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In the early 1920's War-Veteran Hitler plunged into local Munich politics, rose by sheer gift of gab, lung power and personal magnetism to such eminence that on the night of Nov. 8, 1923 he with General Erich Ludendorff attempted the famed "Beer Putsch." In the presence of the Military Governor of Bavaria, General von Kahr, spellbinder Hitler leaped upon a beer-greasy table and bellowed:
"I proclaim the Nationalist Revolution! Von Kahr and his brother officers will please join me. I guarantee their safety."
Governor von Kahr did join Hitler & Ludendorff ("at the point of a pistol," he afterwards testified). Enough other beer-soused Bavarians joined to make it necessary for a Reichswehr regiment to shoot several people. When Ludendorff & Hitler were tried for high treason the General was acquitted, the upstart given a light prison sentence from which he was released in a few months ("as insane," say enemies).
Starting from scratch again, but with confidence in his own spellbindery, Adolf Hitler slowly worked up the fantastic party he calls National Socialist, Nazi Fascist. Its program consists of stentorian appeals to every form of German prejudice. Essentially Nationalists and patrioteers, the Nazis insert "Socialist" into their party's name simply as a lure to discontented workers.
"Marxism is not Socialism!" Herr Hitler has absurdly postulated. "The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shant take Socialism away from the Socialists."
Today it is no exaggeration to state that the Nazi Party is pledged to so many things that it is pledged to nothing. Abolition of interest ("usury"), expulsion of Jews from Germany, confiscation of department stores and the parceling out of their different departments to small merchants: these are but three pledges mouthed at Nazi mass meetings. More basic are the Party's pledges to "scrap" the Treaty of Versailles and pay not a pfennig more in Reparations—but all German statesmen have those aims!
That precisely is the point. In so far as it has a doctrine, National Socialism promises the bulk of the German people whatever they want. Also its "Storm Battalions" offer shelter, food and a pittance to perhaps 200,000 German unemployed. The money comes from rich Germans who expect favors from Chancellor Hitler and from every German who has dropped a copper into the box thrust at him by a young Storm Trooper.
Results count, and are measured by votes. In 1928 the Party won a ludicrous twelve Reichstag seats; in 1930 it became second largest party with 107 seats. It has been largest since last August. The fact that entrenched, conservative German industrialists like Fritz Thyssen count themselves Herr Hitler's friends; the fact that ex-Kaiser Wilhelm's fourth Son Prince August ("Auwi") Wilhelm is a Nazi; and the fact that Germany's new Cabinet is so full of "safeguards," sufficiently explained last week the equanimity with which best posted observers greeted the advent of Chancellor Hitler.