Thereupon the triumvirate called in the leaders of the patriotic organizations on November 6 and peremptorily informed them that they, the heads of government, were directing the forthcoming operation and would smash any private initiatives. This was their final attempt to regain control. Hitler was excluded from this meeting as well. That same evening the Kampfbund resolved to seize the next opportunity for striking, thus bringing the triumvirate and as many of the undecided as possible to join in a contagious rush on Berlin.
This decision is often cited as proof of Hitler’s theatrical, overwrought, megalomaniac temperament. There is a tendency to make the operation seem ridiculous by the use of such terms as “Beer-hall Putsch,” “Political Fasching,” and so on. To be sure, the undertaking had its comic aspect. Nevertheless, it also reveals Hitler’s knack for sizing up a situation, his courage, and his tactical consistency.
In actual fact Hitler no longer had a choice on the evening of November 6. Since the defeat of May 1, from which he had barely recovered, the call to act was almost unavoidable. Otherwise he would jeopardize the very quality that made him unique among the profusion of parties and politicians: the radical, almost existential seriousness of his sense of outrage. It was his unyieldingness and refusal to compromise that made him impressive and credible. As leader of the Kampfbund he had acquired command over a striking force whose will to act was no longer fragmented by collective leadership. And finally, the storm troopers themselves were impatiently pressing for action.
Their restlessness had various causes. They were professional soldiers, who after weeks of conspiratorial preparations were all keyed up for action. Some of the paramilitary organizations, which had been on battle alert for weeks, had taken part in the “fall maneuvers” of the Reichswehr, but now all their funds had been used up. Hitler’s treasury was also exhausted, and the men were going hungry.
The pressures on Hitler become the more apparent from the statement made by Wilhelm Bruckner, the commander of the Munich SA regiment, at a secret session of the subsequent triaclass="underline"
I had the impression that the Reichswehr officers were dissatisfied too, because the march on Berlin was being held up. They were saying: Hitler is a fraud just like the rest of them. You are not attacking. It makes no difference to us who strikes first; we are going along. And I myself told Hitler: one of these days I will not be able to hold the men back. Unless something happens now, the men will take off on you. We had many unemployed in the ranks, fellows who had sacrificed their last pair of shoes, their last suit of clothing, their last penny for their training and who thought: soon things will get under way and we’ll be taken into the Reichswehr and be out of this mess.46
In a discussion with Seisser at the beginning of November, Hitler himself said that something had to be done immediately or the troops of the Kampfbund would be driven by economic necessity into the Communist camp.
Hitler had not only to worry about the morale of his troops; the mere passage of time also had its dangers. The revolutionary discontent threatened to evaporate; it had been strained far too long. Meanwhile, the end of the struggle for the Ruhr and the defeat of the Left had brought a turn toward normality. Even the inflation seemed about to be checked, and the spirit of revolution seemed to be vanishing along with the crisis. There was no question that Hitler’s effectiveness was entirely bound up with national distress. So to hesitate now would be fatal, even if certain pledges he had made stood in his way. These did not trouble him so much as a flaw in the plan: contrary to his principles he would have to venture on the revolution without the approval of the Prime Minister of Bavaria.
Nevertheless, he hoped that sufficient boldness on his part would extort this approval, and even the Prime Minister’s participation. “We were convinced that action would only come if desire were backed up by will,” Hitler later told the court. The sum total of significant reasons for action was thus counterweighed only by the risk that the coup might fail to ignite the courage of the triumvirate. It would seem that Hitler gave little thought to this danger, for he felt that he would only be forcing the triumvirate into something it had been planning in any case. In the end the entire undertaking foundered on this one point. The episode showed up the weakness of Hitler’s sense of reality. He himself, to be sure, never accepted this charge; on the contrary, he was always somewhat proud of his disdain for reality. He quoted Lossow’s statement that he would take part in a coup d’état only if the odds were 51 to 49 for a successful outcome as an example of hopeless enslavement to reality.
Yet there were other reasons besides the calculable ones that spoke in favor of action; in fact, the course of history has shown Hitler to have been right in a broader sense. For the undertaking that ended in debacle nevertheless turned out to be the decisive breakthrough on Hitler’s way to power.
At the end of September, in the midst of all the hectic preparations and maneuverings for position, Hitler had staged a “German Day” in Bayreuth and used the occasion to present himself at Wahnfried, the home of the Wagners. Deeply moved, he had gone through the rooms, sought out the Master’s study, and stood a long time before the grave in the garden. Then he was introduced to Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who had married one of Richard Wagner’s daughters and through his books had been a formative influence on Hitler. It was a poor sort of interview with the partially paralyzed, speechless old man; yet Chamberlain sensed the quality of the visitor. Writing to him a week later, on October 7, he lauded Hitler not as the precursor for someone greater, but as the savior himself, the key figure of the German counterrevolution. He had expected to meet a fanatic, he wrote, but now his instinct told him that Hitler was of a higher order, more creative and, despite his palpable force of will, not a man of violence. The meeting, Chamberlain added, had set his soul at rest, for “the fact that in the hour of her greatest need Germany should produce a Hitler is a sign that she is yet alive.”47
To the demagogue at that very moment facing a crucial decision, those words came as the answer to his doubts, as a benediction from the Bayreuth Master himself.
The Putsch
And then a voice shouted, “There they come, Heil Hitler!”
The two days leading up to November 8 were filled with nervous activity. Everyone negotiated with everyone else, Munich reverberated with warlike preparations and rumors. The Kampfbund’s original plan called for staging a major night maneuver north of Munich on November 10; the next morning they would march into the city, still pretending to be an ordinary parade, and on reaching the center would proclaim the nationalist dictatorship, thus forcing Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser to commit themselves. While consultations were still going on, it was learned that Kahr was planning to deliver an important address on the evening of November 8 in the Bürgerbraukeller; the cabinet, Lossow, Seisser, the heads of all the government agencies, industrial leaders and directors of the patriotic organizations were invited. Fearing that Kahr might get the jump on him, Hitler revised all his plans at the last moment and decided to act the following day. The SA and the Kampfbund units were mobilized in great haste, and the stage was set.