rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

VERSAILLES, WEIMAR AND THE BEER HALL PUTSCH 69Army for not coming over to his side that he declared hence forth he wouldnot recognize a German officer nor ever again wear an officer’s uniform. Thewounded Goering was given first aid by the Jewish proprietor of a nearby bankinto which he had been carried and then smuggled across the frontier into Austriaby his wife and taken to a hospital in Innsbruck. Hess also fled to Austria.Roehm surrendered at the War Ministry two hours after the collapse before theFeldherrnhalle. Within a few days all the rebel leaders except Goering and Hesswere rounded up and jailed. The Nazi putsch had ended in a fiasco. The partywas dissolved. National Socialism, to all appearances, was dead. Its dictatorialleader, who had run away at the first hail of bullets, seemed utterly discredited,his meteoric political career at an end.TRIAL FOR TREASONAs things turned out, that career was merely interrupted, and not for long.Hitler was shrewd enough to see that his trial, far from finishing him, wouldprovide a new platform from which he could not only discredit the compromisedauthorities who had arrested him but – and this was more important – for thefirst time make his name known far beyond the confines of Bavaria and indeedof Germany itself. He was well aware that correspondents of the world press aswell as of the leading German newspapers were flocking to Munich to cover thetrial, which began on February 26, 1924, before a special court sitting in the oldInfantry School in the Blutenburgstrasse. By the time it had ended twenty-fourdays later Hitler had transformed defeat into triumph, made Kahr, Lossow andSeisser share his guilt in the public mind to their ruin, impressed the Germanpeople with his eloquence and the fervor of his nationalism, and emblazoned hisname on the front pages of the world.Although Ludendorff was easily the most famous of the ten prisoners in thedock, Hitler at once grabbed the limelight for himself. From beginning to endhe dominated the courtroom. Franz Guertner, the Bavarian Minister of Justiceand an old friend and protector of the Nazi leader, had seen to it that thejudiciary would be complacent and lenient. Hitler was allowed to interrupt asoften as he pleased, cross-examine witnesses at will and speak on his own behalfat any time and at any length – his opening statement consumed four hours,but it was only the first of many long harangues.He did not intend to make the mistake of those who, when tried for complicityin the Kapp putsch, had pleaded, as he later said, that ”they knew nothing, hadintended nothing, wished nothing. That was what destroyed the bourgeois world– that they had not the courage to stand by their act . . . to step before thejudge and say, ’Yes, that was what we wanted to do; we wanted to destroy theState.’ ”Now before the judges and the representatives of the world press in Munich,Hitler proclaimed proudly, ”I alone bear the responsibility. But I am not acriminal because of that. If today I stand here as a revolutionary, it is as arevolutionary against the revolution. There is no such thing as high treasonagainst the traitors of 1918.”If there were, then the three men who headed the government, the Armyand the police in Bavaria and who had conspired with him against the nationalgovernment were equally guilty and should be in the dock beside him instead