THE LAST WEEK - THE ROAD TO WAR
Chapter 9 - Part 4
August 30, 1939

The only other beneficiary of the inflation is Seeckt and his Truppenamt. They inform the Allied Control Commission that the economic chaos in the Reich prevents them from guaranteeing the safety of the Commission members. The French and British inspectors confine themselves to quarters.

That gives Seeckt´s men time to whip up a contract with Heinkel for the new He 1 monoplanes, which can be used as fighters. They make another deal with an old supplier to the Reich, the Dutchman Anthony Fokker, for his new D. 13 fighter, fastest in the world, with its British Napier-Lion engine, at 171 miles per hour. Fokker asks the Reichswehr where the fighters are going, since Germany cannot legally purchase fighters? Argentina, he is told. He doesn´t inquire any further.

By August, massive inflation and French occupation are a devastating combination. Three-quarters of a million kumpel and steelworkers are on strike. Terrorists cut down French troops right and left. The French try to create a Ruhr-Rhineland Republic, which collapses almost immediately, lacking any sort of credibility and popular support.

By September, a loaf of bread costs 1.5 million marks. On September 5, a German bank sends a letter to a doctor, who has had 86,000 marks in his account since 1914. The letter reads: "The bank deeply regrets that it can no longer handle your account of 86,000 marks because the related fees are way out of proportion to the capital. We therefore take the liberty of returning your capital to you. Since we do not have any bank notes small enough, we rounded the sum up to a figure of 1 million marks. Enclosure: one bank note worth 1 million marks." The stamp on the envelope is worth 5 million marks.

By November, a loaf of bread costs 201 trillion marks.

As the crisis worsens, the middle class resorts to a barter economy. Families offer their Steinway pianos, Dresden china, and Krupp silver in return for food from peasants. Doctors, lawyers, and students, unable to pay their way, dig ditches or go to soup kitchens. German families have to survive on vegetarian diets. Starvation threatens large cities. Hungry mobs storm trains carrying relief supplies. Krupp prints its own money, the only currency worth anything in the Ruhr.

Morals take a hit, too. Berliners are scandalized when they learn that nude dancer Celly de Rheidt is the wife of a former Prussian officer. Another noblewoman works as a barmaid. Middle-class girls turn up on police blotters as Berlin streetwalkers. Impoverished senior citizens commit suicide.

Some folks gain from the mess. The courts rule "A Mark is a Mark" and people with mortgages or installment plan debts gleefully pay off their enraged creditors in full.

The government goes on printing money as fast as it can. By December a thousand-mark note issued in Berlin is stamped over in red: "Ein Milliarde Mark." A 500-million mark note is stamped as a 20-billion mark note. To save time, money is printed on one side. In offices, workers use the blank side as scratch paper – it´s cheaper than buying a note pad.

Money´s value degrades with unbelievable speed. A worker who misses a trolley to the bank might see his month´s salary reduced in an hour to a quarter of its value.

Even Hitler has to swap diamonds and jewelry for Swiss francs in order to pay the Nazi Party´s debts.

Yet German industry rolls on. On July 9, 1923, the Cipher Machines Stock Corporation is founded, opening its doors in August at Berlin´s Steglitzerstrasse 2. Their product is a device that gets displayed at the congress of the International Postal Union and the Leipzig Trade Fair that year. Their device is one of the first cipher machines to employ electricity, which passes incoming electrical impulses through three alphabetical rotors set to pre-chosen positions, rendering them into indecipherable gibberish. The only way to decode the message is to have a similar machine at the other end of the telegraph or radio, with the rotors set to the same position, which means having that day´s rotor schedule.

The machine, called the "Enigma," stands 15 inches high, with knobs and handles on its right side, weighing more than 100 lbs. At the front stand three rows of typewriter keys. Behind are three rows of circular windows for the output letters. On the left, the top of four rotors (Navy version) or three (everybody else), and the toothed wheels for setting them sit up.

To operate this machine, one selects three rotors from eight available, and puts the alphabet ring into a position designed by the key list, and locked into place with a pin on a leaf spring. Then the three rotors are inserted into the machine. Jacks on each end of several short cables are plugged into the sockets specified by the key list of a plugboard on the machine´s front. Then the operator turns the rotors until the letters specified by the key list are visible in the Enigma´s lid. Then the operator starts typing in his message. Each time a plaintext letter is typed on the keyboard, the letters that light up on the illuminable panel are written down. This is the cipher text. The entire message is then put into cipher, and radioed or telegraphed to its recipient. The device has one weakness: a letter can not be enciphered as itself, so that knocks off one of 25 possibilities for a code-breaker.

Even so, the Enigma offers unparalleled security. With five rotors to choose from, there are 60 different possible wheel orders. Resetting the rings can lead to 676 possible combinations. Later models enable up to 150 million-million variations. Even if a machine falls into an enemy´s hands, the Enigma won´t reveal secrets…the actual keys can be changed every day.

Business leaders studying the Engima at the convention are impressed by the machine´s safety, but not too impressed. They don´t need to go to great levels to protect their trade formulas, merger plans, and personnel files form competitors or cops.

But the Reichswehr is very impressed. So much that Col. Erich Fellgiebel examines the machine at the Leipzig Fair, and reports on it to Seeckt. The German government orders Enigma withdrawn from the market and buys up Scherbius´ entire line.

The Polish government notices the Enigma too. Poland already and logically sees Germany as a threat to their independence, despite Versailles. They take Seeckt and his secret army seriously, and wisely so.

More importantly, Poland has a long history of mathematical excellence, dating back to Nicholas Copernicus, and mathematicians at the University of Poznan begin studying the Enigma.

Back in Germany, Cuno´s passive resistance is an even greater disaster for Germany. He resigns on August 12, and Dr. Gustav Stresemann becomes Chancellor two days later. On September 26, he ends passive resistance, enraging the right wing and the "Black Reichswehr." Stresemann is a liberal who believes in freedom and political and human rights. Those ideas are anathema to the nationalists, the Communists, the Reichswehr, and Hitler. Next day, President Ebert declares martial law.

Stresemann´s opponents try a putsch in Kustrin on October 1, but Seeckt refuses to cooperate with the rebels. The Communists plan revolts in Saxony, Thuringia, and Hamburg, but Seeckt sends troops to the first two provinces and cops to Hamburg to crush the insurgency before it happens.

But nobody does anything about the right-wing military regime in Bavaria, which even prints its own postage stamps. Moehl is retired by now, and General Otto von Lossow has replaced him.

Now, Hitler, inspired by Mussolini´s successful coup in Italy, makes his move. In May, he meets with Ludendorff at the general´s villa at Ludwigshohe near Munich, and gains his support for action.

In September, 100,000 nationalists, many of them Swastika-waving Nazis, march through Munich to wild cheers and flowers from the crowd. Hitler warns that he intends to act rather than let the Reds seize power again. Bavarian President Eugen von Knilling reacts on September 26 to this announcement and Stresemann´s appointment by appointing General Gustav von Kahr as "state commissar general" with police powers to maintain order. Kahr bans 14 mass meetings scheduled for the 27th.

On the 27th, Italian troops pull out of the island of Greek island of Corfu, under pressure from the League of Nations.

Next, Kahr, Von Lossow and State Police Chief Colonel Hans Von Seisser form a temporary triumvirate to run Bavaria, defying both the Nazis and the left-leaning Berlin government. They like Hitler´s values, but not his tactics, and want to channel him or outlaw him. They declare that Stresemann´s national state of emergency does not apply in Bavaria.

Hitler believes that these three bigshots, who control Bavaria´s armed forces, might be inveigled to lead their state´s secession from the Reich. Hitler´s theory gains credence when Lossow announces that he will defy Berlin´s demands to curb Hitler and ban the Völkischer Beobachter, which has been libeling the Weimar government. Berlin orders Lossow fired. Lossow refuses to step down.

The Bavarian government retaliates by taking control of all Reichswehr units in the state. The troops renounce their oaths to Weimar and swear allegiance to the Bavarian government "until an adjustment between Bavaria and the Reich has been arrived at, and I renew my obligation to obey my superior officers." And Lossow ignores the order dismissing him, staying on the job.

Bavarian troops close the state´s borders, and deploy to defend an assault by federal troops from Thuringia.

Bavaria is teetering on the edge of revolt and secession, but the Bavarian cabinet denies those ideas to American consul Robert Murphy, telling the Milwaukee-born diplomat that "The ship of state had merely listed too far to the left, and it was and is Bavaria´s duty to right it."

The political crisis energizes Hitler. He opposes Bavarian secession, theorizing that it would merely bring back the Wittelsbach dynasty in the form of Crown Prince Rupprecht, claimant to the throne and a successful army group commander during the war. Hitler has a better idea: force Lossow and Kahr to march on Berlin as a Nazi-inspired and led coup to overthrow Stresemann and Weimar.

Rosenberg suggests that several hundred Nazi stormtroopers kidnap Rupprecht and Kahr at the ceremony on November 4 for German Memorial Day. One of Hitler´s pals and patrons, Harvard-educated photographer and art publishing heir Hans "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, calls that idea "crazy." Hitler vetoes the kidnapping, but doesn´t reveal his plans – keeping his subordinates in the dark and his moves a secret, a favorite strategy now and in the future.

Hanfstaengel is an odd recruit for Hitler. A socialite, he ignores Hitler´s lousy taste in art and poor table manners, and admires his sincerity. To Hanfstaengl, Hitler´s lack of polish is a connection to the masses. Hitler likes Hanfstaengl´s sophistication. When Hanfstaengl plays Wagner on the piano, Hitler marches around the room, conducting the music. Hanfstaengl introduces Hitler to Bavarian bigshots with anti-Semitic views and money to donate to the Party. In return, Hanfstaengl suggests that Hitler grow his dust-bug moustache out to the ends of his lips…the short brush style is only fashionable with Charlie Chaplin.

Hitler retorts, "If it is not the fashion now, it will be later, because I wear it."

On October 30, former British Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law dies. Americans gape at the appalling Teapot Dome scandals, in which Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall has transferred U.S. Navy oil reserve leases to private ownership without competitive bidding. Assistant Navy Secretary Theodore Roosevelt Jr. is among those accused of benefiting from these shady deals. He denies it – pointing out that his wife´s oil stock purchases and stock sales took place well before the transfers…and he lost money on the transactions.

The same day, Hitler tells a cheering crowd at Munich´s Zirkus Krone, "The German problem will be solved for me only after the black-white-red swastika banner floats on the Berlin Palace! We all feel that the hour has come and, like the soldier in the field, we will not shirk our duty as Germans. We will follow the order to keep in step, and march forward!"

On November 6, a loaf of bread in Berlin fetches 140 billion marks. In Munich, the triumvirate meets with representatives of the various nationalist organizations. Kahr and Lossow deliver doubletalk to Hitler and his rivals: The Bavarian rulers support a nationalist regime to replace the leftist Stresemann. However, they´re opposed to a putsch by force of arms. But if a backstairs coup can succeed, they´ll support it. Most of the nationalists leave the meeting baffled. But Hitler races over to a crony´s apartment to organize a putsch to take over Bavaria. With about 4,000 storm troopers at his command, Hitler has a formidable force – on paper.

Hitler proposes a coup on Sunday, November 11 – a national holiday in Germany as it was then and now in many nations – when officials will be asleep. They can be arrested in their beds. The pals counter that it would be easier to round up the government while they´re all in one place, rather than raiding 40 different homes.

Hitler learns that Kahr is holding a "mass patriotic demonstration" at Munich´s Burgerbraukeller on the evening of November 8. At this event, Kahr will announce his program and unite Bavaria´s power brokers. Even Hitler is invited. But Hitler suspects a trap: Kahr may actually be moving to arrest him and bring back the Wittelsbach monarchy.

He orders the coup for 8 p.m. on November 8, which dawns bitter, windy, and cold. Hitler wakes up suffering both a headache and a toothache. He orders the coup anyway, with Goering joining him to lead the Brownshirts. "The hour has come," Hitler tells Hanfstaengl. "Tonight we act!"

Hanfstaengl is told to bring pistols to the Burgerbraukeller. Instead he phones home to tell his wife and son to leave town for their villa in Uffing, and then calls a bunch of foreign reporters, all in town to cover the chaos. Among the Ausländer invited to report on the coup is Hubert R. Knickerbocker, who will later cover Operation Torch with the Anglo-American invasion of Algiers.

That evening the SA men swap out their workday clothing and don their field-gray windbreakers, ski caps, revolver belts, and swastika armbands. The full Brownshirt uniform will not be complete until 1924.

At the Burgerbraukeller, Munich´s largest beerhall, 125 cops, including some mounted police, are handling security. The hall has a capacity of 3,000, and the place is packed with politicians, bigshots, flunkies, family, hangers-on, waiters, a brass band, and Bavaria´s finest lager. Beer is selling for 5 billion marks a stein.

Hitler, in a morning coat under a trench coat, slips into the crowd early with Hanfstaengl and sips his beer, until 8:30 p.m., when Goering´s trucks arrive and armed Nazis in coal-scuttle helmets surround the beerhall. The cops, outnumbered and outgunned, yield when one of Goering´s officers yells, "Out of the way!"

Hitler´s bodyguard, wrestler Ulrich Graf, looking like a waiter, tells Hitler that Goering has arrived. Hitler, Hess, and Nazi publisher Max Amann, trailing armed Brownshirts, push through the crowds into the main hall while Kahr is speaking. Other SA goons block the exit and set up a machine-gun. In the uproar, people kick over or hide under tables.

Hitler leaps onto a chair, waving a pistol, and shouts, "Quiet!" Nobody listens. He fires a shot into the ceiling and that does it – everyone shuts up, quickly.

Sweating and pale, looking like "a cross between Charlie Chaplin and a headwaiter," Hitler tells everyone not to leave the hall, and shouts, "The national revolution has broken out! The hall is surrounded!"

People in the audience are confused. Some shout, "Bravo!" Others yell, "South America! Mexico! Cheap comedy!"

Hitler shouts from his chair the police and troops are marching on the government buildings, and the government has collapsed. Nobody believes him. He then tells the audience to remain where they are, and summons Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser into a side room to negotiate. Hitler smiles and tells the crowd, "In a short while we will return and tell you our plans."

A more annoyed Lossow mutters to his colleagues, "Put on an act."

In the side room, Hitler tells the triumvirate that he has five bullets in his pistol, "four for the traitors, one for myself." He also says, "Please forgive me for proceeding in this manner, but I had no other means." The Putsch is for the good of Germany. If the big three back Hitler, they will get important posts: Kahr as Regent of Bavaria, Lossow as Reich Army Minister, and Seisser as Police Minister. Hitler will be Chancellor.

The bigshots are unimpressed. They ask what the exalted Ludendorff is doing. Hitler himself doesn´t know what to do. He takes a few swigs of beer and then leaves the room, the audience restless. Goering fires a shot in the air to shut everyone up, and bellows that the display is not directed at Kahr, the army, or the cops. The audience is even less impressed. Goering tries bonhomie. "You´ve got your beer, what are you worrying about?" he asks rhetorically.

Hitler storms to the stage and shouts, "If silence is not restored, I will order a machine-gun placed in the gallery!" That turns everyone´s attention to Hitler´s speech, in which he assures the crowd that Kahr has his full trust and will be Regent of Bavaria. Ludendorff will head the army. And so on. "The task of the provisional German National Government is to organize the march on that sinful Babel, Berlin, and save the German people!" Hitler shouts.

The oratory impresses the audience – as usual – and soon Hitler has the crowd on his side. They figure the revolution is a fait accompli. "Either the German revolution begins tonight or we will all be dead by dawn!" Hitler roars.

At that moment, in a melodramatic scene Hollywood would call ludicrous, Ludendorff and his stepson arrive by car through the fog, and enter the beerhall to roaring cheers. The old warrior is wearing his full uniform of the Imperial Army, which impresses everyone there. Ludendorff agrees to try and win over the triumvirate. But the general is annoyed with the corporal´s action.

Ludendorff applies his rank, record, ribbons, and charm on the two military members of the triumvirate, but Kahr is last to submit. The whole crew returns to the platform and Kahr says he will serve as Regent of Bavaria, pending a return of the monarchy. All is alliance, amity, and revolution.

Hitler, ecstatic, says, "I am going to fulfill the vow I made to myself five years ago when I was a blind cripple in the military hospital: to know neither rest nor peace until the November criminals had been overthrown, until on the ruins of the wretched Germany of today there should have arisen once more a Germany of power and greatness, of freedom and splendor."

Hitler walks down the line of people, shaking hands, as the crowd sings "Deutschland Uber Alles." But a more thoughtful person in the crowd says to a senior police officer, "The only thing missing is the psychiatrist."

All across Munich the Putsch rolls on. At the Löwenbraukeller across the Isar River, the Battle League and SA bands blare away while Rohm himself harangues the crowd. When word comes at 8:40 that the triumvirate is backing Hitler, hordes of Reichswehr soldiers leap onto tables, ripping off Weimar insignia, singing the national anthem. A mob of stormtroopers and soldiers rushes out of the beerhall to launch the revolution. Rohm´s bunch heads for Lossow´s headquarters, while others take up defensive positions. Among the marchers in Rohm´s band, carrying an Imperial banner, is the newly-graduated agricultural student, now a fertilizer salesman, Heinrich Himmler.

Rohm´s men easily take over the building, emplacing machine-guns and barbed wire, but Rohm leaves the telephone switchboard in the hands of the non-political duty officer, Major Schwandner.

Hess rounds up "enemies of the people" as hostages. Amann heads for a bank to use as the new government´s offices, and Police Presidium bigshot Wilhelm Frick, a colorless man who is Hitler´s insider with the cops, tells his buddies to there wait and do nothing to stop the revolt.

Back at the Burgerbraukeller, Hitler learns that Rohm´s bullyboys can´t win over the Army engineers. Hitler decides to appear at the engineers´ barracks himself and sort things out. He puts Ludendorff in charge at the beer hall. Wrong move. As soon as Hitler leaves, Lossow tells Herr General that he has to go to his office and give orders, and that he wants to "inform Crown Prince Rupprecht of the revolution." Ludendorff, who accepts the word of honor of a fellow member of the Generalstab, obligingly lets Lossow, Kahr, and Seisser leave.

While Hitler argues at the engineers´ barracks gate to be admitted – to no avail – the coup start collapsing.

Lossow and his cronies head to the headquarters of the 19th Infantry Regiment, where Lt. Gen. Von Danner, commander of the Munich garrison asks, "All that of course was bluff, Excellency?" Lossow doesn´t answer.

Lossow finds a telegram from Von Seeckt, ordering him to put down the putsch. If Lossow can´t, Seeckt will come down from Berlin with Weimar troops and do so himself. This puts Lossow in a tricky bind. He chooses to doublecross Hitler rather than Seeckt. Lossow orders in reinforcements from Bavaria, and the seat of government moved to Regensburg. Reichswehr troops and Bavarian State Police are routed out of the barracks and ordered to entruck for Munich.

As the night wears on, Lossow issues more orders: the promises made in the Burgerbraukeller are to be repudiated, the Nazi Party ordered dissolved. From his mansion, Crown Prince Rupprecht suggests the coup be crushed: partially because of its nature, partially because Rupprecht and Ludendorff hate each other´s guts.

Meanwhile, the Putsch spreads. Lt. Gerhard Rossbach, another Freikorps leader, war hero, and homosexual, brings in 1,000 cadets from the Infantry School, behind a brass band, all wearing swastika armbands.

Hitler returns to the Burgerbraukeller and reviews the cadets. They march off to occupy Lossow´s offices and military headquarters. Rohm himself takes over Lossow´s office as his tactical headquarters, and summons Schwandner to explain to the baffled major just what is going on. Schwandner is astonished by Rohm´s story and dress uniform, replete with medals.

Schwandner tells Rohm the putsch breaks the Nazi Party´s deal with Lossow, but Rohm says everything is all right. Schwandner says to an officer, "The affair is crooked."

Rohm wants to know where Lossow is. Schwandner says he´s at the 19th Infantry. Then Schwandner is summoned to the phone switchboard: Lossow´s on the line, ordering the Army to mount up and put down the revolt. The amateurishly-planned coup has forgotten to cut off the phone lines before Lossow can give his countermeasure orders.

When Rohm realizes his mistake and takes over the switchboard, it´s too late.

Back at the beerhall, Hitler and Ludendorff wonder why they can´t get Lossow and Kahr on the phone. Worried, he orders the SA to grab all the money at the official Parcus Brothers printing plant and bring it to the Burgerbraukeller. They hotfoot it over to the Jewish-owned company posthaste, and grab the bales of bills at gunpoint, but being German, they sign a receipt.

In the Burgerbraukeller´s main hall, stuffy with cigarette smoke, the Brownshirts stack up thousands of billion Mark notes (14,605 trillion Reichmarks in all). Each revolutionist must be paid his stipend.

Other Brownshirts attack left-leaning newspapers, coup opponents, old enemies, and anyone in the phone book with a Jewish name. Perfectly innocent people are dragged out of their beds and held hostage.

Meanwhile, Hitler wonders why the Army hasn´t come to his side. More like-minded Nazis and right-wingers arrive by car and truck, cold and wet. Among them is pharmacist and Nazi leader Gregor Strasser, and Julius Streicher, complete with bullwhip, who works up the crowd with an obscene harangue. Hitler´s lawyer, Hans Frank, also turns up with his briefcase.

Rossbach and his men march on Kahr´s headquarters and find Kahr has the Bavarian Police mobilized to defend his headquarters. Cadets and cops don´t want to fire on each other, so they try negotiations. Rossbach orders his cadets, "What? Still negotiating here? You know General Ludendorff´s orders. Why the hesitation? Order your men to fire!"

The cadets move into position and set up their machine-guns, so the cops invite three of them to come in for a chat. After 10 more minutes of stalemate, the cadets pull back. Kahr and his cops still hold headquarters. Nobody asks the drunks being held overnight what they think of all this. Their number behind bars is added by one: Wilhelm Frick. Lossow orders him jailed for treason.

As the night wears on, Kahr orders the Putsch to be "ruthlessly be made to suffer the punishment they deserve." Now to let Hitler in on that little secret.

Lossow passes that word to the boss of the Infantry School, who regretfully informs Hitler at 5 a.m. that the triumvirate does not feel honor-bound to their oaths, as they were given at pistol point. Hitler shows remarkable calm, and tells his team that he is ready to fight and die for the cause.

Ludendorff, in tweed shooting jacket, sips red wine and makes the decision: "We´ll march!"

The Nazis and their allies must storm out of the Burgerbraukeller, across the Isar, and into Munich, banners flying. The spectacle will awe the average Munchener, and victory will be won. "The heavens will fall before the Bavarian Reichswehr turns against me," Ludendorff tells Hitler.

Hitler isn´t that impressed. But he´s running out of options. It´s fight or surrender now. So he agrees with Ludendorff and adopts the idea as his own. By now the Nazis and nationalists massed in the beerhall are tired, cold, wet, and in many cases hung over.

Hitler and other speakers, including Streicher, give their audience another harangue as a gray dawn breaks in Munich, and the Battle League is sent to occupy police headquarters – again. The Battle League heads over to the building, finds it guarded by machine-gunners, and returns. Disgusted, Hitler tells them to go to City Hall and arrest the Marxist council members who refuse to fly the swastika over the Rathaus. They hop into their trucks, race over to City Hall, and haul off councilmen.

At military headquarters, however, the regulars have arrived to besiege Ernst Rohm´s 150 bravos.

All morning Nazis mass at the Burgerbraukeller, listening to speeches. They can´t listen to the band – as soon as the money runs out, so does the oompah music. By noon 2,000 Nazis, in surplus Army gear, civilian hats, and mufflers, are massed before the beer hall. They look like an army that´s already been defeated.

Hitler´s only capable outfit is the Stosstrupp Hitler, a 100-man SA outfit in gray-green uniforms and steel helmets, loaded for bear with short infantry carbines and hand grenades.

At 11:30, the Nazis line up behind Colonel Hermann Kriebel…Stosstrupp Hitler, the Bund Oberland on the right, the Munich SA Regiment in the middle. Behind them stand various Nazis and sympathizers in business suits, work clothes, and swastika brassards on the left arm. The smart-looking cadets are scattered through the groups. A pale and grave Hitler, in trench coat and slouch hat, stands in the front row, next to Ludendorff. Next to Hitler stands his pal Max Erwin Von Scheubner-Richter.

The men line up amid snow flurries and overcast, leaden skies, Kriebel forming them up with military precision.

In the ranks are men whose names will become familiar to Germany, future leaders of the Third Reich, like Himmler and Goering. Himmler stands owlish and pale in his trademark rimless glasses. Also present are unknown men who will later orchestrate the Holocaust, like Wilhelm Stuckart, who will later write Germany´s racial laws, and Joseph Bouhler, who will implement them.

Large and small, mighty and meek, this collection of thick-necked goons, ideologues, racists, bullyboys, thugs, greedheads, cold-blooded intellectuals, perverts, and even misguided idealists will become the Alte Kämpfer of the Nazi Party, its old warriors, Hitler´s favorites, the elite of the Third Reich. It adds up to about 2,000 men.

At noon, the Nazis march off behind a Swastika banner, across the Ludwigsbrucke. The few state police guarding it scatter when Goering shouts that if one shot is fired, his men will shoot hostages at the tail of the column. He´s lying, but it´s immaterial. Bystanders join in, as hoped, and the marchers sing their songs, breath creating mist in the chilly air.

Professor Muller, watching, sees the impressive figure of Ludendorff, and the less impressive putschists: "a motley gang with helmets and military caps, a bunch of civilians without order, all higgledy-piggledy."

Another onlooker is more derisive, yelling, "Has your mother given you permission to play with dangerous things here on the street?"

In 15 minutes, the Nazis reach the Marienplatz at the Rathaus, where they are pleased to see the swastika flying. Food vendors compete with Nazi orators for attention from the gathering crowd.

At this point, confusion begins. Nobody has told the marchers the plan. Stop here and go back or go on to rescue Rohm? Many marchers think the battle is won because the Swastika now flies atop the Rathaus. But Hitler knows the Army hasn´t turned up yet, and he cannot make a decision.

Ludendorff makes the call. He turns the Army to the right, to rescue Rohm at military headquarters. He barks a command and the column moves on, Hitler now becoming reluctant.

Now the column approaches Munich´s legendary Feldherrnhalle, King Ludwig I´s memorial to Bavaria´s past generals. The Nazis sing "O, Germany, High in Honor."

Frau Winifred Wagner, daughter of the composer and wife of the English racial theorist Houston Stewart Chamberlain, watches her idol, Hitler, march down the narrow, canyon-lie Rezidenzstrasse next to Ludendorff.

At the end of the block, in the Odeonsplatz, green-clad Bavarian state police and Reichswehr men are deploying a roadblock, with machine-guns and an armored car. Police 1st Lt. Michael Freiherr von Godin sees the oncoming Nazi mob and calls out, "Second Company, double time, march." The cops jog forward, but the Putschists keep coming. Hitler shouts at the cops, "Surrender! Surrender!"

Ulrich Graf, Hitler´s bodyguard, steps forward and shouts, "Don´t shoot! His Excellency Ludendorff is coming!"

The cops level bayonets and pistols and start clubbing the Nazis. Then a shot rings out – whether the shooter is police or Nazi is never figured out – and a police sergeant slumps down dead.

The police open fire with a ragged burst of their carbines. The shots kill Hitler´s front-row pal Ernst Scheuber-Richter, whose life´s last act is to knock Hitler to the ground. Another bullet kills Graf. Hitler himself hits the deck, separating his shoulder, covered by Graf´s body, which also saves Hitler´s life.

Ludendorff also hits the dirt, but picks himself up and keeps walking through the police line. A cop recognizes him and says, "Excellency, I must take you into protective custody."

Ludendorff answers, "You have your orders, and I will follow you."

On the smoke-covered Odeonsplatz, the firing stops after 30 seconds. Thirteen Putschists lie dying. Two more will expire at military headquarters. Four cops are also dead. So is Karl Kuhn, who is described either as a Nazi marcher or an innocent bystander. SA medic Dr. Walter Schultze pulls Hitler away and hauls him and a wounded boy to Hitler´s old car.

Another top Nazi, Goering, wearing his Pour le Merite, lies on the roadway, a bullet in his upper thigh. Ilse Ballin, wife of a Jewish merchant, drags Goering indoors with her sister´s help, and dresses his wounds. Goering asks them to get him to a private clinic, and they do so.

But Goering´s wounds become infected anyway, forcing a series of operations to remove the dirt and lead. The surgeons put Goering on morphia to reduce the pain, which fails to do so. Instead, Goering later becomes addicted to morphine and codeine.

Outside on the Odeonsplatz, the coup is disintegrating. Armed and unarmed Nazis scatter from the police. Some Nazis run into a bakery and try to hide their guns in ovens or under flour sacks. Most surrender on the spot. At the Burgerbraukeller, other Nazis simply stack arms and go home. At military headquarters, Rohm surrenders to the massed troops before him.

Putschists, government officials, and Bavarians all feel betrayed. When the cops march off the Nazis, citizens spit at the police and shout, "Jew defenders! Betrayers of the Fatherland! Heil Hitler! Down with Kahr!"

On a road leading to Rosenheim, a Nazi stronghold, cops arrest a truckload of Brownshirts with their hostages, including Munich city council members, who are freed.

Ludendorff, using the force of his personality, convinces his captors that he had participated in the Putsch because Hitler convinced him it had the Army´s backing. Ludendorff says he should have known better than to trust a foreign (Austrian) agitator like Hitler. It´s the end of that alliance.

Meanwhile, Hitler is speeding out of Munich, driven by Dr. Schulze, in great pain from tooth and arm. They head for the Hanfstaengl villa in Uffing, where Putzi´s wife Helene welcomes them. Schulze tries to set Hitler´s arm, but fails, and Hitler whines about Ludendorff´s "treachery" and Graf´s death. He spends the night in a guest room bed, moaning in pain. The "Beer Hall Putsch" is over.

Unnoticed in the fighting, Hans Goebeler, son and grandson of Prussian warriors, is born that day in the Hessian farming village of Bottendorf, near Marburg. His father Heinrich, having survived captivity as a Russian POW, is fiercely anti-Communist, because of the horrors he saw in their civil war. A railroad official, Henrich Goebeler is unable to keep his job, when he refuses to join the Communist-led railway workers´ union, and the Goebeler family finds the years from 1921 to 1930 to be hard and hungry. Ultimately Hans Goebeler will join the German Navy and pull the plug on U-505 in a desperate attempt to keep the submarine out of American hands.

Two days later, on November 11, the Bavarian State Police descend on the Hanfstaengl villa and arrest Hitler, finding him in pajamas and bathrobe. He shakes hands with a diffident young police lieutenant and says he is prepared to leave, his shoulder having been set.

The cops take Hitler to Landsberg Prison´s Cell Seven, the only one with an anteroom big enough for a military guard. The guards have to move the occupant, Graf Arco, who killed Kurt Eisner, the Bavarian Premier, in 1919. Hitler lies down on the cot and refuses the soup.

Outside, Hitler is already being discussed in the past tense, rapidly becoming an object of public derision. The comic and theatrical nature of the putsch makes Hitler a laughing stock across the Reich. His failure to organize a coup, inability to withstand a few bullets, and his ludicrous "deals" with Lossow and company add to the hilarity. American consul Robert Murphy wires his analysis to Washington: The Germans will probably deport Hitler to Austria, ending his political career.

Foreign newspapers laugh harder. Helene Hanfstaengl phones Knickerbocker in Munich and the American reporter drives up to gain an exclusive, complete with photographs, of Hitler´s hideaway.

American and British newspapers call the Putsch a "miniature beer hall revolution" and a schoolboy Redskin raid. Others regard Hitler as a pawn in the plot, calling him "Ludendorff´s noisy lieutenant." The New York Times declares on its front page: "The Munich putsch definitely eliminates Hitler and his National Socialist followers." The ridicule hurts Hitler worse than the physical injuries.

But the truth of the Putsch is that Hitler never intended to fight the Army. His porous plan was to gain their alliance and support. Then everybody would march on Berlin and oust his real enemies: the Weimar government.

Hitler´s coup is poorly organized, with important sites unsecured and key people not arrested. He learns one vital lesson from the botched revolution: not to repeat the fiasco. He will achieve his dream of supreme power through safer and legal means, with the backing of Germany´s industrialists and generals, not their opposition.

Within weeks, those chances seem further away. On November 20, the US dollar exchange rate is fixed at 4.2 trillion paper marks. But a new Reich currency is issued, backed by gold and a central bank, which takes over from the old money and postage stamps.

American financier Charles G. Dawes and German Finance Minister Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, the "Old Wizard," negotiate an agreement for a provisional end to the reparation issue, putting payments on a sliding scale. The Dawes Plan does not give a final figure for the reparations bill, or a deadline for final payment. However, it provides for loans to Germany to pay the bills, which are so generous, they exceed Versailles obligations. Nor are the Americans particularly concerned about having these loans to their former enemy – as opposed to their former allies – repaid.

That agreement even satisfies the French, who end their occupation of the Ruhr. They give Gustav Krupp his freedom after seven months´ imprisonment in an "amnesty." On the way home, the French haul off 21 new Krupp locomotives and 123 freight cars (trucks to Britons). Gustav finds his board members gloomy, and they recommend he sell out.

No way, replies Der Konzernherr. He orders his men to expand. New furnaces, new mines in Scandinavia, and a new method of converting low-grade iron ore into high-grade steel are developed. Krupp engineers develop the new KA-2 Krupp Austinistic Steel. American engineers working for Chrysler call it the best steel anywhere, and they use it to cap the Chrysler Building under construction in New York City, briefly the world´s tallest.

Krupp also orders his men to continue Die Firma´s secret rearmament programs. Krupp designers gain from Berlin 26 patents for artillery control devices, 18 for electrical fire control apparatus, nine for fuses and shells, 17 for field guns, and 14 for heavy cannons. These designs are turned into field artillery at Krupp factories, initially in Poland, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Russia. Once the Allied Control Commission withdraws, the production moves back to the Ruhr. In Finland, Krupp builds prototype U-boats, ostensibly for Spanish and Turkish clients. Krupp establishes a relationship with the Swiss Bofors Corporation to produce anti-aircraft guns.

The secret rebuilding of the German air service also continues. The Ministry of Transport subsidizes glider pilots with money to practice their hobby, but the subsidies really come from the Reichswehr. Kurt Student recruits glider pilots, who will ultimately train to become fighter pilots.

The eccentric and colorful Professor Hugo Junkers, boss of the huge aviation conglomerate, refuses to lay off workers, denounces his fellow capitalists as bankrupt, unethical parasites, and signs a lucrative contract with the government to build passenger airliners. When a government official suggests that the airliners be developed to be converted into bombers, Junkers flies into a towering rage. He won´t have anything to do with it. The skies should be used for peace. Despite his name, he´s had enough of war. He will only build passenger airliners. The government experts snicker, buy his planes, and convert them to bombers anyway.

Professor Ernst Heinkel, on the other hand, does not sneer when Pour le Merite winner and fighter ace Friedrich Christiansen turns up at the Heinkel factory front gate, to discuss how Heinkel built airplanes that could be squeezed into a hangar on the deck of a U-boat. Can Heinkel do it again? Sure, Heinkel says, but how do we evade the Allied Control Commission?

Easy, Christiansen answers…by building planes for another nation eager to bristle with arms…Japan. The new Heinkel 3 is fabricated in Germany, assembled in Sweden, tested back in Germany, and wins first prize at the Swedish Goteborg trials.

That success brings Hauptmann Student to the Heinkel factory, asking if Herr Professor can design a modern biplane fighter and a military reconnaissance plane. Certainly. But how will these projects avoid the Allied Control Commission? Again, the work is to be done for the Japanese, and the liaison to the project is Japan´s naval attaché in Berlin, himself a member of the Allied Control Commission. Soon Heinkel´s staff is developing on the He 17 reconnaissance bird and the He 51 biplane fighter, which will debut in combat over Spain.

The German Navy is moving, too. In 1920, after 25 years service in the Navy, Cap. Erich Raeder, expecting to retire, starts reading law and political science at the University of Berlin. The Hamburg native, son of scholars and teachers, has spent the last two years writing the history of Germany´s cruiser operations.

Instead of retirement, he gets a new job and promotion in 1922, rear admiral and Inspector of Naval Education. Raeder is now the schoolmaster of the German Navy, and sets up its process for selecting, screening, and educating officers and enlisted personnel (other ranks). The Kriegsmarine will bear Raeder´s personal stamp. The Navy´s long-term planners figure that war with Britain is absolutely out, but war with Poland or France more likely. The German Navy leaders plan to build light, fast commerce-raiding ships, which can wage a raiding war against the French, or overawe the Polish Navy. U-boats, being banned by Versailles, are out of the picture, of course…but the Navy plans and orders them anyway, in secret.

While Germany regroups, Britain faces another General Election. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin keeps his promise, and British voters trudge to the polls.

The West Leicester Liberal Association asks Churchill to be their candidate on November 19. The National Liberal Club dusts off Churchill´s portrait and rushes it back upstairs to a prominent place.

Churchill´s main opponent is a Labour candidate whose promise to a working-class district of boot and shoe factories is a tax on all Britons worth more than £5,000. Churchill faces lecture halls filled with hecklers, including a gang of Socialist that follow him everywhere. Everywhere he goes, the Dardanelles fiasco is hurled in Churchill´s face. An American reporter covering the race says, "It is doubtful if even Great Britain could survive another world war and another Churchill."

When Churchill speaks in London, men smash windows of his car and hurl bricks at him. Clementine points to his domestic record…the Shop Hours Act, the Mines Regulation Act, the Unemployment Insurance Act, but it cannot erase the bloodshed of Gallipoli. Churchill loses, netting 9,236 votes to his Labour opponent´s 13,634.

Under the Dawes Plan, Germany´s territorial integrity is guaranteed by the Allied powers. By the middle of 1924, Germans are steaming the formerly valueless Reich Savings certificates they have used as wallpaper off their walls, and are re-depositing or cashing them.

Germany´s "Golden Twenties" begin, a five-year period in which German art and culture finds free expression, with George Grosz, Paul Klee, Bertolt Brecht, and Wilhelm Furtwangler gaining fame. Bauhaus architects and architecture start giving Germany a stunningly modern look. Mies Van Der Rohe builds his first glass-walled skyscraper in Berlin. Jewish architect Fritz Mendelsohn starts building a snappy office building on the Prinz Albrechtstrasse. Yehudi Menuhin makes his debut, with Einstein himself in the approving audience. In his spare time, Einstein and Hungarian scientist Leo Szilard study heat and thermodynamics, and also together gain 29 patents for inventions that improve that new and still unsafe device, the home refrigerator.

But at the same time, politics and society in Germany continue to roll in the mud. A former Tsarist officer, Fyodor Vinberg, publishes a shoddy newspaper in Berlin whose main regular feature are chapters from the notorious forgery, "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," which describes a Jewish plot to destroy the world. Vinberg´s newspaper calls for destruction of the Jews. The "Protocols" are hot reading for Landsberg prison inmate Adolf Hitler.

The "Protocols" themselves have a twisted history. A creation of Tsar Nicholas II´s secret police, the Okhrana, they are actually a rewrite of a French political satiric tract, "A dialogue between Montesquieu and Machiavelli in Hell." Written originally to attack Napoleon III and his authoritarian regime, the Russians re-write the tract to make it look as if it has been ripped from the hands of its author while being drafted, starting and ending in mid-sentence. The "Protocols" depict a meeting of Jewish rabbis with Satan in a cemetery in Switzerland, where they plot to destroy humanity, using both capitalism and Bolshevism to do so. All of humanity´s ills are laid at the hands of these fictional rabbis and the Jewish faith. The solution, clearly, is the removal of the Jews.

When the Tsar reads the "Protocols," he remarks that a good cause (anti-Semitism) is being served by a bad method, and declines to have them published. The Okhrana boys, knowing that the Tsar´s governing and quality assurance skills are lacking, publishes them anyway, creating what future historians will call a "warrant for genocide." One hundred years later, the forgery is still published, popular…and still widely believed.

Another popular book on the "Jewish menace" arrives in the Reich from overseas: "The International Jew," by Henry Ford. The American auto manufacturer, having revolutionized industry with assembly line-produced cars, is now attempting to establish himself as a political thinker. His alleged thinking appears in his weekly newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, whose circulation of 750,000 across the United States is achieved chiefly because Ford dealers are required to sell the paper.

However, the Independent´s main contribution to civilization is the publication of a lengthy series of articles by Ford himself, denouncing the Jews as the source of the world´s problems. After the series comes out, Ford assembles the articles into a single book, "The International Jew," which becomes a best-seller in several languages and nations, including Germany. Among its most fascinated readers is Alfried Rosenberg, the Estonian-born editor of Völkischer Beobachter. Rosenberg visits Hitler in prison daily, and provides Hitler with a copy of the book. The imprisoned Hitler devours it, along with Rosenberg´s more turgid anti-Semitic drivel.

"The International Jew" becomes core reading for anti-Semites around the world. Despite the tenor of the times, in which Jews are reluctant to fight back against any form of oppression, the American Jewish Congress sues Henry Ford. They force the automaker to apologize for his vicious slurs in 1927. But by then Ford´s work has gained international readership, belief, and acceptance, fueling anti-Semitic fires across Europe and the world.

Despite these high sales and popularity among angry young and old men, Ford´s prose goes ignored by many German readers. They have enough to think about. Prosperity provides German workers with jobs, which cuts down on violence, but bucket-shop swindles, corruption, scandals, and teenage vice clubs roll on. Americans are up to their neck in scandals, too…the Ku Klux Klan dominates Indiana and tries to control the Democratic Party, falling apart when their leader gets arrested for rape and murder. The Leopold-Loeb thrill murder trial rivets America. The Teapot Dome swindles and thefts dominate the newspapers…and bootleggers and gangsters wage civil war in the streets of Chicago with that new, expensive, popular, and deadly weapon, the Thompson sub-machine gun, originally designed as a police firearm. The Tommy Gun kills a lot of mobsters and innocent people with effectiveness, but American and British military procurement officers, lacking funds anyway, ignore it, deriding the Tommy as a "gangster weapon."

In Munich´s Prison Cell No. 7, awaiting trial, the defeated Hitler barely eats, convinced that no one will ever follow a man with "such a fiasco behind him." But Hitler´s followers, visiting him in jail, convince him that he should eat and fight. When the prosecutor comes in, Hitler gives him a lengthy off-the-record harangue on the plot and its intentions.

With the party officially banned, its groups take up highfalutin names like "Völkischer Singing Club, "Völkischer Pathfinder Detachment, and "German Rifle and Hiking League." The Battle League is re-named the Frontring or "Frontbann." Goering heads for Austria, struggling to recover from his Putsch wound, addicted to the morphine used to heal it. Eckart lies dying in Berchtesgaden, while Drexler disapproves of the party´s direction.

Rosenberg takes over as temporary boss of the underground Nazi Party. Fascinated by Ford, he starts batting out his own book, "The Myth of the 20th Century." Nobody can decipher his muddled and almost incoherent theories. Rosenberg´s book becomes one of the central pillars of Nazi philosophy anyway. So does Rosenberg. Loyal and anti-Semitic, he struggles to raise money for Hitler´s defense.

On New Year´s Day, 1924, Navy and Washington battle to a 14-14 tie in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Schacht, now Reich Commissioner for National Currency, and Bank of England Governor Montagu Norman solve the money crisis and abolish the emergency money. Germany´s new Mark will be tied to the Pound Sterling. The economic crisis is over, which knocks out Hitler´s main political prop.

While the prison psychiatrist prepares his report – saying Hitler is sane even if the idea of the Putsch is nuts – Hitler reads everything he can…that supports his own theories. He devours Nietzsche, Ford, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Vinberg´s newspapers, and Bismarck´s memoirs. He tells his pals that prison is his college. Hitler is now confident he will be leader of Germany. He even plans one of his first moves as Germany´s ruler: to end unemployment in the Reich by building a system of highways and mass-producing a car that everyone can afford.

Hitler´s trial for high treason commences in Munich on February 26, 1924. Ludendorff, Hitler, Rohm, Weber, and six other top Nazis sit in the dock. Reporters from around the world jam the old Infantry School to cover the trial. Ludendorff is the chief attraction by virtue of his gold braid, but Hitler is the primary defendant.

The prosecutor, judge, and jury are all highly sympathetic to Hitler, and treat him with extreme deference. The prosecutor calls Hitler "a soldier who did his duty to the utmost and could not be accused of using his position for self-interest."

Hitler himself takes over the defense with his ferocious oratory, using the trial – with support of judges and prosecutor – to rake the Bavarian triumvirate. Hitler cross-examines the shaven-headed Lossow personally, bellowing contempt at the general.

Lossow fires back by snarling that Hitler is only fit to play the role of "political drummer." Hitler roars defiance back. Lossow calls Hitler "part sentimental, part brutal."

Hitler leaps out of his chair, "And where is your word of honor! Was this the sentimental or brutal Hitler?"

A German journalist later calls the trial a "political carnival," but the judges and audience are impressed. Ludendorff avoids responsibility. Hitler takes it. Hitler denounces the "November criminals," the Socialists, and the triumvirate. Ludendorff´s star fades, as the general increasingly comes over as a grouchy, irrelevant, old man, spouting theories too crackpot even for Hitler´s standards.

But Hitler tells the court, "It is not you who pronounce judgment upon us, it is the eternal court of history which will make its pronouncement upon the charge which is brought against us. You may pronounce us guilty a thousand times over, the goddess who presides over the Eternal Court of History will with a smile tear into shreds the indictment of the Public Prosecutor and the judgment of this court, for she declares us guiltless."

Hitler´s oratory and defiance makes him a national figure.

On April 1, the gang war for control of Cicero, Illinois, results in the death of Al Capone´s brother Frank, who is killed when gangsters steal ballots at gunpoint.

In Munch, the court is packed with women bearing flowers and rosettes – in black, white and red monarchist colors – for Hitler. Assistant Prosecutor Ehard orders them removed. Then the women ask to bathe in Hitler´s tub. Ehard can´t find words to deny that request.

Flashbulbs pop at 10 a.m. as Ludendorff, in full dress uniform complete with jeweled sword, and Hitler, in neat trench coat, face their sentence. The former railway porter and Frontkampfer, now paunchy at 170 pounds, looks like a successful businessman.

It takes the court an hour to read out the sentence. Ludendorff, as predicted, is acquitted. Ludendorff says, "I look upon this acquittal as a disgrace which my dress of honor and my decorations have not earned," which embarrasses the presiding judge. Hitler and two cronies draw five-year sentences and 200-Mark fines, which are greeted with catcalls and boos by his supporters.

But the court denies a prosecution motion to deport Hitler – still an Austrian citizen – noting his war service and decorations. Instead the court hurls scorn at the triumvirate, assailing Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser for not clearly saying "yes" or "no" to the Putsch. Lossow himself has finally accepted being fired. The judges note that Hitler may go free in five months, with good behavior. Then the cops hustle Hitler out of the courtroom and back to Landsberg Prison, to avoid demonstrations.

When he returns to Cell 7, still holding his leather briefcase, Hitler gloomily pulls out an empty diary, and writes, "Motto: When a world comes to an end, then entire parts of the earth can be convulsed, but not the belief in a just cause." Below that, he writes, "The trial of common narrow-mindedness and personal spite is over – and today starts My Struggle (Mein Kampf)."

The other Putschists draw light terms, too. Röhm gets 15 months and a 100-Mark fine, with the sentences commuted to probation.