cialist majority leader Albert Nussbaum at the trial, “all the way
across the square until we were tossed into a truck and driven off
to the Bürgerbräu.”
Hitler ran his eye over Göring’s ten new hostages without
enthusiasm. He said nothing, but ordered a lame hostage re-
leased.
A few minutes before noon the Nazis and storm troopers
formed up into a marching column outside the beer hall. Hitler
took his place in the front rank flanked by Göring and Luden-
dorff. “We leaders went out in front,” he proudly testified at the
trial, “because we’re not cast from the same mold as the Com-
munists. They like to lag behind a bit, while somebody else goes
over the top of the barricades.”
As they marched off, somebody shouted to the storm
troopers guarding the hostages it was probably Göring him-
self “If the army opens fire on us, you’ll have to bayonet them
or smash their skulls with your rifle butts!” (Colonel Kriebel had
ordered all firearms to be unloaded to avoid any accidental
shooting.) The two thousand or so marchers were led by two
flagbearers carrying the colors of the Nazi party and the Bund
Oberland, each flanked by two helmeted troopers with fixed
bayonets or drawn sabers. The Oberland column headed by
Weber was on the right, the column of SA and shock-troop men
headed by Göring and Hitler was on the left. Göring was
marching at Hitler’s immediate left. There was no clear plan of
action, nobody knew where the march was heading. As they
reached the river, they saw ten green-uniformed Landespolizei
officers forming a thin cordon across the Ludwig Bridge. An
hour earlier their officer had formally warned Göring and
Brückner that he would not allow any march to pass over his
bridge into the city center. They saw the Landespolizei clap am-
munition drums into their machine guns, but the first ranks of