The infamous Beer Hall Putsch is crushed in Germany on this
day in 1923. Like many events in the 20th
Century, the Beer Hall Putsch stems from the unsatisfactory end to World War
I. The winning powers in the war, mostly
Britain and France (well, mostly France) wanted a vengeful peace that made sure
Germany stayed down. Previous to the
war, Germany would be what modern minds would term a “First World” nation. By the standards of the time, they were
certainly up there. They had a sweet
empire (not as sweet as Britain’s), a kick-ass navy (not as kick-ass as
Britain’s) and an industrial establishment that was every bit the power house
that Britain’s was.
After the war, they had nothing. No colonies, no navy and crippling war
reparation payments. Hitler, and quite a
few other Germans, felt the Treaty of Versailles was a betrayal by egghead
civilians and Marxists and, let’s not mince words, Jews. The Germans had the right to be
surprised. They had been led to believe
that Germany had been winning the war that their armies could not be defeated
and now everything had been lost.
Hitler was but one of thousands of disillusioned, angry
de-mobbed soldiers hanging around with nothing to do. In the cities, violence became commonplace
as different factions fought it out in the street. This was also the high-water mark of in the
infamous Weimar inflation where a wheelbarrow full of cash bought you a slice
of bread. Apparently (and I never knew
this) Hitler still had some affiliations with the German army and had been
ordered to infiltrate the German Workers Party (DAP) and find out what they
were up to. Secret agent Hitler? Anyway, Hitler joins the DAP and finds out
that they’re a bunch of swell guys. Hey,
these guys are crazy nationalist who hate the Jews too! It’s a match made in
heaven.
It wasn’t too long before Hitler was running the DAP and
made them from a bunch of guys getting drunk and bitching about the Jews into a
viable political force. Hitler took as
his model for seizing power Mussolini’s coup the year before in 1922. But Germany ain’t Italy, as Hitler would
later learn. Hitler took 600 of his
closest buds and a bunch of machine guns and surrounded the beer hall where one
of Hitler’s rivals was making a speech.
Hitler stormed into the hall, fired into the air, jumped up on a table
and shouted, "The national revolution has broken out! The hall is filled
with six hundred men. Nobody is allowed to leave." Not exactly, “You have nothing to lose but
your chains.”
Well, it didn’t work. The Nazis went on to cause all sort of
mischief, beating people up and generally being a nuisance. Buy November 9th, the writing was
on the wall. Nobody was signing up for the revolution, the DAP was like, “We
just wanted to drink beer, man.” “And bitch about the Jews!” “Yeah, and bitch
about the Jews!” and the government was starting to get tired of this
shit. The putsch was crushed and Hitler
did a year in jail using his time to write Mein Kampf, one of the most
unreadable books ever written.
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