Munich police have come under fire for allowing an anti-Islamic group to hold a rally – and deliver a Nazi-glorifying speech – at the site where Adolf Hitler’s 1923 uprising failed.
His so-called “beer hall putsch” began on the evening of November 8th, 1923, and ended the following morning when police confronted Hitler and his supporters at Munich’s Feldherrnhalle and led him off to prison.
Now, almost a century on, Munich police are struggling to explain why they allowed a speech from the local branch of anti-Islam group Pegida on the same site last Monday.
Anti-fascist groups say police stood by as about 180 demonstrators from the local branch of Pegida, founded in Dresden a year ago, heard a speech drawing a line between the Nazis and their own movement.
According to Micky Wenngatz, organiser of a counter-demonstration, a Pegida speaker noted that another movement had once started at the site of their demonstration and said the time has come for a "march of thousands" from this square in Munich to Berlin.
"Nazis and right-wing extremists in front of the Feldherrnhalle, that was unthinkable even weeks ago," said Mr Wenngatz to the Süddeutsche Zeitung daily. "Pegida is deliberately underlining the historical connection to this site."
The Pegida group had applied to hold a rally at the adjacent Theatinerkirche but, at the last minute, police on the scene decided to shift the barriers to in front of the Feldherrenhalle.
It was built in the 19th century by Bavaria's King Ludwig I to honour the Bavarian army. In the early hours of November 9th, 1923, Hitler and about 2,000 supporters marched there from the Bürgerbräu beer hall.
Nazi salute
Their plans to overthrow the government in Munich and Berlin were quashed by police in a battle that left some 16 Nazis and four policemen dead.
After the Nazi takeover in 1933, the Feldherrnhalle was transformed into a place of pilgrimage to the 16 Nazi “martyrs” of the putsch. Anyone passing the building was obliged to give the Nazi salute.
Ahead of another Pegida rally on Monday night, registered to be held before the nearby interior ministry, Bavarian city official Marian Offman criticised the "historical amnesia" that allowed the rally before the Feldherrnhalle.
Others have asked questions about why authorities permitted a demonstration involving at least four well-known neo-Nazis.
The demonstration was registered by Heinz Meyer, a 55 year-old who has been under investigation for three years on suspicion of involvement in a terrorist organisation.
“We are no Nazis,” said Mr Meyer in a letter to state parliament officials last month. “We are not even stalwart patriots – just decent, considerate citizens.”
Germany’s growing refugee crisis has left 51 per cent of people “fearful” of the influx of asylum seekers and boosted Pegida, which stands for “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident”.
Support for the group fell earlier this year after its founder dubbed immigrants “trash” on social media. But, a year after its founding in Dresden, Monday-evening marches there are once again attracting up to 10,000 people.
