The Trial of Adolf Hitler

April 3, 2017
King (Death in the City of Light) affirms his reputation as a first-rate narrative historian in this well-researched analysis of Adolf Hitler’s trial for treason in the aftermath of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. Initially Hitler was a marginal figure; the focus was on national hero Erich Ludendorff. But in this fast-paced account, King demonstrates how Hitler increasingly came to dominate and define the proceedings. He understood, and took full advantage of, the court’s overriding desire to conceal the full extent of the conspiracy of leading public figures against the state of Bavaria and the Weimar Republic. Hitler used the courtroom as a public forum, talking for hours at a time of his vision of a Germany raised to greatness from the ashes of defeat. His speeches were described by one newspaper as “a serialized novel.” The trial’s presiding judge understood the value of the smokescreen this hitherto minor figure was providing, and Hitler’s conviction for high treason was a matter of form. His minimal sentence and eventual parole reflected the legal system’s collective conviction that he would sink back into obscurity. As King shows, Hitler’s trial made him a patriot and martyr to an increasing number of supporters, and the system’s contingent miscalculations facilitated Hitler’s rise to power.

Starred review from April 15, 2017
A highly detailed study of Hitler's failed putsch of Nov. 8, 1923, in Munich and the trial that "catapulted this relatively minor local leader onto the national stage."In an astute work of scholarship and vivid narrative of vying personalities and power, Kentucky-based historian King (Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris, 2011, etc.) chronicles the ill-planned, audacious attempt by a small but growing right-wing party of disaffected thugs to seize the reins of Bavarian government. Harnessing the postwar disillusionment with the "peace of shame," crippling reparations, hyperinflation, fall of the monarchy, and rise of a Socialist republic for the first time in German history, a number of right-wing groups emerged in the early 1920s, specifically Munich's "anti-republic, anti-parliament, anti-Communist, and anti-Semitic" National Socialist Party. Hitler was known as "a speaker who could fill the beer halls and whip the throngs into a frenzy." Seizing the moment--and backed by the party's paramilitary wing, the well-regarded war hero Gen. Erich Ludendorff, and Hitler's own band of murderous bodyguards--he did just that at Munich's Burgerbraukeller. In three parts, King illuminates this dark saga: first, the actual putsch, which entailed the party's taking of Bavarian government officials as hostages and storming the war ministry only to be removed by the Munich police when no real plan for a march on Berlin emerged; second, the monthlong Munich trial itself, which largely tapped into public sympathy for Hitler and his theories, resulting in a conviction for "high treason" yet a jail sentence that allowed him to be released on parole after eight and a half months; and finally, his incarceration in a fairly luxurious cell in Landsberg Prison, where he was celebrated as a hero and managed to write the propaganda tome that would launch the Nazi Party's apotheosis, Mein Kampf. A meticulously researched, deeply instructive work with great relevance for our current era of right-wing resurgence.

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February 1, 2017
While Gen. Erich Ludendorff was the lead defendant charged with treason after the Beer Hall putsch, the Nazis' failed coup attempt in 1923, the case vaulted Adolf Hitler from semi-obscurity as a minor party leader to demagog who captured the attention of a nation. New York Times best-selling author King gives a day-by-day account of the trial. With a four-city tour.

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