|
Now the crowd became wavering and uncertain in the face of the speaker’s new direction of talk. Halstead leaned forward over the podium and lowered his volume, now that the hecklers had been silenced. “Tonight is a night of action, my fellow Germans! Tonight is the night which shall be remembered for a thousand years as the beginning of a new Germany!” Halstead was screaming now. “The phoenix that is Germany is now risen from the ashes, and shall last for those thousand years!” Halstead’s final words were a shriek, both of his fists were shaking in the air, and the cloth covering the wall behind his back dropped to the floor on cue. Before the hall of three thousand terrified observers now hung an enormous flag, a flag with a black phoenix superimposed over a white triangle, its wings sweeping upward into a red field, a field whose color, along with the black and white, instantly reminded many in the hall of the flag of the Empire. Once the covering cloth had come to rest on the floor, Halstead and the other regular members of the Darbeitpartei raised their right arms out in front of them to a ninety degree angle and pulled the tight fists at the end of those arms back to their hearts in the new salute of the new party, a salute which many in the hall instantly imitated. “My fellow Germans! Unite, I tell you! Unite and drive these Bolshevists from our homeland! Restore Germany to its rightful place in history!” Halstead’s voice rang out in the hall, along with a distant rat-tat-tat of the two Ordnertruppe machine guns firing outside. The firing continued, all eyes turned to the hall’s entrance, several members of the audience started to edge towards the only exit, and then Röhm ran into the hall, jumped onto a table, and fired a single shot from his Luger towards the ceiling to gain attention in the disorder. “The Communists are attacking the hall! All able-bodied men grab a rifle to defend yourselves!” Röhm gestured with his pistol towards the rear wall, where crates of freshly-oiled rifles and insigniaed steel helmets had been set out and opened. Several men in the rear of the crowd rushed forward and accepted the rifles and helmets from Ordnertruppe members already decked out with such gear, and allowed themselves to be shoved into instant squads of twelve and led by squad leaders through the Burgerbräukeller entrance and outside. |