The Coming of the Third Reich (The Third Reich Trilogy Book 1)

by Richard J. Evans

Having secured his complete mastery over the Nazi Party, Hitler now enjoyed its full support for the propaganda campaign he quickly unfolded. It soon descended from provocation to violence. On 14 September 1921 a group of young Nazis went with Hitler to a meeting of the Bavarian League, a separatist organization, and marched onto the platform with the intention of silencing the speaker, Otto Ballerstedt. Someone switched all the lights off, and when they came on again, chants of ‘Hitler’ prevented Ballerstedt from continuing. As the audience protested, Hitler’s young thugs attacked the separatist leader, beat him up, and pushed him roughly off the platform onto the floor, where he lay bleeding profusely from a head wound. Soon the police appeared and closed the meeting down. Ballerstedt insisted on prosecuting Hitler, who duly served a month in Munich’s Stadelheim gaol. The police warned him that if he continued in this way he would be sent back to Austria as an alien. The warning had little effect. In early November 1921, shortly after his release, Hitler was at the centre of another beer-cellar brawl, with beer-mugs flying across the room as Nazis and Social Democrats traded blows. Soon the Nazis were arming themselves with knuckledusters, rubber truncheons, pistols and even grenades.