Hitlers Life Part III

Between December 1918 and March 1919 Hitler worked at a prisoner-of-war camp at Traunstein before returning again to Munich.
After he gave evidence at an investigation on which he had witnessed a takeover bid by local Communists,
he was asked to become part of a local army organization which was responsible for persuading returning soldiers not to turn to communism or pacifism.

During his training for this tasks and subsequent duties he was able to sharpen his oratory skills. Part of his duties was to spy on certain local political groups, and during a meeting of the German Workers' Party he became so furious by one of the speeches that he delivered an angry tirade to the speaker. The founder of the party, Anion Drexler, was so impressed by Hitler's tirade that he asked him to join their organization. He finally agreed to join the committee and became their seventh official in September 1919.

Hitler was given responsibility for publicity and propaganda, and first succeeded in attracting over a hundred people to a meeting in held October where he delivered his first speech to a large audience. The meeting and his elocution were a great success, and afterwards in February 1920 he organized a much larger event for a crowd of nearly two thousand in the Munich Hofbrauhaus. Hitler himself was not the main speaker, but when his turn came he calmed a rowdy audience and presented a twenty-five point programme of ideas which were to be the basis of the party. The name of the party was itself changed to the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi for short) on April 1st 1920.

Not long after the February speech he was discharged from the army. Hitler continued to expand his influence in the party and began to form a private group of thugs which he used to quell disorder at party meetings and later to break up rival party's meetings. This group later became the Sturmabteilung or S.A. - Hitler's brown shirted storm troopers. He also became the regular speaker at party events from then on, attracting large crowds for each meeting. During the summer of 1920 Hitler chose the swastika as the Nazi party emblem.

By 1921 Adolf Hitler had virtually secured total control of the Nazi party, however all Nazis did not like this. In July of that year, while Hitler was in Berlin, the disgruntled members of the party proposed a merger with a like-minded political party in Nuremburg in the hope that this would weaken Hitler's authority. On hearing the news of the proposed merger, Hitler rushed back to Munich to face the party and threatened to resign. The other members were aware that Hitler was bringing in the lion's share of funds into the party, from the collections following his speeches at meetings and from other sympathetic sources. Now they knew they couldn't afford his resignation. Hitler then proceeded to turn the tables on the committee members and forced them to accept him as formal leader of the party with dictatorial powers.

Up to November 1923 Hitler continued to build up the strength of the Nazi Party. During this time he also plotted to overthrow the German Weimar Republic by force. On November 8th 1923 Hitler led an attempt to take over the local Bavarian Government in Munich in an action that became known as the "Beer Hall Putsch." Despite initially kidnapping the Bavarian officials in the Buergerbraukeller beer hall in Munich and proclaiming a new regime using their names, the coup was not successful. The officials were allowed to escape and re-gain control of the police and the armed forces. The coup was ended on the morning of November 9th, when a column of three thousand SA men headed by Hitler and General Ludendorff (one of the most senior generals of the First World War) were halted on their way to the centre of Munich by armed police. After a brief gunfight, only General Ludendorff and his aide had made it through to the central Plaza, where they were arrested. Hitler had fled the scene and was later arrested and charged with treason. After his trial for treason he was sentenced to five years in Landsberg prison, however he had successfully used the trial itself to gain publicity for himself and his ideas. During his term in prison Hitler began dictating his thoughts and philosophies to Rudolf Hess which became the book "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle).