Because of the shift in power relationships, Bavaria became the natural center for radical rightist plots—even more than it had previously been. The Allies had repeatedly demanded that the paramilitary bands be dissolved. The Kahr government in Bavaria resisted, for these bands were its strongest support. Gradually, all those irreconcilable enemies of the republic who could ill stand the climate in other parts of Germany poured into the Bavarian militias and private armies, which already numbered more than 300,000 men. Among them were followers of Kapp who had fled Berlin, determined remnants from the dissolved Free Corps of the eastern regions of the Reich, the “National Warlord” Ludendorff, vigilante killers, adventurers, nationalist revolutionaries of various ideological shades. But all were united in their desire to overthrow the hated “Jews’ Republic.” They were able to exploit the traditional Old Bavarian separatism; the Bavarians had a long history of intense dislike for Prussian, Protestant Berlin. They flattered their Bavarian hosts with the slogan Ordnungszelle Bayern (“Bavaria as the mainstay of public order”). With more and more open support from the state government, these paramilitary groups began setting up arms depots, converting castles and monasteries into secret military bases, and plotting assassinations and coups. The conspiratorial whisperings went on constantly; all the groups were engaged in treasonous projects and often worked at cross-purposes.
These developments proved highly important to the rising National Socialist Party. The military, the paramilitary, and the civilian holders of power all looked upon it with favor, the more so as the party proved itself increasingly successful. After Hitler had been received by Prime Minister von Kahr, one of Hitler’s student followers, Rudolf Hess, addressed a letter to the head of state: “The central point is that H. is convinced that a recovery is possible only if it proves possible to lead the masses, particularly the workers, back to the nationalist cause…. I know Herr Hitler very well personally and am quite close to him. He has a rarely honorable, pure character, full of profound kindness, is religious, a good Catholic. His one goal is the welfare of his country. For this he is sacrificing himself in the most selfless fashion.”
The day of public acceptance had come: The Prime Minister finally mentioned Hitler, in terms of praise, in the Landtag. Pöhner, the police commissioner of Munich, let Hitler do pretty much as he pleased. Roles in the forthcoming drama had been assigned. It became possible to discern the shape of that political constellation which has been called typical of Fascist conquests of power. Henceforth, Hitler was leagued with the conservative power of the Establishment, pledged to it as the advance guard in the fight against the common Marxist enemy. The conservatives thought they would make use of the energies and hypnotic arts of this unruly agitator and, at the proper moment, outmaneuver him by their own intellectual, economic, and political superiority. He, meanwhile, intended to march the battalions he had built up under the benevolent gaze of the ruling powers over the body of the enemy and against his partners in order to seize all the power. Hitler was playing that peculiar game, whose moves were marked by illusions, treacheries, and perjuries, with which he subsequently won almost all his victories and outwitted successively Kahr and Hugenberg, Papen and Chamberlain. On the other hand, his blunders, down to the ultimate failure in the war, were partly due to actions of impatience, petulance, or overconfidence.
The progress of the party was greatly furthered by the purchase of the Völkische Beobachter in December, 1920. Apparently Dietrich Eckart and Ernst Röhm raised the 60,000 reichsmarks that represented the down payment for the financially troubled racist-nationalist semiweekly.17 Among the donors were many members of respectable Munich society, to which Hitler now found an entry. For this, too, he was indebted to Dietrich Eckart, a man of many connections. A roughhewn and comical figure, with his thick round head, his partiality for good wine and crude talk, Eckart had missed the great success he hoped for as a poet and dramatist. (His best known work was the German version of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt). In compensation he had thrown himself into that bohemian group which indulged in politics. He had founded a political club called the German Citizens Society, but that, too, had come to nought. Another failure was the periodical Auf gut Deutsch (“Plain Speaking”), which, in corrosive language, and with displays of pseudoerudition propounded the familiar anti-Semitic theses. Along with Gottfried Feder, Eckart preached a revolution against “interest slavery” and for “true socialism.” Influenced by Lanz von Liebenfels, he called for a ban on racially mixed marriages and demanded protection for pure German blood. He referred to Soviet Russia as “the Christian-kosher-butchering dictatorship of the Jewish world savior Lenin” and said that what he wanted most was “to load all Jews into a railroad train and drive into the Red Sea with it.”18
Eckart had met Hitler early. In March, 1920, during the Kapp putsch, both were sent by their nationalist backers to survey the scene in Berlin. Well read and a shrewd psychologist who possessed extensive knowledge consonant with his prejudices, Eckart exerted great influence upon the awkward and provincial Hitler. With his bluff and uncomplicated manner, he was the first cultivated person whom Hitler was able to endure without an upsurge of his deep-seated complexes. Eckart recommended books to Hitler and lent him some, schooled his manners, corrected his language, and opened many doors to him. For a time they were an inseparable pair on the Munich social scene. As early as 1919 Eckart had prophesied the rise of a national savior, “a fellow who can stand the rattle of a machine gun. The rabble has to be scared shitless. I can’t use an officer; the people no longer have any respect for them. Best of all would be a worker who’s got his mouth in the right place…. He doesn’t need much intelligence; politics is the stupidest business in the world.” As far as he was concerned, someone who always had “a tough reply” to the Reds was far to be preferred to “a dozen learned professors who sit trembling on the wet pants seat of facts.” Last but not least: “He must be a bachelor! Then we’ll get the women.” Hitler seemed to him the embodiment of this model, and as early as August, 1921, in an article in the Völkische Beobachter he for the first time hailed him as the Leader. One of the early battle songs of the NSDAP, “Storm, Storm, Storm!” was written by Eckart, and the refrain of every stanza became a party slogan: “Germany, awake!” Hitler repaid Eckart by declaring that he had written “poems as beautiful as Goethe’s.” He publicly called the poet his “fatherly friend” and described himself as a disciple of Eckart. Along with Rosenberg, Eckart seems to have wielded the most lasting ideological influence upon Hitler during that early period. Evidently he also made Hitler aware of his own stature. The second volume of Mein Kampf ends with the poet’s name printed in italics.
The welcome Hitler received in the Munich society to which Dietrich Eckart introduced him was scarcely of a political nature. One of the first ladies to open her salon to him was an American by birth, Catherine Hanfstaengl, mother of a young man named Ernst (“Putzi”) Hanfstaengl, who had fallen under Hitler’s oratorical spell. She herself was by no means nationalistic. Liberals were intrigued by this phenomenon of a young popular orator with Neanderthal views and unpolished manners. His sometimes shocking public behavior made him the more interesting. He had the aura of a prestidigitator, the acrid odor of both the circus and of tragic embitterment, the sharp glitter of a “famous monster.” The common topic of conversation was frequently Richard Wagner; Hitler would rhapsodize at length about Wagner in staccato phrases. The descriptions we have all convey a mixture of eccentricity and clumsiness. With people of importance Hitler was inhibited, brooding, and to some extent servile. During a conversation with Ludendorff at this time he kept raising his backside slightly after each of the general’s sentences, “with a half bow uttering a most respectful, ‘Very well, your Excellency!’ or ‘Quite so, your Excellency!’ ”