Hitler's failed 1923 coup in a Munich beer hall ended with nine months in prison
On a November evening in 1923, Adolf Hitler burst into a packed Munich beer hall, fired a pistol into the ceiling and announced that a national revolution had begun. Within a day the coup had collapsed in gunfire in the city centre, yet the treason trial that followed made him known across Germany for the first time.
Southern German cities of the era had vast beer halls where crowds drank and argued politics, and the Bürgerbräukeller was among Munich's biggest. In late September 1923, amid political violence, Bavaria declared a state of emergency and handed near-dictatorial powers to Gustav von Kahr, who governed alongside the state police chief Hans von Seisser and General Otto von Lossow. Kahr banned a series of mass meetings Hitler had announced, while quietly planning a nationalist dictatorship of his own without him. Inspired by Mussolini's March on Rome, Hitler decided to act first.
On 8 November, while Kahr addressed some 3,000 people, about 600 SA men surrounded the hall and a machine gun was set up inside. Hitler took the triumvirate into a side room at gunpoint and pressed them to join, having promised Lossow days earlier that he would attempt no coup. With the prestige of the war hero General Erich Ludendorff behind him, Hitler won the crowd's approval and extracted public pledges. Then he left to deal with a problem elsewhere, and around 22:30 Ludendorff let Kahr and his colleagues go. Elsewhere, an army captain locked 400 putschists inside the barracks they had come to raid.
By the next morning the plotters were lost. Ludendorff called for a march, and roughly 2,000 men set off with no clear goal before meeting a police line at the Odeonsplatz by the Feldherrnhalle. The exchange of fire killed sixteen Nazis, four police officers and a bystander. Hitler escaped to the countryside and was arrested two days later.
His 24-day trial drew wide coverage and handed him a platform. Convicted of treason and given five years in Landsberg Prison, he dictated Mein Kampf to Rudolf Hess and Emil Maurice and walked free on 20 December 1924 after nine months. He then switched to pursuing power through legal means and propaganda.
Source: Beer Hall Putsch
