Before the signing youwould please take your chairs and lean against something solid just to help us. Make us orderly looking again. Okay, so todays event. At a time when there is a growing sense of unease among sensible people because of the rise of fascism, is now important for us to look toward the past and analyze the conditions that made fascism possible. So naturally we turn to our historians as our guide into the murky labyrinth of the past. One such historian, david king is here with us today. He is a fulbright scholar earned his masters degree from cambridge. And aprofessor who once thought the european history at the university of kentucky. Hes a New York Times bestselling writer who has written several acclaimed books of history such as death in the city of light. He is here with us today to read from his new book the trials of adolf hitler the beer hall putsch and the rise nazi germany. Kirkus reviews calls davids new work and astute work of scholarship and vivid narrative. A meticulously researched, deeply instructive work with great relevance for our current eraof rightwing resurgence. And joseph and writer of the book shepherds says david new book is a courtroom drama both farcical and ominous. And absorbing details accounts of a crucial but often overlooked chapter in settlers rise. George sent the on a once said those of us who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Please let us welcome who with his writing and research makes us remember, david king. [applause] thank you very much, thank you for that warm welcome, thank you for coming out here today. Can everyone hear me okay. Im use to roaming when i talk so i will try to stand behind here and stay chained to the podium, see how that goes. I want to make sure everyone can hear me so thanks for coming out today. Its a pleasure for me to be here. And coming up, the publisher is going to book the tickets and im like no, no. We will make it a road trip and i have my family, special guests over here. Their mind uses and we would not be late and more unforeseen experiences but what a wonderful bookstore here. Its an honor to be here. Imagine for a moment catching adolf hitler alive and hauling him into a courtroom and putting him on trial for his crimes. For his partners crimes. This is sometimes a dream, sometimes a premise or fan fantasy for a novel, many novels have been written about this. Well, it actually happened. February 26, 1924. Nine years before hitler came to power. Hitler entered the courtroom in munich to stand trial for high treason. This leaked out a few months ago in november 1923, hitler stormed into a crowded beer hall, fired a pistol into the air and declared the National Revolution had become. But the National Revolution did not begin. Instead, hitler eventually was arrested after hiding out and actually saying in the attic on a germanamerican woman who left an incredible unpublished handwritten memoir of hitler, her guest for the weekend. This is the socalled beer hall putsch and it had failed. Hitler had become a laughing stock in many circles and his career seemed to be over. Even the great newspapers like the frankfurt site bird wrote an obituary on the nazi party. The New York Times announced hitlers career being over. And it probably should have been over. Well, what happened . It may not be what you think, it certainly wasnt what i thought and i started researching this. I started researching this book five years ago, five years fulltime. I just finished my previous book, a death in the city of light which takes place in nazi occupied paris. A serial killer was on the loose and he got filthy rich from his murderers. True story and its a gruesome account so i was looking for something a little less dark and ended up here. Its on the list of history topics, when i need to work on next and these lists seem to get longer every book i write and i was chasing down one wild idea after the next. One rabbit hole after the next. One state after the next and these are probably amusing and exasperating for my wife and everyone i encounter and tell them about the latest idea. I look like a crazy person. All the while the topic was there in front of me. My favorite lectures i used together, i used to teach at the university of kentucky was on the the trials of adolf hitler the beer hall putsch and the rise nazi germany beer hall putsch. I bring in the German Market that my motherinlaw, my swedish motherinlaw, she went to germany and i bring in these millions of marches and pass them around so that was the reason i thought but this is something that interested me and not just as an economic but as a social, cultural, ecological ordeal. The Exchange Rate being fourpoint remarks for now on the eve of world war i. By december 1918 it was 81. Then it goes down. 15 to 1, 21, 501, about one, 1 million to one. It eventually goes down to hundreds of millions and bottoms out to the trillions. Trillions to one. Your life savings, wanting to buy a couple coffee. Red cabbage in munich at this time is 10 billion marks in the market. So thisnightmare , thats what i originally thought of as i had done on both on the porch at that time in those years and i thought the story had a lot going for it. It was a city at a turning point. You have a sweeping action and the drama, the melodrama the inflation nightmare, the apocalypse of capitalism it seemed at the time and the conspirators plotting revolution. You had a cast of characters who were a young adolf hitler, goering, Alfred Rosenberg and many others. Many future leaders of the third reich, all young, all in munich at this time. People in nuremberg, war crimes trial already here. As you say, we learn about somebody when they, get them when they are young. You can use this beer hall putsch to understand munich at the time because i was also dumbstruck by this shift of the munich, what a sophisticated, cultured city. A city of painters and poets and romantics and dreamers and bohemians. How did it become a haven for the far right . I think it happened in munich. Was he, that was how i went into it. As i got into this, i thought wow, i couldnt believe i had done a book in 30 years that i started researching it, i was by Something Else. All the wonderful books, the vast scholarship adolf hitler, the classic biographies and i had never written a book on the trial. A number of the look on the trial in the english language, i couldnt believe that because one of the first books i read was alan bullock, an oxford professor at saint Marks Catholic College wasnt the november trial expert, expert on classics from a long time ago so he said he was always most impressed with hitler during the trial. Some of his political skills were never more revealed that during the trial, he said. Yet there had never been what, i couldnt believe it. I thought this was astonishing, maybe something had gone wrong. Thats been a dealbreaker for me many times, i had my heart broken many times to find this wonderful story story and theres not enough good credible sources. Your writing history and if you dont have sources, you can make it up. All the dialogue, although whether its all from the source and ive never done historical fiction so i would be out of but when i started looking at the sources i found out with this trial, it was a gold mine. The trial transcript itself, almost a 3000 page. The complete unabridged copy of the original german transcript, pervading dialogue. Our after hour of hitler on the stand fencing with his opponents or just attacking them as he tries and does score with the audience. The Munich Police files, thousands and thousands of pages here. It was incredible. Lengthy interviews and interrogations with many of the ringleaders, anyway they can catch however rosenberg , heinrich himmler, many other people. It starts the nazi Party Offices confiscated, inventories, everything they took. You have paintings on the wall, i found the pictures and they found a picture of these as they quote, to gypsies and they couldnt figure out who it belonged to. Its the bicycles, it was almost like a mental pompeii. It was like the nazi party, all that was there. The damage to the beer hall, interviewing the beer hall manager, it was incredible. He had the papers of the warriors at the trial, both fusion and defense. One of my favorites was this unpublished memoir of the deputy prosecutor who reduce hitler after he interviewed him for his first time. He was not impressed. Among other things in his file have the tickets to the trial, you had to have these admission passes to get in because they were very much afraid of riots and attacks and thugs and hooligans coming in and trying to free hitler. You had happy special passes, is was there. Memoirs area of course there was a male, a quick mail was in the archive in munich. They hate mail from the prosecutor in the united states, the prosecutor, go after somebody on patriot like hitler. Memoirs, besides the obvious public ones there were unpublished memoirs by hitlers bodyguard. There was in munich, he could just sign up, jumping in front of hitler. Maybe save his life. At the ballet of the guy whos marking arm and arm with hitler at theputsch who dies. His ballet, a published memoir. It goes on and on. Unpublished handwritten notes of the woman who hid her in her describing hitler showing up, how hitler is blaming people like Erich Ludendorff for the favor failure. Its a plan to get hitler away before the group comes eventually including she gets a plumber who one of the nazis she knows and she had he has a motorcycle so the plan was, the sidecar and the motorcycle, throws a blanket and park over it and send him away but hitler didnt go for that. Other writings. The letters of goerings wife who is swedish. She got home to her family in sweden and this is always fun because she is fine. She reads my german and in germany, i have to struggle, i have to concentrate hundred percent before swedish will come out. Its too close, Speed Reading is one thing but the swedish is the most formal language so you have to be careful, you can insult somebody with it. But there were letters in the swedish describing his time of the putsch, and job offers that goering had in the meantime. Or how a jewish family, kind jewish family saved goering early, tended to his wounds in the putsch after he got shot. Of course the nazi files, the house which was captured by the u. S. Army had always all these interviews with storm troopers. Us army captured this and brought it back to germany so this was available in microfilm, they had these things for years. Its also the reports of us vice counsel who claimed to live across from hitler and later on but he did not do it at this time, landsberg. He followed and was researching a previous book. He discovered these files in nuremberg fleamarket, which probably had been stolen or at least they end up in the free market, the director of landsberg prison had been robbed and somehow ended up years later at the fleamarket and everybody visited the prison. You go in and you get to stay. So that was a wonderful surprise. I got in my topic, the trial opened february 26, 1974 and in the signing hall of the military academy because they didnt have a room big enough or secure enough then this. Theres a massive undertaking. Nothing like in germany for years, there are about a dozen defense lawyers, a team of judges, 24 days of proceedings, reporters came from all over germany and europe, france, switzerland, and the navy and elsewhere to cover the sensational trial. It seemed endless from the getgo. And hitler takes the stand, chief defendant hour after hour and it was this very guttural voice. Hes not quite shrieking as we are used too it seems but again, the press covered this in great detail describing how he would speak and how he would move. Sometimes you hear hitler, youve never heard him when hes not screaming. Somehow hes dismissed as a screaming lunatic but speaking slowly, his voice was guttural. It was pretty frightening. But thats hitler here, up close, across the room, hitler and all his narcissism, all his megalomania, his mesmerizing demagoguery. One journalist in the audience was a future Pulitzer Prize winner, but hitler was probably the greatest spell binder of all time. And then he says in his memoir, actually his probably number two. One person that was a better speaker than hitler, trotsky. So we see hitler in all his talents, all his incompetence. Hitler under pressure, acting in the spotlight and hes getting a growing following. With ruthless selectivity he struggles with the truth which he did not want to stand in the way of a good line. He has a famous most of his party, probably all Seven Members in the back room into a movement of millions, the party was always a movement for hitler. He says it at the trial, he says it and its not true. He did not have millions. Because the police files, they raise the office. They tried to get the files, he didnt get the file but one did not see workers in the office wrote a letter, he had 55,787 members. Not exactly a movement of millions. So hitler would take the crowd into a world of distorted facts, all the while he exploited the lower instance of the crowd and you might say the least intelligent person of the room. This is not the inner, the judge would say many times. And hitler spoke not to a courtroom but thanks to the presiding judge who had his own reasons, that was another big surprise for me. The judge was always presented as this are nationalist and he was but he had Something Else going on. And i dont want to spoil it. Ill tell you afterwards but he had Something Else going on. And because of that, hitler is speaking to the biggest audience hes ever had. Its not just people in the beer hall in munich in a courtroom, and thanks to the reporters and judges, all of germany. And the world. So this would be his first major autobiography and he uses it to spread a mythology about himself and this was an incredible moment in history in many ways. The authorities had hitler in their hands. He face high treason. He did not deny it. In fact, he bragged about it. The fault was on the side of the prosecutors. A lengthy prison sentence and then deportation. After all, hitler was not german, hes austrian and the law says he should be deported as a foreigner. This was the chance to remove him and instead you see day by day glowing reviews from the far right. He becomes less and less marked, during the trial you even see reporters misspelling hitler with two ts and when hitler was writing about his military background, it was like Lieutenant Colonel hitler. Not with irony. Think of it like that and its less calling as the trial goes on. His background is less bungled and less marked as he goes on. So by the end hitler is far more powerful than ever before. Doctor methuen who fights the push is becoming more of a National Figure than he had been before. And some people a National Hero, a national martyr. So he turned the tables on his accusers. Im not the trader, its the government that are the traitors of the government, thats the enemy. And the court will send them off to landsberg where as you know he will write his historical manifesto mine, area hes at the trial, and the basis for some of it. And rebuild his party which had been banned, fallen into squabbling factions. It seemed like hitler on the way to the dustbin of history. But hitler believed this. Of the putsch and the prison was much more dangerous enemy to the german republic and the world. So the trial of hitler is not short, its not just sensational, or a terrible scandal as many reporters noted at the time, it was a catastrophe. He was not locked up as the law required. He was deported. He would be released on parole and it turns out hitler receiving parole when he went to the beer hall, because of the crime at the beer hall, he was already on parole. But he gets out and he will find new, more effective ways than the beer hall putsch to undermine the constitution, Civil Liberties and a fragile democracy. You. [applause] does anybody have any questions . Im from the caribbean but i grew up in the netherlands. And when i went to the netherlands there was still a tremendous rage against germany at that point in time. I could remember that and i grew up along people who were involved in some resistance type i think so this has a few questions, the first question is i dont know if you have it in your book but a book is being published 10 or 15 years ago now about the problem with the german legal system that the german legal system not in the netherlands but the importance is that the premise of the book that the german legal system was very much in league in the 1800, 1890s beginning of the 1900s. Had been undermined with a profound sense of antisemitism. And that it basically was the year to be had by the by the ozzie. The second question is how hitler who as he develops his poll uses a lot of the modeling that was going on in the united states. In germany, right . Uses them and their violence against minorities, etc. Etc. So what do you have to say about that, you see that developing and as he develops his political program. And ultimately the last one would be you know, he never one the majority of the popular vote in germany, right . He got rid of the parliament but he got enough of the popular vote, right . Again, this is the situation germany was facing to be simply be in power so how do you see all of these issues playing out and leading to hitler and maybe the last question, do you see a potential danger not exactly hitler but somebody like hitler coming to the west again . Yeah, i think antisemitism definitely, i think also some of the problems we had with the wine bar system is when they were making a republic, a lot of the judges who forced the laws were still monarchists and were not removed from power like the judge in this case, weimar was an oldstyle monarchist and never really came to terms with this republic idea which was imposed. This was germanys first republic, theweimar republic , a fragile and eventually would direct from within. Never having the popular vote. But i think that was one thing that we see here. There was a statistician in the 1920s that went and reviewed many cases in the german legal system. This was up to about 1922 and out of the 350 rightwing suspects, a vast majority of these were going to be written offas a slap on the wrist. And compare it to the states on the left on the other hand which was far fewer, i have a lot of this in the book and you can see where they would have much harsher sentences, 10 to 12 years, a lot more