# Adolf Hitler's Own Book Mein Kampf (My Battle)/Chapter 19

Chapter XIX
Battle with the Reds
In 1919, 1920, and in 1921 I attended many Bourgeois meetings. Once, at a meeting in the Wagnersaal in Munich, on the anniversary of the “Battle of Leipzig”, a speech was read by some dignified old professor. On the platform sat the committee of the meeting. On the left a monocle, on the right a monocle, and in the middle, one without a monocle. All three were so soberly dressed that the general impression was that this was either a court about to sentence someone to death, or a solemn baptism. After three quarters of an hour of talk the audience started to doze.
Just in front of me sat three workers, who had perhaps come to start some trouble, but after a short time they grinned at each other, and soon after quietly left the hall. The last thing they wanted to do was to create a disturbance here.
How different our Nazi meetings were—they certainly were not peaceful. Here the two world views crashed head on into one another, and the meetings did not close with some pretty song sung weakly, but with a frenzied outburst of natural passion.
Friendly Gatherings
Often there were real battles with the reds who came with instructions to destroy our meetings, but the fearless recklessness of our squads of guards always countered with violent action that foiled the enemy.
It was a joy to follow the bewildered tactics of our opponents. First the Marxists received orders to leave our meetings alone. But since people came more and more the red leaders began to worry, and soon felt that we must be stopped. Then fighters were sent to our meetings to strike us down. Yet in battles in our meeting halls they were vanquished, and often many of these Marxist workers went away with certain of our slogans ringing in their ears. They began to question their own doctrine.
The Only Bad Publicity Is No Publicity
The worried red leaders reversed their orders—our meetings were to be avoided. But our meetings were too big and successful. Then again came the order to smash our meetings.
A bit of that. Then the watchword was issued:
“Workers! stay away from the meetings of the Nazi monarchist reactionaries!”
The same vacillating policy was to be seen in the red press: first we were ignored, then laughed at, then attacked, then overlooked, and then denounced again!
I took the view in those times that it didn’t matter whether they laughed at us, or denounced us as villains—so long as they kept us before the eyes of the workers!
Because the protection of the authorities could never be relied upon, we had to police our own meetings and keep the peace ourselves. More important, police aid is not wanted because it only helps the disturbers—it always ends either in the dismissal of a meeting, or else its prohibition, even before it is begun, for the sake of “law and order”. To avoid either the one or the other, we had always to be prepared to suppress any disturbances the moment they broke out.
Private Armies
Every meeting which receives its protection exclusively from the legal police authorities is discredited in the eyes of the masses.
Just as a brave man wins the heart of a woman more easily than a coward, so does a heroic movement captivate the heart of the people much more easily than can a movement of cowards which survives only by police protection.
“The leader who is forced ‘to abandon the platform of his general world view because he found it in error, acts honorably only if he for all future time relinquishes all further public political activity.”
Mein Kampf—Chapter II
At the time of the first mass meetings, I began organizing storm troops composed of young men, whom I knew from my military days, to police our meetings and to make us known not as a debating club, but as a fighting group of an idea for which its members were willing to spill their last drop of blood.
How the eyes of my lads used to shine when I would explain to them their mission, repeating again and again that all wisdom in the world was useless if force did not defend and protect it—that the Goddess of Peace can walk only beside the God of War! How the idea of military service seized upon them!
And how they fought!
Like a swarm of hornets they descended upon enemy agents who tried to disrupt our meetings. They thought only of our holy mission and never considered wounds nor blood sacrifices.
By mid-summer of 1920 regular troops began to take form; in the spring of 1921 these fighters were divided up into companies of hundreds, which in turn were divided into smaller groups.
This organization of actual troops made necessary some emblem, some symbol, to be put in opposition to the Internationale. Just after the war, in Berlin, I witnessed a Marxist demonstration in front of the Royal Palace, and the ocean of red flags, red arm bands, and red flowers, aroused a passion so strong that I easily understood how a man falls victim to the hypnotic force of a grandiose spectacle.
Up to the year 1920 the Marxists were opposed by no flag—the Bourgeoisie, after 1918, did not have any opinion, let alone a symbol.
The old Reich was dead, and ours was a new movement for a new state; so the flag we would hoist and fly in the face of the Marxists had to bear the symbol of the new nation. It also had to symbolize our fight. Anyone who has dealt with the masses very much knows the importance of these seeming trifles—a strong emblem can have much to do with the successful launching of a movement, if it catches the eye of the masses.
Birth of That Hooked Cross
All sorts of suggestions were made. I—as Leader—did not want to offer my own design at the start, for it was possible that someone else would produce another one as good or better. Actually, a dentist from Starnberg brought in a design that was not at all bad; it was much like mine, but it made the mistake of having the swastika in the form of a white circle with curved hooks.
Finally I, after countless experiments, put down the form that was kept: a flag with a red background, bearing a while circle with a black swastika in its center.
Similarly-designed arm bands were handed out to the storm troopers.
A Munich goldsmith, Herr Fuss, produced the first suitable design for the party emblem.
The flaming flag, young as the movement, flew before the people for the first time in mid-summer of 1920.
We see our program symbolized in our flag—red for our social ideas, white for nationalism, and the swastika for the fight for the victory of the Aryan man, and the victory of the creative work which must forever be anti-Jew.
During 1920 we began to hold as many as two meetings a week. People clustered about our posters, and we filled the largest halls in Munich. The city talked about us. In the winter of 1920-1921 we emerged as a strong party in Munich.
Grave troubles rose for Germany as January, 1921, drew to a close—the country was obligated to pay the mad sum of one hundred billion gold marks according to an agreement dictated by London.
There was talk in Munich of a common protest, and apparently a small national association, The Workers Community, was going to organize it. But there was delay and indecision, and meanwhile the great parties of the nation seemed to have no intention of making any protests.
Tuesday, February 1, 1921, I demanded a decision. I was put off until Wednesday; then the answer was again vague, so my patience gave out, and I decided to stage the demonstration on my own initiative. At noon on Wednesday, I dictated the words for a poster to a typist, in ten short minutes, and reserved the great Zirkus Krone—the one great place in Munich in which we had so far never quite dared to hold a meeting.
It was a great risk, for one thing because our storm troops were still by no means large enough effectively to patrol so large a room—or so I thought. Later I found that it was really easier to quell disturbances in large spaces than it is in jammed rooms.
There was only one day for advertising—Thursday—and it rained in the morning! Shortly before noon I was seized with fear that the hall would not be filled, so I speedily dictated some leaflets, had them printed, and ordered that two trucks swathed in red and manned by fifteen or twenty party members roar about the streets of the city throwing out the leaflets.
Swastika and Clenched Fist
These were the first trucks driven about by anyone save Marxists, and the Bourgeoisie stared in amazement at these red trucks adorned with swastikas. In the wake of the trucks many outraged Communists waved their clenched fists.
At seven in the evening the hall was not well filled—I received telephone reports every ten minutes, and I was greatly agitated. Then favorable reports began to come in, and at a quarter to eight I was told that the room was more than three-quarters filled and that great throngs were lined up before the ticket booths. At that I left for the meeting.
At two minutes past eight I arrived in front of the Zirkus Krone. Outside there was still a huge crowd.
I was swept off my feet with joy when I entered the gigantic hall, but only when I had reached the stage did I see how great was our triumph. The hall lay before me like a giant shell, cupping thousands and thousands of people. More than six thousand were present.
I began to talk—and kept on talking for around two and one-half hours—and I at once felt that the meeting was to be a great success. Immediately I was in contact with the audience. After an hour applause broke out more and more often, in great outbursts, and then ebbed away after two hours, until I finished in that solemn silence which will never be forgotten by a soul who was there, and which I afterwards experienced so many times in this room. Almost nothing but the soft breathing of the mass could be heard, and suddenly when I was finished applause rose like thunder, and then release was found in fervent singing of Deutschland über Alles.
I stood and watched the hall slowly empty. Only after twenty minutes I stepped down tremendously happy, to go home.
Now we had to be taken into account.
To prove that we had not been merely lucky, I immediately scheduled a second demonstration at the Zirkus Krone for the next week, and again success was ours. The third week there was another jammed meeting.
“The real genius almost inevitably personally announces his arrival in world history!”
Mein Kampf—Chapter III
When the summer of 1921 came, we were sometimes holding three meetings a week—and now we always met in the vast Zirkus Krone.
And so we gained more and more followers and members.
Our enemies, of course, were not left very pleased by all of this, so they decided to try terror. There was a strange attack upon Erhard Auer, a deputy; supposedly some one shot at him one night. At least he said so, and he also explained that the villains fled so fast that it was impossible to know who they were. We were blamed for this in the press of the Social Democratic Party.
Our enemies thought this was the time for a showdown; a meeting at which I was scheduled to speak in the Munich Hofbrauhaus was chosen as the time and place. I was warned shortly beforehand, late in the afternoon of November 4, 1921.
Armed Mobsters
When I reached the hall just before eight, the hall was jammed, and it was clear our enemies were there. I lined up forty-five or forty-six storm troopers who awaited me, and told them that now they were really to demonstrate their faith—that no one was to leave the hall unless he was carried out dead. I declared that I would stay in the hall myself, and tear the armband off any coward.
“Heil!”—shouted three times—strongly and more hoarsely than usual, was the answer.
I entered the hall and there the enemy was, waiting. They stared at me. I began to speak. As always in the Hofbrauhaus, I was in a corner, my platform a beer table.
The enemies before me were hearty fellows, mostly from the Maffei factory, from Kustermann, from Isaria, etc. They were massed close to my table and now commenced drinking beer, and placing the empty mugs—ammunition—on the floor between their feet.
For an hour and a half I spoke despite all the shouts of the opposition, and it seemed as if perhaps I was to be master of the situation. The enemy leaders grew nervous and gathered in little groups and whispered.
Then, defending myself against an interruption, I made a slight psychological error—one which I felt the moment the words had left my lips—and the storm broke. There was a great noise for a few moments—a few shouts and scuffles. When a man leaped upon a table and shouted: “Freedom!”
This was the signal—and in a few moments the room ​was a wild maelstrom of roaring, fighting people, with beer mugs flying about, and the sound of tables crashing and chair legs breaking.
I stood at my post, and watched how the storm troopers did their duty. Like wolves they swooped on the enemy and drove them from the hall. In five minutes there was not one that was not covered with blood. I came really to know many of them only then—above all my faithful Maurice, and my present private secretary, Rudolf Hess, and others who though desperately wounded fought as long as they could stand.
Two Pistol Shots!
After twenty minutes most of the enemy had been chased out of the hall, and they numbered, perhaps seven or eight hundred men, as against our forty or fifty!
    (Hitler’s enthusiasm has here run away with him, for he overlooks all the Nazi sympathizers who, although not members of the storm troops, actively engaged in this battle. The numbers were approximately even.)
All at once two pistol shots came from the entrance to the hall, and then wild shooting began. Our hearts rejoiced in such a revival of the old war days.
But after twenty-five minutes there was quiet once more, although the room was a wreck; the chairman of the evening, Hermann Esser, declared: “The meeting will continue. The speaker has the floor.”
“State authority can never exist as an end in itself, or tyranny would be sacred and inviolable in this world.”
Mein Kampf—Chapter III
I spoke again.
Just after we had ended the meeting, an excited police lieutenant came in, waving his arms, and shouted: “This meeting is dissolved!”
I could not help laughing at this tardy officer—and his typical self-importance.
That night we learned a great deal, nor did our enemies forget the lesson they had received.