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

200 DER FUEHRERa few moments, saw the following picture: The storm troopers marchedin gray or yellow wind-jackets and Norwegian ski caps (from which theS.A. cap was to develop). They carried their rifles over their shouldersand sang, apparently with no thought of fighting; as on parade.Suddenly the sound of firing was heard. It was an unexpected shock, noton the program. Two, perhaps three, volleys were heard, and for a fewseconds the heavy rat-tat-tat of a machine gun. The whole thing did notlast much more than half a minute. Time enough for the observer to runinto a house door. At the same time the long column began to halt, tobreak up, and to run back in leaderless flight.Ahead of all the rest the Leader fled. The day before Hitler had takena long chance, he had risked his head and he knew it; he had done it inhigh spirits and with good courage. Today he had gone into a venture,lost before it was begun. Unable to avoid it, he had staked his life on anaction which he knew to be useless. Now, leaving his men stretched outon the paving stones, he stood up and ran away.Thus did armed bohemia behave when things became serious andtheir lives were at stake. Walter Flex, their poet and model, once hadsaid that a man must be capable 'of shooting at the enemy through hisown body.' On November 9, 1923, there was none of this. One man whoreally wanted to fight was commanded by Rosenberg to stop. A fewweeks before, Communist workers in Hamburg had kept on shooting; in1919, the bloody struggles of the proletarians in Berlin had lasted fordays; the same was true in Munich in April and May of 1919, in March,1920, in the Ruhr, later in central Germany. In February, 1934, it tookthe Austrian Fascists with their cannon days to break the resistance ofthe workers— not to mention the fight which the Spanish Republicansput up for more than two years against the Fascist generals. Thesestruggles were serious and both sides realized that their heads were atstake. But in Munich it was a different type that faced the fire. We knowthe professions of the men who fell. Among the sixteen there was alocksmith, a hatter, a headwaiter, and Ludendorff's servant; the otherswere retired officers, or 'merchants' and 'bank clerks' — in reality,retired officers, temporarily in civilian occupa-