Behind the Insurrections - Hitler's Munich Beer Hall Putsch, Part 1 - Behind the Bastards

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hitler, Sophie, Sophie, Sophie. But we did it. I always
promised we do it again. That's our That's everyone's favorite
intro is when I just a totally shouted Hitler. We're
talking about Hitler today. This is Behind the Bastards podcast

(00:23):
about the worst people in all of history. I'm Robert Evans,
and this is actually a special mini series of Behind
the Bastards called Behind the Insurrections. Uh. Last episode we
talked about Benito Mussolini's March on Rome. This episode, we're
talking about another fascist insurrection directly inspired by the March
on Rome and carried out by Bastard's pod side character

(00:46):
and main character, Adolf Hitler. We're talking about the Munich
beer Hall push today. Yeah, lighted a fire, baby lighted
on so awful insurrection. I realized I should probably reference
where I got that from. It's okay, so Common the
actor and I call him the actor. I'm finishing. That

(01:11):
is an interesting since the rapper. Okay and yes, and
one could argue of the top ten list of greatest
rap albums of all time, Common may hold two of
those slots, one of which is an album called Resurrection
and That's where I got that from, was because he's
saying Ris Rick should so I was just saying insurrection,

(01:34):
deep cut, unnecessary piece of information. But you can pull
that out next time somebody tried to judge you about
your pop culture stuff. Beautiful, thank you. I'm more excited
about the fact that he was common sense. And then
he got into Hollywood and decided to drop the sense,
which no com There was a there's a band out
here in l A, like a local band who sued

(01:57):
him whose name was common said, and they were like
almost like a three eleven sublime, like white Boy Raggai band,
and they sued him for the name. They were like,
we were common sense first, and I mean I feel like,
I feel like you can't copyright the word or name
common sense, but they wont. So he was like, all right,

(02:19):
whatever comment and then became a list celebrity. I was
going to say, speaking of people who won, we should
talk about hitler Um at least for a while, but
not in this particular story, although eventually, at least when
this particular story ends, it's not the end of the story. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

(02:41):
This particular story is with Nazi defeat. But the broader
story of the Nazis is more complicated than that. So
I think we're gonna start here by talking about the
city of Munich, because generally when people talk Nazis, they
wind up kind of focusing on Berlin Um. But Munich
is where the National Sohalist Germans Workers Party, the n

(03:02):
s d a P, the Nazis, That's where they came from.
That's the birthplace of the Nazi movement is Munich. And
if you look a little bit into Munich's history it
makes sense. Um. Munich is a city in the German
state of Bavaria Um and Bavaria is historically the most
conservative part of Germany. It's kind of like Texas, uh
in that even after German unification in eighteen seventy, Bavarians

(03:24):
tended to see themselves as different and other from like
the rest of Germany, right like we're Germans, sure, but
we're more Bavarian, right Like it's it's this this the
attitude that you do kind of see like Texans have
a bit of this, right like where we're our own thing.
So that's always big in Bavaria and there's this kind
of like traditionalism. They have their own monarchy that's separate

(03:44):
from the Kaiser right, like the Kaiser's in charge of
Bavaria still, but they also have their own king UM.
And there's a lot of Bavarians who aren't super into
the idea of being part of Germany right because they
they they are more Bavarian than anything. Now. Adolf Hitler,
who was again in Austrian so he's not really a
German by the consideration of a lot of Germans. He

(04:05):
moves to Munich in nineteen thirteen mainly because he was
getting drafted to go join the Austrian Army and he
didn't want to join the Austrian army. So he's a
draft dodger and he moves to Munich to avoid serving
his time in the military. UM and just based on
what happens lest this is less because Hitler was Hitler
was not scared of being in the military. He didn't
like Austria. He thought it was like racially polluted UM

(04:27):
and so he moved to Munich because it was more
in line with his right wing sensibilities. UM. So he
rented a cheap room and he made a poverty level
income in Munich painting pictures of like famous buildings in
town because the beautiful city and selling them to tourists.
And this was like a whole industry in Munich. A
bunch of of little artists would paint pictures of local

(04:47):
buildings and sell them as like keepsakes to tourists. Hitler
was kind of unique among these artists because while most
of them would actually go out to where those buildings
were with like an easel and paint the buildings and
then sell their pictures and stuff, Hitler would buy cheap
postcards of those buildings and paint alone in his room
where he spent most of his time reading fringe political
tracts and one presumes masturbating furiously. We have to Yeah,

(05:11):
just unbelievable. Yeah, yeah he was. I mean he was
a pretty right wing guy. But yeah, he's he's pounding
it in his little office um and painting from postcards. Um.
And he's not a very good artist, which is one
of the key little because he lived in like a
tiny little real he was renting from a lady. He

(05:34):
was he was very little. Yeah, when Hitler, I thought
we were just putting him down for no reason. But no, no,
he was extremely poor. So when Hitler moved to Munich,
he had just finished being like a homeless person in
in Vienna, Like he lived in like a men's home
and stuff for like people who couldn't afford um to
stay off the street and whatnot. So he had just

(05:56):
gotten out of like a really dire financial situation. Um.
And actually part of why he was in a dire
financial situation is he inherited money from his mom, but
then his sister needed it for her kids, and so
he gave up his inheritance to her. Um, which you know,
kind of his evidence that, like everyone who turns out terrible,
there was a period of time in which Hitler might
not have wound up being Hitler. Um. So anyway, important

(06:18):
to keep in mind. So Hitler's living in Munich, He's
painting shitty paintings, tugging it all the time, um, and
reading a bunch of like reactionary right wing zines, like
poorly mimiographed newsletters about the dangers of the Jews. That's
like a huge thing Hitler's doing in this period. Some
things never changed, man. Yeah, Yeah, It's like it's like
he's like hanging out on the day's equivalent of eight Chan,

(06:39):
which is like these tracts that are being passed out
on the street. So when World War One kicks off,
and you know, in this period, right the Archduke's assassinated,
as we talked about last time, but in the run
up to World of One, Benito Mussolini's furiously trying to
get his country Italy involved in the war. UM. Germany
goes to war with the World UM, and Hitler immediately

(06:59):
joins up and become as an infantry man. UH. And
he's almost immediately thrown into one of the most horrifying
battles in not just like the whole war, but like
ever it's known colloquially as the Slaughter of the Innocence
because the Germans sent tens of thousands of basically children
to die to like Allied machine guns, a horrible battle. UM. Now,
at the same time as Hitler's watching his friends getting

(07:21):
mowed down in the trenches, Herman Gerring, who would become
his future second in command, is becoming one of the
first fighter pilots in history. Gering flew with Manfred ron
Richtoven the Red Baron's Flying Circus. He took command of
the squadron after Ricktoven got killed in nineteen eighteen, and
he got something. He shot down like twenty nine planes.
He's an extremely good fighter pilot, and it's like a

(07:41):
dad becomes like a dashing national hero. Now another big
Nazi you might know, Heinrich Himler was too young to
serve during World War One. He came from that awkward
generation where you were too young to fight in the
First World War, and he would have been too old
to fight in the second, and so his entire youth
was spent like idolizing these soldiers go off to die
in France who he was unable to join. Now, another

(08:04):
fellow who went to war in nineteen fourteen was Ernst Pohner.
Now Powner was a middle aged I know, it's a
rough name. You gotta give the guy some credit for
it the real cross to bear. So Powner grew up
or Powner was like a middle aged, conservative educated Bavarian,
pretty right wing guy. When the war starts and he
was commissioned as an infantry officer and eventually rose to

(08:26):
regimental command. Now, despite being a Bavarian to his soul
and thus being kind of like separate from the rest
of Germans, fighting in the war gives him this sense
of like unity with the rest of Germany and he
starts to feel like a member of this, like this
unified nation for the first time in his life. And
in fact, all of Bavaria was brought closer in step
to the rest of Germany. As a result of the war.

(08:47):
The region industrialized rapidly to provide armaments, and as the
German state devoted itself increasingly to becoming an engine of
arms production. Um, Bavaria becomes like a big part of that,
particularly Nuremberg or not, I think I think it might
have been. It was it was Narremberg. I'm not great
on all the other German cities, but like Bavarius starts
industrializing heavily, and their military was like just the best

(09:09):
in the world, incredibly good. Yeah yeah, like like Germany
actively amazing goes up against the entire rest of the
world in World War One and comes pretty close to winning.
They yeah, they like it's not like World War Two
where after a while, like they're almost they almost pulled
it off almost one yeah yeah, um, so the Kaiser's
propaganda had forbidden so like and that that's actually part

(09:32):
of the problem is that right up until the end
of the war, Germany could win it. It's not again,
not like World War Two. We're after nineteen forty three.
Everyone can see the writing on the wall up until
like late nineteen eighteen, Germany could pull that ship off.
Um And this is sort of compounded in the minds
of German people who see their soldiers winning by the
Kaisers propaganda, because the Kaiser had forbidden journalists from reporting

(09:55):
on the dire situation in the West. Um. So number one,
Germany is in a pretty good position most of the war.
They knock Romania and Russia out of the fight, so
they beat like two powers, including Russia, which is like
a fifth of the world's land masks which they heard
of at the time. They conquer Ukraine, um like get
it in a treaty basically, and they spend most of

(10:17):
the war within spitting distance of Paris. So on a map,
Germans spend most of that war thinking like we're winning.
This is tough, we're losing a lot of men, but
like we're gonna win this thing now. The situation on
the map belied some crucial realities, including the fact that
as the war went on, Germany was completely hollowed out
of soldiers, of supplies, and of food. Three quarters of

(10:39):
a million German civilian starved to death as a result
of the Allied blockade. UM. By the time Germany surrenders
in the winter of nineteen eighteen, it's army is on
the very brink of collapse. The generals who are in
charge at the end a guy named Eric Lundor for
you might remember from the Wonder Woman movie. Yes, he's
the bad guy and Wonder Woman um, but was a

(11:00):
real dude. UM. And Paul von Hindenberg, who was his
his co general. We're not the ones to accept failure gracefully, right,
Like both of them had some victories to their name,
both of them made some major strategic errors at the
end that we're a big factor in German defeat. Um.
But when the Germans lose, they don't stay on deck
to be like, hey, guys, we tried our best, we

(11:21):
fought as hard as anyone could fight, and we got
our We we just lost. They fucking bounce like as
soon as it becomes clear they're going to surrender, they're
fucking out of there. Yeah yeah, so back yeah, and
they they hand over responsibility for negotiating Germany's surrender because
the Kaiser also bounces like that motherfucker's off the Belgium

(11:42):
on a trade like um. So all of the people
who had gotten Germany into war and had like pushed
the war the whole time leave and put the responsibility
for negotiating the surrender on the social democrat dominated Reichstag.
So Germany overnight is a social democracy. And also the
liberals who had been most a lot of them anti

(12:02):
war up to that point, now have to deal with
negotiating germany surrender. Meanwhile, the guys who were responsible for
losing the war start concocting a narrative that the left
had stabbed the German army in the back, um, and
that's why they lost. And when I say the left,
I also mean the Jews, because that's what they mean, right,
like they're not, yeah, the left. And it's the same

(12:23):
thing people talk about cultural Marxism today, right the turn
back then was Judeo Bolshevism. But it's the same idea, right.
So the first days and weeks after Germany's defeat, there
were just a bunch of revolutions all throughout these different
cities in Germany, and a lot of them were left wing.
But Verry was not spared in this wave of unrest.
As you said, there was a strong While Bavaria is
very conservative, in Munich in particular, there's a very vibrant

(12:46):
left wing. And several days before Germany signs the armistice
on November eleven, on November seven, this huge crowd as
symbols in Munich and they forced the Bavarian king to
leave his throne. Now, the guy who orchestrate did this
was a dude named Kurt Eisner, and he's the head
of the Bavarian Social Democratic Party and his goal was
to you know what he did. He wanted to kick

(13:07):
out the king and establish a Bavarian republic. Now, that
worked for a little while. The unfortunately Eisner, the coalition
that Eisener used to kind of kick the king out
and establish a republic was only united in their desire
to bring it into the war and get rid of
the king. And once that war ended and the king
was gone, they didn't agree on anything else because it

(13:27):
was a coalition of like the far left, but also
a lot of like center left people and even centrists
were just like this World War One thing doesn't seem
to be working out for anybody. All of us sucks
for all of us. And when that ends, a lot
of these centrists are like, well, we don't really agree
with the left on anything else, you know, And there's
this huge desire to We've got the king out, the

(13:48):
war has gone. Let's go back to business as usual.
Let's go back to the way things were before the war.
I think people Americans can understand. People. Yeah, I just
want to go back to branch man. Yeah, I want
to go back to brunch. And a lot of these
centrists wanted to go back to the center right and
the center left, arguing because both the extreme right and
the extreme left had been empowered by the war and

(14:09):
the economic collapse that came with it, and these these
folks in the middle were scared by that. So this
is before like Proust, and like the new like the
new Democrats or the new like Constitution. They right, like this,
this is right, this is before the Weimar Constitution. Istion
Eisner over Eisner leads his sort of revolution like five

(14:33):
days before Germany surrenders. Um. So this is contemporary, like
the Weimar Constitution starts being written during the period where
a lot of this is happening. But this starts before.
This starts while the Kaiser is still on the throat, right, Um,
I'm fairly sure while the Kaiser is still on the front.
It starts before the official German surrender. So things, you know,
the center right or the center left decides like, we

(14:56):
don't really want to work with Eisener. Eisner's support dissolves,
and he kind of winds up unable to govern because
he doesn't really have a lot of people backing him. Um.
There's new elections, uh in January of nineteen nineteen, and
this kind of center left dominates as opposed to Eisner's
far left. So on the morning of February one, nineteen nineteen,

(15:17):
Kurt Eisner starts walking to the lawn Tag, the land Tag,
which is like they're, you know, kind of their Congress
sort of thing, to resign his position as head of
the local government. Now, while he's on his way, this
German noble count Anton Arco Valley, which is a fucking badass.
Now Arco Valley, it's like he's like a Spiderman victim right, Billy, Yeah, Um,

(15:39):
he's a he's a rich Bavarian nobleman. So Arco Valley
like comes up and shoots him dead. Eisner. Um so
because he's you know, Arco Valley is a monarchist and
a and a far right kind of guy, and he
wants to murder this left wing dude, even though the
guy is about to leave power willingly. So one of
Eisner's Eisner does have some very loyal followers, and one
of them responds to Eisner being killed by gunning down

(16:03):
another politician. And for reasons unknown to history, this like
leftist supporter of Eisner, instead of going after one of
arco Valley's allies, picks a moderate liberal um, a guy
named Ernard our Um and shoots him. Now, our survives
an hour at the time is kind of the head
of the Social Democrats and Munich. So he's like, he's
like kind of the Joe Biden right, Like he's like

(16:24):
a moderate liberal. Um. Yeah uh. And this leftist shoots
him instead of one of arco valleys allies for a
good reasons that aren't really well known. Um, but our survived.
What theories you know, I I haven't really heard a
good one. It might just be that, as a rule,
a lot of folks on the far left will always
hate liberals more than they hate the right. Um. It

(16:47):
might have been it's like it was just like personal
It's like that fool hit on my girl. Yeah, I've
been personally. He might have been a man. I took
my chance. He might have just fucked up right, like
guns are at the wrong rate back then, you know,
like you know, I don't really know. Um Ours survived
though he doesn't get killed, but his injuries keep him
out of politics for two years. And while our was

(17:09):
like kind of a centrist, he was an effective leader
of the Social Democratic Party. He was good at getting
people in line. Um And the fact that he's out
of the picture for a couple of years means that
his party is effectively rudderless right at the same time
that the far left is energized by Eisner's martyrdom. Now,
our successor, a guy named Johann Hoffman, was weak and

(17:30):
not very competent um. So you've got this position where
the dominant center left party loses its effective leader at
the same time as the radical left gets energized by
the assassination of like one of their big dudes. And
I'm gonna I'm gonna read a quote now from a
graduate dissertation by James McGee titled the Political Police in
Bavaria nineteen nineteen to nineteen thirty six. To explain what

(17:53):
happens next. The assassination of Eisner had worked as a
solvent upon political consensus such as it was in Bavaria.
The Hoffman government found itself caught between the advance of
radicalism on both the right and the left the first round,
and the struggle went to the radical left. No longer
able to maintain itself in Munich, the Hoffman government decamped
on April seven, eventually coming to rest in the northern

(18:13):
Bavarian city of Bomberg. Authority in Munich was assumed successively
by two councils, the first led by an ill assorted
collection of independent socialists and anarchists, and the second by
the communists. So two different successive kind of far left
governments take over through like a revolution basically, but neither
of them are very good at it right. Neither of

(18:34):
them really have like the anarchists are way more focused
on creating public art and stuff um and don't really
have a great, uh cohesive set of plan to deal
with the needs of a lot of like uh Moonstionaris,
I think it is like people of the people of Munich,
um whereas the communists are kind of they're not really
that good at building support outside of the people who

(18:54):
are already involved in their movement. Uh there there spent
a lot of time going after their political enemies, um
and again aren't very good at consolidating power. Meanwhile, outside
the city, conservative forces start regrouping and preparing to invade
Munich because there's been a left wing revolution. What is
the right going to do? They're gonna murder everyone they can.
So the core of this right wing movement where the

(19:15):
Free Corps um, and that's an organization of right wing
veterans that you could see is broadly similar to groups
like the Oath Keepers or the three Percenters today. Now,
the main difference between these two is the oath Keepers
and the three Percenters are mostly people dressing up like
soldiers who if they were in the military, never heard
a shot fired in anger. The men of the Free
Corps are hard sons of bitches, like they have They

(19:36):
have done a ton of killing. They have seen thousands
die before their eyes, Like a lot of these guys.
These guys are like veterans of the trenches. So they're
not they're not playing, you know, like they're not dressing
up because soldiers look cool. They've they they have been
so broken by war that it's the only thing they
can really do, you know, Larkin over here. Yeah, they're

(19:57):
called the Free Corps, the Free Corp, the Free Corps
right like where, Yeah so, and the Free Corps. Not
all these guys. A number of like free core dudes
actually become anti Nazis later, but a lot of the
Free Corps are the genesis of what becomes some of
the Nazi street movements too. And it's kind of like
we saw with the r d T in Italy right
where you've got all these veterans. Some of them do

(20:17):
become some of them just one order and they're more
Republican than anything. But they'll fight the radical left and
then they wind up being anti Nazi. Most of them
go more in a Nazi direction. Some of them wind
up being kind of more on the left after a
while because they get, you know, disillusioned by right wing politics.
But you have this melting pot of soldiers who are
angry at things, and the bulk of them do go

(20:38):
to the right. Now. Yeah, so these guys invade and
they make quick work of the Red forces of the
Revolutionary Government. I'm gonna quote from macgee's article again. By
the end of April, the feeble Red forces had been
pressed back into the environs of Munich itself. At this moment,
with their backs to the wall, elements of the Red
Army executed tin hostages. Some of the hostages were members

(20:59):
of the right radic called Tula Society. Others appeared to
have been selected almost at random. None of the ten, however,
had done anything to earn so terrible a retribution with run.
With one gratuitous act, the leftist defenders of Munich had
opened the floodgates of violence. The aroused White forces poured
into the city on May first, bent upon the eradication
of the Bavarian Soviet Republic and its supporters in the

(21:19):
most literal sense imaginable. The hardened Free Corps and Army
troops coursed through the streets of the city, shooting anyone
who appeared even remotely suspicious. The orgy of execution did
not stop until May seven, when it was discovered that
the White forces had mistakenly murdered a group of twenty
one Catholic school boys. These school boys were by no
means the only innocence who fell before the guns. Before

(21:41):
this first wave of killing had come to an end,
over six hundred individuals had been slain, many of them
individuals with no connection to the Red Army or the
Soviet Republic. The revolution, which had begun so peacefully six
months before, had ended in a blood bath. Order had
returned to Bavaria. And that's kind of the story of
the radical left in the rat right, right, you get

(22:01):
the radical left, some of them go a little bit far.
They killed ten people, and the right murder six hundred people,
including several dozen schoolboys. Yeah, got dog man, Yeah, I
hearing about this just this time in the world and
being a you know, albeit African American male, But the

(22:27):
reality is I live in America, you know that like
in this in this era that like the type of
violence these people endured all the time, you know, and instability,
Like it's just we really can't get our brain around
that six hundred Yeah, you know, it was six hundred
people at least, like they murder a whole school of

(22:48):
Catholic children, you know, famous leftists the Catholic school. Yeah, right,
I mean to be actually, if we're being honest, like
one of the in Germany, the anti fascists were a
mix of anarchists, communists, social Democrats, and Catholics. A lot
of very traditional conservative Catholics were anti fascists because they

(23:12):
were against the Nazis, right, and they still believed some
pretty messed up stuff. You're talking about Catholics in the
thirties and forties. But um, we're not Nazis, you know,
And you get a lot of credit in my book
if you're anti Nazi, regardless of what you believe in
that all the other stuff I can say this about you. Yeah,
but you know, this does kind of everything that's happening
in Germany in this period makes it clear what I

(23:33):
what I kind of consistently think is the most the
thing that we have going for us the most in
our present struggle against fascism, which is that our fascists
are they're fucking whimps for the most part, right, most
of them have never seen heavy combat. They have not
seen people shot to death. They haven't shot anyone to death,

(23:55):
they have not been in like That's why a lot
of them started to run as soon as like the
police started really using force the fascists, the Nazis, the
O G Nazis. Most of them are hard, hard people.
Hitler is an incredibly physically tough man. Like Hitler is
a guy who got into street fights with a whip,

(24:16):
you know, Like, these are these are rough people, um
and I that's one of the things we have going
for us is that most of ours just aren't that tough,
you know. Um. Yeah. There's like this weird like combo
of like there's you're not that tough, but you have
something to prove, so you're gonna be so you're dangerous

(24:37):
because you have something to prove, right, But then there's
you are tough and you have something to prove and
you ain't scared, you know. I'm like, yeah, that's a
toll that. That's a totally different situation. Yeah. Yeah. Like
you'll see a lot of folks in our far right
dress up in you know, plate carriers and carry guns
and look like soldiers. The Nazis did that too, They

(25:00):
war military. They dressed like German stormtroopers, and most of
them had been right when they dressed like the guys
who charged through trenches with an axe in one hand
and a handgun in another. It's because they charged through
trenches with an axe in one hand and a handgun
in another. You know, Yeah, and I know you've seen
that look, bro as a tangent, but like as much
as you've trapped as any war zones you've been in,

(25:21):
and then even here, like you can see it in
a person's eyes to where you're like, oh, yeah, you'll
cut me, you will cut my throat. You're not, you
won't think twice, You'll cut my throat, Like you can
see it in a person's eyes. Yeah, it's the willingness,
it's it's the people, and you can really see it
in a lot of folks eyes, the folks for whom
doing violence is the same as like turning the page

(25:42):
in a book, right, Like it doesn't require a switch
in their mental circuitry. Yeah, they're just ready, you know,
and most of them aren't that. Most of the far
right in Munich in this period are that kind of person.
You know, You've got folks like Heinrich Hemler who were
too young and who want to be that and are
playing at it. But a lot of them are really
tough people. So mainstream Munich, which you know, after the

(26:06):
right comes in and massacres everybody, it's still like kind
of the liberals who are in charge of the government
for about a year after this point, you know, kind
of the mainstream center left, and they blamed the far
left for everything, even though the vast majority of the
killing had been done by folks that were basically proto
fascists um and among other things, the fact that the
left had taken over the city briefly helped to incite

(26:27):
and fuel an extremely active right wing malicious scenes. So
all of these different street militias of armed young men
start to form up during this period of time. So
different groups of angry young men, many of them veterans,
got together to fight the reds and then share their
city would never fall to the left again again. A
liberal government is in charge for the next year, but

(26:48):
after the Free Corps and the army come in, the
real power in Munich is with the military and the police,
and the dominant political ideology in the city among both
the center left and center right comes a thirst for
order above all else, right, which you can understand, like
these people aren't just going through like a lot of
Americans just want order at this point after the last
four years, and we didn't go through a war that

(27:10):
killed like what one out of every ten of our
young men something like that. Yeah, their calls for law
and order are understandable. Yeah, I think they're you know,
the history will show it was the wrong way to
go about it, But you have to be more sympathetic
to them than the people calling for now like well,
you can't even imagine. No one in in America can
imagine we have no Yeah, exactly. Um. So, Ernest Pohner

(27:34):
was one of the first men who stepped in to
fill this need for order. And he'd been enraged by
Eisner and you know, even more enraged by the Soviet
Republic that briefly took charge of Munich. Um and so
he gets promoted to be the head of the Munich
Police Force in May of nineteen nineteen. And he's fresh
back from commanding a regiment in World War One at
this point, and as soon as he's put in, you know,

(27:55):
in charge of the police force, he sets to work
not just crushing Marxism but doing everything he can to
encourage the growth of the radical right in Munich. Now,
the radical right there were a number of different parties
at this period, but the one that would come to
dominate the Munich far right scene was of course, the
National Socialist German Workers Party the n s d a P.
They were founded in February of nineteen twenty by a

(28:17):
fellow named Anton Drexler. A lot of people don't know this.
Hitler didn't start the Nazi Party. He wasn't involved at
the very beginning. It was a locksmith named Drexler who
had been involved previously in a bunch of other fanatical
nationalist parties. Now, from the beginning, the n s d
a P. And they're not the Nazis at this point,
nobody calls them that yet. That that that takes for
a while later, So at this point called him the

(28:39):
National Socialists or the n s d AP. Their goal
initially was to be the party of the German middle class.
And I think you'll remember that from our episode on Italy. YEP.
Drexler sought robust social aid programs for arians. So he
wanted socialism four arians, right, and he wanted anyone who
was not to not be in his fucking country. That

(29:00):
that yeah. Now, at the onset, the National Socialists were
a small and secretive group of about sixty people. Now,
the reichs Wear, which is Germany's post war army becomes
immediately concerned with this small party, namely because they were
afraid that it might have subversive or revolutionary goals. Right,
the Army is definitely more anti left than right, but

(29:20):
they're concerned about anyone who might be a threat to
order in this period, So they decided to send in
a spy to look at this young starting party and
figure out if it's a threat. And the spy they
send is a young German corporal named Adolf Hitler. Like
of of all the times, I mean like of So

(29:41):
there's so much of world history that fascinates me, but
this moment, this time, this time, the in between wars,
this time is so interesting to me. U is it
so interesting that we should take an ad break for
a suspect. Yeah, you know who won't send Hitler and
to infiltrate a radical political party and then become its head.

(30:07):
Our sponsors, They will not, our sponsors have never ordered
Adolf Hitler to infiltrate right wing politics. That for a fact,
Absolutely certain. Yes, I'm a bastard for that transition. By
the way, that was a great transition. Oh my gosh,

(30:30):
we have returned and I am just loving talking about
some old h bomb hittie hits h bombay. Uh here
here's what you could do. Here's what you can do
for these people, which is some of the Uh well,
I don't get into these Gussies anymore because they're ridiculous.

(30:51):
But um, help these people understand this party having to
term socialists in it, but they're not socialists, like yeah, yeah,
help them understand net. It's just they're they're national socialists,
which means which means they're they're kind of and in
their conception that means that, like, we seek a socialist

(31:12):
state for members of our race, so we want to
and and some of that was just was just lies
because the Germans, a lot of stuff is happening here.
For one thing, the left is very powerful in Germany
during this point. The Communists are beating the Nazis for
the most part in elections through most of this history.
So and they're both competing for people who have been radicalized,

(31:33):
like we talked about last time, people who have accepted
that the system is fucked. A lot of them can
go left or right. So the Nazis have to be
reaching out to the workers, have to be trying to
recruit from that. And there's also you know, you are
talking about a period of time in which the German
economy is it's like five point seven billion marks to
the dollar. Like Germany is a nation of trillionaires who

(31:54):
can't afford food. So you have to be able to
speak to these people and promise them some sort of aid.
And that was a big part. And and the way
basically the left is like everybody deserves to be taken
care of. We need to take money away from these
We need to nationalize industries, we need to nationalize corporations,
we need to give the means of production to workers.

(32:14):
The Germans are basically like we need to take money
away from the Jews and businesses away from the Jews
and give it to arians, right because of them. Yeah,
the idea of like accepting the fact that, like you
lost this war. I feel like that's what's so that
this is part of what's interesting me about this season

(32:35):
to this time in history, because it's like you couldn't
get your brain around the fact that y'all just lost,
Like it just you lost. You drained your economy on
a war that you shouldn't have been in the first place. Again,
nothing that sounds similar to this country today exactly. Just hey, bro,
you take it on a chint. You lost, you know

(32:56):
what I'm saying, Let's figure this out. Were you looking for? Like, well,
we just lost because of them? Like well anyway, Yeah,
none of this is familiar. And it's also when we're
talking about sort of socialism within the Nazis. One thing
people do need to understand is that in the early
period and this hasn't even really evolved yet in the
episode we're talking about. This is more in like the

(33:16):
later twenties, there's a left wing and a right wing
of the Nazi Party. There are Nazis who are anti capitalist.
The Night of Long Knives is the right wing of
the Nazi Party, which is the dominant chunk of the party,
murdering all of those ps. Which is not to say
the left wing of the Nazi Party weren't a bunch
of hideous racist monsters. They were, Um, they just believed

(33:36):
slightly different things and were then murdered, right Like. That's
that's what the Knight of Long Knives was, was a
purging of the kind of more socialist elements within the
Nazi Party that they needed to kind of get into
power and get enough workers behind them that they could,
you know, um take the streets. Um so. Again, a
lot of Chairman, his political history is incredibly complicated in

(33:57):
this period, so much is going on, um and again,
like people who are convinced that the system needs to
be destroyed will often have some stuff in common with
each other, which is what you do see Nazis and
communists on a couple of occasions, like fight together against
police in the state, not because they agree with each other,

(34:19):
but because they agree on the fact that the state
is ship. Um you know, it's it's a very messy
time because everything is falling apart. Again, I'm sure Americans
can identify with that. Um so. Yeah. This Hitler's you know,
commanding officer sends him to infiltrate this far right group
and learn if it's like a threat to the German government,

(34:41):
which I think you have to count as like one
of the worst decisions ever made, like calculation and I
don't know if anything's ever backfired more than be like, oh,
we don't want to we we want to make sure
these guys don't overthrow the government. Send Hitler in the
checkout him yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
Mostly underestimated big so Hitler at the time was an

(35:02):
angry young man, still suffering from his war injuries. He'd
been pretty badly messed up at the front, and he'd
been at the front for about four straight years. So
he's he's riddled with PTSD and physically injured, and he's
adrift in a nation on the verge of collapse. The
economy is in free fall. People don't have jobs, and
Hitler's kind of One of the reasons he does this
is he's desperate to not get kicked out of the military.

(35:24):
Most soldiers are released from the military after the war.
He hangs onto his job for a while, and this
is how and he needs the fucking money, right, so
he takes this gig. He goes in and shows up
at a meeting or two of the Nazi Party, and
he finds himself kind of enthralled by the group's discussions. Now,
one of the party's early members was a fellow named
Dietrich Eckert. Now Eckert was an anti Semitic poet, and

(35:46):
most historians consider him to be the spiritual founder of
the Nazi Party. Hitler himself, in some private writings, described
Eckert as the spiritual founder of Nazism. Now, Eckert was
all about nationalism and saving Germany from the Jewish menace
that he believed had lost the war for her bereft
of a Kaiser. Dietrich became convinced that an Aryan hero

(36:07):
was needed to save the German race, and he spent
a lot of his time thinking about who that hero
might be. And I'm gonna quote Dietrich here. This is
talking about like what he believes is necessary to save Germany. Yeah,
the rabble has to be scared shitless. I can't use
an officer, by which he means a military officer. The
people no longer have any respect for them. Best of

(36:28):
all would be a worker who's got his mouth in
the right place. He doesn't need much intelligence. Politics is
the stupidest business in the world, right, I mean, politics
is the stupidest. Yeah, you have to see Eckard is

(36:49):
in a lot of ways one of the most effective
and like political thinkers of all time. He's absolutely right
about how to take over German democracy. It succeeds, a
plan works. Yeah, he turns out he was right. Yeah. Now,
during one early Nazi party meeting, a professor got up
and made an impassioned argument about why Bavaria needed to

(37:10):
seceed from Germany. Hitler got enraged by this, and he
starts screaming at this professor and he's so eloquent in
his arguments about like why Germany needs to stay together,
that like everyone who's there is just struck by his
his skill as a speaker. Um, And this professor actually
like flees the room in in shame because he can't
like argue against Hitler. And yeah, this convinces all of

(37:31):
the party leaders at the time that Hitler had a
future as an orator, that he could be like a
big voice for spreading the party's propaganda. So they start
having Hitler gift speeches and they're right, Like he's able
to draw a crowd. That guy is a good public speaker.
He gets better and better about it over time, and
in short order he's the most prominent member of the
National Socialist Party and the soon it's figurehead. Now the

(37:54):
Nazis grew quickly at this point, drawing in other disaffected
veterans like Herman Gearing and Ernst Rome. Him. Now, Rome
had been a stormtrooper and he's a really interesting guy.
He's one of the members who's purged in the Night
of Long Knives. So he had in World War One
been like a Special Forces guy, an elite assault trooper.
He's covered head to toe in scars. His nickname because
he has so many connections in the military. He's able

(38:16):
to get like heavy machine guns for these militias and
stuff like have them smuggled out illegally from the army
to these right wing groups. They call him the machine
Gun King, which is an objectively cool nickname. No, Rome
is a terrifying person um and and it's just like
a like and if you want to think about his
the way he's seen by a lot of the radical

(38:37):
right at this point point in Germany. You think about
a guy like Chris Kyle, right, the American Sniper, how
Republicans talk about him. Rome was that sort of legend.
He's just this absolute legendary brawler, a warrior. He's also
very almost openly gay, which is why he's murdered in
the light Night of Long Knives, right, is because like

(38:58):
Hitler doesn't want that kind of ad pr He's a
very interesting guy. Um. Yeah, he's a tough He's a
tough and that's like a huge factor in you know
there there again we talked about all these kind of
countercultural movements coming together. You see versions of this within
the Proud Boys too, right like where and that's a
big part of Like at the time, what you know,
Romes sexuality wasn't something that they advertised. Now it is

(39:21):
kind of an advertising point where it's like, hey, we're
not white nationalists, like look, you know our leaders, this
our leader is like a black guy. We've got all
these gay people, like, we couldn't possibly be fascists. And
it's like, no, no, no, The fascists have had always
at the start a lot of different people represented as
long as they're violent. Now, once they get into power,
they murder those people. Yeah, Rome doesn't last after Hitler

(39:46):
gets into power. No no, no, no. But Hitler's happy
to be his friend when he needs to be up.
The finesse on that kid, Hitler, Man, it's just that
the finesse is ridiculous, Like yeah, yeah, any you can't
finesse is ridiculous. Anyway, Hitler starts attracting these war heres
because Garing is also herman. Garring is like a fighter

(40:06):
ace and he's very handsome as a young man. Like
everyone knows like the obese heroin addicted garing that like,
you know, gets caricatured when he's a young man. He's
this like very handsome, prominent look like he looks like
a movie star, and he's a legendary fighter pilot. You've
got Ernst Rome, who's just like tough as nails, and
all of these like war heroes start joining the Nazi ranks,

(40:27):
which of course brings in more guys from the far
right because you've got all as a young man. Yeah,
you need a young one. Now I'm looking at young one.
This dude's handsome, young herman Gary, drop the leak. Yeah,
I'll show you a picture of him. I'll show you
a picture of him. Drop that into chet. You know what,
we're gonna agree to disagree on this one. This is

(40:49):
a point to motherfucker looking like no, no, no, no, no, no,
I'm gonna throw I'm gonna like an ugly lego loss
from one of the rings. Well you got it. Well
you gotta type those in there, so I mean no,
I don't ugly. Okay, chat chat picture of them. Okay,

(41:10):
hold up this the same picture I was looking at. Yes,
this is not an attractive man. He looks like he
looks like a young bing Crosby. Yo. That's a little
bit of you know what I'm saying, a little Matthew McConaughey, jaw, Yeah,
you know what I'm saying. It's traditionally, I I don't
want to get caught into the talking about how hot
Herman Garring used to be. Discuss he's still a monster.

(41:31):
He is, he's he is seen as being an attractive
young war here traditionally attractive recording to Western standards. Also,
half of the men in Germany in this period have
had their faces blown off, So it's the bar is
not as hot. Um, it's like Ricketts chip, it's a
no for me dog. Okay, well good does not think

(41:54):
Herman Garring is hot. Well, that's a T shirt right
there on the motherfucking record. We need to we need
a let's get two sets of T shirts out Team
Herman Garring was fuckable and Team Herman Garring wasn't fuckable yet, Sophie,
can we get can we get t public on? That?
Is that a good idea? I'm sure, but I don't know.

(42:15):
It's just just a picture of Hermann Garring and DTF
The question, right under uh, that might not go over
well for us. It's all bad, so uh yeah, they
start to draw in a lot of like because they've
got all these war heroes, they start to draw in
a lot of other people on the right who had
idolized these men's soldiers who you know, these guys have

(42:36):
been their heroes in the trenches, and also younger men
who hadn't been old enough to fight in the war.
But we're drawn to wanting to be in the company
of these legends, guys like Heinrich Hemler, right, he sees
all these heroes joining the Nazis. He never got to
fight in the war, so he joins the Nazis. Now
Hitler's give speech after speech after speech, and while he's
doing this, Dietrich Ekort is helping Hitler mold his public

(42:59):
appearance and create what came to be known as the
Hitler myth. And this is the idea that Hitler was
not just a politician, but he kind of supernaturally embodied
the spirit of the German people and was their defender
against their racial enemies. Eckert is the architect of this idea,
which is the core of like what became It comes
like the fewer principle like the center of Nazism. Now,

(43:21):
one of Eckert's main points was that a new German
revolution was necessary. The nineteen eighteen revolution, he felt, which
is like the socialist revolution that takes O Remunich, had
failed because it was soulless and Jewish. Eckert wanted a revolution,
but he wanted a revolution that was led by someone
he crafted, namely hitler Um, that could lead the German

(43:41):
people into freedom and wipe away the stain of defeat
in World War One. Now, of course, the Nazis were
opposed even from an early period, as they always are
by the left, namely socialists and communists. In this period,
and this is before the birth of German anti fascismism
as a movement, there are people fighting fascism, but like
the idea of like Antifa as we know it like

(44:02):
comes out of Germany like a decade later than this
or so um, that hasn't really evolved yet. And there
anti fascism in Germany in this period is at a
more primitive level than it is in say Italy. Right, um,
so there are but they are still opposing the Nazis,
and there are frequent fights at Nazi party rallies. Communists
and socialists will show up at beer halls where Nazis

(44:23):
are meeting and like try to beat the ship out
of these guys, and the Nazis will do the same
thing at left wing gatherings. All everything, every political thing
in Munich happens at a beer hall. And you do
have to assume that everyone but Hitler has wasted it
pretty much all the time. Hitler is not much of
a drinker. Everybody else is just fucking man. How come
like as unstable as the world is like at this time, Matt,

(44:44):
you know, I wonder if we would have much more
people entering into political discourse if they fought the way
that these people fight. Y'all just drinking scrap, Like could
you imagine that that? Like our party, I know, our
parliament in the seventeen d was like this, you know
what I'm saying, eight hunts, We used to actually scrap,
you know what I'm saying. But like these dudes like
like you you talking. It's so funny because it's like

(45:07):
it's this is hood ship. This sounds like gangbanging, Like
y'all pulling up. It's like, yo, you left this Yeah,
and I'm left this what's what's What's what I'm saying.
It's like you flashing signs at each other, y'all, y'are politicians.
Y'are politicians. You know what I'm saying? Like what that's
so that's what I think Again, that's going back to
what I mean by like, we don't have we don't

(45:28):
have categories for it is their officials fight. Yeah, that's
crazy to me. M Yeah, they are like like and
this is a lot of these guys are like kind
of not elected, like elected leaders do get into fights
and stuff. This. Yeah, a lot of these guys are
just sort of like campaigning, and a lot of it

(45:49):
happens via street fighting, and it's it's ugly. Ship people
are being gunned down and stabbed and beating um like
it's nasty stuff. And in fact, it gets so nasty
that now only does like Hitler start carrying a whip
and a handgun so that he can like slash people's
faces open during barbawlls. But the Nazis, in order to
like defend their meetings, develop a powerful and organized street

(46:11):
fighting arm. Uh. These guys are called the Storm Abtai
Lung or the Storm Division and they were created an
early nineteen twenty as a hall protection force, like a
beer hall protection force for like the meetings that the
party would hold in Munich. Now, in addition to having
like a bunch of guys who would show up to
like crackheads and fight communists, they also opened a sports

(46:31):
and gymnastics wing which started training their men in boxing,
jiu jitsu, and exercise. And you see the same thing
with modern fascist. There's a lot of fascist and neo
Nazi m M A. Jim's a strong like lifting culture
among like the Rise Against movement, who are a big
part of Charlottesville Unite the Right in Charlottessville. Like you
know that that the idea of like nazis loving to

(46:52):
get into jiu jitsu. Nothing against jiu jitsu, it's rad
as hell, but like the fact that they've been into
it that goes back a century. Man, I'd say, bro, like, yeah,
it's been playing its eyes where I'm like I just
may I just do some like somebody like catasthenics like
plan metrics stuff. Man, I'm not going to these gyms
just just like you just feel like it's just full
of these like buck boys. You know what I'm saying,

(47:14):
and now it makes sense. It's like, yeah, there's a
history of this. Yeah, there's a history which is like
there's also some pretty rad you know, anti fascist like
m m A gyms and stuff out there. Yeah, because
I think it's important to train people who aren't Nazis
and how to defend themselves against But there's a long
history of like there's a there's a huge like fascist
m m A fighting like network in Eastern Europe, particularly

(47:39):
in Ukraine. Like they'll have these big conventions and and
competitions and stuff like. It's a big part of that
kind of culture. Um. Yeah, so that you know that
starts with the Nazis in this period. Um, they're doing
jiu jitsu in nineteen fucking twenty, so that's kind of
And the Stormtrooper catchphrase in this period was a very

(47:59):
subtle death to the Jews. So not great at keeping
a lid on what they're about, you know. Now. In
nineteen two, Herman Gearing was promoted to lead the Sturm
up Tailung, hereafter known as the Essay These are the
guys that come to be known as the brown Shirts. Now,
by that point, his men had spent much of the
last two years and by being a steady diet of

(48:21):
race hatred and revolutionary fascist propaganda. Wilhelm Bruckner, who was
the head of the Munich Stormtroopers, told Hitler that year
that very soon Hitler would be unable to restrain his
men from doing something. And what Bruckner was warning about
is the same thing we saw in Washington, d C.
On the sixth. If you have this movement of young
men that you gin up with conspiracies about child eating

(48:42):
pedophiles and the globalist destruction of their race and nation,
which is exactly the kind of a lot of the
ship the Nazis are learning hearing this period is like
q and on ship right, very similar. If you if
you get a bunch of angry, violent young men obsessed
with weaponry focused on that ship for years, they will
demand to go shed blood to stop it at some

(49:02):
point and you won't be able to stop them. And
kind of one of the areas where you know Trump
fucked up is he didn't do anything with them cohesive,
because I don't think he ever had much of a
cohesive plan. So they raided the capital and caused a
crackdown on themselves. It's beyond him. Now, yeah, it's beyond him.
Now Hitler doesn't let it get beyond him. He realizes

(49:24):
this is happening and that action needs to be taken now.
For a while he was able to kind of burn
out this excess energy among his street fighters by having
them go after journalists and newspaper offices, having them tear
down political propaganda and beat up left wing canvassers in
the streets. So he has them assaulting his enemies and
part to just try to get off this excess energy

(49:44):
so they don't blow up and like tip their hand
too early. And of course all of the fighting and
violence in the street they're doing is very illegal under
under German law at the time. But the Police President Powner,
who we've talked about earlier, ensured the Nazis faced few consequences.
And I'm gonna quote from McGee's article on the Munich
political police. At this point, the debt with which the
Nazi movement owed Powner was real. As Police President Powner

(50:08):
extended a sheltering hand to protect the activities of the
nascent Nazi movement. In doing so, he ensured its survival
and gave it an opportunity for future growth. This passive image, however,
does little to convey the full dimensions of Powner's commitment
to both the radical right in general and Nazis in particular.
As a key figure in Bavarian politics during the post
war period, Powner actively aided the Volcush movement and occupied

(50:30):
a central position in its highest councils. And the Vocish
movement is like all these ideas about the Aryan race
and the German people that kind of feed into Nazism.
I mean they had like that judges. Yeah, we'll be
talking about the judges. Becomes a judge. He's becomes a judge.
Yeah yeah. These scholl was sitting in court with their
legs all the way up the cross like yeah, yeah,

(50:52):
go ahead. Yeah. And for an example of how biased
he was, at one point during his time as the
chief of police in Munich, Powner is asked if he
realizes the Nazis are murdering people in the streets of Bavaria,
and he replies, yes, but far too few of them.
So now, as an aside, unrelated to anything we're talking

(51:12):
about at present, we now know that at least twenty
eight police officers were present for the storming of the
capital on January six. Um. I should note that in
two thousand eighteen, after a series of dueling protests in
Portland between left and right wing demonstrators that ended with
police assaulting and hospitalizing a left wing activist, internal planning
documents from the police revealed that they viewed the fascist

(51:33):
activists as quote much more mainstream than the anti fascists.
There's a long through line, you know. Yeah, yeah, that
mainstream has quite a subtext. It sure does, sure does. Probably. Yeah,
So by nine the thrill of beating the ship out
of their enemies in the streets was wearing thin for
the storm Abtai Lung. Now, roughly two thirds of the

(51:55):
Nazi Party membership was under the age of thirty one
at this point. These are young men who want to
drink and fight and revolt against the liberals and Jews
they see is ruining their country, right. Um, they look
a lot like the Proud Boys. It's a group of
like macho, like, testosterone loaded young men who drink and
probably do a lot of like the Proud Boys do

(52:16):
a lot of cocaine. I'm guessing a lot of these
guys are on blow too, you know, not uncommon in
Germany in that period. So Hitler was super on board
with getting these guys into the fight do largely to
what he and the rest of the world had watched
Benito Mussolini's Black Shirts do in Italy the year before,
Because again, the March on Rome is the year before
Hitler does his beer hall punch. Twenty three is the

(52:39):
beer hall punch. And I'm gonna quote now from a
book called The Trial of Adolf Hitler by David King,
and that he's this is Hitler talking at first. If
a German Mussolini is given to Germany, Hitler said to
a journalist for London's Daily Mail on the eve of
the push, people would fall down on their knees and
worship him more than Mussolini has ever been worshiped. This
journalist was unim rest In private, he dismissed Hitler as

(53:02):
another hot air merchant. But Hitler had in fact decided
to follow in the Fascist footsteps and march on Berlin.
The original plan had been to strike on Saturday night,
November ten. This was, after all, the weekend, which Hitler
believed was the best time for a revolution. Authorities would
be away from their desks, police would be reduced to
a minimal staff, and the lighter traffic would not impede

(53:22):
on the movement of his trucks and troops. So Hitler
becomes convinced after seeing Mussolini that like, not only did
Missolini have some great ideas, but this will work even
better in Germany, um, because we kind of have more
of an authoritarian culture. Italy when Mussolini took over, had
a much longer democratic Germany a lot more authoritarianism. Hitler's like,

(53:43):
if I present myself the way Mussolini did, I'll be
even more powerful. People will join me on the road
to Berlin and we'll take over the whole country. Now
oh my gosh, h Yeah he's not. I mean, he's
wrong in this instance, but not overall. There's an interesting
light um even with that like Germans like at the

(54:05):
time propensity towards like authoritarian like I still think even
and and then their their assaulted is towards Catholicism. When
I think about their like Protestant movement um being so
informed by sort of like reform Calvinist thought like this
this idea that like humans are so depraved at their

(54:28):
core because of sin. You know what I'm saying like,
you can't trust them to make good choices for themselves,
So you need a strong man in the same way
that Jesus was your strong man. You know what I'm saying,
to make to make these answers, to choose these for you,

(54:48):
because I mean, you're full of sin nature, So why
would we trust what you would vote for yourselves. No,
you need a guy. You need a guy, a dude
in charge that can tell you what's better for you
because you can't us your own instincts. And and that
that theological twist to me, it's like it adds to
the mythos of how somebody like a good, smooth talking

(55:13):
Hitler could convince this nation who already got got authoritarian tendencies.
Now you add in this like this like theological worldview
to it, it's just like it's just gonna work. And
it does. What else is gonna work? The products and
services that support this podcast? Oh yeah, that is going

(55:36):
to totally deprave my wallet. They are absolutely going to
march on Berlin and overthrow the Reichstag. Yes, I I
think that's been t public school from the beginning. We're back.
So now Hitler knows he wants to march on Berlin.

(55:57):
He wants to do a Mussolini but better. But he's
he's not a dumb guy. He realizes that he alone
doesn't have a big enough name to successfully push Bavaria.
He's very popular within Munich and the Munich right. He's
not a national figure at this point, so he has
to enlist the help of a national figure, and he
picked someone he had idolized, General Eric Ludendorff. Now, the

(56:18):
old General had already tried to take over the government
once before, right after World War One, um, and had
failed at that, but he hadn't really been punished because
you know, he was the war hero. He's Ludendorf, he
was the architect of the victory over Russia. Uh. He
was just very beloved and he was a massive figure
for the right wing, revered and respected for his part.
The old Field Marshal had spent his declining years becoming

(56:41):
an increasingly massive racist and conspiracy theorist and mostly pushing
the stab in the back narrative, blaming the loss in
World War One on the Jews, all that stuff. You
could see him as like a General Flynn figure. Um.
He's he's this very popular among the far right general
who shacks up with this far right political character. Now,
the big difference is that General Flynn has been like

(57:03):
profoundly loyal to Donald Trump, and Ludendorff just kind of
saw Hitler as a vector for which he could, you know,
push his kind of fringe right wing politics to get
more storm and Norman sports cough head ass, yeah a little, yeah,
I mean he's not that. Yeah, yeah, he's not like
he's not like, um, loyal to Hitler, but he sees

(57:24):
Hitler as a guy he can use, and Hitler sees
Ludendorff as a guy he can use. I feel like
in that that exact sentence is like was the dagger
for almost all the political parties, y'a thought I could
uses man like he wasn't. Yeah anyway, yeah, I mean.
And so Hitler goes to Ludendorf and is like, hey,
I want to overthrow the government. I want to be
the dictator, and I want to have you be basically

(57:45):
like running the country with me. You'll be in charge
of the army and together will bring Germany back to greatness.
And Ludendorf gives a soft yes, the kind of yes
that could mean to know if like the police came
to his door and he could say like, but he's like, yeah,
if do it, like, I'm on board. I'll take over
the army if you win, you know, like that's the
kind of yes Ludendorf gives him um, but he's he's

(58:08):
he's on board as long as he doesn't have to
stick his neck out too much. Is kind of like
Ludendorff's attitude towards this. So the initial plan for the
pusch is November ten, but they wound up pushing it
up by two days kind of at the last minute,
the Thursday, November eight, because Gustav von Kar, who's basically's
the General Commissar, he's basically like the governor of of

(58:28):
of of Munich. Um. He's giving a speech at the
Burger brow Keller beer Hall, which is one of Munich's
most prestigious places for people to drink heavily and do politics.
Burger Carl Burger, the Burger Browbeer beer Hall. Yeah, man,
we need to rename something like that because that's yeah,
I would still around today, I think, yeah. Yeah. So
this is where the putsch actually starts. So Car is

(58:51):
in charge in Munich and he is he's been brought
to power and what some would call a military coup um.
It was kind of a soft coupe, but basically, after
the liberals had let the left seize the city and revolt,
the military made sure that a strongman like Car wound
up in charge after the you know a year or
so later, and Carr had vowed during his campaign to

(59:12):
turn the city into a cell of law and order.
Oh god, they keep saying that, keep saying that, which
just keep saying law and order, but just you don't
never happens never. Yeah yeah. So I'm gonna quote from
author David King describing cars politics here. He welcomed right

(59:33):
wing extremists to settle in the region, and many of
them in turn joined the paramilitary societies emerging in the
aftermath of the war and revolution. Car also organized many
of these bands into a loose coalition called the Iron
waterwaven or Citizens Militia, that would soon surpass three hundred
thousand men. Car would use this volunteer home guard and
everything from law enforcement to border patrol. They were necessary,

(59:55):
he said, like a fire brigade. So Car builds this
Citizens Militia basically a private army of himself for his
own to crack down on the left, and Germany at
this point is forbidden from having much of a real military.
They're captive about a hundred thousand soldiers in the reichs
Fair um. And this is a part of the Treaty
of Versailles. And France realizes that Car is raising up

(01:00:18):
thousands and thousands of private soldiers, and they complained that
he's building a new German army, and he's forced to
disband his militia. UM. Now this pisses off the far right,
the fact that Car caves and cancels his militia and
tells his guys to go home. Um. And a lot
of them consider him like the fascist equivalent of a
rhino at this point, you know, a Republican and name

(01:00:40):
only like they're like a cars not really on the right.
He got cooked by the French, yea. UM, but he's
still very popular with the center right, and he's seen
as something of like a a resistance hero um among
like the center right. So he's you know, he's not

(01:01:00):
like popular on the fringe right, but he's popular on
the middle right. So in October. Now, another thing that's
happening at this period of time is. In August of
nineteen twenty three, Gustav Stresseman is elected Chancellor of Germany.
Um and right before he comes to power, the Germans
had begged the Allies for a moratorium on reparations payments
because the German economy is collapsing in this period, they

(01:01:20):
just can't afford it. The French had refused to put
in a moratorium on payments, and then in order to
get money out of Germany that Germany wasn't sending, they
invaded and occupied the Ruhr, which is Germany's industrial heartland.
So Germany defaults on their payments after, like you know,
before they invade the rule and like the fact that
the French invade pisses off all of Germany and particularly

(01:01:42):
the German right wing. Yeah so is this this again? Yeah,
like a little little little human in his story here
is like, yeah, so you guys a new chancellor because
they had to write a whole new constitution, the Roho
new Constitution, got a new chancellor. They gotta payback Audisty
they destroyed for his war. They already feel salty about that,
Like damn, I gotta I gotta clean it. I gotta
pay for artists, you know what I'm saying. And then

(01:02:03):
they like, literally, we're broke, Like God, damn it, we're broke,
you know what I'm saying. So then and then for
France to be like, oh, you're gonna give me my
money and they're like what money, Well, they don't have anything.
What money? We don't have it. Yeah, we starve to
death on turnips last winter, like we have nothing, like

(01:02:24):
you saw it. We lost. Damn man, we lost, and
now we are like we got it. Yeah. And this
this a lot of the anger at the Treaty of
Versailles and the way the French are behaving gets pushed
onto the German liberals, who like because their internationalists kind
of like try to engage with the French and g

(01:02:45):
stop stress him and gets elected and one of the
first things he does is he orders the end of
a general strike against the French and the RU and
he starts resuming reparations payments, and this enrages the right
wing and so and stress him and knows it's going
to so he has the President of the Reich declare
an emergency. The Bavarian government gets pissed by this because
they hate Stressman. They're all very conservative, he's a liberal,

(01:03:07):
and they're like, basically, this guy has been cucked by
the French, and they declare Bavaria to close its own
state of emergency. Now, the decision to do that was
made by the Triumvirate that ruled Bavaria, which consisted of
von Kar General von Lasso, who's in charge of the
army in Bavaria, and the commander of the state police,
a guy named Ciser I think. Now, this triumvirate had
publicly refused a number of orders from Berlin as a

(01:03:29):
show of protest and his red meat to their right
wing base. So basically it's like a state in the
United States refusing orders from the federal government because it's
against what their political base wants. Um. And this is
mostly for show, because yeah, this is mostly for show
um because like the federal government has the ability to
deny funds to Bavaria, right, which kind of fox them over.

(01:03:49):
And so by early November, the Triumvirate is losing heart
because they wanted to get red meat to their base
and like improve their own personal popularity by saying fuck
you to the central government. But they did want to
pay consequences, so they're starting to cave by November, but
most voters don't know that. And so when von Kar
takes the stage at the burger Brow beer Hall on
November eight, the really like a lot of people show

(01:04:12):
up because they think he's about to announce that Bavaria
is seceding from Germany. Um. Now, Hitler knows that's not
gonna happen. He knows that's very unlikely because Hitler sees
von Kar is basically a moderate. But he also knows
that a huge crowd, including all of the people running Bavaria,
are going to be in the beer hall that night,
which makes it a great place to occupy with armed men.

(01:04:33):
If you're going to do a push, if you're pushing,
you know, that's where you want to put this where
you push the put. Yeah, this is the beer hall.
The burger Brow beer Hall is the equivalent of the
capital on January six. Here, it's like where all these
elected leaders are. If you want to actually capture these people,
this is where you do it. Um. So he gets
together his stormtrooper leaders and his key advisors and they

(01:04:54):
work with their police insider, who's a fellow named Frick.
Because a lot of cops are Nazis. I'm not to
get a put like a timeline on that a lot
of cops. Let's just for a little okay, cool, so
frick this cop ensures that the police presence outside the
beer hall is minimal. Like all of the guys running
Bavaria are there, but they don't have very many cops

(01:05:15):
protecting them, and that's by design to make it easier
for the storm trippers. So Hitler sets Yeah, I know
another thing that has never happened again, yea. So Hitler's
other lackeys, the guys who aren't like fighters, get set
to the organizing propaganda. One man was set was like
put to the job of organizing the distribution of posters

(01:05:37):
and newspapers announcing the Nazi overthrow of the government. Hitler's
half American friend, a guy named Hunt Stengele that are
known as Putsy, who's like a Harvard graduate um was
in charge of making stir. The foreign press was there
without knowing why they were there, because Puts a charmer.
He's a he's a like an aristocrat guy. He's good
at talking to people. He's good talking to like American media,

(01:05:59):
so like the New York Times has a guy there
on this night. Now, Hitler and his entourage show up
at the beer hole uh that night, like as thousands
of people are gathered up outside to get in to
watch von Kar speak, and Hitler's immediately gets out of
his I think it's a Mercedes, and he's immediately greeted
by a crowd of three thousand people outside the hall.
Because Hitler is very popular in with the right in Munich,

(01:06:22):
so he gets mobbed by this crowd who wanted to
know if, like he knew what von Kar was going
to speak about, is you know, are we going to succeed?
What's happening? And Hitler's like, I'm just a guest. I'm
here like the rest of you. And he goes inside
to get a beer, and he doesn't get a beer
because he wants to drink it. Hitler's not really a drinker.
Every now and then he'll he'll like down like um,
some champagne or something. He's not much of a drinker.

(01:06:43):
He has the beer because Garing has warned him like, hey,
we're going to try to overthrow the government. We don't
want people to realize we're onto something early. If you're
sitting in a beer hole in Munich with a beer.
No one will suspect that you're planning to break the
law because it's Munich. Um. So Hitler gets a beer
and he's like kind of nurse sing it um, and
Car takes the podium. Now, car speech is boring and pointless,

(01:07:05):
in a big bummer to everybody. He just starts like
he's not succeeding. He starts a standard harangue about the
evils of Marxism, about how Munich was going to fight
the contagion and quintessential evil of socialism. Pretty normal right
wing stuff. Um. And Hitler is reported to have asked
his men during cars speech, does anyone understand what he's
talking about? Like? What the fund is this guy doing

(01:07:26):
up there? Started trolling him. Yeah, well this is going
on while you know, Hitler and his kind of inner
circle or watching Car speak, and this beer halls got
thousands of people in it. Hitler's stormtroopers are assembling nearby.
Now twenty six year old Cigar a dealer named Josef
was the quartermaster, and so he basically like as the

(01:07:47):
troops assembled, he starts handing out rifles and machine guns
and grenades to several dozen of the Nazi Party's best fighters,
the men of Stostrip Hitler or the Hitler Assault Squad. Now,
these guys wore a gray military a uniform with a
silver Death's Head badge on their caps. The star Strup
would wind up evolving into the shoot Staffle, which is
the infamous SS right, Like, that's the the guys who,

(01:08:09):
among other things, man the concentration camps. At this point,
they're Hitler street fighters, um, and are responsible for protecting
him and stuff. And these are the guys he's going
to use to be the the armed fist of his push. Now,
before the putch, Hitler had given his fighters a few
suggestions for how to behave. He had told them cruelty impresses,
and don't leave a fight unless you're being carried out dead. God,

(01:08:33):
these are disorders screen light. Yeah, look you the only
the only way you leave is in a bagh. Yeah,
these guys are sucking. Um. You know, he's a gangster.
This is a gangster regime. A lot of people at
the time, actually, like a lot of American newspaperman in
the twenties and thirties will say this about the Nazis.
These people are working gangsters. Yeah. Now, a little before

(01:08:57):
eight thirty pm, a hundred stormtroopers swarmed the premises of
the Burger Brow and entered the beer hall, shouting Heil
Hitler and waving guns. Herman Gering, who led the assault team,
told the police officers outside that the government was being overthrown.
The dozen or so cops there were easily overpowered. Garing
and his men secured the building, and as he entered,
he called for quiet. Now everybody's drunk at this point,

(01:09:18):
so they don't get quiet. So he has to shoot
into the roof with his handgun. Then he like basically
hands things over to Hitler, who pulls off his trench
coat to reveal a black suit with two iron crosses
pinned to his lapel. And I'm gonna quote next from
a rite up by Douglas oh Linder. He jumped up
on a table, pulled out a pistol, and fired two
shots into the ceilings. The second guy who's fired into

(01:09:39):
the ceiling that night, it keeps happening. It happened several
more drinking guys and fired two shots into the ceiling. Silence,
he yelled. Then Hitler and several supporters pushed their way
to the front of the room and confronted speaker Car
at the podium. Stormtroopers pointed a machine gun at the crowd.
Many who were in the audience leader said that they
suspected they were about to witness an assassination. Hitler shouted

(01:09:59):
to the crowd out, the national revolution has begun. Six
hundred armed men are occupying this hall. No one may leave.
The governments of Bavaria and in Berlin have been overthrown.
Army barracks and police headquarters are now under the control
of this party. None of this was true, but Hitler
hoped and suspected that it would be soon enough. Hitler
then told car and two other important political leaders, General

(01:10:19):
von Lasso and Colonel von Seiser, that they should join
him in a side room for a conversation about Bavaria's future.
After the men leave, Garing told the crowd, you all
have your beer, keep drinking. You have nothing to worry about.
It's gonna be fine. It's just a punch. Chill out, guys.
Nobody has to die. Man, keep drinking. Just that's it. Yeah,

(01:10:40):
we're in charge where the Nazis. It's fine, it's fine.
So Hitler's goal was to convince the triumvirate to back
his plan. He wanted Bavaria's army units and police on
his side. He doesn't want to fight these guys. His
plan is to do a grander version of what Mussolini
had done and start marching with Ten's basically all of

(01:11:00):
the right wingers in the military of Bavaria and start
marching up to Berlin. And he imagines thousands of people
are going to join him on the way, and once
they reach Berlin, they're going to overthrow the liberal government
easily in institute of fascist state run by Hitler and Ludendorff.
And of course for that to happen, they can't get
bogged down fighting the Bavarian state right now. Seisser, loss

(01:11:21):
Out and car were all pretty close to being fascists themselves.
But these guys are all state loyal right, they're not revolutionaries.
They don't want to overthrow the government. They want the
government to change into a more right wing government. But
they're not like bomb throwers like Hitler is um. So
they didn't want to follow his weird little Nazi guy
in open rebellion against the state. Now, Hitler tried to

(01:11:43):
smooth talk them. He promised them cushy positions in the
new regime. Car is a monarchist and Hitler tells him like, hey, man,
I'm gonna bring back the King of Bavaria and you
can be his envoy to the government. Isn't that like
your dream? Um? Right? Yeah? So they resist um Car
and Lasso and everyone like they're not they're not on

(01:12:04):
board with this, And before very long, Hitler did what
Hitler's do and he starts threatening to murder them at gunpoint. Now, Ludendorff,
who like when the occupation of the beer Hall starts,
Ludendorff like some Nazis show up at his house and
they're like, hey, you know that thing you kind of
agreed to, we're doing it. Ludendorff like shows up and
it's like, okay, I guess we'll see if this works.
And he's kind of horrified by Hitler's behavior because Ludendorff

(01:12:26):
is a he's like a classic imperial German manners dude, Right,
there are ways in which you, especially these people are nobles.
You don't you don't point a gun in their face, right,
Like that's very ghost and he's not. He doesn't like
Hitler in a lot of ways because Hitler's a fucking,
you know, kind of a peon to him, but he's not,

(01:12:48):
you know, he's he's he's gotten acclimatized to being in
high society. Hitler is very much crude, um damn and
Ludendorff is kind of like horrified by this, but he's
he's still on board with the Jim Rule plan because
he wants to take over the government and institute right
wing military dictatorship. And eventually, now that once Ludendorf shows
up to these guys, car And and Lasso and Sisser

(01:13:11):
kind of agree to help the putsch and agree to
like basically put the powers of the Bavarian state behind
Hitler's push attempt. And they didn't really mean it, but
a guy was threatening to murder them, so they're like
all right, yeah, yeah. Now, while this was happening, different
armed groups of Nazis were out capturing key parts of

(01:13:34):
the city. The Bavarian War Ministry was taken by Ernst
Rome and his men, including young Heinrich Himler, and they
proceeded to fortify it. Another group of four hundred stormtroopers
was sent to take guns and equipment from the army
engineer barracks. Now this is a very fun story because
these Nazis all show up and the captain on duty
who's like in charge of handing out guns and stuff.
They're like, hey, we're here to do maneuvers. Can we

(01:13:56):
borrow the guns? Um? And the captain realizes something is
very fishy, and it's like, you can use the guns,
but you can't go on maneuvers outside. You got to
show up inside and like the big gymnasium and then
I'll hand you the guns there and you can do
your maneuvers inside. And so all four hundred Nazis go
into the gymnasium and he locks it from the outside. Brilliant.

(01:14:20):
Yeah here, he bro yeah, yeah, I got you us
right here there, Yeah, right inside the door. I got you.
This guy's name should be remembered. His name is Captain
Oscar Canceler, and he ruled. He he saves the German
state that night. He definitely stays at least for a
little while. You know, it didn't last, but he did
his bit um. So the Nazis who were locked inside

(01:14:41):
couldn't call Hitler to let him know they had the guns.
And we're ready to take part in the Putsch and
Hitler was waiting for that call. Right, He's got teams
going out and seizing places in the city, and he realizes, like,
these dudes haven't called in from the barracks yet, Right,
something must be wrong. And this was a key part
of his intricate plan. Uh and he knew. So this
kind put Hitler in a bind. Um. He knew that

(01:15:03):
the Triumvirate were not enthusiastic about this plan, and if
if he was going to keep them enthusiastic and like
kind of forced them to be enthusiastic his men, and
we're going to have to be in total control of
the city. Right if he could, if he could really
be in charge in Munich, they weren't going to fight him.
They give the army the orders to go along with it,
right because they don't want to die. But he's got
to actually be in charge. And making his first critical mistake,

(01:15:26):
Hitler desize it's necessary for him to leave the Burger
Brow beer hall late that night to see what's going
on at the Engineer barracks, and he leaves Ludendorff alone
with the Triumvirate. This is a bad call. Oh, So
Hitler and his Nazis know these guys are captives. He
knows that he's holding them against their will. He knows
that if they're agreeing, it's they're not really that on

(01:15:48):
board with the idea. Ludendorff again is kind of not
being told the entire truth about what's happening, and he
thinks these guys are fellow German patriots, right um. And
he also thought they looked tired, you know, it's been
a long night. And he's like, do you guys want
to go home and like take a nap or something,
and they're like, yeah, we would like to go home,
and he's likely, bro, yeah, man, you guys are German officers. I,

(01:16:11):
as a German officer, know that no German officer would
ever lie. Give me your word of honor that you'll
come back to help us finish the coup tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
we'll be back. What's time we'll be yeah, they say,
of course we'll come back, of course, Bro. What's what's
I like, tan, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll see you in
the morning. Yeah. So some of the Nazis there are

(01:16:31):
Nazis in the room too, and they see Ludendorf doing this,
They're like dude, they're not gonna come back. And Ludendorff
gets pissed at them and he's like, I forbid anyone
in this room from doubting the word of a German officer.
How dare you? YEA? When I was a kid, uh,

(01:16:52):
you know, the like the clue you was about to
get knocked out but robbed by somebody like hey, hey, hey, hey,
your phone right quick? Let me use your phone? Yeah,
Well you would look and be like, don't get that
man your phone. Do not walk over there and get
that mean, what are you talking my many? You just
want to borrow my phone. Don't give him your phone?

(01:17:14):
What do you do? You keep walking? Bro? Like, hey, hey, man,
come on, let me just use it right quick? No,
man like like you know what do you what do you?
What do you? What are you doing? What are you doing? Well?
There it is now you're now you're sleeping. Hey, just
put you to sleep and your stare foot The guy
just stole your shoes. I told you not to. Yeah,
so that that's totally funny. Like the guys in room

(01:17:36):
saying yeah. The boss is like, yeah, let him go
take a nap, and the dudes are like, hey, I
don't think that's a good idea. Man, you really think
they're gonna come back, Like, I don't think they're gonna
come back. Hey boss, maybe you shouldn't let them leave
you kind of seeing this why Ludendorff didn't win the war, right, Yeah? Yeah,
like this good idea, coach, Yeah, hey boss, this this

(01:17:57):
might not be the plan. So that is where we're
gonna leave it in part one. General Ludendorff the genius
of German military tactics. It's just let everyone go that
he needs in order to make Germans don't lie, German
officers don't lie. Um, I swear to you, I'm coming back.

(01:18:18):
I'll bring back Yeah, absolutely tons of coffee. We're gonna
we're gonna push the hell out of this state. Give
me a minute, Yeah, let me get a nap um prop.
You want to plug any plug doubles before we roll
out and then I do. Yeah, you can follow me
on all the things proper hip hop. Got a podcast
called the Politics will prop that um given all the

(01:18:38):
good takes, uh and um. I got some T shirts
and music, a lot of music rolling out this year,
so I can't wait to show you all that is
like the highest quality, Like I wear his shirts all
the time. Yeah, I try to. They're all they're all like,
they're all like you know, uh, ethically sourced and recyclable material.

(01:19:00):
Yeah yeah. Yeah. So that's me highly recommend And you
can find me somewhere on the internet if if you
first told me in your heart, but only then, only
if I am with you, and you can follow me
on Twitter. I'm underscore Sophie, underscore why I was, Yeah,

(01:19:22):
happy plugged for myself. You should not and uh yeah,
check out Sophie, check out prop find me in your
heart and come back on Thursday to hear the thrilling
conclusion of Put Put Tabulous. There you go, yes, but Sam, Yes,

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Behind the Insurrections - Hitler's Munich Beer Hall Putsch, Part 1

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Behind the Insurrections - Hitler's Munich Beer Hall Putsch, Part 1