Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

WAR IN THE RUHR 153putsch; he knew that these volatile and embittered young soldiers spenttheir evenings in the back rooms o£ obscure beer halls near the MunichCathedral, reckoning how few companies would be needed to arrest agovernment, to occupy a railway station, to silence a telegraph office, toblock six bridges, and place machine guns in the most important cornerwindows in the center of the city. This was the world in which theyounger officers of this army lived, and everyone knew it. And theunknown man in the yellow coat, with the unexpressive mustached faceand the murderous eye, was mysteriously involved in all theseconspiracies. A passionate force, a confidence of victory,incomprehensible to outsiders, seemed to emanate from him.All this was known to the minister. He knew that at least oneresponsible general, Franz von Epp, favored the conspiracies. He alsoknew that the really active force was Epp's adjutant, Rohm; and hesuspected that Captain Rohm and the beer-hall orator Hitler hungtogether like twins. What kind of state was it which its army did notsupport but was forever threatening to overthrow! Schweyer, the calm,gray-bearded minister, had written bitter letters to Berlin. Others hadwritten; the Social Democratic president of the Reich had complained.Reluctantly the Reichswehr Minister, a former mayor, had called hisgenerals to account. In the end the Berlin generals had conducted ahasty and inadequate investigation in Munich. They had separatedRohm from his superior, Epp, and had subjected him to the immediatesupervision of the general commandant of Bavaria. And to the latterpost they appointed a new man, disinclined to adventures: General Ottovon Lossow, a skeptical man, diplomatic and sly, believing in nothingbut his military profession. Rohm and Epp accused one another ofdisloyalty; between the two a coolness arose which lasted for years andperhaps exerted a decisive influence on National Socialism. Rohm, thehero of the counter-revolution, was accused of making money on secretarmament sales. Apparently nothing could be proved; he himselfsubsequently claimed to have been rehabilitated; but hardly a year later,in autumn, 1923, he resigned from the Reichswehr. Epp soon followedhim.The new commandant of the Reichswehr in Bavaria, von Lossow,