Say what you will about Adolf Hitler, but he knew how to make an entrance. Exactly 100 years ago, flanked by machine gun-carrying goons, the wild-eyed 34-year-old climbed on to a chair in a packed Munich beer hall and fired a shot into the ceiling. Once he had the shocked drinkers’ full attention, he put away his Browning pistol and announced a national revolution. It was a brazen act of wishful thinking – his poorly-planned coup d’etat soon failed – but it was amazing PR. A decade later the Nazi fascist state was reality, the 1923 Munich putsch its founding...