Ben Wilson

You know, what's Lutendorf gonna say?

Is he going to be convicted?

Is he gonna be found not guilty?

And by the end, people are calling it the Hitler trial because Hitler takes all the responsibility.

And the others, they all put the responsibility on Hitler, not just the triumvirate and Lutendorf, but all the other co-conspirators who had some hand in it.

All of them point the finger at Hitler.

And he wants this because this more than any speech he had previously given raises his profile in Germany.

I mean, talk about turning a difficulty into an opportunity, right?

I can't think of anyone who's done it better.

People are thinking that he's going to go to prison for decades, that he is finished.

And instead he says, no, I'm not the traitor here.

The government, they are the traitors.

And I alone am responsible.

And as a consequence, he is the one in the spotlight that everyone is looking at.

And he becomes nationally famous for the first time.

A student named Joseph Goebbels is reading press reports of the proceedings of this trial in early March 1924, and he writes in his diary, quote, I am occupying myself with Hitler and the National Socialist Movement, and I suppose I shall have to do so for some time.

So many of the future leaders of the National Socialist Movement were attracted to it by hearing or reading Hitler's remarks at the trial for the Beer Hall Putsch.

With the benefit of hindsight, Hitler could say in one of his courtroom speeches, "...the deed of November 8th did not fail.

It might have failed if a mother had come to us and said, Herr Hitler, you have my child on your conscience, but I can assure you that no such mother came.

On the contrary, thousands of others came and stood in our ranks, and regarding the young men who fell, one day an obelisk to them will bear the inscription, they too died for the liberation of the fatherland."