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THE POET AS SCIENTIST

THE POET AS SCIENTIST, THE POET AS SCIENTIST

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The Geek's Raven
[An excerpt, with thanks to Marcus Bales]

Once upon a midnight dreary,
fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bedsheets,
Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
Having reached the bottom line,
I took a floppy from the drawer.
Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
But got instead a reprimand: it read "Abort, Retry, Ignore".

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Form input - by Günter Born

Monday, May 22, 2023

What if Hitler holds onto the ruling triumvirate of Bavaria, as hostages, during the Beer Hall Putsch?

Due to runaway inflation and communist uprisings, the semi-autonomous German state of Bavaria declared a state of emergency in September, 1923. The ruling triumvirate was composed of State Commissioner Gustav von Kahr, Police Chief Hans von Seisser, and Military Chief General Otto von Lossow. Adolf Hitler was, at the time, plotting a coup rather along the lines of Benito Mussolini's march on Rome, a year earlier. In Bavaria itself, Hitler actually possessed a significant manpower advantage over the police and military combined. His brownshirts outnumbered them, two to one. In any case, the Bavarian military and police, along with most of the people, were largely pro-Nazi. So, the notion of taking over Bavaria, if not all of Germany itself, had some merit, tactically speaking. On November 8, 1923, all three members of the ruling triumvirate were present for a rally at the BurgerbrauKeller, a huge beer hall in Munich. Hitler decided to march his brownshirts on the beer hall, capture the ruling leaders, and force them to cooperate with them in turning Bavaria, formally, into a Nazi state. From there, he hoped, eventually to be able to be able to march on North Germany, and Berlin. While the issue of conquering all of Germany was highly problematic, the notion that Hitler could conquer, and perhaps retain control of, an independent Bavaria for a time, is by no means inconceivable. After all, how likely was North Germany going to be to want to risk a prolonged civil war, to try to take it back from Hitler? Really, the only big mistake Hitler made here, was allowing WWI hero General Ludendorff to release the ruling triumvirate, after he himself had briefly left the building. Naturally, even with their manpower advantage, once the Bavarian leaders had control of their forces, their training and loyalty was too much for the disorganized brownshirts. But, let's suppose that Hitler keeps hold of the Bavarian leaders during the Beer Hall Putsch. They order their forces to side with Hitler, because they have no other choice. So, Hitler does make himself master of Bavaria, in 1923. What happens next? I think Hitler himself would have realized the impracticality of actually marching on Berlin, eventually, and rather shortly, given the leftist tendencies of North Germany, and the fact that they vastly outnumbered the population and resources of Bavaria. So, I would see a formal split of Germany, into North and South. Effectively, the dissolution of the German Empire. Hitler, of course, would hanker after much more than control of Bavaria. Perhaps, as in OTL, he would think that the Great Depression might give him an opportunity. However, given just Bavaria as a base of operations, I really don't think he'd have the power to get much farther. I suspect that Hitler will simply remain a kind of tinpot dictator of Bavaria, kind of a Mussolini wannabee, and rather little more than that.

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