Filming us. Is so later in the question and answer portion, if you would please go to the microphone on this side so that you can be heard. After the event, before the signing, if you would please take your chairs and lean them helpst something solid, to make this store orderly looking again. At a time when there is growing unease among sensible people because of the rise of fascism, it is important for us to look toward the past and analyze the conditions that made fascism possible. So naturally, we turn to historians as our guides into the murky realm of the past. One such historian, david king, is here today. He is a fulbright scholar who earned his masters degree from cambridge, and a professor who taught european history at the university of kentucky, a New York Times bestselling writer, onhas written several books history including death in the city of lights. He is here to read from his new book, the trial of adolf hitler the beer hall putsch and the rise of nazi germany. Calls davids new work an astute work of scholarship and vivid narrative, meticulous research, deeply instructive work with great elements for the current era of rightwing insurgents. Saysr joseph cannon davids new book is a courtroom drama both farcical and ominous, and absorbing and detailed account of a crucial but overlooked chapter in hitlerss rise. It was once said that those who cant remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Please let us welcome who, with our with his writing and research, makes us remember. David king. [applause] david wow, thank you very much. Thank you for that warm welcome. Thank you for coming out today and being here. Can everyone hear me . Roaming when i talk, so i will try to stand here and be chained to the podium. It is a pleasure for me to be here. My publisher was going to book the tickets and i was like, no, we will make it a road trip. Some very special guests here. But what a wonderful bookstore. It is an honor for me to be here. Imagine for a moment, catching adolf hitler alive and hauling him into the courtroom and putting them on trial for his crimes, or at least part of his crimes . This is sometimes a dream, sometimes a promissory fantasy for a novel. Any novels have been written about this. Happened onually february 26, 1924, 9 years before hit looking to power. Hitlers into the courtroom in munich to stand trial for treason. This is because a few months ago in 1923, hitlers storm did to a crowded beer hall, fired a pistol into the air and declared a National Revolution had begun. But a National Revolution did not begin. Hitlers was eventually arrested, after hiding out and staying in the attic of a hadanamerican woman, who an unpublished memoir about hitlers, her guest over the weekend. This was the socalled beer hall putsch. Hitlers have become a laughing stock in many circles. His career seemed to be over. Newspaper wrote the obituary on the nazi party. Announcedork times hitlers career over, and it probably should have been over. What happened . It may not be what you think. It wasnt what i thought when i started researching. I started researching this book five years ago, five years fulltime. I had just finished my previous book, i death in the city of place in nazikes occupied paris, and a serial killer was chopping people up and got filthy rich from his murders. It was a true count. So i was looking for something a little less dark, ironically, and ended up here. I always go through a list of history topics on what i want to go through next, and the list usually gets longer than shorter. One wild idea after the next, one rabbit hole after the next. It was probably amusing and exasperating for my wife. The topic was in front of me. One of my favorite lectures i used to give when i used to teach at the university of kentucky was the beer hall putsch. German marksof that my motherinlaw got when she was living in germany, passing them around, this interested me, not just as an economic phenomenon, but as a social, psychological, cultural ordeal, the extremes rate 4. 2 marks to the dollar on the eve of world war i. By december 1918 it was eight to 101, 501, 1, 15 to 1, 1 thousand 1, 1 million to one, eventually goes down to hundreds of millions and bottoms out into the trillions to one. So your lifes savings wont buy a cup of coffee. Munich at this time cost 10 billion marks at the market. That is what originally thought of because there had been a book on the beer hall putsch in about 30 years, and i thought that the story had going for it the city as a turning point, sweeping action, melodrama, hyperinflation nightmare, the apocalypse of capitalism and it seemed at the time you had conspirators plotting revolution, a cast of characters, a young adolf hitler, terman goering, alfred goering harmon , alfredgoering rosenberg, others. To learn about somebody, look at them when they are young. I thought i would use the book about this putsch to learn about munich at the time. Munich was a sophisticated, cultured city, city of painters, romantics, bahamians. How did you come avon for the far right . If it could happen in munich, who is safe . That is how it went into it, and i got into this. Was started researching, i struck by something. All of the wonderful books, all the scholarship on adolf hitler, landmark studies, that there had never in a full book on the trial in the english language. He couldnt believe it. Wouldve the first books i remember on hitlers as a teenager, it was that nuremberg. Rial expert [inaudible] he was always most impressed with hitlers during the trial. His political skills were never more revealed during the trial, he said. I couldnt believe it. I thought it was astonishing. I thought there might be something wrong. I have had my heart broken many times, find a wonderful story and there are just not enough good, credible sources. Because when you are writing history, you have to have sources come he cant make it up. All the dialogue, accounts of the weather, it is all from the sources. I have never done historical fiction, so i would be lost. Windsor started looking at sources, i found out that this trial was a gold mine. Itself istranscript almost 3000 pages. The complete, unabridged copy of transcript, german verbatim dialogue, our after hour of hitlers on the stand, fencing with his opponents are just attacking them as he tries and does score the audience. The Munich Police files, thousands and thousands of pages. It was incredible. They linked the interviews and interrogations with many of the ringleaders, alfred rosenberg, heinrich himmler, heinrich hoffman, many other people. Officesrched nazi party and confiscated and inventoried everything they took, paintings on the wall, they found a gypsies andwo couldnt figure out who it belonged to, there were bicycles, almost like a mental pompeii. Damage to the beer hall, interviewing the beer hall manager, it was incredible. You have papers of the lawyers at the trial, both prosecution and defense. Theof my favorites was unpublished memoir of the deputy prosecutor with interviews of hitlers, and he was not impressed. You had the tickets to the trial, in his file, you had to have these passes to get in because they were afraid of riots and attacks, hooligans coming in and trying to free hitlers. So they had these special passes, and his was there. There was hate mail. Archive, was in the including something from the United States and how dare the prosecutor go after a patriot like hitlers . Memoirs a patriot like hitler . Was a memoir from hitlers bodyguard in munich. Up, maybe saved his life. The valet who is marching arm in arm with hitlers at the arm in arm with hitler at the putsch, his memoir. The memoir of the woman who hid hitler in the attic. There is a plan to get hitler away before the police come, because it will becoming eventually. And hews an ardent nazi has a motorcycle, and the plan goes put him in the sidecar of the motorcycle, cover him with blankets and spirit them away, but hitlers didnt go for t itler didnt go for that. Letters from caeri oering inn g swedish to her family back home in sweden. Language andormal you have to be careful because you could insult somebody, but there were letters in swedish ordeal, joboerings offers goering had in the jewish familyow a , kind jewish family saved goering, tended to his wounds at the putsch after he got shot. Were captured by the u. S. Army and had interviews with stormtroopers, the u. S. It wasptured this, and available on microfilm, so i had these things for years and had copies at home. There were reports of the u. S. [inaudible] landsberg. When i was researching a previous book, i discovered these files at a nuremberg fleamarket that had probably been stolen, or at least the director of the landsberg prison had been robbed and these ended up years later at a flea market, and it was everybody that visited him in prison, they would go in and say how long they get to stay. So that was a wonderful surprise. So i got my topic, the trial. In aen for port 26, 1924, former dining hall of the military academy because they didnt have a room big enough. Nd secure enough other this it was a massive undertaking. Nothing like it in germany in years, several papers said. There were about it doesnt defense lawyers, team of judges, 24 days of proceedings, reporters from all over germany, france, switzerland, britt, scandinavia and elsewhere to cover the sensational trial, a scandal from the get go. Hitlers would take the stand, speaking hour after hour in his doctoral voice. As wenot quite shrieking are used to, but he gets lots of great press covers it in detail, describing how we would speak and how he would. And they said if you hear hitlers, if you ever hear him when he is not screaming, it is unsettling. And he is just speaking lowering his voice, it is pretty frightening. That is hitlers, up close, across the room in all his narcissism, megalomania, mesmerizing demagoguery. One journalist in the audience, a future Pulitzer Prize winner, hr nick and bacher hr knickerbocker, said hitlers was one of the most spellbinding speakers of all time and the only speaker that was better hitler was leon trotsky. Hitlers in the spotlight and getting a growing following. Didtruggles with the truth, not want the truth to stand in the way of a good line. Most mous post boast ofis famous turning a party of seven people into millions, he says it in the trial, he says it in mein kampf, it is not true, they did not have a party of millions. Police raided the party office, one of the nazi workers in the saying hete a letter only has 55,000 some members. He said it was a group with millions. So he takes the crowd into a world of alternative facts while exploiting the lower instincts of the crowd, going to the least intelligent person of the room. This is not a theater, the judge would say any times. And hitlers pope not to the courtroom and hit he spoke thanks to the presiding judge who had his own reasons. The judge always looked at it as this ardent nationalist and he was. I do not want to spoil it. He had Something Else going on. And because of that, hitler was speaking to the biggest audience he had ever had. It was not just a beer hall in munich. It was a courtroom. All of germany and the world. This would be his first major autobiography, premein kampf, and he uses it to spread a mythology about himself and this is an incredible moment in history in many ways. He faced high treason. He did not deny it. In fact, he bragged about it. Lengthy prison sentence. After all, hitler was not german. The law said he should be deported. There were day by day glowing reviews. There was less and less. You could still see reporters misspelling hitler with two ts, or new zealand, when he is bragging about his military background, lt. Col. Hitler. The irony of thinking about him like that. These mistakes would be less and less common as the trial goes on. By the end, hitler is more and more powerful. Hes not this buffoon who botched the putsch. So he turns the tables on his accusers. Im not the traitor. Its the government. The traitors in the government. They will write the semiautobiographical manifesto mein kampf, and would use the trial as the basis for some of it and rebuild his party, which had fallen into squabbling factions. During this latest period of the putsch, the trial of hitler is not just a sensational, terrific scandal, as many reporters noted at the time it was a catastrophe. He was not locked up as the lot aw required. He was not supported. It turns out, hitler was even on parole when he went to the beer hall. He was already on parole. So, he gets out. They thought that there were no more effective ways to undermine the constitution. Thank you. [applause] prof. King does anybody have any questions . Yes. Let me ask a question. Im from the caribbean. But i grew up in the netherlands. There was still a tremendous rage at that time. I can remember, those who were involved in some resistance. This leaves a few questions. The first question is a book has been published, 10 or 15 years ago now about the german legal system, that the german legal system started in the netherlands. But the premise of the book is the german legal system from the late 1800s had been undermined with profound antisemitism and it was basically there to be had by the coming nazis. That is the first question. The second question is how hitler uses a lot of the modeling that was going on in the United States in germany, right . The violence against the minorities, etc. , etc. As he develops his political programs, right . And ultimately, the last one would be he never won the majority of the popular vote in germany. He got rid of the parliament. He got enough of the parliament vote, right to be able to gain a power. How do you see these issues playing out and leading to the figure of hitler . Do you see a potential danger of not exactly hitler, but somebody like hitler coming to power again . Thank you. Prof. King ooh, yeah. I think antisemitism definitely, i think also one of the problems we have with the weimer system is, when they were making a republic, the judges who enforced the laws were still monarchists. It was very much oldstyle monarchists, and never really came to terms with this republic idea. It was germanys first republic. The weimar republic. Fragile, wrecked from within even as hitler comes to power. Never having the popular vote. I think thats one thing we see here. There was a statistician writing in the 1920s who had reviewed many cases and the german legal system. The vast majority would be let off basically with a slap on the wrist. If you compare it to suspects on the left who were far fewer, i have a lot of them in the book. You can see. They would have much harsher sentences. 10 or 12 years. They talked about how the legal system was this wellspring for the third reich because of the goals there is a system i can refer you to. They kept a lot of that. When hitler comes in, one of the things he does, he goes five years with the Peoples Court institution in munich at the time and they will recreate the Peoples Courts. He wont let them talk. He will not let them defend as he was allowed to do when he would just talk and talk and talk. I think you raise a lot of questions about the antisemitism and the challenges they would have. A followup to what you just said im a lawyer among other things. What was it that gave hitler such an advantage. You have a lot of people talking about the third right and how him third reich and how important it was that people cooperated with its . There was something about the legal system that made the totalitarianism of it easier. It fit in with what they had. What was it about the law . Prof. King i think there are a couple things. The way that it worked at the time, the defendant would be allowed to talk, question witnesses. And hitler will do that. The judge will be criticized by a lot of people behind the scenes for not taking more control of the situation, allowing him to speak on and on and on. He said, well, i wanted to make sure they could present their case to the people. The judge at this time is working with that. They also have these closed sessions you go into. In fact, there is even a trial held behind closed doors. A lot of the trial will be held behind closed doors. A lot of the transcripts in 1924, they dont have access to these closed doors, but the germans in the 1990s published a wonderful addition. The transcript has the closed sessions. That is another strategic ploy they will be working with. You make your case behind a closed door session. And they have a lot to hide because of the versailles treaty. Germany seems like an almost unguarded arms dump. France had these very strict rules on what you could have after the war, 100,000 people, limit to everything. They are hiding these things, the guns. Hitler hid in a fraternity society. They dont want this out. The french are following this. The french papers are wonderful sources for this because they expected this all along. They had all these patriotic societies, a bit like the stormtroopers. They were helping the army. They were able to help shield these weapons. That is another thing they have to guard. They dont want that to come out. They dont want the involvement of the bavarian government to come out. The judge is trying to protect, exactly. Thank you. The way i understand it is the featured speaker at the beer hall was to be ludendorff, not hitler. Hitler claimed he was like the drummer for ludendorff. You may have a different view on this. My question is how did hitler displace ludendorff as the sort of leader of germany . Great questions. The speaker the night of the beer hall was going to be the general state commissioner, who is almost he was appointed. The german currency was going crazy. This was at the height of that. They appointed this guy, gave him strong executive powers leaning on the dictatorial side. He was going to speak. We have a found invitation to the beer hall that night when he was going to speak. Ludendorff, he had seen him that afternoon. Hitler will show up because hitler will send three or four people out to bring him in. Ludendorff will always deny, one of the famous generals of world war i, the far right, one of the most one of the best generals ever. He comes in, he pretends not to be associated. Some major hitler biographers, he will be described coming in in his uniform. He wore civilian clothes because he has a cover in case all goes wrong. He seems to cover his bases very well. But you are right, there is another transition here because ludendorff was an idol to the far right for a lot of reasons. The right, he is seen more of a National Hero at the beginning. As the trial goes on, ludendorff does not come out very well compared to hitler. If you see the press reports, you see the ludendorff trial first. You start to see hitler replacing him. Hitler will take the responsibility. He is like, yeah, i did this, i take responsibility. They say ludendorff is blaming everyone except himself. He doesnt come across one french communist newspaper is having a ball with ludendorff. He does not come out well at all. Ludendorff will run for office after