As of: February 26, 2024, 12:52 p.m
By: Dirk Walter
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The defendants with their lawyers, in the middle Ludendorff and Hitler.
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Munich - Historians speak of a first-class judicial scandal: 100 years ago, the Hitler trial began in Munich - more precisely, the trial against Adolf Hitler and nine co-conspirators because of their attempted coup on September 8th/9th.
November 1923.
As is well known, the Hitler Putsch lasted less than 24 hours.
On November 9, 1923, shortly after 1 p.m., the state police stopped the putschists, who, in a kind of desperate act, had marched around 2,000 men through downtown Munich before fleeing in all directions after an exchange of fire at Odeonsplatz.
Ringleader Adolf Hitler was arrested two days later at Staffelsee.
World War II general Ludendorff was placed under house arrest in his home in Solln.
Ludendorff is the first to march into the hall
On February 26, 1924, at 8:45 a.m., the legal investigation into the putsch began.
With Ludendorff at the head, followed by Hitler and the former Munich police chief Ernst Pöhner (who was designated by the putschists as Bavarian Prime Minister), the defendants and their lawyers entered the war school on Munich's Blutenburgstrasse - the court had been moved there.
Today there is a primary school here.
“High treason”?
- Hitler takes the floor
The first day of the trial lasted until 6:30 p.m. and was the event of the day.
The “Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten” dedicated five extra pages to the opening.
There were crowds of people on the street, many wanting to see the putschists “live”.
Inside the hall, public prosecutor Ludwig Stenglein first read out the charges, which lasted over an hour.
Hitler and his co-conspirators were accused of high treason - a long prison sentence was expected.
Stenglein was supported by the second public prosecutor Hans Ehard, who was to become Bavarian Prime Minister for the CSU after 1945.
After Stenglein, Hitler took the floor and, as usual, explained himself at length.
Right at the beginning, however, he got to the point: “If I am said to have committed high treason, I am surprised that others are not sitting here too,” he said.
He was alluding to the fact that the public prosecutor's office had made no effort to clarify the behavior of Gustav von Kahr, Otto von Lossow and Hans von Seißer.
At that time, Kahr was State Commissioner General with executive powers, a right-wing conservative member of the ruling Bavarian People's Party and the actual ruler of Bavaria.
Lossow was the commander of the Reichswehr in Bavaria, Seißer state police chief.
All three were in the Bürgerbräukeller when Hitler initiated the putsch.
They seemed surprised.
There are still different interpretations about their behavior today.
In 1998, the former archivist in the Munich State Archives, Reinhard Weber (77), together with the now deceased historians Lothar Gruchmann and Otto Gritschneder, published the verbatim minutes of the trial days - over 1,600 pages, a standard work.
State parliament stenographers documented the course of the trial word for word.
The fact that the protocols exist is a “stroke of luck,” says Weber.
The actual trial files, 16 volumes, were deliberately destroyed shortly before the end of the Second World War.
Kahr was one of the most fatal figures in contemporary history
Reinhard Weber
Weber calls Kahr “one of the most fatal figures in contemporary Bavarian history before 1933”.
Kahr, a convinced anti-Semite, himself made plans to establish a national dictatorship and flirted with the goals of the putschists.
For hours after Hitler proclaimed the “national revolution” on the evening of November 8, 1923, he maneuvered around - until around 3 a.m. he switched to opposition.
“I think he initially wanted to get involved,” says Weber.
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The Munich historian Matthias Bischel, who published new documents from Kahr's estate last year, has a different view.
He comes to the conclusion “that Kahr really rejected the coup from the start, but had to use all means possible to free himself from a predicament and also carefully consider when and how he could initiate the intended counteraction.”
Be that as it may, the fact that Kahr's behavior was not questioned at all and that he was able to present his surprise thesis as a witness in court without major objection remains a strange thing about the trial.
It was by no means the only one.
Weber mentions further errors: The state court in Leipzig would actually have been responsible for high treason - this non-Bavarian imperial court, Weber believes, would probably have imposed harsher punishments.
However, the intervention of a ministerial councilor sent to Berlin, not coincidentally the brother-in-law of the German-national Bavarian Justice Minister Franz Gürtner, prevented this.
Mistakes of justice
Then: Several crimes were not the subject of the treason trial at all.
After all, four police officers were killed.
Followers of the putschists had also stolen money and taken other Jews and Munich city councilors hostage - here too, the court did not question whether this had happened on the orders of the defendants.
It was also not discussed at whose instigation the judge at the Bavarian Supreme Court, Theodor von der Pfordten, who was fatally wounded in the coup, had drawn up a new constitution.
The paper breathed the spirit of National Socialism, envisaged the dismissal of Jewish officials, the confiscation of Jews' assets and the introduction of court martials.
Did Hitler know about this?
The court did not consider it.
There was a reason for the court's inaction: the presiding judge, Georg Neidhardt, was the most unfortunate person imaginable for the Munich People's Court.
In 1920 he had already certified that Count Arco, the murderer of the revolutionary Kurt Eisner, had “the most ardent love for his people and fatherland”.
Of all people, the German nationalist lawyer Neidhardt was now given the rotating chairmanship of the court, says Weber.
Efforts to prevent this by changing the rules of procedure were prevented by Gürtner.
Mild sentences
It was therefore no wonder that the sentences against the putschists on April 1, 1924 were extremely mild.
Ludendorff was acquitted - a blatant miscarriage of justice.
Hitler and two co-conspirators only received five years in prison each (and a fine of 200 marks) - that was at the lower end of the punishment range.
Other coup plotters got off even milder.
The defendants were “guided in their actions by a purely patriotic spirit and the noblest, selfless will,” said Judge Neidhardt in his verdict.
He concluded by stating that a man “who thinks and feels as German as Hitler” could not be expelled as an Austrian.
While imprisoned in the fortress in Landsberg, Hitler wrote his work “Mein Kampf”.
He was released on probation (!) on December 20, 1924.