Copyright (c) 2014 Phyllis Zimbler Miller
All rights reserved.
Cornelius McNeil Cooper Jr. becomes the first West Point graduate to receive an honorable discharge as a conscientious objector. – February 13, 1971
“Cocktail parties are not too well understood by our German friends. Where we try to chat with as many guests as possible, the tendency of Germans is to cliques. The inbred feeling for rank, characteristic of educated German people, probably underlies this social clustering. The American host must be alert to designate and deploy interpreters and guides to help circulation.” Customs & Courtesies booklet
I stared across the vast spaces of the Hofbrauhaus – one of Munich’s gigantic beer halls – at the multitudes of beer-swilling revelers. Mitch and I had brought our out-of-town guests – people met at Learn to Ski Week who had come to visit. Judging by the ubiquitous drunken singing, I figured these Germans were not the “educated German people” referred to in the Customs & Courtesies booklet.
Taking a sip of beer, I repressed the urge to puke. Even the much-praised Munich beer tasted like all beer did to me – soapy water. And yet love of drinking this Munich beer led to the murder of six million Jews and the millions of others.
The Munich residents who inhabited these beer halls were an important core component of Hitler’s earliest followers. Drunk with the beer and a promise of a role in the new ruling order to come, they hoisted their beer steins and dedicated themselves to conquering the world.
What I wondered was why these Germans couldn’t have been content drinking their beer surrounded by the beauty of Bavaria? Why did these Germans have to covet other people’s lands – and march across borders to take that land?
Barely five years passed between the end of WWI on November 11, 1918, and Hitler’s failed Munich beer hall putsch – coup – to take over Germany starting in Bavaria. In that short time the Germans had apparently both forgotten the horrors of war and convinced themselves that they had to defend their honor by having a “do over.” This time they would win – and win gloriously.
I had been reading more since the night of November 9th when I realized it was the anniversary of Kristallnacht. I had read that the putsch started on November 8, 1923, and ended the afternoon of November 9th. And 16 years later on November 8, 1939 – two months and one week after the Germans marched into Poland and started World War II – Hitler narrowly escaped one of many assassination attempts while in Munich celebrating the anniversary of the beer hall putsch.
Now boisterous singing from the next table engulfed us and our guests. The guests hoisted their own beer steins and my mind focused on the upcoming 1972 Olympics.
In 1936 Berlin hosted the summer Olympics. The Nazis put on a good “show” and the world was duped into believing the smoke and mirrors. And now, in approximately a year and a half, a German city would once again host the summer Olympics. The January 27, 1971, Stars and Stripes had carried a full-page article by Peter Rehak titled “Munich Looks to ’72 Olympics.”
The article began: “The roar of bulldozers and the staccato rattle of builders’ drills fill the Munich air these days as the Bavarian capital gets ready for the 1972 Olympic games.
“Construction of the athletic sites on the outskirts of town is well advanced. Downtown Munich is busy with the building of new hotels, roads, parking lots and subways to deal with the flood of visitors.
