In the beginning of 1923 the French invaded Germany, occupied the Ruhr district and seized several
German towns in the Rhineland. This was a flagrant breach of international law and was protested
against by every section of British political opinion at that time. The Germans could not effectively
defend themselves, as they had been already disarmed under the provisions of the Versailles Treaty.
To make the situation more fraught with disaster for Germany, and therefore more appalling in its
prospect, the French carried on an intensive propaganda for the separation of the Rhineland from the
German Republic and the establishment of an independent Rhenania. Money was poured out lavishly
to bribe agitators to carry on this work, and some of the most insidious elements of the German
population became active in the pay of the invader. At the same time a vigorous movement was being
carried on in Bavaria for the secession of that country and the establishment of an independent
Catholic monarchy there, under vassalage to France, as Napoleon had done when he made Maximilian
the first King of Bavaria in 1805.
The separatist movement in the Rhineland went so far that some leading German politicians came out
in favour of it, suggesting that if the Rhineland were thus ceded it might be possible for the German
Republic to strike a bargain with the French in regard to Reparations. But in Bavaria the movement
went even farther. And it was more far-reaching in its implications; for, if an independent Catholic
monarchy could be set up in Bavaria, the next move would have been a union with Catholic
German-Austria. possibly under a Habsburg King. Thus a Catholic bloc would have been created
which would extend from the Rhineland through Bavaria and Austria into the Danube Valley and
would have been at least under the moral and military, if not the full political, hegemony of France.
The dream seems fantastic now, but it was considered quite a practical thing in those fantastic times.
The effect of putting such a plan into action would have meant the complete dismemberment of
Germany; and that is what French diplomacy aimed at. Of course such an aim no longer exists. And I
should not recall what must now seem old, unhappy, far-off things to the modern generation, were it
not that they were very near and actual at the time Mein Kampf was written and were more unhappy
then than we can even imagine now.
By the autumn of 1923 the separatist movement in Bavaria was on the point of becoming an
accomplished fact. General von Lossow, the Bavarian chief of the Reichswehr no longer took orders
from Berlin. The flag of the German Republic was rarely to be seen, Finally, the Bavarian Prime
Minister decided to proclaim an independent Bavaria and its secession from the German Republic.
This was to have taken place on the eve of the Fifth Anniversary of the establishment of the German
Republic (November 9th, 1918.)
Hitler staged a counter-stroke. For several days he had been mobilizing his storm battalions in the
neighbourhood of Munich, intending to make a national demonstration and hoping that the
Reichswehr would stand by him to prevent secession. Ludendorff was with him. And he thought that
the prestige of the great German Commander in the World War would be sufficient to win the
allegiance of the professional army.
A meeting had been announced to take place in the Bürgerbräu Keller on the night of November 8th.
The Bavarian patriotic societies were gathered there, and the Prime Minister, Dr. von Kahr, started to
read his official pronunciamento, which practically amounted to a proclamation of Bavarian
independence and secession from the Republic. While von Kahr was speaking Hitler entered the hall,
followed by Ludendorff. And the meeting was broken up.
Next day the Nazi battalions took the street for the purpose of making a mass demonstration in favour
of national union. They marched in massed formation, led by Hitler and Ludendorff. As they reached
one of the central squares of the city the army opened fire on them. Sixteen of the marchers were
instantly killed, and two died of their wounds in the local barracks of the Reichswehr. Several others
were wounded also. Hitler fell on the pavement and broke a collar-bone. Ludendorff marched straight
up to the soldiers who were firing from the barricade, but not a man dared draw a trigger on his old
Commander.
Hitler was arrested with several of his comrades and imprisoned in the fortress of Landsberg on the
River Lech. On February 26th, 1924, he was brought to trial before the Volksgericht, or Peoples
Court in Munich. He was sentenced to detention in a fortress for five years. With several companions,
who had been also sentenced to various periods of imprisonment, he returned to Landsberg am Lech
and remained there until the 20th of the following December, when he was released. In all he spent
about thirteen months in prison. It was during this period that he wrote the first volume of Mein
Kampf.
If we bear all this in mind we can account for the emotional stress under which Mein Kampf was
written. Hitler was naturally incensed against the Bavarian government authorities, against the
footling patriotic societies who were pawns in the French game, though often unconsciously so, and
of course against the French. That he should write harshly of the French was only natural in the
circumstances. At that time there was no exaggeration whatsoever in calling France the implacable
and mortal enemy of Germany. Such language was being used by even the pacifists themselves, not
only in Germany but abroad. And even though the second volume of Mein Kampf was written after
Hitlers release from prison and was published after the French had left the Ruhr, the tramp of the
invading armies still echoed in German ears, and the terrible ravages that had been wrought in the
industrial and financial life of Germany, as a consequence of the French invasion, had plunged the country into a state of social and economic chaos. In France itself the franc fell to fifty per cent of its
previous value. Indeed, the whole of Europe had been brought to the brink of ruin, following the
French invasion of the Ruhr and Rhineland.
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