Goering (7 page)

Goering during this period had been trying, on behalf of Hitler, to persuade General von Lossow, as commander of the Bavarian Military District, to break his formal allegiance to Berlin and march with the S.A. and its associates to unseat the Stresemann government, which by the winter had come to regard Bavaria as the chief center of rebellion in Germany and so was prepared to bring force to bear to suppress any likely outbreak. Mussolini had provided them all with a splendid demonstration of what could be done when he had staged his March on Rome in October of the previous year. Hitler's uneasy attempts at alliance with the Bavarian government could not, however, be developed to the point of action, and Hitler decided to force the issue with his own immediate associates. While he was deciding what action to take, a political meeting was announced by Gustav von Kahr, the new State Commissioner and virtual dictator of Bavaria. This was due to take place on November 8, 1923, and Hitler was deeply suspicious that Kahr, whom he did not trust, would on his personal initiative announce Bavarian independence and so steal the thunder of the Nazis. This Hitler determined should not happen, and he ordered Goering to get the storm troopers ready for action. Goering hurried to take up his duties from the bedside of Carin, who had had pneumonia and was still feverish. To add to his worries, his mother had recently died. He kissed Carin and told her he might be very late and that she was not to worry. Then he rushed to join Hitler and assemble the storm troopers.

The public meeting called by Kahr was held in the vast auditorium of the Bürgerbräukeller, a tavern in the suburbs that could accommodate an audience of three thousand people. Kahr took the platform with the Premier of Bavaria, Dr. von Knilling, General von Lossow and other ministers of state. Kahr spoke to his audience as they sat drinking from their great mugs of beer; he spoke of the need for a new German Army to inherit the glory of that which was lost. For the audience this was familiar stuff, and they were settling down to steady drinking when suddenly they heard a man's voice shouting and the sound of pistol fire. Hitler, looking odd in an ill-fitting morning coat, was standing on a table pointing his pistol at the ceiling. Beside him were Hess and Goering and the Leader's bodyguard, a wrestler called Graf. They pushed forward to the platform, where Kahr stood, shocked like his audience by this savage intrusion.

Hitler strode in front of him and shouted, “The national revolution has begun. The building is occupied by six hundred armed men. No one may leave the hall.” The beer drinkers saw that a machine gun was posted at the main entrance. Hitler bluffed the audience into believing that the governments of both Bavaria and the Reich were overthrown, and that the Army and the police had joined the ranks of the swastika. Then at pistol point he removed the ministers from the platform for a conference in another room. Goering was left in charge.

The audience recovered from the shock and began to talk. Goering could see that they were not satisfied, so he decided to address the meeting himself, speaking from the platform.

“There is nothing to fear,” he shouted. “We are your friends. You've no reason to grumble—you've got your beer!” A new government was formed, he added, indicating the room where Hitler, gun in hand, was feverishly bluffing the three ministers to join with him in a government to be formed with General Ludendorff,. Ludendorff in fact knew nothing of this, though at that moment he was being brought by Hitler's emissaries to the beer hall.

The ministers, uncertain what to do with Hitler, who was in a desperate state of excitement, parried his demands. The situation was tense because Ludendorff was expected at any moment, and the huge audience could not be kept under duress for an indefinite time. Hitler had to act. Without further discussion he rushed back onto the platform, announcing to the astonished audience that a new national government was in process of being formed with the collaboration of the ministers outside. He announced that he would be in control of the policy of the national government and that General Ludendorff would lead the new national army which would march forthwith on Berlin. The audience, believing that Hitler was indeed in a powerful association with men whom they trusted as much as they trusted anyone, began to raise a cheer. Then Ludendorff arrived. Although he was furious at the surprise that had been sprung on him, he let his presence appear to give support to what was happening. Hitler, deliriously happy, swore vengeance on the “November criminals” of 1918 and claimed that a new, strong, free, splendid Germany was being born. “Tomorrow,” he shouted, “will either see a new national government or it will see us dead! I shall win tomorrow, or I shall be a dead man.” And, like an actor in a melodrama, he pressed the pistol to his head.

The problem, as the audience poured out, was to decide what should be done with the ministers. Hitler had to leave them in the charge of Ludendorff, while he went to settle a street battle that he heard was breaking out between the storm troopers and a detachment of regular troops. When at length he returned he found that the ministers, after giving their word of honor to Ludendorff to stand by what was agreed, had been allowed to leave. There was great confusion of thought as to what action should now be taken. Meanwhile Kahr, threatened by telephone with action from Berlin, took what steps he could to retaliate. At dawn hundreds of printed proclamations renouncing any agreement with Hitler and dissolving the Nazi Party were posted throughout Munich. Kahr then transferred the state government to Regensburg. It was clear to all that the armed forces of the state had not been bluffed into joining Hitler's revolution and that the original government was still in power.

As soon as there was a moment to spare, Goering asked Hanfstaengl to telephone Carin and tell her not to worry if he did not get home that night; then he gave him a letter to post addressed to her. He was deeply worried about her, though reassured to some extent by the fact that her sister Fanny was there to help look after her. Then he turned his attention once more to the uncertainties of the night's action.

Hitler, Goering and Roehm were learning by experience that revolution could not be staged in so quick, so careless or so melodramatic a manner. Only Roehm had taken decisive action and occupied the military headquarters in Munich, where he stayed with his men. Hitler visited them during the night to discuss the situation. Hess, meanwhile, was busy taking hostages, who included two ministers of the Bavarian government. It was Ludendorff who proposed a solution to the dilemma of what should be done. He suggested an action based, as he pointedly said, on his personal reputation. He did not think that the armed forces or the police would fire on him, and he proposed that on the following morning, November 9, he should march at the head of the storm troopers with Hitler beside him and that they should take over the center of Munich. Hitler, with no other plan left in his head, agreed reluctantly.

Accordingly, near eleven on the morning of this bleak November day the march began. Hitler, Ludendorff, Goering and Hess, together with certain others of the Nazi leaders, put themselves at the head of a body of some three thousand storm troopers, only some of whom were armed. They left the grounds of the Bürgerbraukeller and proceeded along the road toward the center of the city. The swastika flag was held high above them, and a truck carrying storm troopers with machine guns moved along near the front of the column. Hitler flourished his pistol as he marched. Goering, who expected trouble, saw to it that a number of hostages under guard were taken along with them, in case their presence might prove useful.

The Nazi marchers had to cross the Ludwig Bridge over the river Isar before they could reach the heart of the city. Here a detachment of armed police was posted to oppose them and Ludendorff halted the march. It was Goering who took action. Walking forward alone, grim and tough in his black leather coat, with the Pour le Mérite suspended from his neck, he saluted the officer in charge of the police and told him that they held hostages, including certain ministers, who would be shot if the march was opposed by force. The police officer, uncertain what to do, eventually decided to allow them through. The storm troopers triumphantly snatched the weapons from the hands of the police. The first victory was theirs.

They marched slowly across the river and entered the Zweibrückenstrasse, going in the direction that led to the Marienplatz, where the Town Hall was situated, rather over a mile from their starting point back over the river. At the Marienplatz they were joined by Julius Streicher, who was anxious not to be left out of the historic procession and had come up from Nuremberg in order to see what was happening.

By now it was after midday, and the march continued. Ludendorff was still in the front, and beside him his adjutant, Hans Streck. On Ludendorff's left walked Hitler, his arm for some strange reason linked with that of Scheubner-Richter, another of his close associates. Graf, Hitler's bodyguard, strode with Goering a pace or two in front of Hitler, on the left. Their objective was the War Ministry, almost a mile away, in the Schoenfeldstrasse; there Roehm and his men were still in occupation from the previous night, though besieged by a detachment of regular soldiers. To reach the Ministry the Nazi leaders had to take the storm troopers down a narrow street on the right of the Marienplatz called first the Dienerstrasse and then the Residenzstrasse. They went forward and were urged to sing as they marched, but they were soon to meet their main obstacle. The end of this long street was blocked by armed police. The Nazi singing died down, and the march came to a stop.

This time it was Graf who stepped forward with the challenge. “Don't shoot!” he cried. “His Excellency General Ludendorff is coming!”

Hitler, standing behind him, shouted, “Surrender! Surrender!”

Then, from one side or the other, shooting began. Ludendorff, oblivious of the danger, strode forward and walked unharmed through the ranks of the police; he pushed them aside with the arrogance of past authority, though he was dressed as a civilian. But he went forward alone toward the open square beyond. Behind him Scheubner-Richter, with whom Hitler stood arm in arm, fell dying to the ground, and Hitler, stumbling or seeking cover from the bullets, fell heavily and dislocated his shoulder. Unnerved by the confusion and the pain, he fled in a car that was following the procession. At the same time, Hess also escaped. But Goering fell in the street, badly shot in the groin, and the blood began to flow from his wound. According to her own account, Carin's sister Fanny followed the procession and saw something of what had happened. She took the news to Carin.

Their principal leaders either escaped, arrested or wounded, the Nazi procession rapidly disintegrated. Those at the back of the column had heard the exchange of shots and then had seen the men ahead of them running back. Ludendorff, whom no one had thought to follow, was placed under arrest; Roehm and his men surrendered. Goering was carried by storm troopers into a nearby house, which happened to belong to a Jewish furniture dealer named Ballin, whose wife, Ilse, dressed Goering's wounds as best she could with a towel. She and her sister took charge of him in the house until darkness, when he was sent secretly to the clinic of a friend, Professor von Ach.
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The professor informed Carin at once where Goering was. According to Fanny, Carin seems to have had a premonition at the moment Goering fell. Even though she was ill, she dressed and went at once to the hospital. There she learned that Goering's injuries were serious. She also heard that there was a warrant out for his arrest, issued by Lossow. Goering begged her to find some way to save him from capture. Fanny describes her sitting by the bedside holding her husband's hand, calmly and quietly working out what was the best thing to do, never taking her eyes off him for a single moment.

At the risk of his life, she arranged for friends to come from Garmisch, near the Austrian border, and drive him the seventy miles from Munich to their home, where he lay weak and ill and bitter. Carin knew that Hitler had been arrested on November 11 in Uffing, where the Hanfstaengl family had been taking care of him. But she was preoccupied with her own troubles. In a letter written to her mother on November 30, she described her husband's condition.

Hermann is in a terrible state. His leg hurts so much he can hardly bear it. Four days ago almost all the wounds that had healed broke out again and there is a horrible amount of pus in the leg still. He was X-rayed and they discovered a mass of fragments of shot as well as the dirt from the street buried in his thigh muscles. They operated on him with an anesthetic, and for the past three days he's been very feverish. His mind seems to wander; sometimes he even cries, and sometimes he dreams of street fighting. All the time he is suffering indescribable pain. His whole leg is fitted with little rubber tubes to draw out the pus. He is so kind, so patient, so good, but deep in his heart he is desperately unhappy.

Carin realized that her husband's presence was becoming known, and that she must attempt to get him away to the safety of Austria. She was unsuccessful. He was arrested and was placed under guard at the hospital in Garmisch, where he became the subject of friendly demonstrations during which the police were threatened with violence. Goering gave his word of honor to the police that he would not attempt a further escape, but Carin was determined he should do so, although his passport had been confiscated. With the help of friends and of sympathizers among the police, he was taken straight from his bed by car to the border and smuggled out of Germany, using a false passport. The men who took him posed as members of the police who were under orders to remove him.
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