Beer Hall Putsch (1923): Hitler's Failed Coup in Munich

The Beer Hall Putsch, also called the Munich Putsch or Hitler Putsch, was a failed attempt by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party to seize power in Bavaria on 8-9 November 1923. Inspired by Mussolini’s success in Italy, Hitler hoped to use Munich as a base for a march on Berlin to overthrow the Weimar Republic. The coup collapsed in a burst of police gunfire, but the trial that followed made Hitler a national figure and convinced him to seek power by legal means.

Background

Germany in 1923 was in deep crisis. French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr, and the Weimar hyperinflation was destroying the currency. When Chancellor Gustav Stresemann ended passive resistance in the Ruhr in September 1923, nationalists accused the government of surrender.

Bavaria had become a refuge for right-wing nationalists hostile to the Republic. In September 1923 the Bavarian government appointed Gustav von Kahr as state commissioner with emergency powers. Kahr, together with General Otto von Lossow, commander of the army in Bavaria, and Colonel Hans von Seisser, head of the state police, defied Berlin’s authority. This “triumvirate” talked of a national dictatorship but hesitated to act.

Hitler, leader of the small but growing Nazi Party and its paramilitary Sturmabteilung (SA), feared that the triumvirate would move without him or not at all. He had watched Mussolini’s March on Rome bring the Fascists to power a year earlier and wanted to force the Bavarian leaders into a similar march on Berlin.

The night in the beer hall

On the evening of 8 November 1923 Kahr was addressing an audience of around 3,000 people at the Burgerbraukeller, a large beer hall in Munich. At about 8.30 pm Hitler burst in with armed SA men, fired a pistol shot into the ceiling and announced that the national revolution had begun. He took Kahr, Lossow and Seisser into a side room and pressed them to join him.

The retired general Erich Ludendorff, the most famous German commander of the First World War, was brought to the hall and lent his prestige to the coup. Under pressure, the three Bavarian leaders publicly agreed to cooperate. Meanwhile Ernst Rohm and his men occupied the Bavarian war ministry building.

Hitler then left the hall to deal with problems elsewhere, and Ludendorff allowed Kahr, Lossow and Seisser to leave. Once free, they immediately repudiated their promises and organised resistance. Army units and the state police remained loyal, and the putschists failed to take key buildings such as the army barracks and the telegraph office.

The march to the Feldherrnhalle

By the morning of 9 November the coup was clearly failing. Ludendorff proposed a march into the city centre, hoping that the army and police would not fire on him. A column of roughly 2,000 Nazis and allies set off towards the war ministry, where Rohm’s men were surrounded.

Near the Feldherrnhalle, a monument on the Odeonsplatz, the marchers met a cordon of Bavarian state police. Shots were fired, and it is still unclear who fired first. In less than a minute fourteen marchers and four policemen were killed; two more putschists died at the war ministry. Hermann Goring was badly wounded, and Hitler, who had been linked arm in arm with Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter when Scheubner-Richter was shot dead, fell and dislocated his shoulder. He fled the scene and was arrested two days later at a supporter’s house at Uffing, south of Munich. Ludendorff walked unharmed through the police lines and was arrested.

Trial and imprisonment

Hitler and nine co-defendants were tried for high treason before a special people’s court in Munich from 26 February to 1 April 1924. The judges were sympathetic. Hitler was allowed to give long speeches, taking full responsibility and presenting himself as a patriot who had acted against a treasonous government. The trial was reported across Germany and made him famous beyond Bavaria.

Hitler received the minimum sentence of five years of fortress confinement, with the prospect of early release. Ludendorff was acquitted. Although Hitler was an Austrian citizen, he was not deported. At Landsberg prison he enjoyed comfortable conditions, received visitors and dictated much of the first volume of Mein Kampf, his political autobiography and programme, to Emil Maurice and Rudolf Hess. He was released on 20 December 1924 after about nine months of his sentence.

Consequences

The Nazi Party was banned after the putsch and split into rival factions while Hitler was in prison. He refounded it on 27 February 1925. The failure convinced him that the state could not be taken by force while the army and police opposed him. Instead, the party would contest elections and win power through legal means, while keeping its street violence. That strategy succeeded when Hitler became chancellor in January 1933.

The leniency of the court also exposed the weakness of the Weimar justice system towards right-wing violence, which was treated far more mildly than left-wing uprisings.

Myths and facts

Myth: the putsch happened in a single beer hall. The coup began at the Burgerbraukeller on the evening of 8 November, but the decisive events took place the next day in the streets of central Munich, at the war ministry and at the Odeonsplatz.

Myth: Hitler bravely led the march to the end. Nazi propaganda later celebrated his courage, but Hitler fell or was pulled to the ground when the shooting began and was driven away from the scene, while Ludendorff kept walking towards the police line.

Fact: the putsch nearly ended Hitler’s career. Banned from public speaking in several German states after his release and leading a fractured party, he seemed to many observers a spent force in the mid-1920s. His later rise depended heavily on the economic crisis that began in 1929.

Legacy and memory

After 1933 the Nazi regime turned the putsch into a founding myth. The sixteen dead marchers were honoured as “martyrs”, the flag they had carried became a sacred relic known as the “Blood Flag”, and the march was re-enacted in Munich every 9 November. In 1935 the dead were reburied in two “Temples of Honour” on the Konigsplatz, which were demolished in 1947. On 8 November 1939 a bomb planted by Georg Elser exploded in the Burgerbraukeller during Hitler’s anniversary speech, narrowly missing him.

Today a plaque at the Odeonsplatz commemorates the four police officers who died defending the Republic.

Timeline

• 1923, 26 September: Gustav von Kahr is appointed Bavarian state commissioner.
• 1923, 8 November, evening: Hitler storms the Burgerbraukeller and proclaims a national revolution.
• 1923, 9 November, midday: Police fire on the march near the Feldherrnhalle; the putsch collapses.
• 1923, 11 November: Hitler is arrested at Uffing.
• 1924, 26 February - 1 April: The treason trial; Hitler is sentenced to five years of fortress confinement.
• 1924, 20 December: Hitler is released from Landsberg prison.
• 1925, 27 February: Hitler refounds the Nazi Party.
• 1925, 18 July: The first volume of Mein Kampf is published.

Why it matters

The Beer Hall Putsch was a fiasco, but its aftermath was a turning point. The trial gave Hitler a national stage, his imprisonment produced Mein Kampf, and the failure led him to pursue power through elections, the route that brought the Nazis to government a decade later.