Trudy Gold
Munich: Hitler’s City?

Trudy Gold - Munich: Hitler’s City

- What we’re focusing on today is Munich. So what I’d like you to do is to have a good look at the map, and you can see where Munich is. It’s in the south of Germany. It is far nearer to Vienna than it is to Berlin. It’s in the Catholic South, whereas Berlin is in the Protestant North. But I’m just, those of you who are just waiting, I’m just going over things. So those of you who’ve just joined, I’m going to be looking at Munich with you today, as you already have seen. And what I have done is I’ve put up a map so that you can see that Munich is very much in the south of Germany. It’s much nearer to Vienna than it is to Berlin. It was, it’s very much a Catholic city as opposed to Berlin. And this, of course, is the city to which Adolf Hitler is going to come back at the end of the war. But what I’m talking about, first of all, is what’s going to happen in Munich post World War I. So at the end, look, I’ve already mentioned to you, and I know that William has been discussing with you that there is no great decisive battle. At the end of October 1918, German sailors began a series of revolts in Kiel and in other naval ports. And gradually, civil unrest spreads across Germany. The Kaiser abdicates, and on the 7th of November, 1918, which is the first anniversary of the Russian Revolution… Can we see the next slide, please? Here you see King Ludwig of Bavaria. He gives up the throne, he flees by night, one of the princesses wrap up the crown jewels in a handkerchief, and he took a box of cigars.

The family had to actually hire a car to flee because their chauffeur joined the revolution, and they reached safety in Hungary, and they never ever went back. He was a very authoritarian character. And if you like, his reign ended, wait for this, the Wittelsbachs have been on the throne for 738 years. And of course I know that Patrick has been looking with you at the culture of Munich, the extraordinary art culture. Also, it’s Munich of the Oktoberfest. It’s a very, very interesting city. And now he has fled. So what happens? Kurt Eisner, a politician of the Social Democratic Party, becomes minister president of the People’s State. And who was Kurt Eisner? He was born in… And can we see his picture please? So the king flees, and in his absence, Kurt Eisner, who is a social democrat, but he very much distanced himself from the communists. And he declares his government will protect property rights. And he is a fascinating individual. I’ll give you a bit of background. He came from a Jewish family. His father was called Emanuel Eisner. His mother was Hedwig Levenstein. He studied philosophy. He became a journalist in Marburg. And in 1890 to 1895, he was a contributing editor, to Frankfurter Zeitung. And he wrote articles attacking Wilhelm II. He spent nine months in prison, he joined the SDP in 1898. Remember, it was the largest revolutionary party in Europe. It had been created by Ferdinand Lassalle, another Jew. He goes on with his journalism, he becomes the chief editor of the Frankische Tagespost. And after that, he’s just a freelance writer. He joins the international SDP in 1918, which was a leftist, it was an ultra leftist group, and it was a breakaway group. He was actually convicted of treason. This is before the revolution.

And for inciting a strike amongst munition workers. You’ve got to remember that these revolutionaries, be they communists, be they socialists, be they anarchists, they were all anti-war. They took on board the Marxist credo that if you think of the first line of the manifesto, workers of the world unite, what have you to lose, but your chains. So consequently, these individuals, they see the war as a capitalist war, and this bloody terrible war that they just lived through, and soldiers returning from the front, in absolute desperation. There’s been a revolution in Russia. Let’s ignite the whole world. Let’s create a people’s paradise. So after he is… He goes to jail. He spends nine months in jail, and he’s released under an amnesty in October. And after release, he organised the Bavarian Revolution in Munich. And on the 8th of November, he becomes the prime minister of Bavaria. Now, he was a very, he was an absolutely fascinating person. What he actually wanted to do in the revolution was he wanted to make Germany, or I suppose it’s almost a flower power state. What he did was he held an inaugural celebration. The Munich Philharmonic was conducted by Bruno Walter. They played Beethoven Leonore Overture, and a group of actors performed from a play by Gerta. And the chorus sang a section from Handel’s Messiah. Now, this is the kind of revolution it was. If you think about it, the king’s abdicated and this revolutionary socialist Jew is putting on a great artistic pageant. And it concluded with a hymn he himself written, called “Hymn to the People.” Remember, he was a journalist, but he was also a drama critic. And in a way, he’s staging his own performance.

The Berlin’s major socialist newspaper said, though, “The curtain will fall down and soon it will become over.” Ernst Toller, who’s going to become involved in the next revolution, he said, “The world must become a meadow of flowers in which everyone can pick his share.” And this is what he actually said. He was the most unlikely revolutionary. He was very much a coffee house socialist and anarchist. The reason the revolution really occurred, remember, there’s a great vacuum of power. He’s delivering a speech in a coffee house where the city usually hosted the Oktoberfest. He fired up the crowd, he told them to storm the military barracks and seize the weaponry. Then they occupied the stations, the newspaper offices, and other places, including the main Beer Kellers. This is how the revolution begins in Munich. And he said, “Isn’t it wonderful that you have a revolution without shedding a drop of blood?” This is real fantasy time. And of course the problem was that they couldn’t get to grips with actually governing. On the 8th of November, he is now prime minister. And this is a quote from a very interesting historian, “A small hoard of mad Prussian military…” This is an analysis of a military historian on the war, a left-wing military historian. “A small hoard of mad Prussian military men as well as allied industrialists and capitalists, politicians and princes caused the war. However, the government was unable to provide any basic services for people.” So because he is a socialist and he’s distanced himself from the communists, he wanted elections. And because, you know, sewage is running in the streets, there is no food. So as a result, he is soundly defeated. But on the way back from Parliament on the 21st of February 1919, he’s about to submit his resignation when he is assassinated by a man. Can we see the next slide, please? Anton Acro auf Valley. His dates are 1897 to 1945. This is what he said. “Eisner is a Bolshevik, a Jew.

He isn’t German, he doesn’t feel German. He subverts all patriotic thoughts and feelings. He is a traitor to this land.” In fact, he had tried to join the Thule Society, which I’m going to talk about later. You will remember that when I discussed Walther Rathenau with you, I told you that he was assassinated by the Thule Society. And it was a very esoteric, totally racist Nordic, Aryan party with the most extraordinarily peculiar views. Many of the characters are actually going to enrol later in the Nazi Party. And he was rejected by the Thule Society. Why? Because he was of part Jewish origin. His mother, Emily von Oppenheim, had come from a very wealthy Jewish family, and had converted when she married into the German aristocracy. He was put on trial in 1920. He was sentenced to death because he had killed the head of state. But a conservative judge reduced it to five years. And this is what the state prosecutor said about this young man. “If the whole of German youth were imbued with such glowing enthusiasm, we could face the future with confidence.” Now, this is interesting because you need to understand that you have a revolution. But the judiciary, now, Munich is a conservative Catholic city, and you’ve just undergone a revolution. Who has fled to Munich? Well, we’ve already discussed it. As after the Russian Revolution, a lot of whites, anti-Bolsheviks, officers, aristocrats, they fled to Munich, where the existing aristocratic class, the very, very austere aristocracy.

Can you imagine how they felt about a Jewish revolution? And the judiciary, one of the problems was that the judiciary was still archaic. And unfortunately, I think one of the great tragedies of Weimar, and we’re going to be discussing Weimar in quite a lot of depth, the problem with Weimar, even though when the Weimar Republic finally comes into being, it is a broad left democratic government under, with a brilliant constitution. Nevertheless, the judiciary was always out of step. It was left over from the Kaiser’s time. So let me repeat. This is what the state prosecutor said about the man who had killed the head of state. “If the whole of German youth, we imbued with such a glowing enthusiasm, we could face the future with confidence.” He was sentenced to five years. He was to serve his sentence in Cell 7 at Landsberg Prison. He was later evicted to make way for another prisoner, a man called Adolf Hitler. He was released in 1925. He was pardoned in 1927. And in fact, his elder brother, Count Ferdinand von Arco auf Valley married Gertrud Wallenberg, who was a cousin of Ral Wallenberg. So that was the assassin. Right. Now, what then happens… Can we go on, please? On the 7th of March, the socialist… Look, basically Eisner’s has been assassinated. There’s, you can imagine, there’s a lot of unrest, there’s a lot of lawlessness. He’s seen as a martyr for the West. And it led to the closing of Munich University. Aristocrats were kidnapped. You need to see a city in total disarray. You need to see a city that’s totally lawless. And of course, the majority of individuals who were conservative by nature were feeling very, very distressed. We’ve just lost a terrible war. There’s food shortages, there’s no fuel. We’re moving into the winter, and they’ve closed the universities. This is atmosphere of total chaos.

And on the 7th of March, the new socialist leader, Hoffmann, he was a anti-militarist and a former school teacher. He managed to put together a parliamentary coalition government. But on the night of the 6th of April, the communist and anarchist very much energised by what was going on in other places, particularly in Hungary where Bela Kun, a young Hungarian Jew, had taken over the state, they declared a Soviet republic with Ernst Toller as head of state. And they called on the non-existent Bavarian Red Army to support them, and ruthlessly deal with any counter revolution. So the Bavarian Soviet public is going to be ruled by Toller, Landauer, and Erich Muhsam. Toller was a playwright who called it a Bavarian Revolution of Love. It was unbelievably bad government. You’ve got these three Jewish intellectuals who have broken away a long time from their Jewishness. They’re left, and in fact, Muhsam is an anarchist. The government was so bad that, of course, they made a Jew the Minister of Education in Catholic Bavaria, where the church ran all the schools. Now, I’m going to talk a little bit about their personalities, because they are incredibly interesting individuals. And you do understand, of course, why this is going to lead to so much trouble, because these are seen as Jews. The fact that they don’t see themselves as Jews is actually irrelevant because in the end, they are going to be seen as Jewish revolutionaries. So Ernst Toller, he was born in Eastern Germany. He was the son of a pharmacist, and he grew up speaking Yiddish, German, English. He became a playwright. He was a very interesting cultural figure. And he also was involved in German expressionism. He spent quite a lot of time in Berlin where he became involved in the cabaret scene. He was a real left-wing intellectual. Now, his revolution is only going to last seven days. Can we see some other of the characters, please? Here you see Gustav Landauer.

I’ll just find my paper on him because they’re so interesting. Sorry about this. Ah, yeah, here’s Gustav Landauer. He was born to Jewish parents. He was very early on, attracted to pacifists. He was a very bright man. He becomes a writer. He also studies physics. He translates. He’s one of those . He was into the arts and also into the sciences. He was very close to Martin Buber and is part of this Soviet Republic. He is in charge, he’s the commissar for enlightenment and public instruction. That’s when I use the expression flower power. You know, they’ve had a bloody revolution on one level, but what kind of Munich are they trying to impose on the people? This is anarchism, this is love, we’re going to create. In the end, what we’re going to work towards is a state where there is going to be no… You know, even the need for law would wither away. This is their kind of, this is one kind of his sort of dream. Now, he is going to be part of those overthrown. One of his grandsons, by the way, is Mike Nichols, the American director who directed “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” “The Graduate,” “Catch-22.” So ironically, many of these characters, their children and grandchildren make it to America or Britain, and they are really going to light up the cultural scene there. And this is the grandfather, the grandfather of the man who directed “The Graduate” and many, many other films. Now, can we go on and see another one, please? Erich Muhsam. Now, Erich Muhsam was a fascinating individual. He was a brilliant playwright. Of course, again, he came from a Jewish background. He was born to Siegfried Muhsam. Now, that’s interesting. Why were so many Jews calling themselves Siegfried? Remember, this is German patriotism. So his father in 1878, under the rule of Kaiser Wilhelm II names his… His father is named Siegfried, and he names his son Erich. He’s born in Berlin to a very middle-class family. His father’s a pharmacist. Then they move to Berlin and then to Lubeck. He hates the militarism of school. He hates the regimentation.

Again, a very, very bright young man. What happens to him is very early on he’s always a rebel. He’s drawn to socialism, he’s drawn to anarchism, and he becomes a very, very talented writer and poet. Terrible quarrels with his very bourgeois family. His father wants him to become a chemist, but he basically refuses. Despite his father’s anger, he runs away to Berlin. He’s already published by the time he’s 16. All these characters had huge intellectual talent. And they, in Berlin, he becomes involved with many of the young thinkers and all of them want to create a new world. You know, it’s interesting. I want you to try and imagine what their worlds were like before the revolutions. They all lived under oppressive regimes. They all dreamt, be it in Russia, be it in Hungary, be it in Vienna, be it in Germany. They all dreamed of creating a great new world. And you can make the case, and it’s because the majority of the leadership were Jewish, you can make the case, what was it about the Jews that drew them or these young Jews, which of course Isaac Deutscher called the non-Jewish Jews. They wanted to save the world. They didn’t want to save the Jews. If they could save the Jews as part of it, but they’ve broken away so far from their Jewish roots. Never forget the words of Rosa Luxemburg. “There is no room in my heart for Jewish suffering.” She’s not saying that she doesn’t want to bleed for the Jews, but she has to bleed for everybody. And this is very much Muhsam. So he gets involved with many like-minded young thinkers. They live bohemian lives, they’re into communal living. And in Berlin, he finds his niche. He meets Gustav Landauer, who’s already a very close friend that has a great influence. He then travels to Switzerland. They’re nomads. The police are always keeping an eye on these characters.

He began writing plays, a new genre, modern political theory within traditional dramatic form. He edits anarchist journals and he’s the target of police surveillance most of the time. 1908, he relocates to Munich. Before the First World War, Munich was quite, despite the conservatism of much of society, it was still quite an exciting city. And there he becomes heavily involved in the cabaret scene. Ironically, at the beginning of World War I, he becomes extremely nationalistic, but he soon changes his mind. And as the war turns, and in 1918, he’s actually arrested by the Bavarian state authorities. This is in April 1918, for encouraging sedition and talking about the horror of the war. And he’s in Munich when Kurt Eisner takes power. Kurt Eisner actually offers him a place in his government. But he decides to ally with Ernst Toller and Landauer and other anarchists and begins the development of the work, the sort of work of Soviets. Now, so after Esiner’s assassination, they have created the Bavarian Socialist Republic. Remember, Toller is an independent socialist, Landauer and Muhsam are anarchist. It lasts six days. Again, it’s total chaos because none of them have any practicality. So you’ve got to imagine, it’s a state of terrible unrest. But during those six days, they actually declared war on Switzerland. Now, their regime is going to be put down. And I’m going to tell you what happens to Muhsam because in the end, he is imprisoned, and in prison he writes many, many plays. And under Weimar, becomes a very important playwright. And under Weimar, he is released in an amnesty of 1924. He wrote against Nazism. Remember, Munich is Hitler’s city. He sees the dangers of Nazism. On the 28th of February, 1933, he is arrested. And of course, after the Nazis take power, he’s sent to a concentration camp. They hate him. He is tortured, he is tortured horribly.

And he is finally murdered on the 9th of July, 1934. The official report said suicide in protective custody. But in fact, he was horribly, horribly tortured. And his wife went to see the body. And this, in a way, this dreamer who so hated Nazism, he ends terribly. Now, so it’s on the 12th of April, six days after this, the Communist Party seeds power. This is orders from Lennon, and the emigres are led by a man called Eugen Levine. Now, can we go onto the next… Thank you. Now, who is Eugen Levine? Well, he is again, born into a Jewish merchant family. He’s Russian. He’s born in St. Petersburg. And on the death of his father, his mother brings him to Germany, again, very, very clever. He studied law at Heidelberg. Immediately thrown into revolution. He is part of the 1905 failed revolution. He’s exiled to Siberia. He escapes back to Germany. You know, Siberia was really the university of revolution. I mean, if you think of the number of revolutionaries who were exiled there, and like, I mean, Trotsky was there for a couple of years. This is where they honed their craft, and he escapes back to Germany. He marries Rosa Broido. And after the war, he joins the Communist Party. Now, what happens to him is that he leads the Soviet Revolution, which is encouraged very much with the blessing of Lennon. This is what Lennon says at the Mayday celebration in Red Square, “The liberated working class is celebrating its anniversary, not only in Soviet Russia, but in Soviet Gaviria.” Now, what Levine does, remember, he is a hardcore communist. He enacts Soviet reforms, including forming a red army from factory workers. This is exactly what Trotsky does in Russia, Lev Davidovich Bronstein. He seizes cash from the banks, he seizes cash from companies, he seizes food supplies, he expropriates luxury apartments, giving them to the homeless, and placing factories under the control of the workers. Now, remember, this is conservative Munich. One of the main churches was taken over. He had it dedicated to the Goddess of Reason. And he was absolutely at the sharp end of the Bolshevik Vanguard. He wanted all workers to receive military training. They suggest the abolition of paper money. They want to reform the education system. And Max Levien, who was one of his cohorts, arrested aristocrats as hostages.

Now, the situation had really deteriorated even more. There is no milk, and the government, just imagine food shortages and no milk available. The water supply wasn’t clean. And this is what the government said. “What does it matter? Most of it goes on the children of the bourgeoisie. We are not interested in keeping them alive. They will only grow into enemies of the proletariat.” The president of Weimar, the German president now, because there’ve been elections in Weimar, Germany had gone to the poll for the first time in January 1919. And he ordered the subduing of the Republic. And if you go back to the man who took over from Eisner, a man called Hoffmann, troops loyal to Hoffmann, and along with the combat league, which was organised by the Thule Society, mounted a counter coup on the 13th of April. It was put down by the new Red Army of factory workers and members of the soldiers of council. 20 men died in the fighting. There’s a military cache at Dachau. You should know that Dachau is a suburb of Munich. It’s about 12ks from Munich. It’s a very beautiful city. 20,000 Freikorps offices then surround Munich. Who are the Freikorps? These are soldiers back from the front, loyal to the right wing. They are made into a militia, a big militia by a man called Ritter Von Danner and a man called Epp. The adjutant is a man called Ernst Rohm, and they are the ones who are going to put down the revolution. Meanwhile, on the 26th of April, the communists invade the headquarters of the Thule Society, and they arrest Countess Hella von Westarp and six others as hostages. There was a panic. And those seven and three other hostages are executed, including the Prince Gustav of Thurn and Taxis. So the revolutionaries attacked the Thule Society, and I’ve already told you, eventually many of their members are going to feed into what? They’re going to feed into the Nazi Party. So they are never forgiven.

Freikorps breakthrough on the 1st of May. There’s street fighting and at least 600 are killed, including 350 civilians. Levine was arrested and he was condemned and he was executed. Landauer was killed by the Freikorps. Toller had five years in prison. Muhsam, there was trials and executions of over a thousand communists and anarchists. And on the 14th of August, the free state of Bavaria was proclaimed. And this chaos is known as the Rule of Horror. This is what Eugen Levine said at his trial. “We communists are all dead men. Of that I’m fully aware. I shall have to join Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Whatever your verdict, events can’t be stopped. Ironically, he was given a Jewish funeral. So the main point to note, and this is what is going to be so important for the future, is that when revolutions break out at the end of the First World War, they are all perpetrated. The leadership are all people of Jewish extraction. They do not see themselves as Jews. They see themselves as internationalists. Can you go back to the previous slide, if you don’t mind? Yes. Now, that of course is Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII. At this particular period, from April 1917, he was the Papal Nuncio in Catholic Bavaria. He became very attached to Germany. He always had a German housekeeper who he was very close to. And this is what he wrote of his experience when he was Papal Nuncio. Because before the Freikorps take power, who is in control? These Jewish anarchists and socialists. And this is what he wrote in a letter. "The scene was indescribable, the confusion totally chaotic. In the midst of all this was a gang of young women of dubious appearance, Jews like the rest of them, hanging around. The boss of this female rabbi was Levine’s mistress, a young Russian woman and a Jew and a divorcee. And it was to her that the nunciature, him, was obliged to pay homage in order to proceed.

Levine as a young man, also Russian and a Jew, pale, dirty, and with drugged eyes, repulsive.” Well, later on in the course, of course, we will be going back to Eugen Pacelli because of course his record in the war is still incredibly controversial. And there are many who argue one way and the other. And I know which way I think about it. And I think that letter I’ve just read you is absolutely fascinating. But please don’t forget, it is also the city of Adolph Hitler. Now, this is Leon Furtwangler, the wonderful writer who managed to make it to America, Furtwangler, in his book . “Previously the beautiful comfortable city attracted the best minds in the rye. How could it be that they were now gone, and in their place, everything that was rotten and evil and cannot make it elsewhere fled as if magically drawn to Munich.” So can we go on, please, Lauren? Adolf Hitler. Yes. So as you already know, he came to Munich in 1913. He ironically stayed two blocks away from Lennon, who encouraged Trotsky to join him there. And they were writing Iskra, you know, their magazine, the Spark. That’s what they were writing two blocks away from Adolf Hitler. Now, by the early, the first decade of the 20th century, again just like, just like Vienna, just like Berlin, they’re Janus-faced. The decline had set in by the early ‘20s, the publishing houses had closed, once all the communist revolutions were over, and you had the most right-wing governments in Germany, the cultural life moves to Berlin. And Berlin becomes absolutely Weimar, Germany. You know that line of course of Kraus’ about Vienna, an experimental station on the way to the end of the world. You could say that about Berlin, but you couldn’t say that about Munich. The publishing houses are closed. The theatres couldn’t afford to be too modern, to be too experimental. Artists and writers from enemy countries were no longer welcome. Even Shakespeare was not performed. And now you have a situation where a right-wing officer, a member of the Thule Society had assassinated Kurt Eisner.

There’d been three revolutions. And what happens is, this is the city that Adolf Hitler comes to at the end of the war. Why has he lost the war? What has happened? He was suffering from a gassing attack. There was no decisive battle. And of course, he doesn’t go back to Austria, he’s an Austrian, he goes back to Vienna, and he becomes involved with the Freikorps. And I’m going to be talking much more about this in my next session, which will be next week, because this Thursday we just thought with the events in Israel, it was important to bring in an expert to talk to you. So I’ve cancelled my Thursday presentation. And please listen, because I think we’ve managed to find someone who can really fill you in with what’s going on in Israel. So I’ll be continuing the following Tuesday. So he comes to Munich, he goes to work with for Ritter von Epp and Ernst Rohm, investigating parties that are springing up all over Munich. You can imagine three revolutions. He comes in the beginning of the revolution. The Freikorps are very right-wing, and they want to monitor what’s going on, not just with right-wing parties, with also left-wing parties. So what happens is they actually instruct Hitler to spy. He’s employed by them to spy on various parties. And we’re going to find that in the end, he’s going to find a party he likes very much. The German Workers’ Party. He’s going to join it. He’s going within six months to lead it, and that becomes the Nazi Party. And that’s what we are going to do in our next session. But, so Hitler’s in Munich, and he’s already meeting all sorts of interesting people, including a man called Dr. Max Scheubner-Richter, who was an engineer who specialised in chemistry. He was a Baltic German. He’d married an aristocrat 30 years his senior.

And in 1905 in the first revolution in Russia, he’d organised a private army to fight against the revolutionaries. He’d become the vice council in Turkey. He’s a fascinating man, a counterrevolutionary. He’d joined the Freikorps in the Baltic. He moves to Munich, he becomes close to Alfred Rosenberg, who you’ve already met, but we’ll be talking about again in a few minutes. He was very much part of the Volkischer nationalist movements. You see, the Thule Society was just one of all these outlandish movements. I cannot emphasise how extraordinary hot house the atmosphere had been. Look, antisemitism was totally at its height. Those of you who listened to my lecture on the protocols, the protocols was being disseminated everywhere. He was one of those Baltic Germans. He meets Hitler. Also, he’s married to an aristocrat. So this is when you begin to see aristocrats getting involved in these kind of circles. Now also, by the summer of 1923, one of the great heroes, General Ludendorff, he’s going to turn his villa outside Munich into a gathering place for all these kinds of people. Now, I’m going to quote the tragedy of Munich. This is interestingly about the world that was lost. And this is from the wonderful Fritz Stern. “Painters, sculptors, writers, models, loafers, philosophers, religious founders, revolutionaries, reformers, sexual moralists, psychoanalysts, musicians, architects, eternal students, the industrious and the idol, those with a lust for life and those who were world weary.” Which gives you what I meant by the Janus face of it all. So Hitler, as I said, he goes to spy on the German Workers’ Party. It’s founded by a man called Drexler, and he decides to join it. They’re all impressed by his oratory skills. He’s ironically trained by a Jew. He didn’t know he was a Jew. He finds that he can actually light up an audience. He writes to Karl Mayr, who is also involved in the Freikorps, and he is the one… Can we have a look at Karl Mayr, please? He is the one who is trying to educate the Freikorps. And he actually writes to him, he says, “I must join this club or party, as these are the thoughts of the soldiers on the front line.”

Because in the German Workers’ Party, they meet in the Beer Kellers of Munich. And I want you to imagine, they’ve come back to a Munich where there’s no food. They’ve come back to a Munich where there’s been a revolution. There’ve been three revolutions. They come back to a Munich where they have been defeated. Just think of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. And Hitler spots the pulse. This is the pulse of the people. These are the discontented, the dispossessed. And in March 1920, Mayr actually sends Hitler and Dietrich Eckart, who’s another theoretician, and Ritter von Freim to Berlin to actually observe the results of a putsch in Berlin, which fails. So this is when Hitler joins the party. And next week I’m going to go through the manifesto. He only had 3,000 members, but he boosts his power by organising strong arm squads to break up meetings and to keep order. And also these squads grew out of the Freikorps and were organised by Captain Ernst Rohm, who Hitler becomes incredibly close to. Later on, he’s going to have him murdered in the Night of the Long Knives. Now, in the few years between 1921 and 1923, Hitler gradually achieves a kind of support, not just with the dispossessed, but also in strange aristocratic circles. General Ludendorff is very much part of that scene. He and Hindenburg were the two great generals of World War I. And he is incredibly right-wing. All these circles are also violently anti-Semitic. Which had been exacerbated by the number of revolutionaries who are Jewish birth. Because to these folkish racists, it doesn’t matter whether you are a rabbi or a communist revolutionary. If you have the taint of blood, you’ve got to take on… And please don’t start applying logic to this because there is no logic to racist theory. These people believed in the taint of Jewish blood.

So it didn’t matter who you were or what you were, if you were born a Jew, you were a Jew. So gradually, he attracts a lot of support. Goring joins. Goring was the great war ace, disappointed man. He’d been in Barron von Richthofen’s flying circus. He had shot down 22 enemy planes. He was a great war hero who came from an aristocratic background. After the war, he was forced to become a show pilot in Sweden. He married a Swedish aristocratic. He comes back to Munich. He’s violently anti-Semitic. He sees the revolutions. He hears Hitler, he’s impressed. So it’s important to remember all these characters are gradually gathering around him. As does Rudolf Hess, who came from a very, very strange young philosophy student, but more about that next week. So what you need to know is Hitler has gathered a circle around him, and the government is the most right-wing in the whole of Germany. Plus of course, by the end of December 1922, a dollar was buying… Let me just give you the figures. December 1922, 18,000 marks to $1. By July 1923, 350,000 marks to $1. By the 1st of August 1923, 4.5 million marks to $1. By December 1923, 6.7 trillion marks. So you can get the situation, the starvation, the hopelessness, and the absolute horror of it all. And it’s at this stage that Hitler, he’s introduced into aristocratic circles. He also meets Putzi Hanfstaengl, who is half American, half German. And he is fascinated by Hitler. So he’s meeting the wealthy. He meets people like the Singer sewing machine heiress. He becomes very close to Winifred Wagner. In fact, later on when he’s in prison, she visits him and gives him paper on which he writes “Mein Kampf.”

And even more important, he becomes an associate of General Ludendorff. So this man who has a very small party, but they have enough money to have a newspaper, mainly provided by members of the Thule Society, but more about that next week. And they are still one of the smallest parties, but there’s thousands of fringe parties in Germany at this period. Out of disappointment, starvation, horror, defeat. And this is when he becomes quite close to General Ludendorff. So let’s have a look at Ludendorff. Now, he came from a Pomeranian merchant family. He joins the army very early. When he’s 16 years old, he becomes an officer. He joins the general staff. He helps plan the invasion of France and Belgium. He’s the chief of staff of the 8th Army under Hindenburg. He is victorious at the Battle of Tannenberg. And he, with Hindenburg, he was one of the great war heroes. And during the last two years of the war, due to the weakness of the civilian leadership, the two men assumed really an overtly political role. And they were partly responsible for the decision to send Lennon into Russia. Do you remember the German high command sent Lennon into Russia to go for revolution because the first revolution in Russia was a Democratic revolution and kept Russia in the war. And he was also the driving force behind the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Russia. Never forget, it is Lev Davidovich Bronstein and his aide, Joffe, that negotiate with the German high command. He’s dismissed from his post. At the end of the war, he flees to Sweden, he writes his memoirs and he comes back to Munich where he absolutely plunges into the Volkischer movement, encouraging culture revolution in right-wing circles. He participated in the Kapp Putsch in Berlin.

He said Germany has been stabbed in the back. He was very much a national hero. And it’s at this stage that Hitler, believing that he has Ludendorff on his side, he believes the right-wing government is strong enough, is supportive enough that he’s going to go for putsch. So in November, on the night of November the 9th, 1923, 10 years to the day before Kristallnacht, he, with 3,000 stormtroopers, they march on the town hall, where the mayor is there and they take it over, and they then march on. They intend to take over all the government buildings and march on Berlin. However, it doesn’t quite work out like that because… Can we see the next slide, please? Major General Ritter von Danner who is in charge of the… He’s a Bavarian general in the Imperial Army. Fascinating man. He was a hero in the Boxer Rebellion in China, hugely decorated war hero. He’d won the Iron Cross first and second class, the Military Cross. He commanded the Bavarian Reserve Entry Brigade, and he took control of the Munich city, Garrison. And it was he who stopped the putsch. It’s interesting because there was another man… Can we see the next person? Frick, Wilhelm Frick, who is Hitler’s lawyer, and later on is executed at Nuremberg. He was working for the government and he was secretly a member of the Nazi Party. And there were so many of the police in the Nazi Party, they thought they’d get away with it, but it’s actually Ritter von Danner who stops it happening. So what happens is they march on the crowd, they march with a crowd, and then the army, the army opens fire at them, and police defendants open fire. And what happens is that Hitler flees, he’s wounded, the man next to him is shot dead. Goring is seriously wounded and flees to Sweden. And that is where he becomes a morphine addict. And what happens is that they are put on trial.

And in the trial it’s absolutely fascinating. It’s been a coup d'etat against the state, and they are therefore guilty of treason. The 10 ring leaders are now put on trial. And this is when Hitler begins to get incredible publicity. Not because of him, but because of General Ludendorff. The great hero of World War I is now on trial for treason. And this is the editorial in The New York Times. “General Von Ludendorff was the most dangerous man in Germany for the last four years. Driven mad,” I’m quoting, “Driven mad by ambition to reunite Teutonic peoples into a solid fighting force, which could yet conquer the world. When Hitler went off half cop last night, Ludendorff was dragged down with him. The putsch collapsed like a punctured balloon.” The New York Times identified Hitler as a master with an abundance of energy. And this is what they said. “All of the country’s resentments and frustrations were woven by Hitler into a portrait of Germany, succumbing to communists and traitors who were in turn subversive to Jews and industrialists. Hitler is a demagogue extraordinaire.” When the police raided the Nazi headquarters, they found evidence of ties with Nazis abroad, with Hungarian fascists. And they so hated and the Jews, what they threatened to do during the putsch, they’ve taken some Jews hostages and they said that they would slaughter them all. So what happens is these 10 major defendants are put on trial. They’re held at Landsberg Castle, which later becomes a huge rallying spot for the SA and the SS. It’s 40 miles out of Munich, and they’re held in honourable custody. Hitler had his own wing. He had freedom of the castle and sympathy of many of the guards. He was allowed visitors, he was allowed books. In fact, had a Christmas parcel from Winifred Wagner, Ludendorff was actually allowed to stay at his villa during the trial.

And The New York Times reports, “It’s by no means an unpleasant pace of confinement.” So you have the major defendants. They are, ironically, they’re charged with treason against the state. They’re not charged with the death of the four policemen who had been killed or kidnapping of Jews, or theft of marks or attacked on left-wing newspapers. The point is that they are accused of treason against the state. Why did the trial happen in Munich, which was the most right-wing of all the states in Germany with a very right-wing judiciary? After the death of Walther Rathenau, in the summer of 1922, a special court had been established in Leipzig to try high treason traces. Don’t forget, there were 376 political assassinations between 1919 and 1922. But Bavaria acclaimed states’ rights and the Weimar government did not have the strength or the power to stop it. So he’s tried in Munich. This is huge police presence. The president judge, Georg Neithardt, he was 53 years old. He was the highest rung of judges in Germany. He was totally against liberalism and democracy. And a newspaper man said he stepped out of the court of Wilhelm II. All the judges, there were five judges, they were all right-wing. And this is a Weimar statistician, a man called Emil Gumbel. He analysed all the murder trials, 1918 to 1922. Right-wing defendants received a not guilty verdict in no fewer than 326 cases out of 354, no death sentences, and only one life imprisonment. Left-wing defendants, out of 22 cases, only four innocent, 10 death penalties, and three life imprisonments. This is a quote from Fritz Stern. “Weimar may have created a republic, but had not removed the judges of the Kaiser’s regime, who interpreted the law.” And the Daily Mail, Jay Ward Price, because this is big news because of Ludendorff. The British press, the American press, the French press, all European press were there. This is Price of the Daily Mail. “Judges smiled at the defendants.” And in fact, the chief defender, one of the Judges, Neithardt, beg your pardon, he previously tried Hitler before and he’d been released after three months in prison, mitigated to one month, and probation. He was on probation, but they didn’t take that into account. So Hitler was the sole of the undertaking.

Ludendorff was singled out. The chief prosecutor, Stangl, made a request that as a threat to national security and public order, the audience was excluded from the trial. Hitler’s defence team objected. The German people have a right to know, and it was open to the public. And this was the problem because Hitler used it as a show trial. He basically, this is again, Fritz Stern. “The prosecution of a little known writer from Bavaria was on its way to attracting a huge audience.” And in Hitler’s defence, he talked about how he’d been awarded the Iron Cross. He died for his country. And now he describes how in Vienna, he had discovered the misery and poverty of the people. He also discussed the racial problem. The Jews were the great enemy and adversity of all areas, and he said he left Vienna a convinced anti-Semite. This is the London Times. “The Nazi movement was not founded to gain seats in Germany’s parliament, but to change the fate of Germany.” And the trial goes on and on and on.

And he hit the states that he couldn’t stand by as his country was being slashed to pieces. The crisis was mismanaged. Millions had lost everything. The judges didn’t rein him in at all. So he’s given the floor. And in the end, Ludendorff is innocent. Hitler is sentenced to five years in prison. In the end, he serves nine months. He’s given freedom of Landsberg Castle. And frankly, what he does there is to dictate “Mein Kampf” to his secretary, Hurst. And I’ll be coming onto that next week. We will go back and go on forward. But this is fascinating because this is really how you take power. Having failed to take power through putsch, he writes his testimony, he comes out of prison and he says, “We’re going to do it through the ballot box.” And one of the most chilling episodes, I think in the history of the world is how this racist, fanatical party manages to seduce one of the best educated, most cultured nations in the world. And in the end, Hitler does take power through the ballot box. Never forget that. Hitler took over democracy, but he did it through the Democratic process. So let me… And be that a warning to every one of us. So let’s have a look at the questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: Was Eisner from Munich? I thought there weren’t a lot of Jews in Munich.

A: No, Shelly, they weren’t. Under 12,000. This is what’s so stupid. It was a very small percentage of the population.

Q: How was Eisner the prime minister of Bavaria if Germany was already a United Nation?

A: Good question, Ron. In Germany, you have lender, and all of these individual states have a lot of states power, and they have their own prime minister. That was one of the problems. The Weimar Republic could never really control the lender. Current president of Israel, Herzl, wishes to emulate… Hmm.

Q: Did you say that the state prosecutor spoke very highly of someone who’d just been convicted in assassinating the head of state? Why would he have spoken to someone?

A: No, Hitler didn’t assassinate the head of state, Tim. He went for a putsch. He went to take control. Four policemen were killed, but no, he didn’t. It was actually, the head of state was assassinated by Arco von Graf. But the prosecutor did praise him as a man of a glowing youth. You see, the problem with the judiciary in Germany, it was very right-wing. It was atavistic. Muhsam translates as lot of effort.

Q: Can you recommend a book on the revolutionaries, preferably by someone with a sense of irony?

A: Ah, let me come back to you on that. I think Robert Wistrich has written a couple of brilliant books on the revolutionaries.

Landauer was killed, David.

Q: What did the average Jewish businessman or professional think of these revolutionaries and Jewish born revolutions?

A: Shelly, in the main, not very much at all.

Q: Tim, why are so many of these revolutionaries Jewish?

A: They are articulate, they are internationalists. They’ve broken away from their own tradition. They are outsiders. They see the world and they want to change it. And they are working-class movements. So they are better educated than the majority of the people who follow them. Now, there’s a very interesting book on it called “The Non-Jewish Jew” by Isaac Deutscher. Now it’s a political book because Deutscher actually was a, he was a follower of Trotsky. And I wouldn’t suggest you that… He becomes very political, and some of you might find some of his writings quite offensive. But his chapter, “The Non-Jewish Jew,” is brilliant. And I believe that Dennis Davis has already lectured on that. And believe me, the website is two months away. I had a meeting with Wendy yesterday. I’ve been talking to Lauren, and tomorrow we’re putting the categories together, so you will have access to all of it. And so “The Non-Jewish Jew” by Isaac Deutscher.

Q: What religion was Hitler?

A: He was Catholic to start with. But when we look at Hitler in a lot of detail, you are going to find out that very early on he broke away from religion. Hitler was a pagan. And I hope I’m not insulting any pagans, but he did not believe in… He was the dark messiah to Germany. That’s what he wanted to be. To be a furor is far more than to be a leader. He believed in all the Aryan theories of master race, and he was the man chosen by destiny to lead Germany to Valhalla. Look, in the end it was wasn’t it? He was obsessed with Wagner. He once said, “If you want to understand national socialism, listen to Wagner.”

The name is the Thule Society. Rose, you’re being very controversial. You’re saying Jews up to shake this pope’s hand. What about reparation? Look, the whole issue of Jewish Christian relations is such a, it’s such a deep one and such a painful one on both sides, actually. There are really good practising Christians who do bleed for the history. You see, I have said to you before, and I will stand by this, that one of the planks that led to the show, not the main plank necessarily, was 1800 years of hatred. I believe that.

Q: Can you explain the charisma of Hitler? I always saw him as a deranged charter.

A: All you have to do, Arlene, is to look at, and we will be showing you some, the Kirsch Foundation enabled me to make a film on the life of Adolf Hitler, and I’ll be showing it in a couple of weeks. Look, what gives people charisma? It’s very, very difficult. What I suggest you do, you look at footage, and you examine the faces of the crowd. Women are looking at him almost as though he is, you know, he’s a pop idol. It’s extraordinary. He had it, whatever it was. He was a theatrical, he learnt theatre, unfortunately from a Jew, and I’ll be talking about that next week.

Q: Why did the revolutionists want to declare war in Switzerland?

A: Because they were nuts, actually.

Oh, “Babylon Berlin,” let’s see, is recommending. Thank you. Yes, it’s good.

Q: How did the economic chaos affect the average German Jew?

A: It particularly affected the Austrian, those who’d come from Eastern Europe who were dirt, pure poor. The majority of Jews were relatively middle-class with quite a few who were wealthy. Now, the wealthy didn’t suffer very much. The middle classes did. And of course the poor. They suffered along with everybody else. A

h, sorry. Kaiser Wilhelm was the Hohenzollern monarch of the hold of Germany. Ludwig III was the monarch of Bavaria, which was a state within Germany. If you remember, in 1871, Hitler… I beg your pardon. Bismarck finally unifies Germany under Prussian rule. So the over king is the Hohenzollern, Kaiser Wilhelm II, but Ludwig III is the king of Bavaria. There are still loads of these aristocrats around. The Jews, the minute he took power.

Q: Was there really an exact reason?

A: I’ll talk about Hitler’s antisemitism next week. Please don’t ever look for rationality. You are never going to find it in race theory. You can’t. You know that joke where a young Jew goes to a Nazi rally, and the the spokesman says, “Yes, the Jews are responsible for all our misfortunes.” And this man shouts out, “Yes, and the bicycle makers,” and everyone goes, “Yes, yes.” Then someone says and the chap said, “Why the Jews?” Is it true that we all need a scapegoat? Amalee, that’s what you need to think about. When there’s economic, social, and particularly political chaos, do people look for a scapegoat? My answer to that is yes. Look at the world around us. Every society has its own scapegoat. We have to spend much more time on empathy and psychology. We’ve got to see the other as human. And scapegoating is also, you know, it’s all part of the package.

Thank you, Judy. Thank you. Yes, Hitler rise to power. There are so many documentaries. Yes, thank you. was shot next to it.

Yes, of course it was Martin. How silly of me not to mention it. Of course he was a very, very strange character. Yes, the bullet that… You know, Hitler was lucky. There were so many assassination attempts. They were never successful. Oh, thank you very much, very much, Sheila.

Q: How were the Jewish business aware that many of the rebels were Jewish? How much was their Jewishness appetite?

A: Oh, very much so. One of the front covers of the protocols was a picture of Trotsky with a Star of David around his neck. Yet they were seen as Jewish revolutionaries. All Jews are communist, all Jews are capitalist. Remember, Hitler is a national socialist. I’m going to go through his party programme with you. He wants nationalism and socialism. No Jew can be a German. Okay? You are of the wrong blood. You see, you can bring it all together. There’s a whole progression of race literature that Hitler swallows and takes on and rarifies. Thank you.

Cynthia is talking about Trump’s rally speech in Waco. I would even go off on a different tangent. I once went to hear Billy Graham speak because demagogues have always interested me. And it’s fascinating how you can take a crowd. But I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it in a much more benign way in pop concerts. What is it that gets… Look, there’s a brilliant book by Elias Canetti, who was a Holocaust survivor and a Nobel Prize winner. He wrote a book called “Crowds and Power.” His contention is that when you come together in a crowd, we sync to the lowest common denominator. I can read to you at some stage some of the comments of people who experienced Hitler. They were hypnotised by him. You know, if you’ve got a crowd together, William Shirer, who wrote “The Rise of the Third Reich,” “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” who was an American journalist. And he would go to rallies and he said basically, he had trouble keeping his hand down. And also, once they took power, they knew how to stage manage. My goodness, they were good at it. Look, we’ll spend time on it. Thank you, thank you.

Oh, the assassin, nothing happened to him. He became a hero.

Q: Do I feel there’s enough of an economic crisis in the US to account to the rise of antisemitism?

A: Barbara, I’m not going to give you an easy answer on that. It’s much more complicated than that. And that’s a question that… I think the economic crisis is certainly one of the factors. Look, when we are in crisis, we always look for someone to blame. And the point about the Jews in the Western world, we are a visible minority, and we have been, and we’re seen as a successful minority. Look, we’ve never really had power. I think that’s always been a misconception. But Jews do tend to go into what I call visible employment patterns. Therefore, you can get the canard, Jews control Hollywood or Jews control capitalism or Jews control communism. The reality is that individual Jews work as individuals. And what can I tell you? What can I tell you about antisemitism that you don’t already know? Thank you.

Q: Can you tell me about my ring? Is there a story?

A: I don’t know what ring you’re talking about, Mark. Mark, my ring. No, there’s always a story behind everything. Anyway, I wish you all… Thank you for my wonderful birthday wishes. What a lecture to have to give a day after. And so, enjoy your evening, and I will see you next week.