referring to the puny, post-Versailles German Army. “There’s
not one German soldier who will open fire on Ludendorff.”
Two days later Seisser told his officers to get ready for the
March on Berlin.
In Berlin [he pronounced in this speech] there’s a
Jew-boy government. It is quite incapable of restoring
the Reich to good health. So Mr. von Kahr’s intention
is to heal Germany, taking Bavaria as the starting
point. The Reich government is going to be over-
thrown and replaced by a dictatorship of a handful of
nationalists. For the March on Berlin we shall make
units of the state police available with immediate
effect.Police Captain Ruder took a shorthand note of these words.
Since Hermann Göring and dozens of others would be scythed
down by state-police machine-gun bullets only a few days later,
they took some explaining at the Hitler trial as did the fact
that Seisser had ordered on October , , a massive increase
in munitions output, which could only have been in anticipa-
tion of the March on Berlin.
There was quite evidently no time to be lost. German cur-
rency was inflating to galactic figures. At the end of October
, one U.S. dollar would cost , million Reichsmarks.
After visiting General von Lossow, SA Commander
Hermann Göring told his officers, “Lossow is with us. We’re on
our way!”
Almost at once, however, Hitler detected signs that the tri-
umvirate was getting cold feet. Lossow inexplicably banned his
public meetings after October . To cheering Nazi supporters
packing the Krone Circus amphitheater that evening Hitler de-
clared, “The German problem will be solved for me only when