Today -100: April 2, 1924: Of unserious crimes in Bavaria, symptoms of intelligence, and scarfaces

Erich Ludendorff is acquitted of all the treason he totally treasoned during the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler and 3 other defendants get 5 years – which could mean  as little as 6 months with good behaviour, and the pre-trial time in custody counts. In theory Hitler could be released in 6 weeks; he will be released December 20th from his pretty cushy cell in Lansberg Prison. The remaining 5 defendants are sentenced to 15 months and are immediately paroled or released outright. As the sentences are read, spectators shouted “Heil Hitler” and the less alliterative “Heil Ludendorff.” Ludendorff tells the court it’s a scandal that he’s acquitted and his comrades condemned. Yes it is, general, yes it is, but not in the way you mean.

And yes, those ridiculous sentences were passed on April Fools’ Day.

Ludendorff is cheered in the streets: “To plot against the Constitution of the Reich is not considered a serious crime in Bavaria,” the NYT observes.

The NYT editorial page has been pushing for an end to all those investigations of Cabinet officials now that Daugherty is out. The Democrats, the paper  says in today’s smugly headlined “Symptoms of Intelligence,” “have begun to understand that the mania of investigation has carried them too far.” And the Republicans, who have “run like hares before the Democratic hounds”, “are recovering from a state of dazed and abject panic.”

Tulsa municipal elections are won by the Democrats, with highly visible Klan backing.

The Cicero, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago) municipal elections are a tad rambunctious, with interference in the voting by gangsters with sub-machine guns and sawed-off rifles closing polling places, kidnapping election workers and threatening voters. Chicago cops arrive late in the day to restore order. A shootout with the police results in the death of “Frank Camponi,” whose brother “Tony Camponi” “escaped after emptying two guns at half a dozen detectives.” These are actually Frank and Al Capone (who did not shoot at cops that day, that was someone else) in what I believe is the latter’s first mention in the NYT, which does at least get his nickname, Scarface, right. The gangsters who control Cicero succeed in returning a Republican administration.

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