On the night of November 8, 1923, Hitler and roughly 600 Nazi Party paramilitaries surrounded the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich where Bavarian state commissioner Gustav von Kahr was addressing a crowd. Hitler fired a pistol into the ceiling, proclaimed the revolution underway, and forced Kahr and other officials at gunpoint to publicly back his coup. The uprising collapsed the next day when police fired on the marchers, killing sixteen Nazis and four police officers.
Hitler's plan borrowed directly from Mussolini's March on Rome the previous year: seize a symbolic starting point, force local power brokers to endorse the takeover, then march on the capital. The Bürgerbräukeller, a cavernous beer hall, was packed with roughly 3,000 people when Hitler's men burst through the doors, machine gun in tow. Hitler stood on a chair, fired a shot into the ceiling, and shouted that the national revolution had begun and that the hall was surrounded.
He then herded Kahr, along with Bavarian army chief Otto von Lossow and police chief Hans von Seisser, into a side room at gunpoint, badgering them into pledging support. General Erich Ludendorff, the World War I hero recruited to lend the putsch legitimacy, arrived later that night and vouched for the arrangement, believing the officials' word was good. It was not; all three quietly recanted once released.
The next afternoon, Hitler, Ludendorff, and roughly 2,000 supporters marched toward the Bavarian War Ministry only to be met by police at the Odeonsplatz. Gunfire broke out, killing sixteen Nazis and four policemen. Hitler dislocated his shoulder diving for cover and fled; he was arrested two days later. His subsequent trial, rather than ending his career, gave him a national stage and produced Mein Kampf, written during his brief prison term at Landsberg.
Key people: Adolf Hitler, Erich Ludendorff, Gustav von Kahr