declared. “We’re not separatists. What we say is, ‘Let’s March on
Berlin!’ For two months Berlin has spouted one lie after another.
What else can you expect from such a gang of Jews? Fall in be-
hind Kahr!” he appealed. “As from today we’re marching side
by side with Hitler.”
All of this came out at the later trial. “The authorities,”
Hitler testified there, “the state policy, and the army, now re-
sumed the training of our Sturmabteilung in their barracks.” To
rub this point in he added, “From Day One our troops were
training in launching a mobile war of attack northward,” i.e.,
against Berlin.
Hitler and Göring emphasized in their instructions to the
Combat League that they would be marching side by side with
the army. In his ten-minute speech to Göring’s SA commanders
on October , at Nazi party headquarters in Munich, Hitler
underlined that there must be the closest collaboration between
the Combat League, the army, and the police. “I would be an
idiot,” he stated, “to attempt anything against them.” Göring for
his part outlined in detail how the Combat League “troops”
would be spliced into the nationalist army for the March on
Berlin. General von Ludendorff would march at their head.
Gregor Strasser, commander of the SA battalion at Land-
shut, later testified that Göring harped on the need to act in
“total conformity” with the regular army. When Strasser ob-
jected that his battalion’s weapons were all rusty and unusable,
Göring assured him that the army had agreed to clean and re-
store the guns in time. On the next day Lieutenant Hoffmann,
at the th Infantry Regiment barracks, indicated that the
march would take place in two weeks’ time, and Strasser ar-
ranged to deliver seven hundred rifles to the barracks for serv-
icing before then.
That same afternoon, October , , Lossow told the