Seisser leaving consternation behind them. They saw no sign
of six hundred men surrounding the building, just a handful of
city police lolling around the foyer and a dozen SA storm troop-
ers under Göring’s command. The former air-force captain had
unbuttoned his black leather coat to reveal the blue enamel of
his Pour le Mérite.
“A fine mess your police have let us get into!” Kahr
snapped to Seisser.
“Put on an act,” advised General von Lossow, sotto voce.
More police were coming, but not to help them: When the
commander of the thirty-strong police detachment sent to the
hall had appealed to Göring for help, the latter had merely
tapped his watch and said with a broad grin, “Wait till eight-
forty. Frick’s coming then.” (Wilhelm Frick, chief of Munich’s
political police, had been a Hitler supporter for some time.) At
that very moment the Nazis’ code word, Safely Delivered, was
being telephoned to Frick at police headquarters and to a pay-
phone at the Löwenbräu beer hall, where Ernst Röhm had as-
sembled his Reichskriegsflagge men. The audience there saw
Röhm’s chauffeur whisper to him, then Röhm took the stage
and announced that the government had been overthrown and
that a new one was being formed. He instructed his “troops” to
form up outside for the march across town to join Hitler at the
Bürgerbräu.
Over at the Bürgerbräu beer hall Hitler’s captive audience
was growing restless as his deliberations with the triumvirate
dragged on. There were loud shouts of “Scandal!” and jeers of
“South America!” (in mocking reference to that continent’s fre-
quent petty revolutions). Colonel Kriebel ordered Göring to re-
store order; Göring put on his helmet, drew his gun, and waded
in through the throng. To most of the audience, the young man
who mounted the stage was unknown. Witnesses spoke later of