And in fact the prospects for a “March on Berlin” were by no means unfavorable. As became clear the next morning, public sentiment was clearly on the side of Hitler and the Kampfbund. From numerous apartment house windows and even from City Hall and public buildings the swastika flag fluttered, and the newspaper accounts of the events in the Bürgerbraukeller had an approving tone. Many people came to the campaign headquarters the Kampfbund had set up in various parts of the city, while in the barracks the lower rank officers and the enlisted men frankly expressed their sympathy with Hitler’s plans for the march. The speakers whom Streicher had sent around were met with hearty applause in the strangely feverish atmosphere of that bleak November morning.
But during these hours Hitler was isolated from the public, cut off from the impetus and encouragement he might have received from the crowds. Thus, as the day wore on, he began to have second thoughts; even at this early stage in his career he appeared to be entirely dependent on the masses for increasing or diminishing his assurance, energy, and courage. Early in the morning he had sent the Kampfbund’s communications director, Lieutenant Neunzert, to Crown Prince Rupprecht in Berchtesgaden to ask him to act as intermediary. Now he was waiting inactively for Neunzert’s return. He also feared that a demonstration might lead to a clash with armed soldiers and police and thus repeat the debacle of May 1 in a far more fatal manner. Ludendorff finally put an end to Hitler’s temporizing with an energetic, “We shall march!” Toward noon several thousand persons lined up behind the standard bearers. The leaders and officers were sent to the head of the line: Ludendorff appeared in civilian clothes; Hitler had thrown a trench coat over his tail coat of the previous evening. Beside him stood Ulrich Graf and Scheubner-Richter; then came Dr. Weber, Kriebel, and Göring. “We set out convinced that this was the end, one way or another,” Hitler later remarked. “I remember someone who said to me as we were coming down the steps, ‘this finishes it!’ Everyone had that same conviction.” They set out singing.
On the Isar bridge the procession was met by a strong detachment of state police, but Göring intimidated the policemen with the threat that if a single shot was fired, all the hostages would be killed instantly. As the policemen wavered, they found themselves being pushed aside by the columns of sixteen men abreast, surrounded, disarmed, spat, upon, and cuffed by the crowd. In front of the Munich City Hall Streicher was just delivering a speech from the top of a staircase; the crowd was large. How grave a juncture this was for Hitler can be measured from the fact that he, to whom the masses had rushed as “to a savior,” marched silently on this day. He had taken Scheubner-Richter’s arm as if he needed support; this, too, was an odd gesture, scarcely according with his image of a Führer. Amidst the cheering of the crowd the procession swung haphazardly into the narrow streets of the Old City; when it neared the Residenzstrasse the lead party began to sing “O Deutschland hoch in Ehren” (“Oh, Germany high in honor”). At the Odeonsplatz the procession again encountered a police cordon.
What happened next is not exactly clear. From the confusion of accounts, some fanciful, some in the nature of apologies, agreement prevails on only one point: a single shot rang out, provoking a steady exchange of fire that lasted only about sixty seconds. The first to fall was Scheubner-Richter, fatally wounded. In his fall, he pulled Hitler with him, wrenching his arm out of joint. Oskar Korner, the former vice-chairman of the party, was hit, as was Chief Magistrate von der Pfordten. When it was all over, fourteen members of the procession and three policemen lay dead or dying on the street, and many others, including Hermann Göring, had been wounded. Amidst the hail of bullets, while all were dropping to the ground or scurrying for cover, Ludendorff stalked upright, trembling with rage, through the police cordon. The day might possibly have ended differently had a small band of determined men followed him; but no one did. It was certainly not cowardice that forced many to the ground; it was the rightists’ respect for the legitimate representatives of government authority. With grandiose arrogance the general stood waiting for the commanding officer and allowed himself to be arrested. Brückner, Frick, Drexler, and Dr. Weber also submitted to arrest. Rossbach fled to Salzburg, Hermann Esser to Czechoslovakia. In the course of the afternoon Ernst Röhm also capitulated; earlier he had occupied army headquarters, after a short exchange of gunfire that had cost two members of the Kampfbund their lives. His standard bearer on this particular day was a young man with a somewhat girlish face and wearing glasses, the son of a respected Munich gymnasium headmaster. The young man’s name was Heinrich Himmler. In a farewell march, the company paraded silently through the streets, unarmed, the men carrying their dead on their shoulders. Then it disbanded. Röhm himself was arrested.
Ludendorff’s heroic bearing had cast an unflattering light on Hitler, whose nerves had again failed him. The reports of his followers are contradictory only in small details: they agree that even while the situation was still fluid, he scrambled up from the pavement and took to his heels, leaving behind him the dead and wounded. His later excuse that in the confusion he had thought Ludendorff had been killed was hardly impressive, for in that event there would have been even more reason for him to stay. In the midst of the general chaos he managed to escape with the help of an ambulance. A few years later he concocted the legend that he had carried a child out of the firing line to safety; he even produced the child. But the Ludendorff circle demolished this legend before Hitler himself abandoned it. He reached Uffing on the Staffelsee, about thirty-five miles from Munich, where he took refuge in Ernst Hanfstaengl’s country house and nursed the painful sprained shoulder he had suffered in the course of the battle. Broken in spirit, he kept repeating that the time had come to put an end to things and shoot himself, but the Hanfstaengls managed to dissuade him. Two days later he was arrested and taken off to the fortress of Landsberg am Lech. “His face was pale and hunted, with a wild lock of hair falling into it.” Concerned with his image even in the depths of defeat, he had the officer of the arrest party pin the Iron Cross First Class to his lapel before he was led off.
Once behind bars he remained in a state of total despondency. At first he believed “that he was going to be shot.” In the following days Amann, Streicher, Dietrich Eckart, and Drexler were also brought in. Scattered about in various Munich jails were Dr. Weber, Pöhner, Dr. Frick, Röhm, and others. The government had not dared to arrest Ludendorff. Hitler himself apparently felt he was in the wrong simply because he had survived. In any case, he considered his cause lost. For a few days he considered—how seriously it is impossible to say—cheating the firing squad by starving himself to death in a hunger strike. Anton Drexler later claimed credit for talking him out of this plan. The widow of his slain friend, Frau von Scheubner-Richter, also helped him come through the depression of this period. For the shots fired in front of the Feldherrnhalle meant not only the sudden end of three years of progress that had verged on the miraculous; it also meant a terrible collision with reality. Hitler’s whole system of tactics had been demolished.