Volume 42, Number 15 · October 5, 1995
Under an Evil Star
By Gordon A. Craig
Nazi Germany: A New History
by Klaus P. Fischer
Continuum, 734 pp., $37.50
The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution
by Henry Friedlander
University of North Carolina Press, 421 pp., $34.95
On June 14, 1922, a time of mounting inflation in Germany and growing dissatisfaction with the national government, then headed by Josef Wirth and Walther Rathenau, and following a policy of seeking to fulfill the terms of the Versailles Treaty, a group of Bavarian monarchists and other dissidents met in Munich. According to a secret Central European Summary of the British SIS, based on the notes of 'a sure source' in Munich, those who attended included the former First Quartermaster General of the Imperial Army, Erich Ludendorff, the wartime commander of the Royal Bavarian Life Guard, Franz Ritter von Epp, now a free corps leader in Thuringia, the reactionary monarchist Gustav von Kahr, soon to be Bavarian State Commissioner, a Herr Mertl, 'the confidence man of Bishop Waitz of Innsbruck,' representing the Patriotic Societies of Munich, and a Herr Pittinger of the Bavarian Bloc for the Maintenance of Public Order. It also included Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Munich section of the National Socialist Party, an organization that was still small, though growing, and whose guiding principles were not yet clearly defined.
Review, 4389 words
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