marchers began lustily singing the national anthem, while others
shouted, “Don’t shoot!” and “We have Ludendorff with us!”;
the sheer momentum of the march carried it right through the
cordon before the order to open fire could be given.
Munich’s burghers poured into the streets to watch the
unforgettable spectacle. Hitler’s two thousand doubled as the
citizens fell in behind. The marchers now broke into SA battle
songs. Passing the city hall, they could see its façade now draped
with the pre-Weimar colors, and there were loud cheers; a swas-
tika banner was run up its captured flagpole. “As we came
through the arch,” Colonel Kriebel testified, “we were greeted by
universal enthusiasm. The whole square was black with people,
and everybody was singing patriotic songs. They all fell in be-
hind, there were shouts of Heil, and then more singing.”
Many thought that the march would halt right there.
The first volley cut down the front rank of marchers in-
stantly. Dr. Weber saw a broad-shouldered man, Hitler’s body-
guard, bound forward. “Don’t shoot!” he called out before a
bullet felled him too. “It’s Ludendorff!” The general had
dropped with all the animal reflexes of a trained infantryman.
Hitler had been pulled violently to the ground by the dying
Kampfbund leader Scheubner-Richter, who had been shot
through the heart. Police swarmed down the steps of the Feld-
herrnhalle to finish off the injured. “I saw one Landespolizei offi-
cer,” Kriebel alleged at the trial, “put a round at three paces into
somebody lying on the ground it was either Ludendorff’s
valet or Hitler’s bodyguard. Then he reloaded and fired another
bullet into him so that the body kicked into the air.”
As the rattle of rifle fire ended, Hitler picked himself up.
Fourteen of his men, and four policemen, were dead. As for
Hermann Göring, Carin’s sister Fanny glimpsed him lying mo-
tionless in a widening pool of blood and thought that he too had