Circles of Time (49 page)

      
Munich. November 9, 1923

      
Observations and reflections.

            The waiter assured me the coffee was real, but I'm sure they keep the genuine grind for the guests and not for unpaying squatters in the lobby. It is hot, but tastes faintly of dried acorns and chicory.

            The images blend and it is difficult to sort them out and place them in the proper order. Not that order is that important. The event itself lacked structure and cohesiveness. Ignorant armies clashing by night. The frenzy in the beer hall when Hitler made his entrance, the chanting of the Storm Troops, the howls of derision from the beer drinkers. The howls turning to angry shouts and mocking laughter when Hitler climbed onto a chair and shouted for quiet.

            He looked, frankly, too absurd to be taken with any degree of seriousness. A pasty-faced man in a badly tailored cutaway coat—like a maître d' or a Charlie Chaplin imitator. He was being howled down until he fired his pistol at the ceiling. There was silence then—shocked, incredible silence as the pathetic man on the chair holding the small pistol in a pale hand proclaimed that the national revolution had begun. A beefy man seated near me hurled his beer stein—a gesture; it hit the floor without breaking and rolled under a bench. “We've
had
a revolution, you son of a bitch! We dumped the pig Kaiser!”

            That brought laughter—a release of tension. Catcalls and booing as Hitler and others pushed on toward the platform where Kahr was standing, thunderstruck.

            Others. Only one I knew—Werner, a soft felt hat pulled low, the wide brim obscuring his face. But it was Werner—seen from a distance, taut-faced, walking stiffly. A thousand people separated us—but the distance between us was far greater than that.

            Hitler's speech when he climbed onto the platform difficult to hear at first, but the opening sentence must have struck a chord, because silence spread, slowly, moving back like a wave until there was nothing heard in the enormous room but the sound of Hitler's voice—firm, impassioned, almost hypnotic. He did not denounce the commissioner for Bavaria; he told that sea of faces staring up at him only that Dr. Kahr was wrong in wanting to separate Bavaria from the rest of Germany. It was, Hitler cried out, the duty of Bavaria to lead the way to a new Germany, a greater Germany. It was Bavaria's duty to organize a march on Berlin to save the German people.

            And that is the fact reported—Adolf Hitler made a speech before three thousand Bavarian separatists at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich at 8:45
P.M.
, November 8. The speech was successful and he won the crowd over to his cause. There is nothing in the report of the hysterical euphoria that swept the hall, the tears and the shouting, the banging of beer mugs on the tables, the raucous singing of “Deutschland uber Alles,” the hundreds of ex-soldiers standing on their chairs whistling or humming the old marching tunes—“Heir dir im Siegerkranz” and “Die Wacht am Rhein.”

            Nothing of that.

            The crowds spilling out into the night, into the cold wind and the flecks of snow. Storm Troops everywhere. Fixed bayonets glistening under the streetlamps. Trucks packed with Brownshirts rumbling over the Ludwig Bridge. The fever spreading into the center of the city. Byron's stanzas coming to mind—
And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed,/The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,/Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,/And swiftly forming in the ranks of war …

            Rather more mindless riot than war. Wildly singing ranks under Nazi banners serpentining through the narrow streets. A broken shop window here, a manhandled Jew there; the wanton, gleeful wrecking of a socialist newspaper's office and shop—spilled type and smashed presses. No, hardly a war.

            It burned itself out. The frenzy was missing at dawn in the cold, the wind, and the soft, wet snow. The Storm Troops looked bleary-eyed and self-conscious. They stood about in the streets under the soggy flags hanging from lampposts. They were waiting for someone to tell them what to do. The fire was gone. One man kicked the side of a parked car, rhythmic, sullen, the heavy boot thudding against the metal. A man hurried past on his way to work, fearful, eyes downcast.

            “Dirty Jew!”

            “I am not a Jew!” the man cried out, starting to walk faster—starting to run. “I am not a Jew!”

            And there were rumors. The rumors of the state police and the army setting up machine guns in the Odeonplatz and of the Storm detachment under Captain Röhm under siege at the police headquarters. There was nothing to eat. Nothing hot to drink. No one had any money for cigarettes.

            Nothing of that is in the report.

            Hitler came. Only a glimpse of him in the Marienplatz. A glimpse of Werner walking behind him. Some of the excitement of the night before returning, but the bands were gone. There were crowds singing marching songs and there was the clomp of storm trooper boots on the paving stones, but no one knew where they were going. No one knew what they were supposed to do.

            “We march on Berlin!” a Brownshirt cried, waving a banner. “We march on Berlin!”

            But they were marching into the narrow Residenzstrasse toward the Feldherrnhalle, following Hitler, and General Ludendorff in his brown overcoat, and Werner and a dozen others who led the way.

            And that is in the report. And the quick rattle of gunfire and the wild stampede away from the cracking rifles. The ranks of the Storm Troops tearing apart like wet paper as the men bolted and ran. Steel helmets and rifles being thrown away. Swastika armbands torn off and shoved into pockets or dropped in the street. It was over. The putsch had died in an alley along with sixteen men.

            And that is in the report. But not what the blood looked like on the stones; the dirty scarlet puddles; a clot of spilled brains on the pavement. The pale, sweaty face of a young policeman vomiting next to a machine gun. None of that is in the report because it is irrelevant. Only pertinent information goes over the wires.

            Fact. Hitler was injured in a dive to the pavement when the guns went off. A reliable observer saw him get into a car, in obvious pain, and be driven away. The police are searching for him.

            Fact. General Ludendorff marched straight into the fire and was not touched. He is under arrest for treason.

            Fact. Goering was shot in the leg. The police have told me that Werner von Rilke helped him away. They were seen getting into a Mercedes parked in Maximilianstrasse. Warrants have been issued for both of them.

            “Hitler is finished,” a Munich city official told me. “All the National Socialist scum are finished. You can tell that to the world.”

            But it is not fact and is not in the report. On a wall in the Löwenbräukeller where two thousand storm troopers spent the night waiting for Hitler to cross the river, there is a painted prophecy. White paint against a brown wall—SOON BURN THE RED JEWS AND LIBERAL FILTH.

            And that is not in the report either. It is not, as Scott Kingsford would say, significantly germane to the story.