The meeting was to begin at 8:15 P.M. Dressed in a black dress suit, wearing his Iron Cross, Hitler drove to the Bürgerbraukeller. Next to him in the recently acquired red Mercedes sat Alfred Rosenberg and Ulrich Graf, as well as the unsuspecting Anton Drexler, for whom this was to be the last appearance with Hitler’s coterie. For reasons of secrecy he had been told that the group was driving out to the country for a meeting. When Hitler now revealed that he was going to strike at 8:30, Drexler replied shortly and testily that he wished Hitler luck in his undertaking but he himself would have nothing to do with it.
A large crowd was milling about in front of the Bürgerbraukeller, so large that Hitler feared he might be unable to storm the meeting, which was already under way. Hitler summarily ordered the police officer on duty to clear the area. Kahr was well into his speech, evoking the image of the “new man” as the “moral justification for dictatorship,” when Hitler appeared in the door of the beer hall. According to eyewitness accounts, he was extremely agitated. In a moment some trucks full of SA men roared up, and the troops swarmed out to cordon off the building in good warlike style. With his typical love for the theatrical gesture, Hitler held up a beer stein, and as a heavy machine gun made its appearance at his side, he took a dramatic swallow, then dashed the stein to the floor, and with a pistol in his raised hand stormed into the middle of the hall at the head of an armed squad. As steins crashed onto the floor and chairs toppled, Hitler leaped up on a table, fired his famous shot into the ceiling to catch the crowd’s attention, and forced his way through the dumfounded throng to the podium. “The national revolution has begun,” he cried. “The hall is surrounded by 600 heavily armed men. No one may leave the premises. Unless quiet is restored immediately, I shall have a machine gun placed in the gallery. The Bavarian government and the national government have been overthrown, and a provisional national government is being formed. The barracks of the Reichswehr and the state police have been occupied; the Reichswehr and the state police are already approaching under the swastika flag.” He then told Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser “in a harsh tone of command,” the account goes, to follow him into the next room. The crowd inside the hall began calming down, only spluttering now and then, “Playacting!” or “South America!” The SA, however, suppressed such remarks in its own special fashion. Meanwhile, Hitler, in a bizarre scene, attempted to win the reluctant representatives of state power over to his side.
Despite the contradictions and obscurities, the basic outlines of events are fairly plain. Gesturing wildly with his pistol, Hitler first threatened the three men that not one of them would leave the room alive, then excused himself with considerable formality for having had to create a fait accompli in such an unusual manner. He had only wanted to make it easier for the gentlemen to assume their new posts. To be sure, their only choice was to co-operate: Pöhner had been named the Bavarian Prime Minister with dictatorial powers; Kahr was to be state administrator; he himself was taking over the presidency of the new national government. Ludendorff was to command the national army in its march on Berlin, and Seisser had been appointed minister of police. In mounting excitement he exclaimed, “I know that you gentlemen find this step difficult, but the step must be taken. I shall have to make it easier for you to get set for the leap. Each of you must assume his allotted position; whoever fails to do so has forfeited his right to exist. You must fight with me, triumph with me—or die with me. If things go wrong I have four bullets in this pistoclass="underline" three for my collaborators should they desert me, and the last bullet for myself.” To emphasize his point he theatrically pressed the pistol against his forehead and swore: “If I am not victorious by tomorrow afternoon, I am a dead man.”
To Hitler’s astonishment his three prisoners hardly seemed impressed. Kahr especially proved equal to the situation. With visible distaste for this whole melodrama, he replied, “Herr Hitler, you can have me shot, you can shoot me yourself. But whether or not I die is of no consequence to me.” Seisser upbraided Hitler for having broken his word of honor. Lossow said nothing. Meanwhile, Hitler’s henchmen stood at all the doors and windows and occasionally gestured menacingly with their rifles.
For a moment it seemed as though the calm indifference of the three might spell the doom of the entire operation. Meanwhile, Scheubner-Richter had dashed off in the Mercedes to fetch Ludendorff, who had not been let in on the secret. Hitler now hoped that Ludendorff, with his authority, would turn the trick. Nervous and somewhat shaken by his failure to convince Kahr and the other two, Hitler returned to the crowd, where he felt surer of himself. The historian Karl Alexander von Muller was present and has described the indignation of the prominent people in the audience at being trapped in the hall and bullied by the crude SA men. And now the leader was forcing his way through to the podium, a pretentious young man of obscure origins who seemed somewhat cracked and yet had some sort of appeal for the common man. There he stood, ludicrous in his tail coat, looking much like a waiter by contrast with the urbane, complacent notables in the audience—and in a masterly speech he turned “the mood of the meeting completely inside out… like a glove, with just a few words. I have seldom experienced anything of the kind. When he stepped up to the podium, the noise was so great that he could not be heard. He fired a shot. I can still see the gesture. He took the Browning out of his rear pocket…. He had actually come in to apologize for taking so long, for he had promised that people would be free to go in ten minutes.” But no sooner was he standing before the crowd and noting how the faces all turned his way, expecting something from him, and the voices subsided, than he regained his self-confidence.
In actual fact he did not have much to tell the gathering. In a peremptory tone he simply announced what up to then had been largely his own fantasy: the new names, the new offices, and a series of proposals. “The task of the provisional German national government is to muster the entire might of this province and the additional help of all the German states for the march on that sinful Babylon, Berlin, for the German people must be saved. I will now put the question before you: out there are three men, Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser. The decision to act has cost them severe inner struggle. Are you in agreement with this solution of the German question? You can see that what guides us is not self-interest, not egotism. Rather, we wish to take up the cudgels for our German fatherland, at the eleventh hour. We want to rebuild Germany as a federation in which Bavaria shall receive her rightful due. Tomorrow morning will either find Germany with a German nationalist government—or us dead!” Hitler’s persuasiveness as well as his clever trick of implying that Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser were already won over created what the eyewitness calls a complete turnabout; Hitler left the hall “with the authorization of the gathering to tell Kahr that the whole assembly would stand behind him if he joined in.”
In the meantime, Ludendorff had arrived, testy at Hitler’s elaborate secrecy as well as at not having been consulted when posts were assigned, so that he had received only command of the army. Without preliminaries, he launched into speech, urging the three men to shake hands on the coup; he himself had also been taken by surprise, but a great historical event hung in the balance. Only now, under the personal sway of the legendary national figure did the men begin to give in, one by one. Lossow, like a good soldier, took Ludendorff’s recommendation as a command; Seisser followed his lead; and only Kahr stubbornly refused. When Hitler offered Kahr, as the supreme inducement, the promise that “the people will kneel down before you,” Kahr replied dryly that such a thing meant nothing to him. This little exchange between the two men points up all the difference between Hitler’s hunger for stagy triumphs and the experienced politician with his sober grasp of power relationships.