Later he would do the same with the “standards,” which he took over from Italian Fascism and conferred upon the storm troops. He introduced “Heil” as a greeting, made a point of military correctness in ranks and uniforms, and in general stressed all formalities: the setting of scenes, the decorative details, the increasingly solemn ceremonials of dedicating flags, reviews, and parades, all the way up to the mass spectacles of the party rallies, where he directed great blocs of human beings against mighty stone backdrops and reveled in the exercise of his demitalents as actor and architect. He spent many hours hunting through old art magazines and the heraldic department of the Munich State Library to find a model for the eagle to be used on the official rubber stamp of the party. His first circular letter as chairman of the NSDAP, dated September 17, 1921, was largely concerned with party symbolism, which he prescribed in loving detail. He instructed the heads of the local groups “to energetically promote the wearing of the party badge. The members are to be continually reminded to go about everywhere and at all times with the party emblem. Jews who take offense at it are to be dealt with at once.”
These two aspects, one ceremonial, the other terroristic, had marked the party from its wretched early beginnings and proved to be an inspired approach on Hitler’s part. The references to brute force by no means repelled; rather, they added a note of strong earnestness to the party program and seemed to fit the historic hour better than the false amiability of traditional party procedures.
Another asset of the NSDAP was its egalitarian character. Nationalist parties of the past had appropriated true patriotic principles for the upper classes, as if only men of property and education had a fatherland. The NSDAP was at once nationalistic and plebeian; rude and ready to brawl, it brought together the idea of nationalism and the gutter. Hitherto, the bourgeoisie had looked upon the masses as a danger against which they had always to be on their guard. The NSDAP seemed to be offering itself as a vanguard of the masses on the side of the bourgeoisie. “We need force to win our battle,” Hitler declared again and again. “Let the others… stretch out in their easy chairs; we are ready to climb on the beer table.” One might not want to follow him oneself; yet here was a fellow who clearly knew how to tame the masses and harness their energies for the right cause.
His own energy seemed inexhaustible. None of his rivals was remotely a match for him. His principle was: a mass meeting every week. And he was not only the organizer of these but the speaker. Of forty-eight meetings held between November, 1919, and November, 1920, he was the speaker at thirty-one. The increasingly rapid tempo of his appearances reflects the growing intensity of his affair with the masses. “Herr Hitler… flew into a fury and screamed so that not much could be understood at the back,” one report records. A poster of May, 1920, announcing his appearance termed him a “brilliant speaker” and promised the visitor “a highly stimulating evening.” Reports from this time on speak of rising attendance figures. Often he talked to 3,000 persons or more. Repeatedly, the recording secretaries noted that when he stepped on the platform in his blue uniform he was “stormily cheered.” The very clumsiness of the summaries reveals the almost hypnotic power the speaker seemed to have over his audience.
The meeting began at 7:30 and ended at 10:45 P.M. The lecturer delivered an address on Judaism. The lecturer pointed out that everywhere one looks there are Jews. All Germany is ruled by Jews. It is a shame that German labor, brain workers and manual laborers both, let themselves be so hounded by the Jews. Naturally because the Jew has the money. The Jew sits in the government and schemes and smuggles. When he has his pockets full again he again hounds the workers back and forth so that again and again he comes out on top and we poor Germans put up with it all. He went on to talk about Russia also…. And who arranged all that? Only the Jew. Therefore Germans be united and fight against the JEWS, For they’ll eat our last crust from under our noses…. The speaker’s concluding words: Let us wage the struggle until the last Jew is removed from the German Reich and even though it comes to a coup and even more to another revolution…. The lecturer received great applause. He also denounced the press… since at the last meeting one of those dirty journalists wrote everything down.
Another account, of a speech given on August 28, 1920, in the Hofbräuhaus, reads:
The lecturer Hitler explained how things stood for us before the war and how they are now. On usurers and profiteers, that they all belong on the gallows. Further on the mercenary army. He said it probably wouldn’t harm the young fellows any if they had to enlist again, for that hadn’t harmed anybody, for nobody knows any more that the young ought to keep their mouths shut in the presence of elders, for everywhere the young lack discipline…. Then he went through all the points in the program, at which he received a lot of applause. The hall was very full. A man who called Herr Hitler an idiot was calmly kicked out.16
With growing self-assurance the party began touting itself as a supporter of “order” by breaking up meetings of the Left, shouting down speakers, administering “reminders” in the form of beatings, and once forcing a piece of sculpture to be removed from a public exhibition on the grounds that it offended public taste. At the beginning of January, 1921, Hitler assured his audience in the Kindl-Keller “that henceforth the National Socialist movement in Munich will ruthlessly prevent all meetings and lectures—if necessary, by force—which are designed to seditiously affect our already sick folk-comrades.”
The party found such gestures all the easier because now, in addition to the protection it enjoyed from the Munich District Army Command, it had become the “spoiled darling” of the Bavarian state government. In the middle of March, rightist circles in Berlin, headed by the hitherto nameless Dr. Kapp and supported by the Ehrhardt Brigade, had attempted a coup. The attempt had collapsed, partly because of its amateur nature, partly because it was instantly countered by a general strike. A simultaneous attempt of the same sort by the Reichswehr and the Free Corps bands in Bavaria met with more success. On the night of March 13 the bourgeois Social Democratic regime was overthrown by the military and paramilitary forces and replaced by a rightist government under the “strong man” Gustav von Kahr.
The Left retaliated with its classic weapon: a general strike. The radical leftists saw a chance to exploit the situation for their own revolutionary ends and asserted leadership over the strike, principally in central Germany and the Ruhr. Their call for arming the proletariat was greeted enthusiastically. Soon, in a well-co-ordinated way that spoke of careful planning, masses of workers were organized in regular military formations. Between the Rhein and the Ruhr alone a “Red Army” of more than 50,000 men was set up. Within a few days it took over almost the entire industrial area. The weak Reichswehr and police units that opposed its advance were crushed; in places veritable battles were fought. A wave of killing, looting, and arson passed over the country, briefly bringing to light how much class hatred was present, repressed by the half-measures of a semirevolution. Soon, however, the military launched a bloody counterattack. The summary arrests, the shootings, and other acts of vengeance again revealed deep-seated feuds and unresolved conflicts. The country, so often divided and torn by contradictions in the course of its history, more and more desperately craved order and reconciliation. Instead, it found itself sinking ever more helplessly into a morass of hatred, distrust, and anarchy.