The Beer Hall Putsch Begins in Munich
On the evening of November 8, 1923, Adolf Hitler and armed supporters broke into a political meeting in a Munich beer hall and announced a revolution. The attempt to seize power ended the next day with gunfire in the center of the city.
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Germany and Bavaria in 1923
In 1923 the Weimar Republic was in a deep crisis. French and Belgian troops had occupied the Ruhr region in January after Germany fell behind on reparations payments, and prices rose so fast that paper money lost its value within days. In Bavaria the state government under Gustav von Kahr, appointed state commissioner in September, was in conflict with the national government in Berlin. Adolf Hitler, born in Austria, led the National Socialist German Workers' Party, which had its base in Munich and had a paramilitary force, the SA.
The Evening of November 8
On the evening of November 8, Kahr was giving a speech to several thousand people in the Bürgerbräukeller, a large beer hall in Munich. Hitler entered with armed men, fired a shot into the ceiling, and declared that a national revolution had begun. He took Kahr, the army commander in Bavaria, General Otto von Lossow, and the police chief, Colonel Hans von Seisser, into a side room and pressed them to join him. General Erich Ludendorff, the First World War commander, arrived and also pressed them. The three officials agreed under pressure, then left the hall, and in the course of the night withdrew their support.
The March on November 9
On the morning of November 9, Hitler and Ludendorff led a column of about two thousand supporters toward the center of Munich. Near the Feldherrnhalle, a monument on the Odeonsplatz, police stopped the column and shots were exchanged. Sixteen members of the Nazi movement and four police officers were killed. Hitler, who had dislocated his shoulder in the fall, left the scene, and Ludendorff walked on and was arrested. The attempt had collapsed in a matter of seconds.
Arrest and Trial
Hitler was arrested on November 11 at a house in Uffing, south of Munich. His trial for high treason began in Munich in February 1924. He used it to speak at length about his views, and the court allowed him to do so. He was sentenced to five years in Landsberg prison and was released on December 20, 1924, after about nine months. Ludendorff was acquitted. The Nazi Party and the SA were banned, and the party was founded again in February 1925.
What Followed
While in Landsberg, Hitler dictated the first volume of his book Mein Kampf. Afterwards Hitler said that the party should seek power through elections, although it continued to use violence in the streets. The Nazi Party became part of the German government in January 1933, when Hitler was appointed chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg. After 1933 the Nazi government held an annual commemoration of November 9, and the sixteen dead of 1923 were honored in a ceremony. Today the date is also remembered in Germany for other events, including the 1938 anti-Jewish violence known as Kristallnacht and the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
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