Source:
„Germany’s Hitler“ (1938) by Heinz A. Heinz
Adolf Hitler's DAP Membership Card
Adolf Hitler himself tells the story better than anyone
has told it since. He read Drexler’s little pamphlet. Still, curiosity rather
than anything as yet quite like decision, led his steps once more in the
direction of the Sterneckerbräu, or perhaps it was to the „Alte Lilienbad“ in
the Herrnstrasse, where the queer folk he had unearthed there a few nights
previously, seemed wont to forgather on a Wednesday evening... There was
certainly a good lot in what that chap Feder had been saying…
Hitler
says: „I crossed the badly-lighted common room where no one at all was to be
seen, and sought the door leading to a room at the back... There in the glimmer
of a semi-broken gas-lamp four young men were sitting at a table, among whom
was the author of the little brochure“ (previously given him to read, mark and
digest), „who at once came forward and greeted me in the most friendly manner
and bade me welcome as a new member of the German Workers’ Party.”
Hitler
was a trifle nonplussed. However, he meant to see the evening through, and bit
by bit got hold of the names of those present. They read the minutes of the
last meeting, and then went into Party finances – a matter of some 7.50 marks –
and read letters from absent members.
„Fürchterlich,
fürchterlich. Das war ja eine Vereinsmeierei Allerärgster Art und Weise. In
diesen Klub also sollte ich eintreten?“ („Dreadful,
dreadful! This was a wretched little group of the feeblest sort and kind. Was I
going to enrol myself in a Club like this?“)
Yes,
indeed. So it fell out, for want of an alternative. Hitler was not the founder
of this party. Those poor ineffectuals in the „Alte Lilienbad“ at Munich gave
him his opportunity. But it seemed all too negligible and hopeless. How, in
God’s name, Hitler asked himself, was anything to be made of such a beginning? How
was a miserable little knot of pale people like this (he was the only soldier
among them) to be welded into any decent sort of a going concern – club, or
whatever it liked to call itself? How was any kick to be got into it? How was
such a club to be carried any farther, brought to the semblance of some sort of
a society? How was this society to become a significant movement? How would
such a movement proceed to the uplifting of a prostrate, demoralised,
humiliated country? For that and no less an aim from the first was in Hitler’s
mind as he stumbled through the dark of the empty guest room in the „Alte
Lilienbad.”
The
new associate was dutiful enough to attend the next little meeting of the „Deutsche
Abeiter-Partei,” and the next and the next. Nothing happened. Number; did not
increase. The all-devouring question still hammered in the brain that would not
despair. Hitler discovered three radical reasons why this little association
should be so feeble.
First
of all it had no faith in itself, its purpose, or the possibility of its ever
amounting to anything Secondly, no remotest likelihood seemed to exist of any
increase of its membership. Various efforts to this end including a hand to
hand distribution of hand-written invitations to its meetings, met with no sort
of response Thirdly, it was possessed of no funds. It could not afford the
cheapest sort of leaflet publicity.
Hitler
felt at once that much was needed here if the „Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei“ was to
constitute any some of a starting-point for the energetic political campaign he
had in view. Instead of the mere little weekly committee meetings, it must
embark on frequent public assemblies, whence it might he hoped (and the event
amply justified the aspiration) that money for propaganda might be forthcoming.
Also the nucleus demanded fresh young energetic blood! „During the long years of
my military life,” he says, „I had come across a lot of sterling comrades, many
of whom through my persuasion began now to join the group... They were sound
energetic young fellows, well disciplined, and schooled through army life to
the axiom that nothing is impossible, everything is attainable by the man of
strong will.”
The
first few of the new series of meetings thus inaugurated were not particularly
successful, but at last Hitler’s driving and energetic power made itself felt.
„Our
audiences,” he says, „mounted very, very slowly in number. From eleven hearers
we went on to thirteen: presently to sixteen, three and twenty – perhaps even
to four and thirty!“
Something
more, obviously, had to be done about it.
Enough
marks were scraped together to insert a small advertisement in a Munich
newspaper of an amibitious meeting proposed to be held in the Münchener
Hof-bräukeller, a smallish room capable of seating some hundred and thirty
people. This was to be the sort of meeting which, it was hoped, would really
attract some public attention. All depended upon Adolf Hitler himself. As he
went down to the hall that night his heart was in his mouth. He scarcely dared
hope the place would be more than a third, or at very most, half-full...
By
seven o’clock a hundred and eleven people had actually turned up, and
proceedings began. This was the first occasion (apart from his lectures to
soldiers) upon which Hitler was to speak in public. He was allotted twenty
minutes... Then it was that both he and the audience made the discovery upon
which the future of the German nation was to turn. The moment this ex-service
man, this energetic recruit to the flabby little group which called itself the
German Workers’ Party, got upon his legs to speak was the decisive moment for
the Germany we see to-day. His tiny audience was electrified – transported!
Amazed
himself, Hitler perceived in an illuminating flash wherein the secret lay, – in
oratory, convinced and dynamic! He had not dreamed that he possessed such a
gift. He tried it out that night with staggering success. The message he had to
proclaim was not that with the German Workers’ Party nothing but a new election
cry had been added to the existing political babel, but that the foundation
stone had been well and truly laid for the rebuilding of the shattered nation.
In the American phrase, Adolf Hitler „got that message across“! The money
required
poured in. When all was over the hall emptied to scatter Hitlerism broadcast
throughout the city.
From
now on big meeting followed big meeting, with ever mounting success until early
in 1920 Hitler (who had, naturally, assumed the leadership of the group)
determined upon the first great mass meeting, despite the danger, by now grown
to appreciable proportions, of its being suppressed by the authorities, or
broken up by the opposition. It was held on February 24th, in the famous
Festsaal, (not the Keller), of the Hofbräuhaus, and numbered an audience of two
thousand. Hitler’s business was to lay before it nothing less than the reasoned
and detailed programme of the new party.
„As
the time went by,” he says, „hostile interruptions gave way to acclamations. As
one by one, point for point, I laid down the five and twenty planks in our
platform, and submitted them to the judgment of the audience, there gradually
arose an ever-swelling jubilation in response, and as my last words made their
way to the very heart of the mass, the whole room surged before me unanimous in
a new conviction, a new belief, and a new determination.”
The
„Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei“ was now fully in shape to draw upon itself the
implacable enmity of the constituted authority, the Communists, the Marxists
and other political organisations whom its programme affronted or threatened.
It had become a force in Munich. It took to itself a flag and a symbol. Hitler
himself, after many attempts, designed this standard. „We National Socialists
see our purpose in our flag. The red stands for our social programme, the white
for our national, and in the hooked cross we symbolise the struggle for the
supremacy of the Aryan race.”
In
1920 it had already become dangerous to hold meetings and to flourish this
flag, and the worthy Müncheners who frequented Nazi
demonstrations did so at increasing risk not only of bodily injury, but to life
itself. It was this state of affairs which gave rise to the so-called „Saal-Schutz.”
About
a year after Hitler’s first great successful mass meeting in Munich, he decided
upon holding a still greater one, upon which, in fact, the whole future of the
young Movement might be held to turn. Were it to prove a fiasco, the „Deutsche
Arbeiter-Partei“ would disappear in the welter of mushroom parties of that date:
were it to succeed it would dominate in Munich and gird itself for a Reich-wide
struggle.
Already
the local forces of opposition were fully alive to the significance of the new
political activity, and the occasion of this unprecedented effort on its part
was chosen for a decisive counter-demonstration. The Reds in Munich determined
once and for all to smash up the
„Deutsche
Arbeiter-Partei.” Hitler tells us that not only was appeal for police
protection futile, but beneath the dignity of the Movement. The Movement must
defend itself. Only so could it command the respect of those it would attract,
or ensure the safety of its audiences.
A
band of hefty and enthusiastic young supporters were specially told off by
Hitler himself to keep the doors, and to act as ruthless chuckers-out at the
very first sign of disorder. They were to fight with the gloves off an to show
no quarter.
The
event fully justified these precautions. After an enormous gathering in the
Zirkus Krone in Munich, which had been an unqualified success, another meeting
was held well packed with opponents only too eager to snatch the next best
opportunity to wreck the whole business once and for all. Hitler was on his
legs speaking on „The Future or Collapse“ when the signal was given. Thereupon
followed such a scene, such a smash up, such an uproar and such a blood
shedding, that it actually recalled to the ex-service man moments at the Front!
The
„Saal-Schutz“ received their baptism of fists and chair legs, but bit by bit,
fighting literally like berserkers, they hurled the enemy out, slung him head
foremost through the doors, drove him into a corner and pummelled him into a
jelly. Hitler stood still and looked on. His threat to rip the brassard from
the arm of any one of his troopers who showed the white feather in this scrum,
called for no fulfilment. Within appreciable time order was restored – the
speaker took up the thread of his speech, and the meeting closed to the echoing
strains of a patriotic song.
We
have indeed an account of it from one of the eyewitnesses still living in
Munich, from an old lady called Frau Magdalena Schweyer.
When
Hitler was first demobilised he would have liked to have returned to his old
lodgings with Frau Popp, but since she no longer had a room to spare he took up
equally modest quarters in a little street called the Thierschstrasse near the
Isar.
Immediately
opposite the house stood a little shop – it still stands there. One could buy
everything in it from matches to a cabbage. The legend over the door ran „Spezeri-Waren,
Obst und Gemüse,” with the
shopkeeper’s name underneath, „Magdalena Schweyer.”
Frau
Schweyer still stands behind the old-fashioned little counter within. She is an
aged woman now, short of stature, and with grey hair. She came forward as I
entered one day, glancing sharply up at me through her spectacles, and briskly
smoothing down her apron with her toil-worn hands.
„I
want to know something about Herr Hitler in the old days – in the beginnings of
it all ”
Her
eyes instantly lighted up. No one in Munich to-day is more proud than little
old Frau Schweyer of her friendship with the Führer from the first, of the fact
that she joined the Party in 1919 when it was utterly obscure.
„How
I got to know him?“ she asked, and planked herself down on a little stool,
happy to expand on this theme. I leant on the counter and watched her animated
expressive face. Here was one of those working women who befriended Hitler
through some of the thinnest times he had to experience; here was one of the
people to whom he so urgently and so clearly and so simply aimed to bring his
message home, here was one of the women whom he sought to place in positions of
least danger at his meetings.
„Ja, ja, ganz
richtig,” said Frau Schweyer, „it was in November, 1919. A
young man came in here to buy some little thing or other – probably some fruit.
He was rather poorly dressed: he never seemed to have more than one coat. I
shouldn’t have taken no more stock of him than of another, most likely, if it
hadn’t been he struck me as so well spoken. He was that polite. It didn’t seem
to go with the poor clothes, somehow. I watched him out of the shop, and noticed
that he went into the house over the way. So that, I supposed, was where he
lived.
„I
didn’t notice him come in again for a bit, and thought no more about him.
„Then
one day – just about the turn of the year it was – a neighbour of mine happened
to tell about him. She said his name was Adolf Hitler and he had something to
do with a lot called the “Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei”. By all accounts he was a
brilliant speaker – talked something astounding. My neighbour wanted me to go
and hear him. She said the very next time there was a meeting on I had to go.
She’d take me along with her.
„So
we went. She came in one evening and said there was to be a meeting in the
Leiberzimmer of the
Sterneckerbräu.
„Well,
I did go, and I got all worked up. It was wonderful, what he said and all – I
could understand every word. He seemed to think there was a way to be found out
of all our troubles and miseries. We were all to join his party and help. I
joined then and there. They gave me a number – 90.
„I
went to all Hitler’s meetings after that, and got to know him himself. It
didn’t take much to find out how poor he was. I had more than half a notion
that often he wouldn’t have had nothing to eat but for folks giving him a bit
now and then. It gave me an idea, that did. I thought I’d be able to help by
sending him across a few things now and again – a pot of jam, or a snack of
sausage, or a handful of apples. But it was as plain as daylight he hated to
take them. He only did it because he was so poor. He never failed once to come
across to me, after I’d sent him something, to thank me for it. Often though,
when I was thinking to myself that would pretty well do him till next day, one
or another of his pals come in and just let on as Hitler had given every bite
away to them. They were such a hungry crowd, the whole lot of them! Anyhow he
must have kept something for himself once in a while or he wouldn’t be where he
is today!
„Then
there was a Herr Esser
had pop in sometimes, one of Herr Hitler’s friends, and buy a couple of
Rettiche (large white radishes) for the pair of them. That was their idea of a
supper.
„Things
must have gone on just like that for a twelvemonth – them just living on folks
remembering that they hadn’t got nothing in their insides. But the Party
presently began to grow a bit, and when everyone helped as well as they could
things got a little easier for Hitler. Even when I knew he must have a bit
coming in like, now, I used to send him them apples now and again. He was that fond
of fruit.
„It
was wonderful how the Party grew. I know because I hung on all those first hard
months, and went to every meeting, and saw how they had to be held in a bigger
room every time. We soon outgrew the Sterneckerbräu. We went after that to the
Hof-bräukeller, then to the Eberlkeller. Then Hitler rented a little sort of
office called the * Deutsches Reich.’ Things was really looking up.
„But
the meeting I remember best was that big one they held one November, 1921 – the
4th to be exact – in the assembly room of the Hofbräuhaus, when they had that
terrific dust up with the Communists. A real battle that was! I shan’t ever
forget it as long as I live. If I hadn’t kept my head low over the table that
night and folded my arms above it, like all the rest of us women was told to
do, sure as fate it would have been clean knocked off my shoulders. The beer
mugs were flying around that night something alarming!
„Not
long before this meeting was billed to come off there’d been an attack made on
one of the members of the Landtag, Herr Auer. No one seems to have witnessed
it. Auer himself seemed to think his own bravery saved him. But the Party he
belonged to set it
about that it was the new Hitler Party what had done it. They went about all
they knew to stir up the people and egg the working folk on to get a blow in at
the Nazis. Everyone knew – everyone of us I mean – knew that something would be
tried, that night, to bust up our meeting. We didn’t take it too serious as we were
pretty well used to this sort of threats which so far hadn’t gone no further.
This time, though, was to be different 1
„It
was to begin sharp at eight o’clock. My neighbour came to fetch me as usual.
The first thing we saw as we went in was a group of young men standing about
the entrance each with a band round his arms with a hooked cross on it. They
were ex-service chaps, friends of Hitler from Traunstein. I heard him come up
and tell them to keep order at all costs. He spoke sharp and soldier-like; said
he’d rip them bands off their arms if so much as one of them showed the white
feather. No one of them was to clear out unless he cleared out dead! He smiled
though, and added he knew well enough as they wouldn’t!
„The
place was pretty well full. We womenfolk
were
told to get well up in front: it would be safest there, far from the doors. I
was too excited really to be frightened. It was plain there’d be some trouble: half
the people in the place belonged to the Reds. I found a table right in front.
Then they came and set another near it, and a Herr Esser got up on it to open
the meeting. As soon as he jumped down again, Herr Hitler took his place. They
greeted him with a few boos and yells, but after a bit he gripped even the
enemy, and was speaking without interruption for quite an hour, before things
began to look threatening again.
„People
were drinking and attending all ears. Then I noticed that whenever more beer
was called for, instead of giving up the empty mugs, fresh ones were brought,
and the old ones were piled under the tables, whole batteries of beer mugs grew
up under the tables.. ..
„Hitler
had been speaking some time when the sign was given. Someone shouted “Freiheit,’
and a beer pot went crash! That was the signal for things to begin. Three,
four, five heavy stone pots flew by within an inch of the speaker’s head, and
next instant his young guards sprang forward shouting to us women to “duck down!“
„We
ducked sharp enough! The row was ear-splitting. Never heard anything like it in
your life! Pandemonium had broken out; it’s no use me trying to describe it.
One heard nothing but yells, crashing beer mugs, stamping and struggling, the
overturning of heavy oaken tables, and the smashing up of wooden chairs. A
regular battle raged in the room.
„Hitler
stuck to his post. Never got off that table! He made no effort to shield
himself at all. He was the target of it all: it’s a sheer miracle how he never
got hit. Them murderous heavy mugs was flying at his head all the time. I know
because I got a sharp look round just between whiles: there he stuck, quiet as
a statue waiting for those boys of his to get the tumult under. Goodness only
knows how long it went on – twenty minutes perhaps, but it seemed never ending.
The Reds was five times as many as we Hitlerites. The boys with the arm-bands
were enormously outnumbered. They were in a fine state I can tell you before
order was restored, their jackets torn half off their backs, and their faces
all patched and dabbled with blood. Anyhow, they did get the Reds outside
somehow, and then, cool as a cucumber, up gets Herr Esser beside Herr Hitler
and calmly announces that the meeting will go on. The speaker was to continued.
„That’s
famous now. Everyone in Germany remembers them words: „Die Versammlung geht
weiter“
. .
. „The Speaker will proceed.”
„The
room was simply wrecked. There was over four hundred smashed beer mugs lying
about everywhere, and piles of broken chairs.
„This,
you know, was the first time them Reds got as good as they gave. This was the
first time since the Revolution as anyone got up and gave them the no to their
face – the first time they got roundly trounced and walloped themselves. I say
it was the real beginning of our Party as a force and power.
„Ever
after this Hitler’s young men what he told off to keep order were called the
Storm Troops. People ought to have seen that fight and that room afterwards to
know how necessary they were. We should have gone under, for good, then and
there, without the „Saal- Schutz.’ Because from now on the Movement had to
fight and fight and fight, and always – at first – at tremendous odds. Up to
now the Reds had had it all their own way. It was always them what did the
smashing up and the storming of other people: they’d done enough here in Munich
1 Now they was to meet a Party what wouldn’t take it from them lying down no
more....”
Frau
Schweyer had become quite excited as she retailed the story. Something of the
light of battle flashed in her eyes again. They were brave women who attended
Hitler’s first meetings.
„But
then,” she said, „you see we knew him, what sort of a man he was! I’ll tell you
– -just one little thing:
„In
the middle of December the year after he’d been shut up in Landsberg, we
National Socialists in Munich heard that he was to be set free. Just before
Christmas, too, on the 20th. We was wild with joy! We hadn’t expected that.
We’d been thinking how miserable everything would be this year. Then between us
we struck on a bright idea to welcome him. He would come out of the fortress
just as desperately poor as he went in. So we arranged to have a bit of a
collection, just in our part of the city, so as he should have a little money
to put in his pocket straight away. Altogether we scraped up about fifty marks.
But more than that – on the day itself we filled his old room in the house
opposite my shop with flowers (although it was winter time), and covered the
poor table with good things to eat, and saw that there was fruit and stuff in
the cupboard. We even secured a bottle of wine for the occasion, although we
knew he never touched it.
„It
was December 20th, 1924, a raw, grey, miserable day. The hours dragged by; I
began to be mortal afraid somehow that he wouldn’t come after all. I was always
running to the door and looking up and down our street. And then, sure enough,
about two o’clock in the afternoon a motor drove up to the house opposite.
Hitler was in it. I saw him through the window. He got out and was just going
in at the door, when he turned round and caught sight of me standing staring
across the way. He just came over and shook me by the hand and said: „Grtiss
Gott, Frau Schweyer,’ as though nothing had happened at all in all that long
sad time since we’d seen each other last.
„His
hand was icy cold and his grip was like iron. It gives me the creeps to think
how cold and how hard it was, to this day. I remember the thought went through
my head – how awful to incur the enmity of such a fist as that! I couldn’t say
a word. My throat swelled and the tears would come. It was such a joy to see
him back again.
„Well,
he had come, anyway! I went back into the shop all flustered, thinking of his
climbing those stairs opposite and coming into his old room, and finding the
flowers and the eatables and our little preparations for his welcome. I could
just imagine him sitting down in the middle of it all and starting to think of
nothing but how to get the Party going again.
„An
hour or two went by and then a neighbour of mine come into the shop asking for
a subscription to the organ fund for St. Anne’s Church. She had a list with
her. I couldn’t afford much; nor could anybody else apparently. All down the
list people had only been able to give a few Pfennige each. We were only poor
folks round about there. Frau Pfister agreed. We had a little talk together.
She said what awful difficult work it was to get anybody to subscribe for the
organ, times was that hard. And I suddenly said, Well, go over to Herr Hitler,
see if he’d give you anything. I know he’s got a bit. Tell him what it’s for.
He’s not the one to say no.’
„Frau
Pfister got up and crossed the street. I watched her enter the house opposite.
„In
a few minutes she came flying back, radiant, and thrust the list under my nose,
so that I could see for myself what an incredible lot Herr Hitler had given.
„Fifty
marks! There it was, just under his name, Adolf Hitler.
„I
could scarcely believe my eyes. I stared at the figure, stared at Frau Pfister,
took off my glasses and looked again – „Adolf Hitler, fifty marks.’
„Well,
I never!“ I exclaimed, „if the Führer hasn’t gone and given the whole lot away!“
„Frau
Pfister nodded, beaming.
„He
was that kind,’ she said, „do listen! He
opened
the door to me himself and asked what I wanted. When I told him, he made me
come in and sit down. So I did and Herr Hitler catched hold of a glass and
filled it with wine and gave it to me, with a cake and said I was to eat and
drink. I didn’t like to. I tried to excuse myself. I said as how the things on
the table was all for him. But he would have it, “Now you do as I bid,’ he
said, “I don’t drink wine, but that little drop it won’t hurt you.’ Then he
reaches for my paper, glances at it and scribbles something under his own name.
He puts it down and goes over to a little side table, pulls out a drawer and
comes back and pushes fifty marks over to me. “There you are,’ he says, “I’d
give you more, but that’s all I’ve got. Some friends of mine have just dotted
that up for me.’ I gaped and couldn’t for the moment find a blessed word to
say, but he read my face clear as a book and laughed and added, “Believe it or
not as you like, but I’m jolly glad to have it to give. It’s a good object. The
priests don’t particularly love me, but that’s neither here nor there.’
„ I
tried to thank him, but he shut me up. He wouldn’t hear a word… “.
„He
used,” Frau Schweyer concluded, „to come across to the shop as long as he lived
in our street, and often afterwards when he had become a very much bigger man.
He didn’t forget me. When my husband died in 1929 Hitler was in Leipzig. But he
sent me a lovely wreath and wrote ever such a nice letter with it.
„People
needn’t wonder why we love the Führer. He was always for us small folk. He
never had no time and no wish to think of himself. He was always out for
everybody but himself. ...”
