Cold Open 

It’s November 8th, 1923 at a beer hall in Munich, Germany, in the state of Bavaria.

A crowd of several thousand Bavarians have gathered for a political rally.   

Among the large crowd is a young businessman. He empties his beer stein and slams it down on the table. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and nods in hearty agreement to the speech he’s just heard.  

Some of the most powerful political figures in Bavaria are here – the head of the police, the head of the military, the Prime Minister. This young businessman is one of many disaffected citizens who have come here to listen to speeches denouncing the Weimar Republic, which has governed Germany since 1919.

After Germany’s defeat in WWI, the harsh economic punishments imposed by the Treaty of Versailles have brought his homeland to its knees. Hyperinflation has wreaked havoc on the economy. Food shortages have led to mass starvation. The situation is dire – and the government isn’t doing anything about it. Many people are hungry for change. 

Suddenly, commotion erupts in the beer hall.

Men in military uniforms swarm the building, barking instructions and brandishing rifles. 

In the midst of the chaos and confusion, a single gunshot rings out.   

A frightened hush falls over the room.

Craning his neck, the young businessman spots a figure with neatly combed dark hair and a small, black moustache strutting to the front of the room. Some seem to recognize him. But no one knows this is the first step in a long journey that will bring war to the world and leave millions dead.

The businessman and the rest of Germany will soon learn that this man is the charismatic leader of a fringe political party, the National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazis, for short. Adolf Hitler is about to declare a national revolution and make his first play for power on November 8th, 1923.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast – every day – we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is November 8th: Adolf Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch. 

Act One: The Putsch  

It’s just after 9 PM on November 8th, 1923 inside the Munich beer hall, known as the Bürgerbräukeller.

Adolf Hitler, the 34-year-old leader of the Nazi Party, has just taken control of the meeting by force. Now Hitler stands before the crowd, brandishing a cocked pistol. 

Hitler and his inner circle have been plotting this coup d’état for months. The occasion is perfect. Bavaria’s three most powerful political figures are all under the same roof: the head of the police, Hans von Seisser; the head of the army, Otto von Lossow; and, most crucially, the state Prime Minister, Gustav von Kahr. The three are known as the Bavarian Triumvirate. And they are crucial to Hitler’s plans; these men have the political standing, and the loyal support of many thousands of troops, needed to bolster Hitler’s coup against the government in Berlin. 

Hitler and his stormtroopers are here to persuade the Triumvirate to join their revolution against the government. But Hitler's version of persuasion doesn’t give them them much choice. Either they comply, or the Nazis will take them hostage.

After seizing power in Bavaria, Hitler intends to march on Berlin and topple the Weimar government, which he sees as corrupt and incompetent. 

Hitler scans the audience for his primary targets. Prime Minister Von Kahr stands at the front of the room, his face red with fury; von Lossow and von Seisser, equally enraged, are close by. 

With his pistol raised, Hitler steers the three men into a side room. 

Once inside, he makes his pitch: Hitler and his Nazi Party are the future. Join him, and together they will depose the Weimar Republic and restore Germany to its former glory. 

But Hitler has overestimated the three men’s appetite for treason. They refuse to support Hitler’s plan and they chide him for kidnapping government officials. This is not the response Hitler is hoping for. My men, he blusters, are stationed across the city. At my word, they will take control of government buildings; they will storm police stations and seize military barracks. But still the Triumvirate refuses him. So Hitler decides to play his trump card. 

***

Across the city, a telephone rings. It’s a phone call General Ludendorff has been expecting. Hitler met with Ludendorff, a prominent military general during WWI, several weeks earlier. Upon meeting, the two men found that they fundamentally agree that Germany needs to change. So when Hitler asked if he would support his insurrection, Ludendorff agreed. Now Hitler needs Ludendorff's help convincing the Triumvirate to come on board. Over the phone, Ludendorff tells Hitler to sit tight. He’s on his way to the Beer Hall.

In the meantime, Hitler telephones Ernst Rohm, the head of the SA, Nazi Party’s militia. Hitler tells him that since the Triumvirate is being uncooperative, they need to make preparations to take Munich by force. At Rohm’s command, more stormtroopers start to move in on strategic positions around the city.

Back in the Hall, Hitler then turns his attention to the crowd. By now, restlessness has taken over. Murmurs of impatience ripple through the audience. Hitler’s right-hand-man, Herrmann Goering, has been keeping things orderly; but now he steps aside for his boss to take center stage. 

Once the attention is on him, Hitler launches into a tirade, using every rhetorical device at his disposal to turn the crowd his way. He appeals to their sense of patriotism, their duty to the Fatherland. He insists that the Nazis are respectable – they’re not trying to undermine the army or the police, Hitler claims; only the corrupt government in Berlin.

Within minutes, the atmosphere in the hall has changed. People are on their feet, clapping and stamping their approval. One eyewitness will later claim that Hitler turns the crowd “as one turns a glove inside out”.

Soon after, General Ludendorff arrives at the beer hall. The appearance of such a prestigious figure changes the mood of the Triumvirate. With this decorated General on board with Hitler’s plan, suddenly the coup has a sheen of respectability. So the Triumvirate stop resisting and concede to Hitler’s demands. 

Now Adolf Hitler has the leaders of Bavaria in his corner. His men have established garrisons across the city. After years of laboring away in obscurity, his lifelong ambition of power – complete, and uncontested power – has never been so close.

And yet, by tomorrow, everything will come crashing down. Hitler will be a fugitive on the run, wanted for treason; several of his men will be dead; and the coup d’état will be crushed. 

Act Two: Beginnings   

It’s a spring morning in Vienna in 1908, some 15 years before the Beer Hall Putsch.

A pale, unkempt young man is asleep on a park bench. At his feet are several amateurish watercolours – landscapes mostly – with their prices alongside. A street sweeper prods the sleeping man with his broom handle. He startles awake and sits up abruptly – eyes wild, and hair dishevelled. For a split second, he looks furious, like he might scream at the street sweeper. Then, just as abruptly, he stands up, tucks his paintings under one arm, and stalks off across the square.

When Adolf Hitler’s mother died in 1907, she left her bereaved son enough money to move to Vienna and pursue his dreams of becoming a famous painter. But he didn’t get very far. Both of his applications to the Academy of Fine Arts were unsuccessful. And by the next year, 1908, Hitler is an orphaned teenaged art school reject, living rough on the streets of the city. 

Meanwhile, far beyond Vienna, the tectonic plates of global politics are beginning to shift. In 1914, the assassination of an Austro-Hungarian archduke upsets the delicate balance of power on the continent. Europe descends into conflict. 

By the outbreak of the First World War, Hitler has made his way to Munich. He’s always admired Germany. His native Austria belongs to the Habsburg Empire, which contains several different ethnic regions. Hitler is repulsed by such diversity. He considers it a “mongrel empire”, nothing like the pure-blooded Germany.

So Hitler enthusiastically enlists to fight for the German army. He pictures himself as a great hero, winning glory for his adopted fatherland.

But the reality of war is far less romantic. Hitler spends most of it as a messenger, delivering communiques between regimental headquarters and the front line. Taciturn and humorless, Hitler is unpopular with his fellow privates, who think less of him because he’s only a courier.

In 1918, he is hospitalized following a mustard gas attack. When news of the German surrender reaches his hospital ward, Hitler weeps like a child. Most wounded soldiers celebrate the end of the conflict, but Hitler is devastated – serving in the army, even though he was mistreated and ridiculed, was the first time in his life he’d felt a sense of purpose. 

Shell-shocked, Hitler returns to Munich; a city wracked with political instability and social unrest. In addition to the indignities inflicted by the Treaty of Versaille, the victorious allies have forced Germany to hold democratic elections. The resultant Weimar Republic – named after the town where it is formed – is considered illegitimate by many German nationalists who resent the impositions of allied powers. 

To mitigate the humiliation, nationalist factions invent a more flattering narrative. They claim that Germany didn’t lose the war on the battlefield; instead, the fatherland was betrayed on the home front. This “stabbed in the back” narrative lays the blame at the feet of two particular groups: communists and Jewish persons. 

It’s a malicious and potent lie, the result of extreme nationalists grasping for a scapegoat; but it’s a lie that Hitler wholeheartedly embraces. 

***

By the early 1920s, Hitler's military superiors have recognized something in Private Hitler: he is a formidable public speaker and a gifted storyteller. He is promoted to army propagandist, responsible for circulating materials to suppress sedition in the army. Loyalty is another quality that Hitler’s bosses admire in him. So he is chosen by his commanding officer to go undercover and infiltrate the ranks of a newly formed radical political group, the National Socialist German Workers Party, or the Nazis.

Hitler responds immediately to the group’s revolutionary goals. He quits the army, joins the Nazi party, and quickly rises up through their ranks. With his rousing speeches, Hitler builds a reputation around Munich as the up-and-coming champion of the extreme right-wing. By 1922, he has acquired two loyal deputies: his right hand man Herrmann Goering and Ernst Rohm. Together, they gather a militia of violent brown-shirted thugs, the SA; and then they formulate a Party logo – the swastika.  

The Nazis are growing stronger. But Hitler knows that if they want to seize power, they need to strike fast. The economy is stabilizing; soon, the window for violent insurrection will close. So as 1923 approaches, for Hitler and the Nazi Party, the time for action is now or never.

Act Three: False Starts

It’s November 8th, 1923, the night of the Beer Hall Putsch.

So far, Hitler’s coup is going according to plan. But the next move he makes will prove to be disastrous: he leaves the Bürgerbräukeller, choosing to oversee the coup from elsewhere in the city. But without Hitler’s steadying presence, things in the beer hall quickly unravel. 

Among the Triumvirate, one man is wavering. Prime Minister Gustav von Kahr only offered his support to the coup as a means of stalling, and surviving. But he never truly supported Hitler’s scheme. And now, with Hitler gone, he sees his way out. 

He sidles up to General Ludendorff. Let us leave, von Kahr suggests. It’s getting late. We’ve given you our backing, now let us head home. You can trust us. And Ludendorff, swept up in the feverish atmosphere, sees no reason why he shouldn’t.

So, Hitler’s most high-profile hostage walks straight out of the beer hall and into the night. Rather than obediently going home, von Kahr sounds the alarm to the police. 

Hitler returns to the Bürgerbräukeller filled with rage. Without the backing of von Kahr, and the legitimacy he lends to their cause, the plotters look increasingly like unhinged criminals. And as dawn breaks over Munich, the hopes of the Putsch are dwindling. 

But Hitler does not concede defeat. Instead, he rounds up his men and marches through the streets of Munich. It's a dazzling display of hubris – and it ends badly. There is a brief gun-fight between the Nazis and the police, But Hitler and his men are outgunned and outmatched. Hitler himself falls over in the melee, dislocating his shoulder. He ends the coup limping through the backstreets of Munich, later to be arrested and imprisoned for attempted treason.

While in prison, Hitler will have plenty of time to rewrite the narrative of the failed Beer Hall Putsch. In his book, Mein Kampf, Hitler lays out the tenets of his anti-semitism, and claim the attempted coup was a success – not in practical terms, but in establishing a powerful and ominous new force within German politics, the Nazis.

Outro

Next, on History Daily. November 11th, 1869. A new law begins the forced removal of thousands of aboriginal Australians from their families. 

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Mollie Baack.

Sound design by Derek Behrens.

Music by Lindsay Graham.

This episode is written and researched by Joel Duddell and Joe Viner.

Executive Producers are Steven Walters for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.