Just a bit of housekeeping. Please silence all of your cell phones. We do not want them to ring while david king is talking. Also, cspan is filming us. So at the questionandanswer portion, if you would go to the mike on this side so you can be heard. Before thevent, signing, if you would please take your chairs and lean them against something solid, to help us make the store orderly looking again. Ok. At the time where there is a growing sense of unease among sensible people because of the rise of fascism, this net it is now important for us to look toward the past and analyze the conditions that made fascism possible. Naturally, we turn to our historians to guide us through the murky realm of the past. King,ch historian, david is here with us today, a scholar who earned his masters degree , and a professor who once taught european history at the university of kentucky. A New York Times bestselling writer, he has written several acclaimed books of history. He is here with us today to read from his new book, the trial of hitler. Ddler adolf been called ans astute work of scholarship and narrative, particularly researched, deeply instructive work with great relevance for our current era of rightwing resurgence. Another says davids new book is a courtroom drama, both farcical accountous, a detailed of an often overlooked chapter in hitlers rise. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Please let us welcome, with his writing and research, david king. David thank you so much. Thank you for the warm welcome. Thank you for coming out today and being here. Can everyone hear me . Im used to roaming when i talk. I want to be sure that everyone can hear me. Thank you for coming out. It is a pleasure for me to be here. The publishers going to book the tickets and i was like no, we will make it a road trip. Here. Special guest we walked down to make sure we would not be late. A wonderful book story here. It is an honor for me to be here bookstore here. It is an honor for me to be here. Imagine catching hiller live hauling him into a courtroom, and putting him on trial for his part of crimes. Dream, aetimes a fantasy. Many novels have been written about this. It actually happened. Ninebruary 20 6, 1924, years before hitlers came to power, hitlers entered the courtroom in munich to stand trial for high treason. Of 1923, hitlers stormed into a proud crowded declare that the National Revolution has begun. Not begin. Instead, hitlers, eventually, was arrested after hiding out and staying in the attic of the german american woman, who left about hit where cap hitler, her guest. Hitler became a laughingstock. The New York Times announced his career being over, and it probably should have been over. What happened . It may not be what you think. It certainly was not what i thought when i started researching this. I just finished my previous book. Theres a serial killer on the loose. True story. It was gruesome. Ironically i was looking for something a little less dark. I went down my list of history topics. Every book i write seems to get longer rather than shorter. I would go down one rabbit hole to the next. One wild goose chase after the next. I was probably amusing and exasperating my wife. I was like a crazy person. All the while the topic was in front of me. One of my favorite lectures i used to give when i taught was on the beer hall putsch. I would bring in my swedish motherinlaw. That was the premise of the book. I thought, this is something really interesting, not just economic, but social, cultural, psychological ordeal. The Exchange Rate was 4. 2 marks to a dollar on the eve of of world war i. By december 1918, it was eight to one and that he goes 10 to 1, 15 to 1, 101, 1001, a million to one. It eventually goes down to hundreds of millions and the trillions. Your life savings. Red cabbage and munich costs 10 billion marks. That is what i originally thought out. It had been about 30 years and i thought the story had a lot going for it. It was the city at a turning point. You had sweeping action, the drama, the melodrama, the apocalypse. And you have these conspirators plotting revolution. You have a young adolf hitler, rudolf hess, rosenberg, many, many others. They were all young, all in munich at this time. As you said, you would learn about somebody. You could use this beer hall putsch, i thought, to understand munich at the time. What a sophisticated culture and city. Romantics, bohemians. If it could happen in munich, who was safe . That is how i went into it. I could not believe there had not been a book and 30 years. I was struck a something else. All these wonderful books, the scholarship about adolf hitler, there had never been a book on beach ryle, a full book on the trial in the english language. At web the first books i read about hibbler as a teenager, and oxford professor at the nuremberg trials, an expert on thucydides. A classicist. He said that she was always impressed with hitlers during the trial. Thered never been a book. I could not believe it. I was astonished. That has been a dealbreaker for me many times. Theres not enough good, credible sources. I have never done historical fiction, so i would be lost. I found out that this was a gold mine. The trial transcript itself is a mustread thousand pages. The original german transcript. The Munich Police files. Thousands and thousands of pages here. He made a lengthy interviews and interrogations. Anyone they could catch. Offered rosenberg, heinrich hoffman. Many, many people. They started with the offices, the inventories of everything they took. You can picture the paintings on the wall. There were the pictures of the two gypsies. There were the bicycles. It was like pompeii. All of that was there. The damage to the beer hall. We had the papers of the lawyers and one of my favorites was the prosecutor. He was not impressed. Among other things. Thugs and hooligans were coming in. There was, of course, hate mail. Also in munich, there were the hate mails of the prosecutor. How dare the prosecutor go after somebody. A graph of hibblers hitlers bodyguard. He jumped in front of hibbler. On and on and on. Jumped in front of hitler. Now hitler is blaming people, like ludendorff for the failure. She gets a plumber, so the plan was to throw some blankets and tarp over it. Hitler did not go for that. Other writings. The letters of goerings wife karin, who is swedish. She wrote home to her family in sweden. This was fun. You have to concentrate 100 . Reading is one thing. You could insult somebody. But there were letters describing his time. And job offers he had in the meantime. And a jewish family, how a kind jewish family saved goering after he got shots. Of course, the nazi files, there were all these interviews with stormtroopers, the u. S. Army captured this. And they brought it back to germany. There were copies at home. He claimed to live across from hibbler. He did later on. He cling to live across from hitler. He did later on. He had these files at the nuremberg fleamarket. And the director of the prison was robbed. That was a wonderful surprise. It opened in the former dining hall of the military academy because they could not have a room big enough to secure it. Nothing like that in germany for years. A team of judges. Reporters from all over germany, france, switzerland, britain, scandinavia, elsewhere to cover the sensational trial, scandalous. And hitler would take the stand, chief defendant, speak hour after hour. Hes not quite shrieking. But he did get lots of press. The press cover this in great detail. How he would speak, how he would move. And if you ever heard hitler when he is not screaming, its unsettling. He is a screaming lunatic. He is speaking, just lowering his voice. Its pretty frightening. But that hitler. Up close, across the room, hitler in all of his narcissism, his megalomania, his mesmerizing demagoguery. Hr knickerbocker said he was probably the greatest spellbinder of all he said actually in his memoir he was number two. The one person who was a better speaker than hitler was leon trotsky. You see hitler in all his confidence, under pressure, acting in the spotlight. We have ruthless activity. He did not want the truth to stand in the way of a good line. There were Seven Members in the act room. In the back room. And he says in the trial, its not true. He did not have millions. One of the nazi workers, there were 55,000 not exactly millions. So, hibbler would take the crowd into a world of alternative facts. All the while he exploited the lower instincts of the crowd. This is not theater, the judge would say many times. 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 stuff going on. And because of that, hibbler 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 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, hibbler 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. I am not the trader 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 required. He was as the log 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. Questions. 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. , as r 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 follower. 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 loved do when he just would talk and talk and talk. 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 hibbler 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 hobbits easier 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 over spots ability. They say 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 this band it is a disaster. And it is a disaster. I am also under the impression that ludendorff at one time had a nervous breakdown before the arms was signed and advised the kaiser to end the war. Did hitler use that to undermine ludendorff . He will definitely see ludendorff you will definitely see ludendorff with this breakdown. It is interesting watching hitler at the trial ludendorff is getting hammered in the press because of his statements. Does this seem like a general . He seems more like a cadet. Some said no, he doesnt seem like a cadet, he seems like an ass. He goes on the stand and is blaming germans problems on the catholics, the marxists, and the jews. Somebody says well, okay, that covers a lot of people. Hitler will walk this balanced line. There is this great german socialist paper who had a great column in my opinion, because ludendorff is this loose cannon. Hitler instead of alienating people, he distanced himself from ludendorff. At one point he goes, i am a catholic, hitler says. He makes no mistake saying he is antisemite. He makes that clear in the trial and marxist. But he is uniting the far right in a way where ludendorff is dividing them. You can see one part is the racist and use nietzsche and other figures. Some are anticatholic and antichristian, and you have this other side of the far right. Hitler is trying to unite them while ludendorff is appealing to a small part of the far right. You can watch them go down as hitler is going up during the trial. Historians say the japanese political assassination by the military and exoneration at their trial started the second world war. Did you see any parallels between those trials and japan and this trial . I dont know a whole lot about the japanese trial. I read nuremberg and was looking at trials, but i dont know a lot about i have a couple books at home on that trial, but i wouldnt know enough about it to say about the japanese trial. A couple things. If the worldwide depression hadnt occurred, do you think the nazis could have taken power . And this is hard to judge, but dont you think antisemitism in germany was far less than that in france, russia, and Eastern Europe . In the 19th century and prehitler. The first one it is always hard to say what could have happened if it didnt. It is hard to imagine hitler in power without the depression. Without it, you would be getting into alternative history, so it is hard to say. Without the depression, it is almost unthinkable in some ways, hitler coming to power. You can see that with the 1923 trial. The nazi already does very well in the Election Party does very well in the election in 1924. They are losing a lot when the economy is getting better. They go way down again and then it takes the depression for the nazis to get the most votes they will ever get. It would be hard to deny that myself. What was the second question . Antisemitism in germany opposed to eastern russia and france prehitler. It would be a guess going into the late 19th century. I would go back to the lectures we did on austria, france, germany, but i didnt really look into a lot that clearly from the trial. I have Great Respect for someone who takes it on their whole life. This is one year. Looking back to the late 19th century id have to think about it. I dont know off the top of my head. I have a guess, but i dont know myself to say how much worse it is. France and austria i mean, austria had the National Socialists well before the germans. A lot of the germans were looking elsewhere. A lot of the nazi Party Members were not even german. Austria, egypt, it was in america for a long time. A lot of the same people we think of, a lot of them were coming in from the baltics, marching arm in arm with hitler. A lot of the nazis at this time had national roots. With munich being such a cultural center, i would guess germany is far behind a lot of these places, especially like in the east in austria and france. I would have to research a little better before i said. That would be my hunch, so i think you are right about that. In liberal democracies we have the problem of what we do with extremists that dont directly engage with violence. Did hitler at this point directly engage in acts of violence . If he did, why didnt they throw the book at him . He did engage in violence. He used violence. Encouraged storm troopers to go out and brawl. The first people that signed up for the storm troopers are the people he beat up. That is what he said. That was always his claim. He went out in big fights and the first people we beat up will show up first the next time. Dont come out. You go into fight and you dont go out unless they carry you out. He wanted to win the streets. That was one way to win the streets, through intimidation. When they have the trial with so much security, they are afraid the storm troopers will try to spring everybody out. He is definitely using violence. That is what got him in trouble. He attacked a rival speaker in the beer hall. He attacked a guy. He thought that was great publicity. Even if they are praising us they are writing about us. It is getting us known. We have time for two more questions. My understanding is the National Government in germany was a socialist government. Did the relationship between that government and the government in munich have any affect on how strong this is prosecuted . Yes. There is a big dispute, because the trial should have never been in munich. The Peoples Court there were a lot of problems with the trial. Once the weimar constitution was established, these courts in munich shouldnt exist anymore. You can read the letters of correspondence. There was a special court that had been created for these traitors against the republic. The trial should have taken place there, but it is in munich. A lot of people go, why is it in munich . It should not be in this court. It definitely should not be in munich. It seems like a compromise. You can read the Cabinet Meeting minutes. They are sitting back and forth, just as they are trying to kick out hitler. At one point austria accepts him, then refuses to take him. You see this with berlin and veria, and bavaria, a huge rivalry. In the beer hall, when hitler barges in, he is upsetting their plans to go against berlin. So they are upset like that. You can follow along in the book, but it plays into this rivalry between berlin and bavaria that complicates the trial. It is illegal. I just want to congratulate you on the book. I wrote a book a year and a half ago around the same topic, not concentrating only on the trial. This is now the definitive book on this topic, folks. [laughter] i have read most of it. I have read the 12 pages of notes on sources in great detail. Davids research is phenomenal. It is a prodigious of work. I was out of breath reading the notes on sources. I understand you spent five years on it. I spent a year and a half. Yours is a fabulous book, too. This is the first book written in english on the trial. There has never been a regular fullsized book written in german of this trial. This is the book now in english or german or any other language. I read most of it. It takes you day by day through the trial and the rest. So congratulations. [applause] i really appreciate that. That was very kind. Can i say one thing . I have a comment. No, not a question. When you ask germans today, how many jews lived in germany before the war . Do you know what the answer is . Like 20 . In the 1940s, it is less than 1 . There is a paper by my colleagues 10 years ago that the reason why in germany went down is because there were very few jews there. That is a comment. That is all. Thank you. Thank you to everybody for coming out. [applause] if you want to buy the book, we are selling them at the register. [indistinct chatter]