By Denis Wise
The official blog of the site “Der Stürmer” – http://der-stuermer.org
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Monday, November 12, 2018
Friday, November 9, 2018
The Hitler Trial
Originally published under the title: „Der
Hitlerprozeß“ - by Karl Richard Ganzer
Whoever views the history of the
Weimar Republic and its countless effort to preserve its existence will find
that in the struggle against its domestic enemies it again and again resorted
with noticeable clumsiness to measures that in the end benefited these enemies.
It struck at its opponent - but it hit him so that he only became harder, more
tenacious, more insubordinate and burst the old fronts with a new defiance. The
republic perished, because it did not summon up the courage for ultimate decisions. When it was still
young, it indeed mocked Imperial Germany - but it allowed itself to be saved by
counterrevolutionary troops. When it believed itself to be in its peak years,
but was already very aged, it removed the shirts from the charging opposition -
but it did not find the courage to totally exterminate the opponents. There is
not one of its measures that did not suffer from the worst of all political
evils, half-measures. And there is
not more precise proof for the lack of political instinct than the fact that
this always the same failure, this always the same indecisiveness, this always
the same half-measure could continue to thrive despite all bad experiences
through the fifteen long years - to the deserved end.
One must also view the Hitler trial in the context of the
system’s extraordinary inner insecurity in order to grasp it in its full
significance. For indeed, on November 9th the rulers had triumphed at the
Feldherrnhalle with salvos of fire. And indeed, after this bloody victory the system
powers from all camps - from the red and black and bourgeois - came together in
a unified front of loudly stressed confidence, but actually just poorly
concealed fear. But as self-serving as they again and again confirmed their own
glory, as permanently as the National Socialist movement seemed to be mashed
and shot up: a single force, the decisive
force in all history’s conflicts, escaped the clever and all too selfcertain
deliberations of the „victors”: the folk.
For now the new political idea, which
had proven for the first time that one could also die for it, sprang like a
river of fire into the hearts of countless people who were waiting, hesitating,
unbelieving. The folkish movement experienced an upsurge in Bavaria like never
before. And opinions were henceforth sharply divided. November 9th had already,
in the middle of the great despair of these hours, let one experience how
quickly a folk can transform itself, if a great example stirs the slumbering
courage and the hidden defiance. In the following weeks as well, the excitement
did not abate. Quite the opposite: the more arrogantly the „victors” of
November 9th bragged in their statesmen speeches and the louder their
sympathetic press attested their great statesmanship, the more hostile the mood
of the masses in broad circles became. An intensive leaflet struggle, combated
by the police only unsuccessfully, put the government under the heaviest
bombardment for months. The government itself brought up its heaviest guns with
its official dispatches, press declarations and large wall posters. A generous
influencing of public opinion against the imprisoned leaders of the revolt set
in - already many weeks before the trial, which was supposed to clarify the
question of guilt unbiased. But while the confidential memos of Kahr, Lossow
and Speisser, in which the gentlemen put the blood guilt of November 9th on
National Socialism and elevated themselves into heaven as innocents and made
the rounds, spreading poison, in the loyal newspaper offices, in the circles of
„good society” and in all circles of influence and rank, the folk outside
remained true in a moving way. Undeterred, Hitler’s soldiers sang their old
song: „Hitler spirit in the heart must not perish, Storm Troop Hitler will soon
be resurrected!” And even the children, enchanted by the name Hitler in a
strange way, found a new version for their counting verses: one, two three,
Hitler will be free” [„Eins, zwei drei, der Hitler, der wird frei...”]
Could one employ police against
this? And what did the base agitation publications of the white-blue
reactionary, with which one flooded the land, miss here through miscalculation?
Say those infamous pamphlets in white-blue jacket, which an anonymous „Veni
Vidi” had written and proved with an introduction, which was ingratiating like
a bad sermon and in the process dripping with hidden insults? Hitler was
portrayed as the typical ambitious man from lowly origins who had been made
megalomaniac through flattery; one of the dead of the Feldherrnhalle, Scheubner-Richrer,
was defamed as an adventurous political swindler who from the background
fatefully guided the decisions of a hesitant Hitler; Ludendorff was described
as the great Prussian militarist who had only come to Bavaria in order to
prepare a new war - there was nobody who was not attacked by the poisonous
spite of this hidden writer.
Nonetheless: what did such insults
count? They just pulled the front of the reliable closer together and incited
them to even greater passion in their own struggle. For it was felt clearly
enough that no moral, and hence no political, energies stood behind a
government that recruited witnesses of the inferior quality of such slanderers.
The first hour of the „victory“‘,
after all, had already proven how unsure and inwardly unstable this government
was, how it allowed itself to be ruled by such dangerous half-measures even in
its most objective decisions. Already in the night of November of 8th it had
boldly banned the NSDAP, the Bund Oberland and the Reichskriegsflagge, and
thereby believed it had broken forever the revolutionary movement; but now
these organizations had expanded beyond their own independence and merged
together into the „Deutschen Kampfbund”, which was its own legal body: but one
had forgotten to ban the one who had actually carried the revolt! Should the
folk gain confidence in a government that in hours of decision loses its nerve
so much that it only knows the language of the machinegun and in its other
measures commits half-measure after half-measure? Could the folk continue to
give its agreement to a system that accuses its shot down opponent of hostility
to the constitution a hundred times on one day and today smashes his
organization - but on the next day assures that it would allow him to enter the
parliaments unhindered, if he just wishes it. True to parliamentarian error,
the Reich Chancellor back then announced that the ban of the political parties
merely prohibited the outward activity and the organizational union of those
who belonged to the banned political parties; it „did not hinder giving
expression to political views through election of certain representatives for
parliamentary bodies.” The opponent who had just stood on the whipping-post as the
enemy of all enemies — he could march along in the same republic, if he just
put up a parliamentary appearance.... The folk has an unerring feeling for the
inner strength of an institution that makes political decisions.
I hit just like the Bavarian, so did
the government of Ebert-Stresemann as well reveal in its decisions the evil of
half-measures, which the healthy sense of the folk never forgives. The „traitors”
had to make all that much greater an impression, who, even if they had failed,
had nonetheless always let be surmised that history-shaping energies stood
behind their will!
It was no wonder that, in the face
of this background of pitiful uncertainty, even more energetic plans that the
system rallied to found no echo. Even though the Weimar Republic took action
against rebelling communists and Seeckt’s emergency decrees had preserved
makeshift order, it could still be sensed behind it that there existed nowhere
a firmly founded authority under Ebert’s rule. Even the sole positive
accomplishment of those months, the creation of the Rentenmark [currency], was
not able to bestow any superiority on the system; for one knew everywhere that
the plans for the security of the totally shaken currency had been worked out
by the politicians of the opposite and not by system big-shots such as perhaps
Hilferding.
The Bavarian government as well
found little support when it strove to demonstrate its security and
systemization of its political conceptions with great enterprises. It was
quickly proven that after as before the innermost striving of the ruling
white-blue regionalism aimed at a loosening of the Reich. Then the suspicion of
the National Socialist influenced masses only became greater.
The Hitler revolt had smashed the
Reich threatening plans of the separatist reaction. But now it cloaked its old
goal in constitutional forms: a few weeks before the court was supposed to
decide whether Hitler had committed high
treason, the Bavarian presented a renewed attack against the Reich’s unity
in a great memo. It demanded that the governmental sovereignty of the
individual states be re-established to the full extent; the Reich’s right of
sovereignty had to be restricted; even military sovereignty has to be greatly
loosened; hence the Bavarian provincial commander should be named and removed
only with the consent of the Bavarian government; even „a temporary dispatch of
Bavarian troop elements to a non-Bavarian location (!) may only take place with
the consent of the Bavarian government”; hence Bavarian troops were to be
obligated to the Bavarian government in addition to the Reich government; and
if the Weimar Constitution with incomprehensible generosity allowed the
individual states to conclude state
treaties with other states, leastwise with
the Reich’s consent, then this Reich destroying memo wants to allow the
Reich the meaningful right of a mere protest, with which nobody concerns
himself... Eighteen young Germans had died at the Feldherrnhalle for the
winning of a single, solidly unified Reich. But Hitler and his friends had
stood up for the strengthening of the Reich in a time of utmost urgency, they
sat behind the walls of the Landsberg fortress and waited for the verdict about
their „high treason”. But while one treated these rebels for the power and the
glory of the Reich like state criminals, one pushed forward wedge after wedge
against the Reich structure oneself...
The Hitler trial prepares itself in
such a situation, in the middle of a time filled with great tensions, amidst
excitement, lack of clarity, in a city that is filled with political guerrilla
warfare with leaflet, poster and press work, but also in a city in which the
accused have at their disposal almost no public means of defence against the
pubic attacks of the officials and the pro-system press. For weeks, the masses
wait for the scheduling of the beginning of the trial. For weeks they are
stalled, comforted, fed uncertain answers to burning questions. For weeks a
breathless tension lies over Munich, because each asks how far Kahr wants to
still expand his regimen of ban; whether the official influencing of public
opinion, of the witnesses, yes, of the court would not finally cease; how the
rulers would probably behave in a painful questioning of the witnesses.
For weeks such questions hang in the
air unanswered. Then the arming news suddenly comes that Kahr and Lossow with
him have resigned from their offices.
A few days after that the trial
begins: „Against Hitler and associates
for high treason and abetting high treason”.
For a long time it had been a main
concern of the Bavarian government whether one would be able to protect the
trial against disruptions: so correctly did one assess the folk mood, which
viewed the case as the act of a dead paragraph judiciary. After long
hesitation, one had nonetheless chosen Munich
as the trial site. The court was supposed to convene in the same infantry
school whose ensigns had marched under the swastika flag on November 8 to the
Bürgerbräukeller. The ensigns’ dining hall has been transformed into the
courtroom.
A few days before the beginning of
the trial large posters hang everywhere in the city. They announce the security
measures, which the government deems necessary in order to avoid surprises. One
reads the sentences with concern and pedantry.
A whole part of the city around the
infantry school is put under special law: assemblies of three (!) or more
people is forbidden here.
Photographing or filming is forbidden
here. Peddling, even newspapers, is forbidden. No political assemblies may be
held in the halls in this district; but since the largest halls of Munich lie
here - Löwenbräu, Arzbergerkeller, Augustinerkeller and Zirkus Krone - the
political assemblies relating to the events in the trial are largely prevented.
Furthermore, the whole quarter is under the strictest police observation. All
motor traffic is blocked. Violations are punishable with prison. And when on
the first day of the trial the residents along the Blutenburgstrasse look out
their windows, they even discover that the square in front of the infantry
school is barricaded with bard-wire and chevaux de frise like in wartime. Narrow passages are left
open, they are guarded by armed sentries. The sparse visitors who are admitted
to the trial, even the reporters, even the women, wait inside the building for
a painful body search for weapons...
Munich, the city with the calmest
populace, is amazed...
Already many weeks before the
beginning of the trial a brisk rush for the available press cards had set in.
Special attention had been aroused by the participation of the foreign press:
it was obvious that it did not view the case as a purely legal every or as
merely an internal Bavarian matter, rather as a sign of crisis that should
provide insight into the inner strength of the Weimar Republic. The press was
so strongly represented that only a few rows of chairs remained free for the
other visitors.
The defendants, with one sole exception, wore civilian clothes, even
the old General Quartermaster of the old army. The press noticed uniformly that
Adolf Hitler looked around in the courtyard with interest: they had looked
forward all too much to seeing a crushed sinner in order to not be amazed now
to find him with the free certainty of the attacker. The press of the left feels it a provocation that he wears the Iron
Cross First Class; but the bourgeois press from the Kahr camp, moved, remains
silent that one drags the bravest soldiers, proven leaders, before the judge.
And certainly, it is also not an easy office for the chief judge to now have to
try these defendants by the same procedure that is also the exact same for
chicken thieves. The report with the customary „here”, these ten „traitors” - Adolf Hitler, „author in Munich”, the
victor of Tannenberg, Ludendorff the
highest judge in Bavaria, Pöhner, the
high Bavarian administrative official Frick,
the general staff member Kriebel, the
front officers Brückner, Wagner, Weber, Röhm,
Pernet... They let the banality of this naming pour over them - and then
the prosecutor reads the indictment. In whose first sentences two paragraphs resound like a symbol: „The behaviour of the accused constitutes a
crime of high treason according to § 81 No. 2 and § 47 of the Reich Legal
Code...”
The reading of the indictment lasts
one and one- quarter hours: it is so detailed, it expresses the events under
indictment down to the smallest detail. Often it rises to sharply pointed,
dramatic portrayals; then it again carefully arranges its accusations together
point by point - in the most painstaking effort not to forget a single offense
from the plenitude of suspicions. It teams with names and details, with quotes
and testimonies, it reveals an amazing effort in the gathering of material -
what it lacks, so that it remains poor and meager despite its extensive
contents, is something very essential: the understanding for the tremendous
necessities of the political situation and the unnameable tensions out of which
the deed of November 9th took place. This indictment is down to the smallest
detail thought out legalistically. But
that beyond legal systems there exists a life full of elemental conflicts,
this it excludes from its deliberations. That the people of the year 1923 hunger and from their distress shout
like crazy for some kind of solution, it does not figure in. That foreign claws
tear at unprotected German borders, it leaves unspoken. That the threat of the
end has grinned over Germany since the ruinous day when the masters of the new
German conditions smashed a fighting army and defiled a proud Hag; that shame
and rage glowed in proud hearts for years until a decision flamed up from these fires, has no room in the cool logic
of these legal doctrines. When the accused could still fight out there for
their image of a new Reich, their enemies were the many powers of German decay.
Now, in this hall, they find themselves before a new enemy: their opponent is the paragraph with its
claim to regulate according to rigid law life,
in which since ancient times only the creative passions of great men of deeds
are valid.
But when then in the afternoon Adolf Hitler states his position on the indictment, with his words he draws
precisely the worlds into the field of vision of which the prosecutor’s
indictment did not have the vaguest idea. With a single blow, the impressions
have transformed themselves: no longer the pale shadow of paragraphs and
pandects, rather the swaying words of the political shaper dominate in the
hall.
Adolf Hitler begins with great calm.
But already his first sentence points to a historical tension, which almost
nobody in Germany feels yet and in which nonetheless the fate of this republic
lies most innately determined: „It seems
amazing that a human being who for almost six years was accustomed to blind
obedience now suddenly comes into conflict with the state and its
constitution...”. The decisive problem of the whole post-war period has
here in a single sentence been thrust into a bright light: that the prevailing
condition of Weimar remains so tremendously distant from a genuine state that
it must trigger the rebellion of all truly creative people. Where in Germany
did there exist a more passionate will for state and power and clear folk
structure than in Adolf Hitler? And where did there exist worse insults and
slanders of these highest values of a community than among the Weimar mighty,
who had the audacity to cloak themselves with the claims of any genuine state
despite their secret hostility toward the state? It was not otherwise: the will
for genuine state power and strong public order lived from the start on only
among those whom one dragged before the court as national rebels and dangerous
desperados. The powers, however, who set themselves up us judges, had never
known the creative passion, the strict breeding, the lofty discipline from
which the „rebels’’ drew their formative energies. They had become great
through treason against the state;
they lived from continued dissolution
of all order; they practiced an ongoing subversion
of the community idea. If there existed anywhere in Germany these eternally same
values, which were always necessary for the establishment of a state, then
solely among the outlawed opposition, which had never accepted the decay. It
was no wonder that already just this basic position gave the accused Adolf
Hitler immeasurable superiority over the passionless world of the paragraph. It
was nonetheless surprising, however, how he immediately exploited this inner
superiority for an attack of historical rank. He has just spoken for a few
minutes when the fact began to show itself that made this trial become one of
the most memorable political trials: namely that the accused who were called to
account by a doubtful political system rose up to become merciless accusers against the same system and to
encounter it with such blows that looking back it loses the moral foundations
for its indictment. The speech with which Adolf Hitler is supposed to defend
himself becomes a dismissal without pity.
Will he crawl to the cross and
disavow his struggle, which, after all, has failed? That is what the wise men
in all camps hoped. But each sentence of this speech becomes a grip on the
decisive leverage points of German distress; and beyond that, each sentence
becomes an attack against the sources of the great decline.
„I came to Vienna as a seventeen-year-old
human being and learned to study and observe three important questions there:
the social question, the race problem and finally the Marxist movement. I left Vienna as an absolute
anti-Semite, as mortal enemy of the whole Marxist world-view, as pan-German in my political thinking.
„The Marxist movement is a life
question of the German nation. By Marxism, I mean a doctrine that in principle
rejects the value of personality, which replaces energy with mass and hence has
a destructive effect on all of cultural life... Germany’s future means the
destruction of Marxism. Either this race tuberculosis thrives and then Germany
dies off, or it is expelled from the folk body, then Germany will thrive...”.
„The German revolution (of 1918) was
a revolution and hence successful high treason [against the state], which,
after all, is known to be not punishable.... What happened in 1918 in Germany,
however, was not high treason, rather betrayal of country, which can never be
forgiven. For us, that was a vile crime against the German folk, a stab in the
back of the German nation...”
The blows struck home. The Marxist
press will howl in a wild chorus. A flow of insults on the following day will
be the answer, arrogant, impertinent, with the screaming shamelessness of the
exposed. The reporters in the hall jot down the insults for the next day’s lead
article: „November criminals around Ludendorff, big mouth Hitler, politically
bankrupt people, criminal dilettantes...” But the Führer continues to speak.
He portrays the rise of the party
from the band of the first seven unknown men. He reports about the creation of
the first S.A.: „For the man who is
willing to fight with intellectual weapons, we have intellect, for the others,
the fist.” He glows with rekindled shame over the pitiful bearing of the
system politicians in the Ruhr struggle. And he finally comes to speak about
Bavaria as well and the national movement under the protection of the Bavarian
government authorities: for the first time, the name Kahr is mentioned. Hitler’s first sentence about him is a verdict: „I
became acquainted with Mr. Kahr in 1920. He made the impression on me that he
was an honourable official, but that was all.” And after a clear portrayal of
the highly tense situation in late summer 1923. including all the essential
threads, an equally annihilating verdict over Lossow comes out: “A military commander in an army with only seven
divisions. Whoever has one division in hand and rebels against his chief, must
be determined to take it to the end, or he is a common mutineer and rebel.”
The relationship of the forces which
in autumn 1923 wrestled for the fate of Bavaria and Reich, is very sharply
outlined. And now the direction of the thrust also becomes visible: for the
first time, he refers to the separatist
threat, in which Bavaria tottered for months: The struggle such as Dr. von Kahr wages, is a crime, unless one is determined from the
first minute on to integrate oneself
into the German national uprising... The path of looking around for foreign help is for every German the most shameless one that exists... Lossow thought
in the Ruhr struggle that there were two possibilities: either to dress the
resistance in an energetic form, or, if the thing collapsed, each individual state must see how it got
through; that would naturally lead to the Reich ‘s disintegration. Back then, I
was very moved inwardly by that; for my position is: rather be hanged, if
Germany turns Bolshevik, than to perish under French saber rule.”
They must have been fearful minutes
when Hitler spoke about these dangers. And the listeners, moved, again and
again felt from his words the desperate struggle that back then had to have
been waged for the decisions of the triumvirate Kahr-Lossow-Seisser: how Hitler
again and again made attempts to push them back from the Reich threatening
plans; how at each discussion he struggled anew for the shared German solution;
and how he finally thought he could believe that the three gentlemen were in
full agreement with his own direction of will. From the words with which he
portrayed the final result of these conferences, from these bitter,
disappointed, accusing words, one senses the feeling of salvation that
obviously prevailed within him when the unity of views seemed achieved: „The
fact was: Lossow, Kahr and Seisser had the same goal as we, namely to eliminate
the Reich government in its present international and parliamentarian
orientation and to replace it with an anti-parliamentarian government. If
indeed our whole enterprise would have been high treason, then Lossow, Seisser and Kahr must have been
committing high treason with us the whole time, since during all these months
nothing else was discussed than that for which we now sit in the defendant’s
chair...”.
A movement of amazement passes
through the hall. What consequences will these words have?
Initially, they had no other
consequences than that they revealed the direction of the second thrust that
the accused planned to make in this trial. If the one line of their offensive defence
aimed at Bavarian separatism, then this second one followed the daring, yes,
adventurous sounding idea of forcing the accusers themselves onto the defendant’s
seat. The plan is unique. Again and again, Hitler presents it to the court:
„We did not threaten in the
Bürgerbräukeller, rather I reminded the gentlemen what they had promised us the
whole time, and they offered to draw the consequences, whereby, however, I
foresaw that they would go to prison with us, if the thing fails - an opinion,
however, that I must correct today... It is impossible that I committed high
treason, for that could not lie in the events of November 8th, rather in all
the negotiating and bearing of the previous months - and then I am amazed that
those who did the same thing as I do not sit next to me... If we committed high
treason, then Kahr, Lossow, Seisser and an endless number of others did the
same thing. I deny any guilt, as long as my company is not supplemented with
those gentlemen who helped prepare things down to the most minute detail!”
The attack continues. A barrage of
reprimands, refutations, facts flies at the opponent and covers him. Bit by
bit, it has smashed his carefully constructed positions into pieces. The
hardest will, the boldest intellect from the front of attackers has already on
the first day whipped the charge forward, and the companions only have to make
sure to catch up with the charging ardour. The attack had been launched from a
quite unfavourable basis. But now it has already penetrated deep into the enemy
zone. Overwhelmed, the observers follow the unaccustomed collision. Their
feelings are already leaning toward the leader of the charge, who now at the
conclusion of his attack signal declares in triumphant defiance:
„I feel myself as best German who
has wanted the best for the German folk.”
It is not possible to subject the
justification speeches of the other defendants to a thorough examination.
Decisive is that the companions as well without exception charged behind the Führer.
Decisive is furthermore the courage of the thinking that dominated them all
uniformly. Seldom has the court seen a similar loyalty to one’s own deed, which
has nonetheless suddenly been declared a crime: not one who does not declare
that he would repeat this „crime” at any hour, because Germany demands that
from him. Seldom as well did a group of defendants confront its judges in a
similar competition for the responsibility: Adolf
Hitler had already declared in his speech that he as leader demanded sole responsibility. Now his companions claimed
responsibility for their own decisions with the same passion. There are no
requests for forgiveness. There is only the attack in the same front.
Again and again, both lines of
attack in this battle also become visible: the attack against the not accused
fellow traitors Kahr, Lossow and Seisser, and the attack against the diverse
regionalist tendencies in Bavarian politics.
Most of the accused had for years
already played a leading role in Bavarian post-war politics - some as high
officials of the state, others as officers, still others as leaders of
paramilitary formations, which, after all, since the days of the local militias
had also always worked very closely with the political groups around Kahr.
Their testimony then put a spotlight on the background of previous Bavarian
politics; and again and again they let it be seen that these politics - exactly
like the action of the defendants themselves - had been glaringly directed
against the Weimar constitution: yes, after all. only the common front against
the Weimar system had brought the National Socialist opposition into a unified
front with the Bavarian government men. But now that Weimar had the upper hand
in the conflict with Hitler, the Bavarian „battle companions” had defected to
the victorious camp. How shameful for them and their political honour the
memories of the joint actions against Weimar, the „misfortune” of yesterday,
the „legal power” of today, is now put to them from all sides - by men, who
after November 9th did not crawl in
homage before the Weimar presidential seat, rather who remained true to the old
political conviction and the old oaths and manly words.
Pöhner,
Bavarian judiciary official, for years in close political contact with Kahr,
testifies: „I learned to highly value Kahr, since he, like I, was of the
opinion that what had played out in November 1918 had been a crime... I was (on
November 8th) very pleased that somebody had finally been found who possessed
the courage to pull along with himself the gentlemen who long already planned
what the new government in the Reich had long since decided... I do not hide my
whole political position. If what you
accuse me of is high treason — I have been engaged in this business for five
years already! ”
And a defence attorney, who asks him
whether Kahr in the year 1920 and again in 1922 had taken very illegal paths in
order to come to power, receives the answer with laughter: „Yes, I was there,
after all!”
Lieutenant-Colonel Kriebel jumps to his side as he relates
the same matter, where Kahr had ensured himself leadership in Bavaria: „Back
then I earned my state coupe spurs.” But Kriebel passes a different verdict
over the time when Kahr, in possession of power, began to switch to „legal”
circumstances: that „Kahr is a man of the open backdoor, who does not draw the
final consequences from a decision.” And at the conclusion of his examination,
quite agitated: „I feel no kind of regret
to have helped, I am proud that I have done it, because I have long already
loathing for men who have spoken with the mouth to do something, but who have
never done something”.
Robert Wagner,
First Lieutenant in the Reichswehr, also attests of General Lossow that he has
done nothing other than the struggle against the Weimar constitution, to which
he had sworn an oath, and which he brushed aside in a coup d’état manner when he had his own division swear
allegiance to Bavaria: „General Seeckt called Lossow’s action a breach of
oath... But we saw in Lossow the new Yorck.”
Exactly so docs Frick remember Kahr’s very illegal political past, who does not fit
his present sudden loyalty at all: „During
the Kapp revolt I got close to Kahr, who on March 13th and 14th played an
outstanding role...”.
All of them then also go into
extensive presentations about the days immediately before November 8th. when
one conference followed the other and each ended with the realization that
Kahr, Lossow and Seisser wanted to push their already long made break with
Berlin to a violent confrontation as soon as the desired opportunity to strike
just presented itself. When the examination of the defendants has ended, there
can no longer be any doubt that the three winners of November 9th have been
hard hit in their present assurances of loyalty: that their loyalty to the
constitution, which they now put on display so sedulously, did not always
inspire them; that even a few months ago they were totally one with the accused
in hostility against the constitution, for whose benefit they now level their
indictment. The day’s media waits with suspense, since the most important
counterparts of the defendants, the gentlemen Kahr, Lossow and Seisser, must
present themselves to the court as witnesses. This expectation becomes all the
livelier when one of the defending attorneys summaries the result of the
previous proceedings and then in the process also refers to the various secret negotiations that the trial has
already brought with it. After all, the public had always been excluded, when „state
security” appeared to be threatened by the testimony. But it had again and
again been guessed that often enough an incrimination of the three Bavarian
government men was connected to these testimonies. Now on the day when witness
examination begins, the defence hurls its attacking statement at the court: „These
witnesses, who appear as crown
witnesses against the accused, were the
wire-pullers of the whole enterprise, so that it is impossible that the
people who instigated the whole enterprise now appear as witnesses against those who carried out the enterprise”.
Here the plan is very sharply
outlined, according to which the accused led the great campaign for their
justification and for smashing the opponent’s positions.
But now the examination of the
defendants has made yet another main question pops up, which makes the public
hold its breath: each of the defendants had in his testimony also supported the
thrust against Reich threatening Bavarian
separatism introduced by Adolf Hitler.
Ludendorff
wielded the sharpest weapon in this struggle, when he referred to the again and
again appearing machinations of the politicized
clergy - to the lurking spider in the separatist web that spread itself out
in Germany. It had been forgotten all too quickly, after all, how closely the Centrum had since its existence stood in
one front with all Reich threatening forces. And in the confusion of the post-war
period it had also been relatively little noted that the leading Centrum
prelates and leading men of the clergy led Bavarian
Folk Party had again and again in very incriminating negotiations become
involved with the French and with separatists, with conspirators for a new
Rhine Federation and with proponents of a Catholic Danube monarchy. Ludendorff
pulls these dark plans into the light, presents in broad outline their history
since Bismarck’s days, shows how they become alive again since the November
revolt. All the questionable figures of the separatist underworld in Bavaria
are conjured up - the Bothmers and Leoprechtings, the Fuchs and Machhaus, the
French agent Richert and the French emissary Dard, who let his money flow
through all possible dark channels. Kahr’s politics are outlined: he spoke „of strong states in a strong Reich, while I
had spoken of healthy states in a
strong Reich.” The whole dangerousness of this position pops up when the
general brands the words of the „temporary separation of Bavaria from the
Reich”: „I have always viewed the idea of a temporary separation of Bavaria
from the Reich as high treason.” But the great question about the wire-pullers
and beneficiaries of such politics always stands above it. And this question
always finds the answer in an old historical realization: „The creation of a powerless Germany was the result of ultra-Catholic
politics such as they put in an appearance at the Reich foundation and then
during the world war”.
The general presents example after
example. The signal terrifies the separatist and politicized clerical front.
From the Cardinal’s palace in Munich to the smallest chapel residence, from
Rome to San Francisco, the ecclesia
militans feels hit at a nerve. Its press howls...
This is how the attack unfolds
across the broadest front through the defendants when witness examination finally begins. The court had already
questioned many witnesses about a series of details. Then the day came on which
the examination of the main witnesses
Kahr, Lossow and Seisser will
start.
What typifies the testimonies of the
three gentlemen is initially an amazing agreement in the testimonies down to
individual formulations. One clearly recognizes that shared discussions have
preceded, in which the statements were coordinated. Whether it is about the
controversial scenes in the Bürgerbräukeller, where Lossow, according to his
testimony and that of his companions, claims to have issued the motto „comedy
games”; where the talk is about the measures of the witnesses immediately after
the Bürgerbräukeller assembly; where the inner stand on the enterprises is put
to question at all: in all these statements the testimonies of the three
gentlemen betray a careful common revision. Nobody can claim that the gentlemen
faced the examination unbiased, all
the less so, since Kahr namely again and again tries contrary to trial
regulations to read his testimony from a brought along memorandum.
But even aside from such individual
questions, the gentlemen show a noticeable agreement in the great political
line of their presentations. The position of the back then ruling circles on
National Socialism itself downright appears in them.
Above all, it is conspicuous that
with amazing boldness they equate their own mortal person with the eternity of
the state. Lossow, aggressively: „If
Kahr and the bearers of the state’s power sectors are with all means made
despicable, that is not directed against our person, rather against the state
idea and the authority of the state. Not Kahr and his companions are injured
here, rather the state... Who gave the order to fire at the Feldherrnhalle? I can
answer the question exactly: the state gave the order!”
Kahr also gives himself airs: „My
activity was devoted above all to Bavarian interests, the preservation of state
authority and the establishment of the idea of state power. Only the state and
state power may be master in the land and one clearly hears behind that his old
self-conscious claim: „But state power is embodied in we!”
Seisser confirms this claim: „Kahr
wanted to gather the patriotic forces under his own command, under „unconditional
subordination to state authority.”
But they all forget that in November
1923 any state authority was already long smashed to pieces and that any
national order and all faith in the folk could only be maintained through the
work of the defendants, whom one now endeavoured with all means to portray as
criminals against the state.
Kahr’s, Lossow’s and Seisser’s
second claim went that they had indeed wanted to form a new government in the
Reich, but naturally only in a totally legal
way. While the defendants again and again portrayed and through witnesses
proved that the three gentlemen as well must have thought of a violent advance and always instructed
the Kampfbund [fighting federation] in this sense, the three gentlemen now
claimed that they had always endeavoured for a totally peaceful change of the
government in the Reich. A confusing shift of all previously valid political
concepts hence then set in: if one had spoken of a „march to Berlin” in 1923, one now explained that as totally
harmless, that it was just about a soft „pressure on Berlin” or even just a „spiritual rejuvenation”; if one had had
speakers from the most diverse associations in 1923 speak all through the land
without contradiction of the necessity of a national „dictatorship” and again
and again affirmed this demand, one made these clear and hard words harmless in
that one speaks of a „directorship” that was supposed to be formed back then;
if Lossow had declared himself ready for any coup d’état, if it just offered a chance of success, he now defines this clearly
violent term with soft formulations, which completely conform to the
parliamentarian feelings of the Weimar world and could not offend even the most
loyal Republican. No concept remains unblurred during the testimonies of the
three gentlemen, no shared plan of 1923 unaltered.
For an endless flood of insults and
accusation forms the third trait in the examination of the three main prosecution
witnesses. Each according to the temperament of the three gentlemen, they
pounce more or less vigorously upon the defendants. Kahr weighs his utterances
most carefully: he gladly conceals himself in the cloak of contempt put on
display, when he, for example, instead of immediately answering one of Hitler’s
questions, turns to the chief judge as a mediator or even merely addresses the
speaker’s podium. Seisser formulates his attacks sharply, cleverly concealed,
but in a dialectic so insulting that the Führer once mutters the word „shamelessness”.
Lossow, however, rages around cursing
in the courtroom as if he were passing time in a barracks courtyard dressing
down a company of recruits. Already during his extensive speak he had coarsely
insulted: „I noticed that Hitler lacked the sense of reality, the measure for
what is useful and achievable... I often declared that Hitler is not capable of
leadership of a dictatorship. But I agreed that he could be the political
drummer... Hitler is fixated on the word brutality, I have never heard the word
sentimentality from him.” And when the general must in cross examination answer
to even very sensitive questions, he quickly falls into such agitation that he
totally loses his nerves. Agitated, biting, barking, he throws his answers at
the defence, rattling his spurs he runs back and forth in front of the witness
seat, each answer, instead of remaining objective, is seasoned with a raging
after-taste. In this mood he then encounters Hitler as well, who at various important problems - the question of
dictatorship or directorate, about violent march or peaceful „pressure”, about
Lossow’s participation in the preparations for the universally planned „coup d’état” - intervenes in the examination with sharply
outlined questions. When Hitler attempts to correct that shameful accusation
that he broke his word of honour on November 8th, it comes to a clash that has
become famous.
Hitler, with concise statement: „November
8th was the execution of a long-discussed plan.”
Lossow: „Seisser has raised the
objection right from the start: ‘Between us stands your breech of word of honour.’
You have replied: ‘Forgive me, it is in the interest of the fatherland.”‘
Hitler, outraged by the ongoing
insults, in sharp attack: „Was that the sentimental or the brutal Hitler, who
requested forgiveness?”
Lossow, totally uncontrolled: „That
was neither the sentimental nor the brutal Hitler, rather the Hitler with the
guilty conscience!”
Hitler, quite agitated: „I need no
guilty conscience in regard to breech of word of honour, such as of which Mr.
von Lossow accuses me, all the less so, as the only one who broke his word of honour
was Mr. Von Lossow, and indeed on May 1st!”
Lossow storms to the door and slams
it closed behind him menacingly. The trial is adjourned, because the witness
has through his illegal departure removed himself from examination...
The trial escalates to such dramatic
scenes several times. Specifically, there are clashes when the public is
supposed to be excluded again. That occurs regularly, when the further
testimony will in all probability prove things that incriminate the witnesses
Kahr, Lossow and Seisser. Regarding the question what was the nature of the
enterprise that they themselves planned, nothing has hence been publicly determined through the trial.
Kahr’s
examination as well has not provided any decisive open answers here. If Lossow had provided a unique example of the
attempt with which one could behave so crudely in front of a court, then Kahr
presented the equally unique role of a man who in a hardly conceivable manner
refused all dangerous answers at all. As soon as he encountered the question of
the background to November 9th’which proved that he himself and his cronies
were most intimately entangled in the anti-republican plans, he held ready the
same pitiful answer - dozens of times, with an amazing courage for (light: I
cannot remember - or: I am bound by official secrets - or: I am not allowed to
say. Dozens of times, tricky questions pelt down on him, and dozens of times,
he refuses to reply - an unprecedented image of a lost human being, with
lowered head, regrettable victim of his own inadequacies, trembling down to his
deepest soul with the feverish wish to just as quickly as possible escape this
torture. When his examination has ended the world knows that here a man who
once felt himself to be the called representative of the state has collapsed in
a humiliating manner with all his great claims...
But this is not the place to deal
with the details of the lines of questions to which the witness examination was
devoted. Already before the announcement of the verdict, as the decisive result
of the trial, the fact came out, which, after all, after an almost ten-year
long struggle then experienced the same historical justification, that namely inner right, the greater moral weight,
the great historical courage for decision and for responsibility stood solely on the side of the accused. The representatives
of the accusing state had, perhaps with the most honest intentions, defended an
inwardly rotten world. Kahr’s pitiful fall was a symbol of that, and Lossow’s
noisy trump playing was only the sign of the weakness of an order that was not
firm enough within itself in order to fend off an attack with calm certainty.
At any rate, the action-readiness of the defendants showed that the instinct
for history-shaping values was more alive in them than in the called
representatives of state authority. The
courageous have always triumphed over the hesitant, straightforwardness over
evasion, the man over the bureaucrat.
Above all, the trial had clarified
that the many honour slighting accusations against the Führer and his
companions were defamation. It furthermore clarified that the three main
accusers had for months in eternal hesitation discussed with the defendants
anti-constitutional plans, which the defendants alone in their own way had the
courage to achieve. It finally clarified that the actual plans of the three
government men were probably aimed at different and highly dangerous final
goals than the decisions of the „rebels”; but the final disclosures about
precisely this question, the most interesting one of the whole trial, do not
lie in the protocols of the public, rather only of the closed proceedings. When
witness examination is closed and when the prosecution and defence have tested
themselves with sharp juristic weapons, the historical result stands firm: the
enterprise of November 8th and 9th had to
come given the situation back then, it was the release of a tension that had
become unbearable, the daring incision into the centre of a ravaging fever that
convulsed the body of the German folk. An unspeakable confusion had dominated
the period before November 9th, chaos, plans, dissatisfaction, projects,
violent, talk. An energetic will intervened sharply into this turmoil - and the
tangled, drifting, dangerous forces of unrest and sickness already arranged
themselves.
So November 9th had brought clarity
in any case. As the day of the announcement of the verdict approached, the historically so decisive question does
not aim so much at the degree of punishment. It is different: which of the
opposing forces will preserve for the future the ability to transform the
experiences and knowledge of the year 1923, and the decisions of the trial, into
creative impulses for future political formations?
The last days of the trial have
provided the answer to this question to every awaken and believing human being.
On the 19th day of trial, the prosecutor in an extensive speech gives the basis
for the requested punishment. On the
24th day of the trial, Adolf Hitler
in his closing speech once more summarizes for himself and his friends
realization and obligation. In the speeches, both opposing historical worlds
encounter each other, which will still struggle for ten more years for the
final result.
The prosecutor’s feelings are
conflicting. As a human being, he does not deny how deeply the defendants have
moved him in their purity, their affirmation and their national passion.
Sometimes it seems as if he wants to affirm his goal with an unconditional Yes.
But the office suffocates the moved human being, to represent the prosecution
for the state, in a tangle of paragraphs and doctrines, which give no room for
human affirmation. Indeed, he admits what was the decisive impulse for the
defendants’ deed: „Certainly, what happened in November 1918 was a crime of
high treason”; and this confession is amazing. Nonetheless, he believes that he
should protect the Weimar state: „The Weimar constitution forms the foundation
of the Reich. Opposition against the constitution, even if it may appear
justified for national reasons, must never lead to one trying to change or
eliminate the constitution by force.” This speech is dominated by the dangerous
doctrine that any political system, insofar as it simply possesses outer power,
is also good and God given, inviolable and unalterable. A rigid formalism forbids any rebellion, even it
is being ever so necessary for the life of the folk. The bond to a dead
constitutional regulation appears more obligating than the burning faith in the
future of the nation, which feels this constitutional regulation to be a rope
around all its limbs. The prosecutor formulates his demand quite sharply to
affirm every right of even an unhealthy governmental condition insofar as it is
simply outwardly covered by a constitution: „It is a dangerous illusion, which
has formed in the world of ideas of the nationalist activist circles, that
everything that happens out of patriotism and in the interest of the national
cause is also simply allowed, even if one thereby still so very much violates
valid laws and the legal order.” The naked consequence is clear: „legal order”
stands above the well- being of the folk, even if it would be exploited by a
Bolshevik regime...
In contrast, it will remain
eternally memorable how Adolf Hitler countered
this cool doctrine with a new political
faith. His speech is attuned to a mighty chord: a condition is only good
and just, if it serves the folk; a constitution may be legally ever so good: but
if it harms the folk, every rebellion against it is sacred right and even more
sacred obligation. At the hour when he and his political work were supposed to
be smashed, he preached more fervently and compelling than ever before the
inalienable right of a betrayed folk for a creative national revolution.
He stands before the count as an accused. But every word that he speaks
into the hall, into the open hearts of moved human beings, becomes an indictment, which passes its verdicts on
the strength of historical right. The Germany of the November crime is
surrendered to his lashing will.
Has the revolt of 1918 benefited the
German folk? Has it through construction and daring formation legalized the
fact that it emerged through high treason? The answer, which the speaker draws
from an observation of the German present, paints apocalyptic images:
„The failure of the new masters in
the economic sphere is so horrible that the masses are driven onto the streets:
the soldiers, who are supposed to fire into the masses, however, do not want to
constantly shoot at the folk... What all did the revolution prophesize
politically? One heard about the folks’ right of self- determination, about the
League of Nations, about the self-government of the folk. And what came? A
world peace on our field of corpses... Self-determination for every Negro
tribe, but Germany does not count as a Negro tribe. We have become the pariah
in this world. What else are our government organs than the executive organs of
our external tyrants? Can anybody say the revolution has succeeded, while the
object of the revolution, Germany, perishes?”
Imploring the words, compelling the
voice, the hall listens as if enchanted. For weeks, jurists have calculated
here brooding, but now suddenly all the distress and the energy, the
inexhaustible treasure of faith and the fate of all German desperation are conjured
up in this somber room. The files no longer rustle, diligent pens no longer
write thick volumes of protocols, fate itself reckons now through this mouth
about the rise and the fall of this struggling folk, whose deepest energies
have become awake in these raging words that have the courage to examine, to
elevate and to pitilessly reject. He fetches them, the destroyers of German
authority, who have done their work since the November betrayal, and his speech
threatens:
„The young soldiers stand up, who
went to their deaths in Flanders with the German national anthem on their lips,
and call: You are at fault that we lie here as victims of your crimes. Then the
expellees come, who had been driven out, and accuse... Our proud ships lie on
the bottom of the sea and accuse those who helped to destroy the pride of a
sixty million folk...”
Yes, he makes himself the executor
of the humbled living Germans and the betrayed German dead, and stands large
like a judge before the countenance of the nation:
„I accuse Ebert, Scheidemann and
comrades of treason against the nation and of high treason. I accuse them,
because they destroyed a seventy million folk.”
The words swing over listening
Germany like the ring of alarm-bells, like a threat that one day the end will dawn
for the powers of German decline a different one than the one they themselves
are determined to prepare for the leader of the coming uprising.
For that he has been bestowed the
leadership office of the German nation, he knows even at the hour when one will
send him behind prison walls. And that more stands behind his claim than a vain
personal wish, namely the mission of fate and necessity itself, he affirms with
bold freedom: „I take the standpoint that the bird must sing, because it is a
bird. And a man who has been born for politics must engage in politics, whether
he is free or in prison, sits on silken seat or must be satisfied with a hard
bench. The fate of his folk will move him from the earliest morning until late
into the night. Whoever has been born to be a dictator, which not be pushed
back, rather he wants to, he will, himself push forward... Whoever feels called
to govern a folk does not have the right to say: if you want me or fetch me, I
will go along. Me has the duty to do it.”
Unforgettable words! The world had
expected the imploring gestures of a humbled and broken man, but now it must
experience that this persecuted man more masterfully than ever reaches for the
leadership of the folk; that his will for power has only become greater. An
unbounded certainty resonates in his words: „In my eyes it would be pitiful to
plead for something of which I know that posterity will give it to me anyway...
What stood before my eyes was from the first day on was to become a thousand
times more than a [government] minister. I wanted to become the destroyer of
Marxism. And I will fulfil this task!”
For a long time now, this speech has
no longer been a speech of justification. It has become a stern affirmation,
and now it totally soars to the blaze of a prophecy, devout, unerringly certain
in the validity of the proclaimed word:
„The deed of November 8th has not
failed. It would have failed, if a mother had come to me and had said: You also
have my child on your conscience. But I may assure you: no mother came. Quite
the opposite, thousands of others have come and have joined our ranks. That is
the visible sign of the success of November 8th, that in its aftermath the
youth has arisen like a flood and joins together. That is the greatest gain of
November 8th, that it is has not led to depression, rather has contributed to
greatly enthusing the folk. I believe that the hour will come when the masses
who today stand on the street with our swastika flag will unite with those who
on November 9th fired upon us. I believe that the blood will not eternally
separate us... The army that we have formed grows faster from day to day, from
hour to hour. Precisely in these days I have the proud hope that the hour will
one day come when these wild throngs become battalions, the battalions
regiments, the regiments divisions, that the old cockades will be pulled out of
the dirt, and that the old flags will again flatter up front, that then
reconciliation comes at the eternal final judgment of God, to which we are
willing to step. Then, from our bones and from our graves, the voice of the
court will speak which alone is called on to judge us. For not you, my sirs,
pronounce the verdict over us, the eternal court of history pronounces the
verdict... That court will judge us, the General Quartermaster of the old army,
his officers and soldiers, who as Germans wanted the best for their folk and
fatherland, who want to fight and die You may pronounce us guilty a thousand times,
the goddess of the eternal court of history will laughingly tear up the
prosecutor’s request and the court’s verdict: for she acquits us!”
When the court pronounces the
verdict the following day, the republic has apparently triumphed over the
captured high traitors. Adolf Hitler,
together with Weber, Kriebel and Pöhner, is sentenced to five years imprisonment. But while the
chief judge reads aloud the verdict in the hall, outside on the streets,
watched by police lines, thousands and thousands wait for the opportunity to
perhaps see one of the convicted men, so that they can cheer him: cheer like
only an enflamed folk cheers a victor. The hearts of thousands burn brightly.
Each of them carries on his faith. Each of them is an invincible force of
loyalty and affirmation. Each of them is an incalculable threat to the
condemning republic.
Then one led the „high traitors” to
the fortress at Lech. And the victors were happy that the bearers of German
unrest would supposedly for years be shut off from the only places where they
could have an effect. But again, the calculation proved itself wrong. For while
the system now proceeded, with all tricks and all terror, to put into effect
the Dawes Plan, the new pariah pact
that one had tried to force upon the folk with golden talk, in Landsberg a
tenacious will forged new weapons. But behind the walls, a restless prisoner
walks up and down and dictates a book.
A time will come when the system realizes with horror that this book represents
a most dangerous weapon: that here the weapons are stockpiled that will smash
all old walls; that here the foundation stones are hewn from which one day a
new order will rise over Germany. They still mock and revile, the powers of
right and left, the reds and the blacks [conservative Catholic Centrum] and the
masters of big business. But with a solemn ardour, in the solitude of his cell,
an imprisoned man pieces together the plan that will one day smash the rotten
and shape the new. Like from the trumpets of Jericho, it echoes in the Jew
related world: Victory, victory, the enemy has been destroyed. But the traders
have never known that danger still threatens, if just one single brave heart carries its faith forward like a flag.
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