How Hitler Was Made by Cory Taylor

Author:Cory Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633884366
Publisher: Prometheus Books

Violence and terror were powerful tools in postwar German politics. Militias attached to political parties on the left and the right used brute force to intimidate their political rivals. These tactics were not without historical precedent. Back in the seventeenth century, during the Thirty Year's War, when foreign armies of Roman Catholics and Protestants fought a religious struggle on German soil, bands of lawless German mercenaries roamed the countryside selling their services to the highest bidder. In the absence of a centralized military leadership, they served at the behest of their local captains: cunning and charismatic warlords who fought alongside their men.

A German captain was called der Führer (the leader), and they functioned under the Führerprinzip (leadership principle), which gave them the authority to decide all matters concerning the group. Three centuries later, the Freikorps operated on much the same basis during the counterrevolution. But in 1920, they had outlasted their usefulness, and the Treaty of Versailles demanded their dissolution. Bound by esprit de corps and unwilling to break up, many Freikorps regiments vowed to stay together. Some disguised their activities by forming business fronts such as trucking companies or rental agencies.1 Others opened youth camps or adopted harmless sounding names like the “Union for Agricultural Instruction.”2

In Bavaria, some ex-Freikorps members joined the citizen's militia. Despite pressure from Berlin to disband, for example, the Einwohnerwehr had grown to include 400,000 members with 2.5 million weapons.3 After his Freikorps regiment was disbanded and he moved to Munich, Captain Hermann Ehrhardt formed a new group called the League of Former Ehrhardt Officers. What it intended to do, nobody knew for sure.

Since the end of the war, Munich's beer halls had been arenas for vicious brawls. With demobilized soldiers, disbanded Freikorps fighters, and political extremists in the city, it's not hard to understand why. Trouble usually began with drunken patrons shouting profanities to drown out the speeches of their political rivals. Next, beer steins would start flying, followed by fistfights that often spilled out into the streets. Since its inaugural meeting in the Hofbräuhaus, the Nazi Party had been using the Saalsschutzabteilung (hall protection group) to shield Hitler from attackers at his beer hall appearances. Comprised mainly of Hitler's comrades from the war, along with bouncer types, the hall protection group would impose its will with physical violence whenever called upon. Roaming the streets of the Bavarian capital, its members also enjoyed intimidating and sometimes attacking Jews when they could find them.4 Under the protection of Ernst Pöhner, Munich's sympathetic police chief, they didn't have to worry about arrest or prosecution. Restless for action like their seventeenth century counterparts, members of the hall protection group considered these activities fun and games.

Not everyone in the Nazi leadership approved of Hitler's thugs. Party chairman Anton Drexler groused that Hitler's paramilitaries undermined the legitimacy of the NSDAP as a proper working-class movement.5 When the hall protection group was renamed the Turn und Sportabteilung (Gymnastics and Sports Section), the change didn't satisfy Drexler or conservatives in the party, who were increasingly disturbed by Hitler's leadership style.

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