German Workers Party NSDAP sometimes referred to as the Nazi Party Others did not know him at all Hitler hustled Kahr into a back room He soon returned to the stage The beer hall was an excited babble of voices Hitler fired his pistol again to quiet the crowd He proclaimed Kahr had agreed to support him in his takeover of the German government He also said the national government in Berlin had been overthrown As Hitler spoke his words seemed to some observers to cast a spell over the audience One witness recalled In a few sentences he totally transformed the mood of the audience I have rarely experienced anything like it At the end of the evening everyone in the beer hall was allowed to leave including Kahr He quickly contacted the national government in Berlin which had not been overthrown and told them what had happened The next day on November 9 Hitler and approximately 2,000 of his followers went to take over the nearby Bavarian Defense Ministry They had not gone very far however when they came upon a large group of police blocking their way Kahr's phone call had raised the alarm Suddenly a shot rang out The police fired a storm of bullets into the crowd As people started falling all around him Hitler dove to the ground dislocating his shoulder He crawled to a waiting car threw himself in and was driven away Behind him 16 Nazis lay dead on the street The attempted coup later called the Beer Hall Putsch had failed Hitler was arrested found guilty of treason and sentenced to five years in prison Many Germans thought they had seen the last of him They were wrong a CD
Nazis would brutally murder Kahr ten years later as revenge for his actions during the attempted takeover
A POWDER KEG WORLD By 1939 global politics was chaotic It was akin to a powder keg with several slowly burning fuses attached At any moment one of these fuses could cause it to explode into war The leaders of the world's most powerful nations saw a new world war on the horizon One contributing factor to the war was the Treaty of Versailles which had ended World War I 1914-1918 This treaty had harshly punished Germany for its role in the war barring it from building up another strong military Historian A. J. P. Taylor later noted that the treaty's weakness was that it did not include any way for its provisions to be enforced Instead it relied on German cooperation Once Hitler became the leader of Germany in 1933 that cooperation stopped Hitler with his vision of Lebensraum or living space for Germany tried to build a massive German empire In March 1938 he annexed neighboring Austria TREATY OF VERSAILLES Some historians believe the Treaty of Versailles which ended World War I was a major contributing factor to World War II Among its provisions was the removal of German territories including the port city of Danzig and the area of Alsace Lorraine It also cut the German army to 100,000 soldiers reduced the German navy to 36 ships and no submarines and banned Germany from possessing an air force The treaty required Germany to accept total blame for the war and to pay large sums of money in reparations German public opinion was against the treaty Political groups including the fascist nationalist Nazis rose to prominence by denouncing the treaty 10
Large crowds greeted Chamberlain upon his return to the United Kingdom He then threatened Czechoslovakia Many ethnic Germans lived in a section of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland and Hitler wanted to seize this land for Germany Desperate to avoid war British and French officials met with him in Munich at the end of September and agreed he could take the Sudetenland No Czechoslovakian representatives were present Hitler claimed this would be his final territorial request When British prime minister Neville Chamberlain 11
