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the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, a failed takeover of the government in Bavaria, a state in southern Germany.

Hitler was convicted of treason and sentenced to five years in prison. He spent less than a year behind bars, during which time he dictated “Mein Kampf,” his political autobiography. The putsch and Hitler’s subsequent trial turned him into a national figure.

In 1923, Adolf Hitler was 34, an age when most people have finished school and settled into an occupation. He was a high-school dropout, however, and a failed artist whose military service during World War I (1914-18) had been the high point of his life.

A series of financial events unfolded in the years 1921 through 1923 that would propel the Nazis to new heights of daring and would even prompt Hitler into attempting to take over Germany.

The German currency, the mark, slipped drastically in value. It had been four marks to the U.S. dollar until the war reparations were announced. Then it became 75 to the dollar and in 1922 sank to 400 to the dollar.

The National Revolution has begun!" Hitler shouted. "No one may leave the hall. Unless there is immediate quiet I shall have a machine gun posted in the gallery. The Bavarian and Reich governments have been removed and a provisional national government formed. The barracks of the Reichswehr and police are occupied. The Army and the police are marching on the city under the swastika banner!" None of that was true, but those in the beer hall could not know otherwise.