From the failed putsch to a political comeback
Johannes Munzinger and Dr. Richard Loibl have returned from their summer break to continue the discussion they left at the end of July, Passauer Neue Presse reports. Munzinger is an editor at the newspaper's media group; Loibl heads the Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte. Their podcast's full title is "Ein Bayer und ein Halber – Historische Zeitreisen mit Dr. Richard Loibl."
The previous installment followed the hosts through the museum's exhibition on Hitler and the struggle for democracy. It traced his transformation from a failed artist from Austria into a demagogue and putsch leader, ending with his release from fortress detention in December 1924. The newspaper describes the judicial proceedings as a major scandal and the conditions of his detention as resembling a vacation.
The new episode asks how Hitler, a foreign national with a criminal conviction, was able to reestablish himself in Bavaria. It examines who assisted him, how the NSDAP grew from a fringe party into a dominant force in less than a decade, and why the Bayerische Volkspartei and the Bauernbund could not sustain their opposition. The broader question is how the Nazis came to dominate Bavaria and Germany.
Listeners can find episode 20 on Spotify, Amazon and Apple Podcasts, as well as in the web player on the Passauer Neue Presse website.
Rebuilding the party and winning votes
The German Federal Agency for Civic Education, known as the bpb, dates Hitler's re-founding of the NSDAP at Munich's Bürgerbräukeller to February 26, 1925. There he asserted his unconditional claim to lead the party. Bavaria's government imposed a speaking ban on him the following month; almost all other German states followed with bans lasting at least two years.
The bpb's election figures show the scale of the party's subsequent growth. In the 1928 Reichstag election, the NSDAP received 2.6 percent of the vote and won 12 seats. On September 14, 1930, it secured 18.3 percent, representing about 6.4 million voters, and 107 seats. It became the second-largest party behind the SPD.
In Bavaria's state parliament election on April 24, 1932, the NSDAP nearly matched the Bayerische Volkspartei: their respective vote shares were 32.5 percent and 32.6 percent, a gap of just 0.1 percentage points, according to the bpb. In the national Reichstag election on July 31 that year, the NSDAP reached 37.3 percent.
The exhibition behind the discussion
The Regensburg exhibition, "Brennpunkt Bayern. Hitler und der Kampf um die Demokratie," runs from July 8, 2026, through August 7, 2027, at the Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte, Donaumarkt 1. Across roughly 500 square meters, five walk-through stage sets present formative events of the early 1920s, according to the museum.
The exhibition is an international collaboration with the Haus der Geschichte | Museum Niederösterreich. In 2020, that museum presented an exhibition placing Hitler's youth in the social and political context of Austria-Hungary around 1900.
At the Regensburg opening, Loibl argued that the trial following the 1923 putsch was decisive for Hitler's rise in Bavaria, BR24 reported. He said it demonstrated the need to protect democratic institutions consistently against extremists. Bavarian Minister-President Markus Söder also drew a comparison with the present, arguing that the Weimar Republic failed not because radicals were too strong, but because democrats had grown too tired.
