AT 8:45 PM ON NOVEMBER 8, 1923, ADOLF HITLER, THEN 34 and the little-known leader of a tiny, violent extremist group called the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, stormed into the crowded main hall of the Burgerbraukeller, a beer hall in the Bavarian state capital of Munich. Standing on a chair, Hitler fired his gun into the ceiling to gain attention. Then he bounded onto the stage at one end of the room and shouted: “The national revolution has broken out. This hall is occupied by 600 heavily armed men. No one is allowed to leave. If there is not immediate silence, I will have a Gatling gun set up in the gallery. The Bavarian government is hereby dismissed. The national government is dismissed. A provisional national government will be formed.” Outside, a large contingent of brown-shirted storm troopers surrounded the building, manning a Gatling gun mounted at the entrance to prevent people from entering or leaving. The Beer Hall Putsch had begun.
Hitler did not initially want to launch the putsch that evening. He had planned it for November 11, the fifth anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I— a day of abject shame and surrender for Germany in the eyes of the ultra-right. But Hitler moved the date forward when he learned that another group of prominent figures in right-wing Bavarian politics—Gustav Ritter von Kahr, Hans Ritter von Seisser, and Otto von Lossow—planned to hold a public meeting in the Burgerbraukeller on November 8, at which point they were going to announce their own coup aimed at toppling the government in Berlin.
