Hitler

Luther and the cultural traditions of Weimar, in a Protestant area which did not have to reckon with the opposition of the Catholic establishment, as in Bavaria, and, not least, a region with an existing strong base of
völkisch
sympathizers – Hitler conceded that there was something to be said for the idea. ‘But I can’t leave Munich,’ he immediately added. ‘I’m at home here; I mean something here; there are many here who are devoted to me, to me alone, and to nobody else. That’s important.’
    At eight o’clock on the evening of 27 February 1925, Hitler, with his usual sense of theatre, made his re-entry to the Munich political scene where he had left it sixteen months earlier: at the Bürgerbräukeller. Just as before the putsch, red placards advertising the speech had been plastered around Munich for days. People began to take up their seats in the early afternoon. Three hours before the scheduled start, the huge beerhall was packed. Over 3,000 were jammed inside, 2,000 more turned away, and police cordons set up to block off the surrounding area. Some prominent faces were missing. Rosenberg was one. He was irritated at being excluded from Hitler’s inner circle in the weeks since his return from Landsberg. He told Lüdecke: ‘I won’t take part in that comedy … I know the sort of brother-kissing Hitler intends to call for.’ Ludendorff, Strasser, and Röhm were also absent. Hitler wanted the first party-leader, Drexler, to chair the meeting. But Drexler insisted that Hermann Esser be evicted from the party. Hitler would accept no conditions. And for him, Esser had ‘more political sense in his fingertips than the whole bunch of his accusers in their buttocks’. So one of Hitler’s most trusted Munich followers, his business-manager Max Amann, opened the meeting.
    Hitler spoke for almost two hours. The first three-quarters of his speech offered his standard account of Germany’s plight since 1918, the Jews as the cause of it, the weakness of bourgeois parties, and the aims of Marxism (which, he stated, could only be combated by a doctrine of higher truth but ‘similar brutality of execution’). Hitler was frank about the need to focus all energy on one goal, on attacking a single enemy to avoid fragmentation and disunity. ‘The art of all great popular leaders,’ he proclaimed, ‘consisted at all times in concentrating the attention ofthe masses on a single enemy.’ From the context, it was plain that he meant the Jews. Only in the last quarter of the speech did Hitler arrive at his real theme of the evening. No one should expect him, he said, to take sides in the bitter dispute still raging in the
völkisch
movement. He saw in each party comrade only the supporter of the common idea, he declared, to lasting applause. His task as leader was not to explore what had happened in the past, but to bring together those pulling apart. At last he came to the climacteric. The dispute was at an end. Those prepared to join should sink their differences. For nine months, others had had time to ‘look after’ the interests of the party, he pointed out with sarcasm. To great and lasting applause, he added: ‘Gentlemen, let the representation of the interests of the movement from now on be my concern!’ His leadership had, however, to be accepted unconditionally. ‘I am not prepared to allow conditions as long as I carry personally the responsibility,’ he concluded. ‘And I now carry again the complete responsibility for everything that takes place in this movement.’ After a year, he would hold himself to account. There were tumultuous cheers and cries of ‘Heil’. Everyone stood for the singing of ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles’.
    Then came the finale. It was a piece of pure theatre. But it had symbolic meaning, not lost on those present. Arch-enemies over the past year and more – Hermann Esser, Julius Streicher, Artur Dinter from the GVG, Rudolf Buttmann, Gottfried Feder, Wilhelm Frick from the ‘parliamentary’ Völkischer Block – mounted the platform and, among emotional scenes, with many standing on chairs and tables and the crowd pressing forward from the back of the hall, shook hands, forgave each other, and swore undying loyalty to the leader. It was like medieval vassals swearing fealty to their overlord. Others followed. Whatever the hypocrisy, the public show of unity, it was plain, could only have been attained under Hitler as leader. He could with some