Balz, Hero of Munich 1923

[Brag]

Lt’ Fritz Gwitz writes:

As the dark days of 1923 drew to a close, Johan Sebastian Balz, the Wunderkadet, already showed signs of being the heroic personage he was to become later. Here the heroic and historic saga continues.


November 08 1923

It wasn’t too cold in Munich. Balz had developed a bit of a sweat dragging a gunny sack containing 146,728,2550,593 marks. He stopped to wipe sweat off his brow and wondered what could he buy with the money he had earned dancing the hoochie-woochie.

Goering and a bunch of Brown Shirted Nazis went by.
“Where are you fellows going?” Balz asked.
“We’re going to a beer hall” Goering answered. At the speed they marched they must have been thirsty.
Balz looked at his sack full of money and thought, That’s what I will do. I will have a beer then sing and twirl.

Ten minutes later, he had dragged his bag into the beer hall and saw Hitler sitting at a table. Balz approached and said, “Hi Hitler”
“Hi Balz,” Hitler answered.
Balz sat at Hitler’s table and ordered a beer from a buxom maid.
“You need another sack of money to buy half a beer,” The maid chirped.
Balz’s facial muscles sagged, but the great former sea cadet was not going to surrender so easily. “I’ll dance the hoochie-woochie, to earn my beer.”
“The what?” the maid asked.
“The Putschie-woochie,” Hitler said.
“Let me see,”
Balz began giratin, twirling and singing, “Oh meet me on the Balzig Sea, you hoochie-woochie.” But no one in the crowded beer hall paid any attention. Hitler jumped on top of a table, pulled his pistol out and fired into the ceiling,

“Listen to me, Volk.” Hitler bellowed, I am Hitler, “we are having a Putschie-woochie.”
“Hi, Hitler,” the crowd roared. “Let’s see the putshie.”

Meanwhile outside, a policeman ran to the Reichswehr Kaserne, yelling, “Get the Army out, they are having a putshie and firing guns in the beer hall.”
“There will be no putshing,” a colonel said.

Back at the beer hall, Bavarian State Commissioner Kahr said, “This is boring, I’m going home.”
“Hitler said, “No one leaves ‘til the putschie woochie is over.”
The commissioner left anyway and went to see the police chief. “Arrest those putshie rowdies,” he ordered,.

Next week:

The Munich Putsch, Balz, and the aftermath.