February 26, 1924. 10 Defendants enter a courtroom in Munich. They are being charged with an attempted coup. They tried to overthrow the government of the Weimar Republic… and almost succeeded. All eyes are on the second defendant to enter the room. When the judge reads this man’s name into the record, he identifies him as a Munich writer named Adolf Hitler.

Today: Hitler’s first attempt to seize power. How did his 1923 coup fail? And why would Hitler later say that this failure was “perhaps the greatest good fortune of my life?”

Thank you to Thomas Weber for speaking with us for this episode, author of the book Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi. Thank you also to our guest Peter Ross Range, author of 1924: The Year that Made Hitler. We also read David King’s book The Trial of Adolf Hitler in researching this episode–it’s a great resource if you want to learn more about this story.

**This episode originally aired February 21, 2022.

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Gabe and Elaine Smiley join Tavis Smiley