General Erich Ludendorff was only fifty-eight: not quite the “old gentleman” Lothar had taken him for, but nevertheless his mind like his muscles was becoming a little set. Nowadays pre-conceived ideas were not easily shaken and if they were tumbled they left a jagged gap: Kahr’s double-crossing Ludendorff could take, for the man was a civilian and though a protestant was in the Cardinal’s pocket one could only expect of him the moral standards of ... of cardinals: but a world where a Lossow—Commander-in-chief of the Bavarian Army— could break his “word as a German Officer” was a new world altogether for Ludendorff!
The old order was ended for the old war-lord, and he knew it; but his puffy features were quite without expression, as if their soft surfaces had no organic connection with nerve and muscle and bone and brain within, and he sat staring without visible surprise at those wet footmarks on the carpet—the marks of two naked feet where lately a German general in full-dress uniform had stood.
“Eh?—We march,” said Ludendorff again. His voice remained firm as a lion’s, and this time it was unquestionably a command.
But when Ludendorff had said “We march” (as he presently explained) he hadn’t meant it in the military sense. No soldier would try to capture Munich—or even to relieve Roehm beleaguered in the War Office—by doing as Ludendorff now proposed: by marching three thousand men through the narrow streets of the Old City in a kind of schoolgirl crocodile sixteen abreast. But a clever (and desperate) politician might.
A military operation would cross by the Max-Josef Bridge in a flanking movement through the English Garden—some tactic of that kind: but what would be the use? That fellow Hitler (thought Ludendorff) was right: they couldn’t fight the Army. But suppose that instead, in all seeming confidence and trust like friendly little puppy-dogs, their whole companionage paraded peaceably right onto the points of the Army’s bayonets ... would German soldiers ever fire on inoffensive brother-Germans? And once contact was made, once the officers saw their old war-lord Ludendorff in front of their eyes and had to choose, was it conceivable they would prefer to obey the unspeakable Lossow who had turned his coat twice in one night? Barely an hour ago the streets were still placarded with Lossow’s name linked with ours ...“And once the Army obeys my orders again, the road to Berlin lies open!”
Lothar was so bewildered that he stood listening outside dumbfoundered and dripping among the bales of bank-notes which half-filled the ante-room, and scarcely noticed Captain Goering as the latter strode suddenly past him and entered the room beyond.
Goering listened to Ludendorff’s plan; but then his eye met Hitler’s. These two had rather less faith in the magic of the “old war-lord’s” name and presence nowadays than the “old war-lord” had himself. Ludendorff had been slipping—didn’t the old boy realize how much he had slipped these last few years? That flight to Sweden in ’18, and all those antics since ...
Goering suggested instead a retreat on Rosenheim—to “rally our forces” there, he hastened to add. But Ludendorff fixed this bravest-of-the-brave with his stony look: Rosenheim was all too convenient for the Austrian frontier! Hitler also turned his blue stare on Goering: for reasons best kept to himself, escape into his native Austria held no attractions for Hitler.
Goering dropped his eyes and did not press it. But the suggestion all the same tipped the scales in Hitler’s mind, for any alternative was preferable to “Rosenheim”; and he turned to Ludendorff’s plan after all. Hitler’s own “magic” at least was new; and if that called out anything comparable with last night’s cheering crowds they would march behind such a screen of women and children that no one could fire on them!
A coup-d’état by popular acclamation? Maybe it was a forlorn hope. But at least it meant, for Hitler, sticking to the one technique he was yet versed in—the technique of the public meeting.
Blindly Lothar wandered away, not knowing whether he was mad or sane, awake or dreaming. Goering ... he had a message for Captain Goering, something about some guns.
23
One thing, the arch-plotters agreed, was essential: if this gigantic confidence-trick of Ludendorff’s was to work the marching men themselves must have no inkling that Munich was in “enemy” hands, for they must positively radiate friendliness and trust. No one must know the real state of affairs outside the innermost circle. So, shortly before eleven, a briefing-parade for officers was held in the fencing-school and there the supreme leaders, beaming, put their next subordinates “in the picture,” assuring them that everything in the city was going like clockwork under the capable management of their obedient allies, Kahr, Lossow and Seisser, and all ranks should be so informed. Today the Kampfbund would parade ceremonially through the city, merely to “show the flag” and to thank the citizens for the warmth of their support: they would then take up a position for the night outside somewhere to the north, and wait there for regular troops to join them ... and after that—Berlin!
Officers and men alike, that’s what they were told.
Lothar never did get to Goering; and the Oberland adjutant he at length reported to about the defective rifles, being fresh from that “enlightenment” in the fencing-school, took it not at all tragically. He burst out laughing: “Kahr—the old fox! He just can’t change his habits, that’s all ... I admit though I was surprised when he volunteered those rifles!” But it didn’t really matter, he explained to Lothar, for everything was going swimmingly: they could collect and fit the pins this evening at the latest, and meanwhile it was only a parade the arms were wanted for.
Lothar was thoroughly bewildered; and Hope that wiry young woman awoke anew. Could he have been quite wrong about what he thought he had heard upstairs? For this was evidently the latest news, and this was “official”—straight from the horse’s mouth ... but yet ...
The adjutant stole a doubtful look at Lothar’s dumb-foundered face. What ailed the boy?—As for all this about the rifles, the men mustn’t know they were armed with guns which couldn’t be fired: could this lad be trusted to hold his tongue or had he better “disappear”—be put under arrest for something, perhaps?
But just then Putzi Hanfstaengl’s giant frame began to be made manifest—feet first, like a proper deus ex machina; for he was coming downstairs from the council room (something seemed to have wiped the grin off his handsome great jaws for once—till he emerged into public view). So the adjutant whispered to him; whereon Hanfstaengl turned, and his powerful pianist’s fingers gripped Lothar by the arm: “You’re coming to the city with me, my lad!” he said.
Lothar hardly reached to his breastpocket, but Putzi lowered his face almost level with the bedraggled, hollow-eyed youth’s to add confidentially: “I must have an escort—to protect me!”
Dr. Hanfstaengl was such a famous tease! Lothar blushed; and then, in spite of the turmoil in his head, climbed into the car after his new master as proud as Punch to be in such important company. There he tried hard to sit upright in the back seat with proper military stiffness; but before they had even reached the bridge he was sound asleep. Thus Lothar’s friends Fritz and Willi both took part in the famous march but not Lothar, who slept like a log for hours.
When Lothar woke at last he found himself on a floor somewhere. It was the sound of two voices talking urgently which woke him, one of them unmistakably philosopher-editor Rosenberg’s. Lothar’s head was on a bundle of galley-proofs, and his eyes opened with a start only a few inches from the turn-ups of Rosenberg’s bright blue trousers and dirty orange socks with clocks. So he must somehow be in the offices of the Völkischer Beobachter, he guessed.
But as the clouds of sleep began to clear Lothar realized these people too were both talking and acting as if the Revolution had failed. While he talked, Rosenberg was cramming clothing into a broken briefcase on his desk as if for a hurried departure (doubtless preferring brighter and looser neckwear than that usually worn by politicos on lamp-posts). For a second or two the stained tail of a crumpled purple shirt trailed across Lot
har’s face; but he shut his eyes and listened and lay still, his temples bursting with sweat. For what he heard next was even more incredible still. That whole briefing parade had been one deliberate, colossal lie! Indeed, the men “had had the wool pulled properly over their eyes,” said Rosenberg’s companion approvingly. The march was on, and they were all going like lambs to the slaughter! Rosenberg himself was so certain it would end in a massacre that he for one wasn’t waiting to see it. Putzi Hanfstaengl too (one gathered) had gone home to pack ...
Even the leaders who were marching had made their arrangements—or arrangements had been made for them, whether or not they knew it. There would be a car waiting for Hitler (Rosenberg’s companion said) in the Max-Josefs-Platz with engine running: he could nip down Perusa Street to it—if he survived that far. Goering too had sent someone home to fetch him his passport ...
Now Rosenberg was choosing his own passport—choosing it, he seemed to have a whole drawerful of them.
When the two men left at last Lothar was not far behind them. He thought of Fritz and Willi and all his other noble friends going unwittingly to their deaths and his bowels yearned.
But then once again something black descended like a blind over Lothar’s power of reason. It was simply not possible (he told himself) that the Movement had been lied to deliberately by its leaders like that. Hitler loved his men, he would never knowingly lie to them this way and lead them into danger; and as for the heroic, gallant Goering ... let alone General Ludendorff!—No, if these leaders had indeed had evidence of the Triumvirs’ treachery they hadn’t believed it because they were too noble to believe; and it was just this noble incredulity the beastly triumvirate had banked on, to lure the Army of Light into the depths of the city so that when the jaws of the trap closed the slaughter might be all the more complete.
Devils! Lothar bounded down those office stairs four at a time, as if every bound trod underfoot a triumvir. Somehow he must find Fritz and Willi—somehow he must warn them ...
And warn Captain Goering ...
But as he neared the route the city seemed solid with police, and half the streets were closed.
24
Five years ago almost to the day Kurt Eisner too had marched into Munich—with flying beard and floppy black hat like a seedy professor of pianoforte, having half the hooligans of Munich at his heels—and so come to power.
But November the Seventh 1918 had been unseasonably warm: perfect Putsch weather. Eisner had the advantage of surprise too, for he marched first and announced his revolution afterwards. There was little risk of organized opposition since the troops were still at the front and the whole city numbed by defeat.
On November the Ninth 1923 the prospects were chill and gray. It was unseasonably cold—bitterly cold, with a biting wind now and occasional flurries of snow. When the march at last began the buglers with their chapped lips found it difficult to blow. Fritz and Willi shivered in their cotton shirts with no tunics and their chins were raw: the moment they stopped singing their teeth chattered. The “cheering crowds of spectators” could be counted in twos and threes, and were chilled to the bone.
It had been past twelve when the march moved off from the Bürgerbräu and a few yards down the hill it had halted again. Peering over the heads in front, big Fritz could see there was some sort of scuffle going on down at the Ludwig Bridge. It was apparently the police-cordon there making trouble—the wooden-heads! But then a mixed bag of fifty or more leading Munich Jews padded past the waiting column and on down to the bridge at the double. A wave of laughter followed them; for whatever their past dignities (and many were elderly, prominent citizens), today they were all dressed only in underwear and socks: they’d been locked all night in a back room of the Bürgerbräu like that. Captain Goering himself, with his elfin humor, must be taking the situation in hand. Indeed Goering must have threatened to drop all these hostages in the river to drown if the police didn’t show more sense; for almost at once the column began to move forward again, and at last the river was crossed.
Four hundred yards into the Old City however they halted a second time. This time it was their own leaders who halted them, wanting to make quite sure everyone was fully “in the picture” in case of misunderstandings. Any soldiers or armed police they might meet (they were told) would be patrolling the city “on behalf of our revolution, understand! In the Odeonsplatz maybe we’ll find a detachment of regulars drawn up apparently to face us: with guns to their shoulders, even ... but don’t be nervous, that’s just to cow any hostile rowdies in the crowd lining our route so sing ’em a rousing chorus, boys, and give them a hearty cheer as we draw level with them ... Oh, and just in case of accidents in these crowded streets we’d better not march with rifles loaded.”
When the marching column reached the Marienplatz they found the city hall festooned with swaztika flags, and in the open square in front they were cheered by a small but milling crowd. That crowd had just been whipped up by Julius Streicher in his juiciest vein. Indeed that was why Hitler had sent Streicher on down there ahead; for here, potentially—if Streicher had really done his stuff—was the human screen Hitler needed.
If only enough of these cheering citizens would tag along with the marchers from now on, keeping between the moving column and the guns ... If only it hadn’t been so beastly cold today ...
But the wind was indeed too bitter. Struggling to reach the Marienplatz Lothar could make little progress against the solid mass of citizenry hurrying away.
25
As the procession moved off from the Marienplatz again Ludendorff took his place in the van, on foot, in front of the standard-bearers even. On that, Hitler and one or two other notables and would-be notables jostled their way to his side: they had convinced themselves by now that there would be no shooting, that the trick would work.
The Odeonsplatz was their objective, for that was where the troops were said to be waiting for them: that was the psychological point d’appui. From the Marienplatz two routes converge on it, like the uprights of a capital “A” with the short length of Perusastrasse for a cross-stroke, and that bit of pseudo-Florentine nonsense the “Feldherrnhalle” loggia in its tip. The route they chose was the left-hand one, the Wein-and-Theatinerstrasse; and the leaders were already half way along it before seeing that the far end was indeed blocked solid by a small detachment of soldiery—with guns.
Here at last, then, straight ahead, were those bayonets Ludendorff was to deflect with the magic of his presence! Those triggers no German finger could pull ...
We have only to march straight up to them, straight on ...
(Was conviction weakening?)
How far have we got? Tramp, tramp ... just ahead lies the corner of Perusastrasse—the last side-turning, before ...
“Look,” said someone excitedly to Lothar in the thinning crowd, “there’s Ludendorff!” The fabulous, the Army’s idol, walking straight towards those Army guns in his old shooting-jacket ...“And that beside him’s Hitler, his faithful friend; and God-knows-who ...”
Tramp, tramp, and flags waving and a band somewhere tootling and the men singing, tramp, tramp ...
And most of the remaining spectators, cold and bored, remembering their lunches and turning away to go home.
Thirty yards more ...
In the throes of their fore-knowledge the leaders now felt their feet going up and down like pistons, as if they were not really advancing at all, tramp, tramp. No, it was the muzzles of the guns which were all the time moving nearer.
Twenty yards more ...
Hitler keeps his eyes fixed sternly ahead, yet out of their corners can’t but be acutely aware of the delicately-nurtured schoolgirl wheeling her bicycle at his very elbow. “She’s trying in vain to match her stride to my stride ...” Quite easily, though, she matches the men’s voices in song with her suprisingly deep contralto.
Fifteen yards ... Ten ... and now on the right the opening of Perusastrasse is bearing irresistibly down up
on us, an open mouth ...
“My God I’ll give up politics! Never again ...”
It came like the sudden inexplicable unwilled lurch of a planchette at a séance, that sudden unanimous swing of the whole group of leaders into a right-wheel turn—away from the guns, straight into the shelter of that side-street! It was so sudden that the girl taken unaware fell over her bicycle and tore her stockings, and that was the last they saw of her.
The whole cheering follow-my-leader crocodile followed, of course—without a thought, without a worry, singing their heads off in the honor of the troops whose guns at point-blank range were still trained on their defenseless flank as they wheeled. They still hadn’t an inkling of what they were now right on the very edge of.
For the leaders the respite was brief: in a very few yards this short cross-street would reach the open Max-Josefs-Platz. To the left, then, would lie the narrow canyon of Residenzstrasse—the other, perhaps less well-guarded route to the Odeonsplatz ... the route in any case they now had to take ... Ah, but had they? For also from this Max-Josef Square a broad, broad boulevard led back totally unmenaced straight to the river again: the primrose way of retreat.
A primrose-yellow car was parked there, by the monument. As they neared the corner it was young von Scheubner-Richter (Ludendorff’s right-hand-man) who recognized it as Hitler’s—and he sucked in his cheeks. Straightway he locked his arm very firmly in Hitler’s. He’d see to it the old general wasn’t left in the lurch.
But now somebody had ordered another halt, another rifle-inspection: officers were to make quite sure again that every breech was empty.
That primrose-yellow car was trembling slightly—so its engine was running, ready! Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter at Hitler’s side stood still and tightened his comradely grip. Meanwhile, in the ranks behind, Willi was yawning with the cold and his stiff fingers fumbled on the bolt. Was there no end to inspections? He was getting horribly bored. Fritz blew on his fingers, and cursed—he had broken a nail. Were all revolutions as dull as this one? It was a relief to them all when the march started again.