Germany – Page 3 – Great History

The Munich Putsch and the Aftermath

By late 1923, hyperinflation was in full swing. To explain simply, hyperinflation was caused when Germany continued to fail to make war payments, leading to the French occupied the heavily industrialised Ruhr province, where much of the industry of the Weimar Republic was, and decided to reclaim payments through more materials. In order to pay them back as soon as possible, the government began printing more money. This led to more cash in people’s pockets, so business owners increased the prices of their products. When the government noticed this, they began to print more money, which led to people having more money, which led to prices increasing, which ultimately led to people hauling around wheelbarrows full of money in order to buy a loaf of bread. And, as I’m sure you’re aware, the more of something you have, the less valuable it becomes. By the end of 1923, 1 US Dollar was worth 4.23 trillion marks.

Many who had savings found them to be worthless and were thus left destitute and penniless, despising the political establishment as it was. Unemployment was through the roof and many Germans began to turn to extreme alternatives to the established government. High ranking members of the Bavarian government organised a meeting at the Bürgerbräu Keller, a beer hall in Munich, to discuss the establishment of an authoritarian regime in Bavaria, that would not adhere to the rules of other Weimar German States, despising the central government’s passive action against the French Occupation of the Ruhr. Hitler, fearing that the Minister-President of Bavaria, Gustav Ritter von Kahr, would pose a threat to his nationalist revolution, he decided to act.

At around 8:30 in the evening of November 8th, 1923, where Bavarian officials, including von Kahr as well as General Otto von Lossow and Chief of Bavarian Police Hans Ritter von Seisser, were having their meeting, Hitler stormed into the beer hall with his personal body guard, firing his pistol into the air. “National revolution is underway!” he cried. He then proceeded to state that the Bavarian government had been deposed and that it was now simply a matter of the central government, which was a massive lie. Hitler’s plan was to mimic Benito Mussolini’s March on Rome, taking Berlin by force.

He organised Kahr, Lossow and Seisser into a backroom and forced them to cooperate at gun point. Meanwhile, the SA was tasked with securing communications lines and seizing local government authorities. However, this is when things began to go down hill very quickly. The SA only managed to seize a handful of government buildings. In addition, Hitler left the trio in the hands of Erich Ludendorff, a former World War 1 General and fervent German Nationalist, who let them go, under the pretense that they would go and assist in the revolution. They did not, instead ordering the military and police to suppress the Nazis.

Agitated, Hitler paced around the beer hall for hours, thinking on what to do next now that his three points of leverage had gone, enabling the military and police to set up blockades around the city. Eventually, Hitler rallied some 2,000 men to march on the Feldherrnhalle, a Bavarian Army war memorial from the 19th Century. After marching for some distance, the group encountered an armed police presence. After pausing for a moment, they continued to march, and the police opened fire.

With over a dozen Nazis dead and four police officers killed in a shootout, Hitler had fled and went into hiding. He was eventually captured two days later and put on trial for high treason in February 1924. High treason carried a sentence of life imprisonment. Despite the multiple other crimes perpetrated during the putsch, such as the murder of the police officers and the assault of Jewish citizens of Munich, Hitler, as well as other Nazis were only tried for treason. The right leaning judge, Georg Niendhart was incredibly lenient on Hitler.

The defendants at the trial (L-R: Heinz Pernet, Friedrich Weber, Wilhelm Frick, Hermann Kriebel, Erich Ludendorff, Adolf Hitler, Wilhelm Brückner, Ernst Röhm & Adolf Wagner)

Whilst the Bavarian government wanted to keep the trial on the down low as much as possible, Hitler wanted to make a scene, often erupting into fiery speeches, interrupting court procedure and telling his entire life story, interjections that the judge actively enabled. Because of this, Hitler’s public profile grew over the course of the trial. Whilst he was found guilty, Niendhart only sentenced him to 5 years at Landsberg Prison, of which he only served nine months. His cell was incredibly luxurious and he was treated incredibly well, often having meetings with party members.

Hitler and other party members, including Rudolf Hess, meeting at Landsberg Prison

He also began to work on Mein Kampf, his autobiography and political manifesto. Much of the book contained antisemitic and racist talking points.

Races which are culturally superior but less ruthless would be forced to restrict their increase, because of insufficient territory to support the population, while less civilized races could increase indefinitely, owing to the vast territories at their disposal. In other words: should that state of affairs continue, then the world will one day be possessed by that portion of mankind which is culturally inferior but more active and energetic. A time will come, even though in the distant future, when there can be only two alternatives: Either the world will be ruled according to our modern concept of democracy, and then every decision will be in favour of the numerically stronger races; or the world will be governed by the law of natural distribution of power, and then those nations will be victorious who are of more brutal will and are not the nations who have practised self-denial.
Hitler’s writings in Mein Kampf

Eventually, Hitler was released from prison. It was then that he realised that the Nazis could not take over a nation by force. In order to create a “racial state” he could not do it from the outside in but from the inside out.

Hitler Joins the German Worker’s Party

Unlike most other soldiers that returned to civilian life, Hitler elected to remain a part of the military, eventually being recruited to the Information Office under Captain Karl Mayr. He excelled in this line of work, and impressed Mayr with his oration skills, to such a point where Mayr asked him to respond to a letter from a soldier about the Jewish Question. This became one of Hitler’s first, and most notable, antisemitic writings.

[T]he Jews are unquestionably a race, not a religious community. And the Jew himself never describes himself as a Jewish German, a Jewish Pole or a Jewish American, but always as a German, Polish or American Jew. Never has the Jew absorbed more from the alien people in whose midst he lives than their language. […] There is hardly a race in the world whose members all belong to a single religion. Through inbreeding for thousands of years, often in very small circles, the Jew has been able to preserve his race and his racial characteristics much more successfully than most of the numerous people among whom he lives. As a result we have living in our midst a non-German, alien race, unwilling and indeed unable to shed its racial characteristics, its particular feelings, thoughts and ambitions, and nevertheless enjoying the same political rights as we ourselves do. [A Jews] activities produce a racial tuberculosis among nations. And this has the following result: Antisemitism stemming from purely emotive reasons will always find its expression in the form of pogroms. But antisemitism based on reason must lead to the systematic legal combating and removal of the rights of the Jew […]. [A governments] final aim, however, must be the uncompromising removal of the Jews altogether.
Hitler’s letter to the soldier

As a part of his job in the Information Office, he’d often infiltrate parties suspected of communist sentiments. In September of 1919, he attended a meeting at the German Workers Party, also known as the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei in German or DAP for short. However, he found that the party did support Marxism, like the title of the party suggested, but instead was incredibly nationalist and antisemitic, both of which Hitler agreed with.

He eventually formally joined the party and resigned from his position at the information office. He’d often speak at party meetings, impressing Party Chairman, Anton Drexler, with his oration skills. Drexler allowed Hitler to publicly speak at rallies, and became a mentor to him. However, Hitler was less than impressed by the disorganisation of the party, asking Drexler if he could enact vast changes within the party. Drexler agreed and Hitler quickly got to work. He became the head of recruitment propaganda and organised massive rallies, where he would often speak. His oratory skills made him a vital asset to the party.

One of his most notable changes was the rebranding of the party to the National Socialist German Workers Party, which in German translates to Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei and was commonly abbreviated to the NSDAP or the Nazi Party. He also created a party logo, which consisted of a black swastika, a Hindu symbol meaning prosperity, in a white circle with a red background, the colours of the former Imperial German Flag.

Eventually, Hitler announced a massive reworking of power inside the party, which would remove a democratically elected chairman and replace them with a “Führer” with absolute power. If his demands were not met, Hitler would resign from the party. Fearing the loss of the party’s greatest speaker, Drexler conceded, stepping down from the role of Chairman and allowing Hitler to ascend to the title of Führer of the Party. This is the first example of Hitler assuming absolute power, by any means necessary.

During these early years of the Nazi Party, many men, who would soon become high ranking members of the party, joined, inspired greatly by Hitler’s words. Ernst Röhm joined around the same time as Hitler and the two became fast friends. Röhm became the only person who would refer to Hitler by his first name, often referring to him as “Adi”. As the party developed and rose in popularity in the 1930s, Röhm would become the head of the Stormtroopers, also known as the SA, a violent paramilitary arm of the Nazi Party.

Through Röhm another notorious figure within the ranks of the party would enter, a man named Heinrich Himmler. Known for his cunning, loyalty and brutality, he would later become the head of the Schutzstaffel, more commonly known as the SS, another paramilitary group of the Nazis, who differed from the SA in their brutality and loyalty.

Finally of note was Hermann Göring. Having met Hitler in 1921, he was appointed as Supreme Leader of the SA in March 1923, and later became a key figure in the political rise of the Nazis throughout the 1930s via the democracy of the Weimar Republic.

Herman Göring during his service in the First World War

In June 1921, there was a mutiny in the party, which kicked out Drexler and Hitler became the party chairman, where he spoke at beer halls, a type of large German pub. Early followers included Hermann Goering, a former flying ace, Ernst Rohm, a WW1 veteran and was later found out to be homosexual, and Rudolf Hess, another WW1 veteran and met Hitler at one of his speeches in 1920. Rohm later became the head of the Nazi’s Paramilitary force, the Stormtroopers or SA.

The German Armistice

By November 1918, German morale was at an all time low. Despite Russia backing out of the war, they were now losing on the Western Front. The Kaiser had abdicated and had moved to the Netherlands, with a new democratic German government taking his place. Erich Ludendorff had resigned and was replaced by Wilhelm Groener. All of Germany’s allies had all either suffered defeat or surrendered. Everyone wanted the war to end but Germany wanted it more than anyone else.

The German government eventually requested that the allies meet to discuss the armistice. They met in Ferdinand Foch’s train carriage, located in the forest of Compiègne. Foch was French General and would be one of the main representatives of the allies.

A carriage of the same design on display in a museum. The original carriage was destroyed by the SS in 1940

They handed the Germans the terms of unconditional surrender without negotiation. They commanded that the German army leave the territories that they had occupied, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine. They also requested a demilitarisation of the Rhineland, an area of Germany that bordered France. They also had to surrender much of their munitions and other army supplies. The Germans had no choice to agree to these harsh terms and the Armistice was signed at around 5am local time on November 11th, 1918, with the Armistice not taking effect until 11am.

During those 6 hours, another 3,000 men died for nothing. The last soldier of the war to die was German, who died not long after the Armistice took affect.

The Christmas Truce

Well, I thought the same as everybody else. Everybody said ‘It’ll be over by Christmas and you’ve got to get out soon, otherwise you won’t see anything’. But I don’t know if it was my opinion, or if everybody was saying it. One certainly changed one’s mind when we found how well-organised Jerry was compared with us for instance.
Bill Haine, a British Soldier in WW1

Despite what many claimed at home, the war was not over by Christmas. Winter was setting in and the fighting had slowed even more than before. Whilst the Christmas Truce of 1914 is seen as a unique one, ceasefires had been occurring all over the Western Front. A “turn a blind eye” attitude was becoming common place, despite orders from command. The harsh winter was also getting to the soldiers. The feeling of the first Christmas away from home was beginning to set in so gifts were sent. Kaiser Wilhelm sent cigars for the officers and pipes for the ranks while Princess Mary of Harewood sent out cigarettes, sweets and cards.

On Christmas Eve, the rain that had been flooding trenches for weeks had finally stopped, and the ice froze the floor of the trenches over, reducing the risk of trench foot significantly. Soon, snow fell upon No Mans Land and the gun fire slowly but surely dwindled into silence. Filled with merriment and joy, the German’s began to sing Silent Night in their trenches. The British officers, hearing this, believed it to be a challenge and began singing their own carols back at the Germans. However, what began as a competition eventually turned into a harmonisation of English and German voices. Many officers met by the wire, agreeing not to exchange gunfire the next day. However, such friendliness was not shared with the French or Belgian troops, as they were under occupation by the Germans at the time. However, they did agree to stop shooting in order to bury their dead.

Christmas Day came. Many British soldiers looked over the parapet to see German Soldiers standing upright in No Mans Land. The two sides got out and buried their dead. The two sides found they shared a communal experience, of having had their friends die and being sick of the war. Extra gifts given to them by their wives and families were exchanged. One notable exchange was between Captain Edward Hulse of the Scots Guard and Lieutenant Thomas of the 15th Westphalians. Thomas gave Hulse a Victoria Cross and a series of letters belonging to an officer who had been killed in a German trench in a previous attack, hoping to have them returned to his family. Touched by his empathy, Hulse gave Thomas his scarf he had received the night prior. Not having anything to give back, Thomas ordered a German troop to find the gloves given to him by his family in order to give them to Hulse. Unfortunately, Hulse ended up being killed in action the following April at the Battle of Neuve-Chappelle while trying to help his commanding officer. Thomas’ fate remains unknown

German and British troops playing football together on the battlefield

The most famous part of this truce were the football matches played between the two sides. Both sides brought out their own footballs, playing kick-about between the two trenches. However, not all was done with best intentions. This time of peace was used to repair dugouts and spy on the enemy. Some were cautious, with incidents of people spotting daggers being drawn and British soldiers not wanting to smoke German cigarettes for fear of poisoning.

Eventually, high command stepped in, fearing that the war would not go on if their troops knew their enemy as people. For some, the armistice was swift and done with by Boxing Day. Others carried on, pushing until New Years Eve. German command dispatched snipers whilst the French ordered artillery barrages. For high command, they believed the war machine had to go on and all human connection must be stamped out. There was never another ceasefire like this, not just in this war but any war since then.

The Basics of Trench Warfare

Initially, many trenches of World War 1 were glorified foxholes. But once the war began to set in, these trenches became more complex and became a vast system behind the front lines, including reserve trenches, dugouts and medical areas behind the trenches.

Trench warfare would tend to be very repetitive in nature. A battle would start with a large artillery bombardment from one side against the other. Many of these artillery barrages would cause Shell Shock or, as modern physcologists have called it, PTSD.

A British soldier suffering from Shell Shock

Then waves of troops would come over through an area called No Mans Land, the term for the empty land between the two trenches, which was often ravished by craters, barbed wire and dead trees. The guns from the defending side would open fire, usually massacring the wave. They offending side would then usually send wave after wave until they either gave up or captured the trench. Tens of thousands of lives would be lost, only to gain a few metres of land.

The trenches were often very crudely designed, as many suspected the war would not be long. Many had open mud on the floor, which would mean diseases such as trench foot would be spread. Rats were common place as well. However, the German trenches were considered to be more sturdy, being deeper and wider than the Allied trenches, allowing for better movement and cover. German trenches averaged around 12 feet in depth, whilst British ones averaged around 6 or 7 feet deep.

A drawing of a German Trench from a book

For when artillery fire came, bunkers were dug in, with the German ones being characterised as a lot more homely and comfortable.

By 1915, the true nature of the war began to set in and the trench fixtures became a lot more permanent. Machine gun turrets were set up and, eventually, the German’s began using the new weapon, chlorine gas. Poison gas was a key element of the war, despite it being illegal. Both sides would use this weapon on each other. Many died due to gas attacks and those who survived suffered later in life.

German Soldiers releasing some mustard gas

The Initial Eastern Offensive

The Russian Army had now fully mobilised, a lot earlier than Germany had expected. Now half their army was trapped in trenches in France whilst the other half dealt with the Russians. The Russian troops made an advance into Prussia but were swiftly crushed at Tannenberg, where 90,000 Russian troops were taken prisoner and an entire army was wiped out. Another victory at Masurian Lakes forces the Russians out of the region.

Further south, the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia was going bad for Austria-Hungary due to a humiliating loss at the Battle of Cer. An offensive against Russia also fails and the Austro-Hungarians are pushed back, with a siege on Przemysl beginning not long after. The Germans, in an effort to distract the Russian forces, engaged in a series of battles at Lodz in modern day Poland.

Eventually, the Ottoman Empire, a large Middle Eastern Empire spanning Turkey, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and parts of Saudi Arabia, join the fighting on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, by sending some ships into the Black Sea, launching naval bombardments on the naval bases of Odessa and Sevastopol, while engaging with ground units on the Georgian border. Due to the vast length and low density of the line, trench warfare never set in like it did on the western front.

The Schlieffen Plan

Tsar Nicholas ordered the mobilisation of troops on July 29th and Kaiser Wilhelm mobilised theirs on the 30th. Because Russia had such a large army to mobilise on such a large border, Germany believed they had to take out France first. Luckily, they had planned for this.

In 1906, Alfred Von Schliefen had devised a plan in case they needed to invade France. He proposed a plan of going through the Lowlands, of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, before attacking France from it’s northern border, encircling Paris, assuring a swift victory. The front could then be moved to Russia and their large army to focus on that front.

The invasion of Belgium began. Having reassured it’s safety, Britain joins the war against Germany, sending troops down to France. However, the advance slows at the heavily fortified city of Liege. Once the city was captured, the German’s committed brutal war crimes against the civilian population. The Triple Alliance spread propaganda, denouncing the German’s actions in the Belgian cities, making many neutral countries opinions of Germany turn sour.

France began to make a push into the German territory but were pushed back at a heavy cost in the Battle of the Frontiers

Belgian soldiers marching during the battle

The British troops eventually make an advance and fight with German troops at Mons. However, they were vastly outnumbered and had to retreat to the French frontline at the Marne River. It seemed as though the Schlieffen Plan would be a swift success.

However, the German’s needed to secure a naval port. The Allied Armies and the Germans quickly ran to the coast trying to flank one another, forming a full frontline, colliding at the First Battle of Ypres. However, due to some light tinkering from Helmuth von Moltke, the German line was under supplied so could not advance past this point for the meantime. The two lines began to dig in, building a network of trenches across the frontline.

Many believed that the plan itself was flawed and was destined to never work. Others claim that due to Moltke’s meddling, the plan failed. But no matter what you think was the cause for the Schlieffen Plan’s failure, the era of Trench Warfare had begun.

Hitler’s Time in WW1

On 28th of July 1914, Gavrilo Princip, member of the Serbian organisation “The Black Hand” shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife in Bosnia, killing them both. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the assassination, so declared war. Russia had an alliance with Serbia, so declared war on Austria-Hungary. Germany had an alliance with Austria-Hungary, so declared war on Russia, thus bringing both Germany and Hitler into World War 1.

He was attached to the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 and was a runner on the Western Front in East Belgium. He was awarded an Iron Cross (2nd class) for his bravery, one of the highest awards given to soldiers in the German Army, similar to the Victoria Cross or Medal of Honour.

Hitler in a dugout in the war. He is furthest left.

During the Battle of the Somme in 1916, he suffered an injury from an artillery shell which wounded his left thigh. He was sent to hospital and returned in March 1917.

In September 1918, Hitler claimed that in a battle was unarmed and a rifle was pointed at him by Private Henry Tandey, one of the most highly decorated privates of the war, having gained a Victoria cross for his bravery at the fifth Battle of Ypres. He held his gun on Hitler but then told him to go. Hitler told this tale to Former Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain when he visited his house in Bavaria, saying “That man came so near to killing me that I thought I should never see Germany again,”. When first hearing this Tandey denied all claims but later on he says he remembers doing something like this and if it was Hitler he should’ve pulled the trigger, saying, “If only I had known what he would turn out to be […] When I saw all the people and women and children he had killed and wounded I was sorry to God I let him go.” when an interviewer went to his house in Coventry. The paper wrote “Nothing Henry did that night could ease his sickening sense of guilt. […] It was a stigma that Tandey lived with until his death […] He could have stopped this. He could have changed the course of history.” Tandey passed away in 1977 at his home in Coventry.

This is a painting at Hitler’s home in Bavaria which he showed to Prime Minister Chamberlain. Hitler claimed that the injured man being carried at the front of the line is him and the man carrying him is Tandey.

A month after he was nearly killed, Hitler was partially blinded by a mustard gas attack and was sent to hospital. It was during this time when he learnt of Germany’s defeat. Hitler said that when he learnt this he had a second wave of blindness. Hitler and many others believed that Germany had been stabbed in the back from the home front and Hitler blamed it on the Jews and Marxists. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles didn’t help matters, making the German people hate the countries that made them sign the Treaty even more than they already did.

Hitler’s Early Life

Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, a northern area in modern day Austria, which was formerly a part of the vast but fragile Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1889. His father, Alois Hitler, was abusive to the young boy, often exacting punishments via physical abuse, whilst his mother, Klara Polz, who was also his Father’s cousin, was very doting and the young Hitler grew very fond of his mother.

Whilst he was often described as a confident young man in his early youth, his personality changed when his younger brother, Edmund, passed away from the measles when Hitler was 11, turning him into a more detached and depressed young teen, who’d often argue with his father and teachers. Only three years later, his father would pass away from a lung hemorrhage. Not long afterwards, his grades started to decline, with him barely passing his final exams.

At the age of 18, he had a sad goodbye to his mother, before moving to Vienna to take an entrance exam to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. After being rejected not once but twice, he had to return home to Linz, after learning that his mother was dying of breast cancer. She passed away at the age of 47, when Hitler was 18. The family doctor, Eduard Bloch, said that he had never seen someone so distraught as Hitler was at his mother’s death.

Aimless, Hitler slept on the streets of Vienna, selling paintings of Vienna’s sights in order to pay for food and alike. Whilst his former roommate in Vienna, August Kubisek, often described Hitler as rather outgoing, despite a general disinterest in pursuing women romantically, passionate in politics and the arts, a fan of the opera and somewhat Catholic in his beliefs, Hitler abruptly left the apartment they lived in shortly after his mother died and left no note indicating where he was going to. Likely because he was going nowhere.

Whilst he was often friendly towards Jewish individuals who expressed their religion in a more subtle way, that attitude began to slowly change over his time on the streets. Whilst the soup kitchen he spent most of his time in was largely a Jewish community, the middle class of the city found antisemitism to be fashionable. Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna from 1897 till his death in 1910, ran on a populist platform and largely campaigned in favour of antisemitism, a politician who Hitler openly admired. It is also around this time that Hitler noticed a different attitude he had towards Jewish people.

Once, when passing through the inner City, I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black side-locks. My first thought was: Is this a Jew? They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I watched the man stealthily and cautiously; but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a German?
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Antisemitic pamphlets were also commonplace around Vienna. Having developed these racist sentiments, he came to despise the multicultural Austro-Hungarian Empire, so moved to Germany by late 1913. Accused of draft dodging, Hitler wrote a letter to the Austro-Hungarian police, fearing arrest if he didn’t. Admiring his tone, the police let him go and the matter was largely dropped altogether. Only a few months later, war broke out.