Hitler's Charisma (7 page)

Not surprisingly, the French occupation was wildly unpopular. “That was when we did find out that the French ruled with an iron hand,” says Jutta Rüdiger,
²¹
a teenager at the time. “If there was something that was not to their liking, if you were walking on the pavement, for instance, they came along with their riding crop and you had to step down onto the street … There was quite a bit of harassment.” And as well as coping with the French in the Ruhr, the population of Germany had to somehow carry on functioning under the pressure of hyperinflation. “In 1923,” recalls Rüdiger, “an exercise book cost about three billion marks, I think.”

Hitler did not call on his supporters to take part in the passive resistance that some Germans were mounting against the French in the Ruhr. His focus remained on building on the inspiration of Mussolini’s example in Italy. But he realised that he needed at least the tacit support of the
Reichswehr
, the German Armed Forces, in his quest to overthrow the government in Berlin. Yet in May 1923, when as a first step towards national
revolution the Nazis attempted to stir up soldiers of the
Reichswehr
who were parading on the Oberwiesenfeld in Munich, their approaches were comprehensively rejected. Nonetheless, Hitler believed he had to act. Who knew how long the crisis would last? And so in November 1923 he launched the Beer Hall Putsch—an event that was to gain Hitler national publicity for the first time, though not in the way he had anticipated.

It wasn’t obvious to anyone involved in the planning of the putsch whether or not Hitler really was the “heroic” equivalent of Mussolini. Hitler was in discussion with General Erich Ludendorff, hero of the German victory at Tannenberg in the First World War, about his potential involvement in a Nazi-inspired revolution, but it was never made explicit exactly what Ludendorff’s role would be. Was Ludendorff to be just the military leader, with Hitler the political head of the revolution, or was Ludendorff the real “hero” for whom Hitler had merely been preparing the way?

What was clear, however, was that by the end of 1923 Hitler had decided to seize the initiative. The plan was simple—force the leaders of the authoritarian government of Bavaria to declare their support for a Naziled “march on Berlin” to overthrow the “November criminals” who were in power. Since it was obvious that the Nazis needed the assistance—or at the very least the acquiescence—of the Bavarian state security forces as well as Bavarian political leaders, Hitler decided that the coup should be attempted whilst the “state commissioner” of Bavaria, Gustav von Kahr, was speaking at a meeting at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich. Kahr was effectively the dictator of Bavaria, and had been appointed in September 1923 in response to a crisis in government in Berlin caused by the threat once again of revolution.

There were some signs that perhaps Hitler’s strategy might succeed—the Bavarian Government, for example, seemed more sympathetic to the Nazis than the authorities in other German states. The Nazis had been banned in much of the rest of Germany after the murder of Walther Rathenau, the Jewish Foreign Minister of Germany, the year before. But in Bavaria the Nazis were still able to function and Kahr shared Hitler’s contempt for the government in Berlin.

It was to the Nazis’ advantage to make their move at Kahr’s meeting since both the Head of the Bavarian Police, Hans von Seisser, and the commander of the German Army in Bavaria, General Otto von Lossow,
would also be present. Hitler’s gamble was that, presented with a fait accompli, all of these leading figures would go along with his planned revolution.

So, at around 8:20 p.m. on 8 November 1923, Hitler and more than a dozen supporters, including Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess and Alfred Rosenberg, forced their way into the Bürgerbräukeller whilst Kahr was speaking to an audience of several thousand. Outside the beer hall, units of the SA guarded the exits. After a shot had been fired into the ceiling of the beer hall, Hitler announced that the revolution had begun. He and his comrades then hustled the key figures of the triumvirate—Kahr, von Seisser and von Lossow—into an adjoining room.

But then Hitler faced a problem—none of the three men was enthusiastic about supporting the Nazi cause. It took the arrival of Ludendorff at the beer hall to make them finally offer their lukewarm consent. Hitler, who had announced melodramatically to Kahr and his colleagues that he would kill himself if the coup did not succeed, left to try and shore up support for the putsch elsewhere in Munich, leaving Ludendorff in control at the Bürgerbräukeller. However, Ludendorff—old-fashioned officer as he was—then decided to release Kahr, von Seisser and von Lossow on their word of honour to support the revolution. It was a catastrophic mistake, as Hitler realised when he returned to the Bürgerbräukeller later that night and found the three men had disappeared. All of them now disavowed their support for Hitler and actively worked against the Nazi-inspired putsch.

No strategy for the revolution had been thought through, so a march through Munich was swiftly improvised for the next day, after a group of Nazis had robbed a factory where billion-Mark notes were being printed. Emil Klein took part in the march, and remembers how shots rang out when the Nazi supporters reached the war memorial at the Feldherrnhalle in central Munich and were confronted by Bavarian security forces. “The first thing: is Hitler wounded?” says Emil Klein. “Is Ludendorff wounded? And everyone split up. Of course, if there are shots you have to take cover. We, of course, were well-trained SA men who knew what to do when there were shots … And people got up and started looking about to see what was happening. There was a real ballyhoo, partly because the masses who were all there—all in uniform—didn’t know what was going on. But one thing we did know. Kahr had betrayed the whole deal. They did not
keep their word. They shook hands on it, and this handshake was broken by Kahr and his colleagues leaving Hitler apparently standing alone.”
²²

In the midst of the shooting at the Feldherrnhalle—and no one knows exactly who started the gun battle—the man standing next to Hitler, Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, was shot dead. Hitler dropped to the ground—with his critics subsequently suggesting this was evidence of his cowardice.
²³
But Emil Klein vehemently disagrees, saying that Hitler “always” showed that he was brave and courageous. “I was always amazed that Hitler only had a couple of bodyguards who accompanied him on his journeys, [and] when he drove around it was always in an open car.”

Ludendorff demonstrated his own bravery by carrying on marching through the police lines and out the other side unscathed. But sixteen of Hitler’s supporters were killed that day, as well as four members of the Bavarian security forces. Many more were wounded—including Hermann Göring. Shot in the groin, he was helped away from the Feldherrnhalle, patched up and smuggled across the Austrian border to hospital in Innsbruck.

Hitler was arrested just two days after the firefight. He had appallingly mismanaged the whole operation, from his failure to ensure that Kahr, von Seisser and von Lossow were securely held by the plotters once the Bürgerbräukeller had been stormed, to his lack of any coherent plan as to what to do if the Bavarian leadership seemed less than enthusiastic about the putsch. Moreover, Hitler had demonstrably not lived up to his promise to kill himself if the revolution failed, since he was now in the custody of the Bavarian authorities awaiting trial. It was scarcely the behaviour of a “charismatic hero.”

Hitler’s trial began on 26 February 1924 in Munich. And from the start Hitler pursued what appeared to outsiders to be a high-risk strategy—he not only admitted what he had done, but he gloried in it. Not just that, he openly stated in court what he saw as his own role in the fight ahead. “I have resolved to be the destroyer of Marxism,” he said. And whilst he said he had at one time been a “drummer,” he now “demanded for myself the leadership in political struggle.” As a consequence, he announced that he was the “hero” who would save Germany: “I demanded that the leadership of the organisation for which we all longed and for which you inwardly long just as much, should go to the hero who, in the eyes of the whole of German youth, is called to it.”
²⁴

Hitler’s supporters in Bavaria saw his conduct at the trial as evidence of their leader’s strength of character. “I said to myself that he’s come out of it well and behaved decently before the court,” says Emil Klein. “It’s important that a man stand up for himself, even if he is doing something wrong, and I had the impression that Hitler stood up for himself at this trial.”
²⁵
The court case was widely reported and Hitler became known to large numbers of people across Germany for the first time. Many of them now judged, as Emil Klein had done, that he was a man of integrity, bravery and courage—a “charismatic hero” in fact. This transformation took place largely because of Hitler’s defiant conduct at his trial for high treason, and in the face of compelling evidence that the coup itself had been badly misjudged.

But Hitler knew before he spoke at the trial that it was likely that the judges would go easy on him. The presiding judge, Georg Neithardt, had already shown in a previous case
²⁶
that he was sympathetic to Hitler and the Nazi cause, and Hitler was also aware that he was sitting on potentially embarrassing revelations about Kahr and the Bavarian authorities. Hadn’t Kahr himself agreed to participate in this act of “high treason” in front of an audience at the Bürgerbräukeller?

For those privy to this knowledge, the lenient verdict of the court could not have come as a surprise. The London
Times
reported that “Munich is chuckling over the verdict” which proved “that to plot against the constitution of the Reich is not considered a serious crime in Bavaria.”
²⁷

Hitler received the minimum sentence possible—five years—and was likely to be back on the streets of Munich much earlier than that, released on probation. Meanwhile, he would benefit from his time in prison. For whilst incarcerated he would spend his days plotting how to portray himself—unequivocally—as a charismatic “hero” with the “mission” to save Germany.

In order to be perceived as truly charismatic, a political leader must possess a coherent vision of the future—a picture of how the world ought to be, based on a special insight into the nature of reality. For as Max Weber said, a charismatic leader needs to be not just a “hero” but a “prophet.”
¹
In 1924 Hitler attempted to outline his own credentials in this regard in
Mein Kampf
(“My Struggle”) and despite the crudity of the work, despite the appalling writing style,
Mein Kampf
is of paramount importance in understanding the development of Hitler as a charismatic leader.

Hitler had faced problems three years before when senior figures in the Nazi party had flirted with the idea of a partnership with Professor Dickel, author of
Resurgence of the West
. And though Hitler had seen off that challenge and emerged with his authority enhanced, the memory of how this “intellectual” had shown up the paucity of Hitler’s political thinking must still have been raw.
Mein Kampf
was designed to show that Hitler was no mere beer-hall agitator, but a political thinker with a wide-ranging vision.

The book certainly does present a coherent vision of the world, albeit a horrifying one. To Hitler, we live in a cold universe where the only constant
is struggle. And if you cannot win in this struggle then you deserve to die. There is no moral structure beyond the harsh reality of the fight between different people for supremacy. “Those who want to live,” said Hitler, “let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.”
²

What’s missing from
Mein Kampf
—and this is a fact which has not received the acknowledgement it should—is any emphasis on Christianity. Germany had been a Christian society for more than a thousand years, and the belief in a Christian God and Christian redemption after death had been central to millions of German lives. But Hitler offers little of this comfort in
Mein Kampf
. He was later to alter his rhetoric about religion according to the time and situation, but his core belief is expressed here. And whilst he does say in just one sentence in
Mein Kampf
that “a religion in the Aryan sense cannot be imagined which lacks the conviction of a survival after death in some form”
³
the thrust of the work is one of bleak nihilism. Hitler never elaborates on what possible “form” any life after death might take—nor whether he as an individual believes in it. As a consequence, the most coherent reading of
Mein Kampf
is that whilst Hitler was prepared to believe in an initial creator God, he did not accept the conventional Christian vision of heaven and hell, nor the survival of an individual “soul”—an analysis that, as we shall see, is borne out by many of his later private statements on the subject.
⁴
For Hitler, there is little for the individual personality beyond the experience of here and now. We are animals, and just like animals we face the choice of destroying or being destroyed.

Hitler emphasises the animal nature of human life in graphic and desolate detail. Ernest Becker would explore the consequences of this kind of belief fifty years later in his Pulitzer prize-winning
The Denial of Death
, asking, “What are we to make of a creation in which the routine activity is for organisms to be tearing others apart with teeth of all types—biting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating its essence into one’s own organisation, and then excreting with foul stench and gases the residue. Everyone reaching out to incorporate others who are edible to him.”
⁵

The vision Becker expresses here is one that Hitler would most certainly have supported. Hitler concluded that life
is
about the strong “tearing apart” the weak, though he would have disagreed with Becker’s
conclusion about where this realisation leads us. For Becker, to ask the human consciousness to conceive of a world in which the individual must inevitably be extinguished after a life of animalistic struggle was simply too much to bear, “… you can realise what an impossible situation it is for an animal to be in. I believe that those who speculate that a full apprehension of a man’s condition would drive him insane are right, quite literally right.”
⁶
By contrast, for Hitler, the belief that life was essentially about the strong destroying the weak was enormously invigorating. This was because he allied his quasi-Darwinian vision to the idea of race. It wasn’t just that one strong individual ought to destroy one weak individual, but whole racial groups should band together to eliminate other races. The “Aryan” race, wrote Hitler, was a “superior” race responsible for “all the human culture.”
⁷
The core of Hitler’s message was that individual life had meaning because the individual was part of a “race.” Individuals that subordinated themselves for the good of the racial “community” led the best lives. Your life thus did have a kind of meaning—you may not live on as an individual but if you lived the correct life then the racial community to which you belonged would flourish after your death.