Adolf Hitler and the Funeral of Kurt Eisner
Recently I was asked on X – formerly Twitter – about Adolf Hitler’s attendance at assassinated jewish socialist revolutionary Kurt Eisner’s funeral on 26th February 1919 in Munich during the Bavarian Soviet Republic.
As I think this is worthwhile explaining and clearing up a lot of misconceptions about this so as to prevent it being used to dishonestly attack Hitler I will elaborate here.
In the first instance I have already covered the history of the Bavarian Soviet Republic and its domination by jews as well as its murdering its opponents during its short-lived but bloody Red Terror in the city of Munich. (1)
To recap however: Kurt Eisner has been styled as the ‘Bavarian Marxist’ who ‘brought down the Wittelsbach dynasty.’ (2) This is true as far as it goes, but the problem was that Kurt Eisner was a jew from Berlin not Bavaria and after a stint as the editor of the Socialist Party of Germany’s (hereafter SPD) daily newspaper ‘Vorwärts’ between 1898 to 1905; he fled to start again in Munich after falling out of favour with the SPD’s leadership for failing to support the jewish led 1905 revolution in Russia. (3)
This switch to Munich occurred in 1907 and 1910 during which time Eisner abandoned his wife and children in Berlin for his new life in the Bavarian capital. (4)
As Jones records of Eisner:
‘He joined the Independent Socialists after their split with the majority SPD in 1917, and fomented anti-war strikes in January 1918, serving a spell in jail for his pains.’ (5)
After getting out of prison in 1918; Eisner was speaking at the edge of a meeting in a large Munich Park named the Theresienweise called by SPD leader Erhard Auer on 7th November 1918. (6) He addressed himself primarily to soldiers who had fought in World War I. (7)
To Eisner’s great apparent surprise, the crowd followed him out of the park to the Guldien school which was being used as a munition’s depot by the Bavarian army. (8) The mob promptly seized rifles and ammunition and swept on to take control of the Maximillian Kaserne and the other main barracks in Munich. (9)
Eisner went on the Mathaser Brauhaus – a local beer hall - where he met Munich’s workers’ and soldiers’ council who promptly ‘authorized’ him to set up a Bavarian Republic and within hours red flags were flying from Munich’s public buildings and Eisner in effect ruled Munich. (10)
Eisner promptly published a bunch of secret documents from the Bavarian archives ‘proving’ that Germany was responsible for causing World War I to the great embarrassment of Friedrich Ebert’s government. Who rightly saw this as a stab in the back in the middle of their peace negotiations with the Allies. (11)
The radical left of SPD – the Spartacists - attempted a radical coup against Eisner on 7th December 1918 because they foresaw that a right-wing government would likely get voted in the Bavarian elections of January 1919. (12) Eisner successfully suppressed this with the help of the German soldiers left in Munich, however. (13)
This however did nothing to help Eisner with the Bavarian economy now collapsing and massive public anti-Semitic demonstrations against his rule with chants like ‘Down with the Israelite Devil!’ and ‘Bavaria for the Bavarians!’ being an almost daily occurrence. (14)
By the advent of the January 1919 Bavarian elections Eisner was barely hanging on to power (15) and on 21st February 1919 a jew named Count Anton Arco-Valley assassinated Eisner on a Munich street. (16)
As a brief aside we should note that while Count Arco-Valley is often styled as an ‘anti-Semitic nationalist’ who had been angered by his rejection for membership in the famous Thule Society because of his jewish origins. This leaves out some very important context in that Count Arco-Valley later publicly threatened to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1933 because of his hatred for anti-Semitic German nationalists (he was after all jewish) and secondly because Count Arco-Valley may have assassinated Kurt Eisner in order to trigger a Red Terror against the ‘nasty Nazis’ of the Thule Society and thus revenge himself upon them as I have argued in a separate article. (17)
Eisner’s funeral then occurred on 26th February 1919 in Munich and was a study in the reality of the jewish involvement with the radical left with – for example – Heinrich Mann – the jewish elder brother of the writer Thomas Mann – giving the funeral oration, (18) which eventually resulted in the establishment of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic of 1919 on 6th April which was ruled Silvio Gesell, Gustav Landauer, Erich Mühsam and Ernst Toller. (19)
Of whom Landauer, Mühsam and Toller were jewish. (20) Until this was in turn overthrown by three jewish Communists sent by the Communist Party of Germany (hereafter KPD) from Berlin to seize control of the ‘revolution’ in Bavaria - Eugen Levine, Max Levien and Tobias/Victor Axelrod - which they achieved on 12th April 1919 (21) and which lasted until the dissolution of the Bavarian Soviet Republic on 3rd May 1919.
Having summarized the history of the revolution headed by Kurt Eisner then subsequently its transformation into a short-loved communist dictatorship headed almost entirely by jews and bent on conducting a Red Terror against its enemies.
We can move on to Adolf Hitler’s role in and relationship with the Bavarian Soviet Republic. The importance of this time in Hitler’s life is clear in that Kershaw – for example – points to this time as being central to Hitler’s political and intellectual development from a pretty conventional right-wing nationalist to his later far more radical National Socialism. (22)
Hitler arrived back in Munich on 21st November 1918 from the military hospital at Pasewalk after having recovered from being gassed in the last months of World War I; (23) roughly two weeks after Eisner had taken power in Munich.
Hitler reported to his unit – the 7th Company of the 1st Reserve Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Division – in Munich and soon after his arrival in the city – according to Hitler’s friend and fellow soldier of the 7th Company Ernst Schmidt after World War II – he volunteered along with Schmidt to be one of the fifteen soldiers of the 7th Company who were to go to Traunstein in eastern Bavaria to guard (primarily Russian) prisoners of war at the camp there. (24)
Hitler’s motivation – according to Schmidt whose testimony we have no reason to doubt – was that he detested the soldier’s councils that were the basis for Eisner’s rule in Bavaria. (25)
We know that Hitler returned to Munich by mid-February – although Schmidt hints that Hitler returned in late January – (26) because we have German military records that Hitler was slated for discharge from the German army on 12th February 1919, (27) but also that this was subsequently delayed to March 1920 – long after Hitler had joined the fledging NSDAP of Anton Drexler and Karl Harrer - due to Hitler’s involvement with the German army as an intelligence agent and counter-revolutionary speaker. (28)
Hitler’s later claim that he returned to Munich from Traunstein in March 1919 (29) is almost certainly a deliberate falsification by Hitler to prevent difficult questions being asked about his time in Munich between January/February 1919 and the end of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in May 1919.
Kershaw is right to opine that Hitler was covering something up, (30) but I have to disagree with Kershaw about what Hitler was covering up.
Kershaw claims that because Hitler was named in a routine order as a ‘Vertrauensmann’ (= ‘Representative’) of his company on 3rd April 1919 - Kershaw thinks Hitler had been in this position since 15th February 1919 - this means that Hitler had been ‘in service’ with the local SPD/USPD/Communist regime – and specifically its propaganda department - and this would have been embarrassing. (31)
He further cites Hitler’s comments defending his then propaganda chief Hermann Esser in 1921 that during the Bavarian Soviet Republic: ‘Everyone was at one time a Social Democrat.’ (32)
The reason for this was because Esser had been a journalist on a Social Democrat-run newspaper for a while and nor was this unusual as Sepp Dietrich had been elected head of a soldier’s council in November 1918, Julius Schreck (Hitler’s chauffeur) served in the Red Army (of the Bavarian Soviet Republic) till April 1919, Gottfried Feder had initially supported Kurt Eisner in writing, (33) while Roland Freisler (Hitler’s main lawyer) had actually been a Bolshevik Commissar in 1918 during his internment in a Russian prisoner of war camp. (34)
However, Kershaw is using Hitler’s comments out of context. Yes, Hitler was defending Esser against criticism of his past and probably referencing his own (i.e., ‘we all grow up’ essentially), but his actual meaning was probably that Hitler had aligned with the Social Democrats in Munich (i.e., the SPD) against the communists (i.e., the USPD/KPD). We know this because the Berlin-based SPD government of Germany led by Friedrich Ebert – who remember Eisner had promptly betrayed as soon as he came to power - were actually the ones funding and directing the Freikorps against attempted communist coups, revolts and revolutions and the Freikorps was protecting the SPD-led government in Berlin against the communists. (35)
It was a political alliance of convenience not that the SPD liked the Freikorps nor the Freikorps the SPD, but they had a mutual enemy that they believed (with reason) posed an existential threat to both of them: the communists.
As Kershaw himself notes of the time:
‘Ideological muddle-headedness, political confusion and opportunism combined frequently to produce fickle and shifting allegiances.’ (36)
My interpretation jives with the information that jewish anti-Hitler journalist Konrad Heiden dug up in the early 1930s in the form of rumours that Hitler had defended the Social Democrats against the communists during the Bavarian Soviet Republic. (37)
What Hitler was actually doing then was defending the Social Democrats as part of their alliance with the Freikorps against the communists not being an actual supporter of the Social Democrats as both Heiden and Kershaw try to suggest.
Even Kershaw thinks that while Hitler did indeed wear the red armband like all the soldiers of his unit; he did so not out of any belief in what many of them espoused (38) but rather because was a counter-revolutionary and likely a spy for the Freikorps (this also makes sense of his volunteering for (his right wing views) and then early return from Traunstein (because he’d decided to spy for the Freikorps/German army). The reason we know this is because in the interrogations of pro-Bavarian Soviet Republic soldiers from Hitler and Schmidt’s 7th Company after the fall of the jewish-run communist state in May 1919; Hitler was identified by them as a known counter-revolutionary and a right-winger. (39)
Evidence in support this is not hard to come by as on 27th April 1919 three ‘Red Guards’ came to arrest Hitler as a ‘counter-revolutionary’ and Hitler held them off with a rifle before escaping. (40) This should be viewed in the context of the ‘Red Guards’ having been on a large murder spree as they they’d been – for example - murdering members of the Thule Society and then also proceeded to bludgeon 100 ‘bourgeoise hostages’ to death in Munich’s Luitpold Gymnasium. (41)
Further Hitler was then known to be actively working as an informant and spy for the Freikorps and subsequently identified many of the leftists involved so they could be tried for treason and executed by the German authorities. (42)
He also showed a talent for whipping up nationalism among German soldiers (43) which resulted in the German army being very impressed with Hitler’s staunch nationalist views, ability to appeal to the ordinary soldiers and loyalty and promptly appointed him a ‘V-Man’ (= ‘Vertrauensmann’ = ‘Trustie’) in a new intelligence unit called ‘Abteilung I b/p’. (44)
Hitler was then tasked by ‘Abteilung I b/p’ to report on the activities of the new German party called the German Workers Party (or the DAP) which eventually became the National Socialist German Workers Party (or the NSDAP) and the rest as they say is history.
So, circling back again to the funeral of Kurt Eisner in Munich on 26th February 1919 and the photograph which shows what is widely believed to be Hitler - this author agrees that it is clearly Hitler - to have been present with other soldiers. What we are actually looking at is not the young Hitler supporting Kurt Eisner and the subsequent murderous communist regime that came about after his death, but rather Hitler spying on communists for the Freikorps and the German army that he was still part of while walking a fine-line as known counter-revolutionary and an anti-communist right-wing member of the Munich soldiers’ councils.
Why did Hitler cover up this involvement and back date his arrival in Munich from Traunstein to March 1919 from January/February 1919?
Well because it avoided awkward questions about Hitler’s role as an espionage agent and spy for the Freikorps and German army and thus also avoided his political enemies plausibly then claiming he was a spy in the DAP/NSDAP as well which is exactly what Konrad Heiden heard rumours about a decade or so later.
It really is that simple.
That is the real history behind this famous photo of Hitler: conversely to the silly claims of so-called ‘anti-Nazi activists’. It shows a brave Hitler acting as an espionage agent and spy for the right-wing forces suppressing the revolution as impeding the ability of the Bavarian Soviet Republic to mobilize soldiers against the Freikorps and German army as well as conduct the Red Terror against the citizens of Munich.
References
(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-jews-behind-the-bavarian-soviet
(2) Nigel Jones, 2004, ‘The Birth of the Nazis’, 2nd Edition, Robinson: London, p. 115
(3) Ibid., p. 140; Howard Sachar, 2002, ‘Dreamland: Europeans and Jews in the Aftermath of the Great War’, 1st Edition, Vintage: New York, pp. 230-231
(4) Jones, Op. Cit., p. 140 ; Sachar, Op. Cit., p. 231
(5) Jones, Op. Cit., p. 140
(6) Ibid.
(7) Ibid.
(8) Ibid., p. 141
(9) Ibid.
(10) Ibid.
(11) Ibid., p. 142
(12) Ibid.
(13) Ibid., p. 143
(14) Ibid.; Sachar, Op. Cit., p. 233
(15) Jones, Op. Cit., p. 143
(16) Ibid., pp. 143-144
(17)See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/count-anton-arco-valley-and-the-murder
(18) https://web.archive.org/web/20131219082340/http://www.atlantic-times.com/archive_detail.php?recordID=1586
(19) Jeffrey Gaab, 2006, ‘Munich: Hofbräuhaus & History: Beer, Culture, & Politics’, 1st Edition, Peter Lang: Oxford, p. 59
(20) Chris Harman, 1997, ‘The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918 to 1923’, 2nd Edition, Bookmarks: London, p. 317
(21) Ibid., p. 132; Stephen Bronner, 2012, ‘Modernism at the Barricades: Aesthetics, Politics, Utopia’, 1st Edition, Columbia University Press: New York, p. 131; Richard Grunberger, 1973, ‘Red Rising in Bavaria’, 1st Edition, Arthur Barker: London, p. 116; Gaab, Op. Cit., p. 58
(22) Ian Kershaw, 1998, ‘Hitler’, 1st Edition, Penguin: New York, p. 109
(23) Ibid.
(24) Ibid., pp. 109-110; 116
(25) Ibid., p. 116
(26) Ibid., p. 117
(27) Ibid.
(28) Ibid.
(29) Ibid., p. 110
(30) Ibid.
(31) Ibid., pp. 117-118
(32) Ibid., p. 119
(33) Ibid.
(34) Guido Knopp, 2002, ‘Hitler’s Hitmen’, 1st Edition, Sutton: Stroud, pp. 216; 220-222; 228; 250
(35) Jones, Op. Cit., pp. 32-39
(36) Kershaw, Op. Cit., p. 119
(37) Ibid., pp. 118-119
(38) Ibid., p. 120
(39) Ibid., pp. 120-121
(40) Ibid., p. 110; Jones, Op. Cit., pp. 154-155
(41) Jones, Op. Cit., pp. 154-155; Kershaw, Op. Cit., pp. 113-114
(42) Jones, Op. Cit., p. 232
(43) Ibid.
(44) Ibid.; Kershaw, Op. Cit., pp. 117-118