A tougher sentence for Hitler in 1923 could have changed history

The young murderers were out for more than blood. By gunning down Walter Rathenau, the Jewish foreign minister, in June 1922, they were hoping to spark a crisis that would lead to the destruction of the Weimar Republic, the German government formed after the first world war. The heavily armed, virulently antisemitic terrorist network that Rathenau’s killers belonged to, called the Organisation Consul, wanted to rise up and destroy the republic, avenging Germany’s defeat in 1918 and subsequent humiliations.