling, announced a national revolution, and took the three into a side room, where they agreed under duress and left. They repudiated it within hours. The following morning about 2,000 marchers went towards the war ministry and met a police cordon at the Feldherrnhalle. Sixteen marchers and four policemen were killed, Hitler dislocated a shoulder and fled, and Ludendorff walked through the line and was arrested. The trial in February 1924 is what he made of it. He was permitted to speak at length, used the court as a platform, was reported nationally, and received the minimum sentence of five years from a sympathetic judge. He served nine months, wrote Mein Kampf, and concluded that power would have to be taken legally. The Feldherrnhalle became a shrine after 1933, with an SS guard posted and passers-by required to salute; people who preferred not to used a side street that Munich still calls the shirkers' alley. The party dated its official history from the putsch and held an annual commemoration.
- Year: 1923 CE
- Category: Political
