bouncers that the SA developed.

18 It was into this violent

and seedy mix that news came in October 1922 that
Benito Mussolini had become Prime Minister of
Italy, a moment that energised the revolutionaries in
the Nazi party.For if an ultra-nationalist leader could
suddenly gain power in Italy, then why not in
Germany? On 3 November 1922,just days after Mussolini’s
success in Italy, Hermann Esser stated to a
crowd at the Nazi hauntof the Hofbräuhaus Beer
Hall in Munich that “Germany’s Mussolini is
called Adolf Hitler.”19 The following month, December
1922,the Völkischer Beobachterpublished an article that
proclaimed that Adolf Hitler was no mere “drummer” but the
leader who would rescue Germany.20 The following year,
1923,Hitler seized the opportunity to demonstrate his
credentials as a heroic revolutionary. But—and this
is a recurring theme of his rise to power—in order
to do so he needed to exploit a crisis in
the German state. Fortunately for Hitler, in 1923
Germany faced just such a crisis when the French
occupied the Ruhr, the industrial region in the west of
Germany. Under the termsof the Versailles treaty the
Germans were forbidden from stationing troops in this
area, so the French faced little concerted opposition when they
moved on to German territory on 11 January 1923.
The French Prime Minister, Raymond Poincaré, had
taken this drastic course of action because the
Germans had defaulted on deliveries of coal and
timber due to France as part of reparations
payments. Not surprisingly, the French occupation was
wildly unpopular. “That was when we did find out that the
French ruled with an iron hand,” says Jutta Rüdiger,21
a teenager at the time. “If there was something that
was not to their liking,if you were walking on the
pavement, for instance, they came along with their riding crop
and you had to step down onto the street… There
was quite a bit of harassment.” And as well as
 coping with the French in the Ruhr, the population of
Germany had to somehow carry on functioning underthe
pressure of hyperinflation. “In 1923,” recalls Rüdiger,
“an exercise book cost aboutthree billionmarks, I think.”
Hitler did not call on his supporters to take part in the
passive resistance that some Germans were mounting
against the French in the Ruhr. His focus remained
on building on the inspiration of Mussolini’s example
in Italy. But he realised that he needed at least
the tacit support
of the Reichswehr, the German Armed Forces, in
his quest to overthrow the government in Berlin.
Yet in May 1923,when as a first step towards national
revolution the Nazisattempted to stir up soldiers of
the Reichswehr who were parading on the Oberwiesenfeld
in Munich, their approaches were comprehensively rejected.
Nonetheless, Hitler believed hehad to act. Who knew how
long the crisis would last? And so in November 1923
he launched the Beer Hall Putsch—an event that was
to gain Hitler national publicity for the first time,
though not in the way he had anticipated. It
wasn’t obvious to anyone involved in the
planning of the putsch whether or not Hitler really was
the “heroic” equivalent of Mussolini. Hitler was in
discussion with General Erich Ludendorff,hero of the
German victory at Tannenberg in the First World
War, abouthis potential involvement in a Nazi-
inspired revolution, but it was never made explicit
exactly what Ludendorff’s role would be. Was
Ludendorff to be just the military leader, with Hitler
the political head of the revolution, or was Ludendorff
the real “hero” for whom Hitler had merely been
preparing the way? What was clear, however, was that by
the end of 1923 Hitler had decided to seize the
initiative. The plan was simple—force the leaders of the
authoritarian government of Bavaria to declare
 their support for a Naziled “march on Berlin” to
overthrow the “November criminals” who were in power.
Sinceit was obvious that the Nazisneeded the
assistance —or at the very least the acquiescence—of
the Bavarian state security forces as well as Bavarian
political leaders, Hitler decided that the coup should
be attempted whilstthe “statecommissioner” of Bavaria,
Gustav vonKahr, was speaking at a meeting at the
Bürgerbräukeller in Munich. Kahr was effectively the
dictator of Bavaria, and had been appointed in
September 1923 in response to a crisis in government
in Berlincaused by the threatonce again of revolution. There
were some signs that perhaps Hitler’s strategy might
succeed— the Bavarian Government, for example,
seemed more sympathetic to the Nazis than the
authorities in other German states. The Nazishad been
banned in much of the rest of Germany after the
murder of Walther Rathenau, the Jewish Foreign
Minister of Germany, the year before. But inBavaria
the Naziswere still able to function and Kahr shared
Hitler’s contempt for the government in Berlin.