
#Hitler speech trial#
The publicity surrounding the Beer Hall Putsch and Hitler’s subsequent trial turned him into a national figure. In the aftermath of the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler was convicted of treason and sentenced to five years in prison but spent less than a year behind bars (during which time he dictated the first volume of Mein Kampf, or My Struggle, his political autobiography). Hitler had hoped that the “putsch,” or coup d’etat, would spark a larger revolution against the national government. In 1923, Hitler and his followers staged the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, a failed takeover of the government in Bavaria, a state in southern Germany. Many dissatisfied former army officers in Munich joined the Nazis, including Ernst Röhm, the man responsible for recruiting the Sturmabteilung (SA) (“strong arm” squads) Hitler used to protect party meetings and attack opponents. Hitler soon emerged as a charismatic public speaker and began attracting new members with speeches blaming Jews and Marxists for Germany’s problems and espousing extreme nationalism and the concept of an Aryan “master race.” In July 1921, he assumed leadership of the organization, which by then had been renamed the Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party. Founded earlier that same year by a small group of men including locksmith Anton Drexler (1884-1942) and journalist Karl Harrer (1890-1926), the party promoted German nationalism and anti-Semitism, and felt that the Treaty of Versailles, the peace settlement that ended the war, was extremely unjust to Germany by burdening it with reparations it could never pay.

In 1919, army veteran Adolf Hitler, frustrated by Germany’s defeat in World War I, which had left the nation economically depressed and politically unstable, joined a fledgling political organization called the German Workers’ Party. After Germany’s defeat in World War II (1939-45), the Nazi Party was outlawed and many of its top officials were convicted of war crimes related to the murder of some 6 million European Jews during the Holocaust. In 1933, he became chancellor of Germany and his Nazi government soon assumed dictatorial powers. Hitler joined the party the year it was founded and became its leader in 1921. Founded in 1919 as the German Workers’ Party, the group promoted German pride and anti-Semitism, and expressed dissatisfaction with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the 1919 peace settlement that ended World War I (1914-1918) and required Germany to make numerous concessions and reparations. The National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party, grew into a mass movement and ruled Germany through totalitarian means from 1933 to 1945 under the leadership of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945).

Beer Hall Putsch Sends Hitler to Prison.
