--- title: Downton Abbey Season 5 Episode 4: What Lady Edith Learned About Hitler description: "A horrid bunch" is putting it mildly, Lord Grantham canonical: https://time.com/3675487/hitler-downton-abbey/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-01-26T12:00:47.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T03:43:43.349Z article:section: History og:title: Downton Abbey Season 5 Episode 4: What Lady Edith Learned About Hitler og:description: "A horrid bunch" is putting it mildly, Lord Grantham og:url: https://time.com/3675487/hitler-downton-abbey/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt64ce0aec984cbc23/69877ae306f2c1ebfb333814/beer-hall-putsch.jpeg?branch=production&width=1060&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1060 og:image:height: 596 og:image:alt: Beer Hall Putsch Trial og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Downton Abbey Season 5 Episode 4: What Lady Edith Learned About Hitler twitter:description: "A horrid bunch" is putting it mildly, Lord Grantham twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt64ce0aec984cbc23/69877ae306f2c1ebfb333814/beer-hall-putsch.jpeg?branch=production&width=1060&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # News of Hitler Finally Reaches _Downton Abbey_ > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Jan 26, 2015 12:00 PM UTC  A courtroom scene on Mar. 3, 1924, during the treason trial of Adolf Hitler and Erich Ludendorff (following the unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923 A courtroom scene on Mar. 3, 1924, during the treason trial of Adolf Hitler and Erich Ludendorff (following the unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923 Hulton Archive / Getty Images  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Jan 26, 2015 12:00 PM UTC **_Contains spoilers for Season 5 Episode 4 of_** **Downton Abbey** Though Lady Edith was more concerned with the whereabouts of the missing Michael Gregson, history buffs may have caught something else in the news she received from Munich during the episode of _Downton Abbey_ that aired in the U.S. on Jan. 25. Viewers already knew that Michael had disappeared after being involved in a fight in Munich, shortly after moving to Germany in order to divorce his mentally ill wife so that he could marry Edith. Now, with a phone call from Michael’s office, more information is available: the gang who got into a fight with Michael was apparently a “group of thugs” who “wear brown shirts and go around bullying people,” as Lord Grantham phrases it. Their leader, who tried to start a revolution, is on trial, so more information about Michael’s fate may soon become available. If you didn’t guess, that “absurd” man — as Edith puts it — is Adolf Hitler. The trial she mentions took place in March of 1924, after the event sometimes referred to as the “Beer Hall Putsch.” For about a year before that, Hitler (along with General Erich von Ludendorff) had agitated for a fascist, monarchial revolution against the republican government that ran Germany at the time. Throughout 1923, the Hitlerites clashed with their many opponents throughout Germany, culminating in an attempted coup. Here’s how TIME described what happened, in the [Nov. 19 issue of that year](http://time.com/vault/issue/1923-11-09/page/1): --- > “” --- Though it seemed the next day that “Chancellor” Hitler was in control of the city, the revolt was soon crushed. Hitler was found hiding in a friend’s house a few days later and, after a trial in the spring of 1924, convicted of treason. But, though Lady Edith wouldn’t have known it then, that was not the last the world would see of him and his followers. “They’re a horrid bunch, from the sound of it,” Lord Grantham said — and history would prove him very, very right. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3675487/hitler-downton-abbey/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3675487/hitler-downton-abbey/"},"headline":"News of Hitler Finally Reaches Downton Abbey","datePublished":"2015-01-26T12:00:47.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T03:43:43.349Z","description":"\"A horrid bunch\" is putting it mildly, Lord Grantham","url":"https://time.com/3675487/hitler-downton-abbey/","keywords":["Television","Nazi","Hitler"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt64ce0aec984cbc23/69877ae306f2c1ebfb333814/beer-hall-putsch.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt64ce0aec984cbc23/69877ae306f2c1ebfb333814/beer-hall-putsch.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Beer Hall Putsch Trial","caption":"Beer Hall Putsch Trial","creditText":"Hulton Archive / Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3675487/hitler-downton-abbey/","name":"News of Hitler Finally Reaches Downton Abbey"}}]}] ```