changed by the elimination of the current leadership.
—George ElserOn the evening of 27th February 1933, less than a month
after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor, an intimate soiree
was in progress at Joseph Goebbels’s Berlin apartment. With an
election campaign in full swing and due to culminate in a week,
Hitler had been engaged in a frantic electioneering tour, criss-crossing
the country speaking to huge audiences and giving radio
broadcasts. He had intended to strengthen the position of his
new government by giving it the democratic mandate that most
previous governments had so grievously lacked. The indications
were that he would succeed in his task. The new state-sponsored
terror apparatus had cowed his political enemies, while his propaganda
machine had managed to persuade the undecided to give
him the benefit of the doubt.
That evening, however, Hitler was enjoying a break from the
hectic political schedule and was a guest with the Goebbels family.
At around 10:00, after a fine dinner of braised trout, the guests
were relaxing and reminiscing when the telephone rang. Goebbels
answered and was informed by a colleague that the Reichstag
building was on fire. He was incredulous. “Is this meant to be
a joke?” he demanded? After phoning around for confirmation
of the report, he passed the news on to Hitler. Together they
gazed across the Berlin skyline at the spreading orange glow.
Hitler was in no doubt as to the perpetrators. “It’s the communists
he raged.
Within minutes, the two were hurtling to the scene in one of
Hitler’s limousines. The Reichstag was already well ablaze. Fire
crews and police were doing what they could, but the debating
chamber--oak-paneled and generously upholstered—was already
an inferno, and flames licked up at the night sky through the
cracks in the great glass cupola. In the foyer, Goebbels and Hitler
encountered Goring, who informed them that a suspect, a Dutch
communist, had been arrested at the scene. Together, the group
ascended to a viewing gallery overlooking the chamber. There
Hitler stood staring silently at the blaze below. After a time, he
turned to the assembled group, his face red with the heat and his
own fury. As one witness recalled: “He shouted uncontrollably, as
I had never seen him do before, as if he was going to burst:
‘There will be no mercy now. Anyone who stands in our way will
be cut down.’"
That very evening, Hitler began to translate those words into
deeds. Along with Goebbels, he hurried to the editorial offices
of the Nazi newspaper, the Volkischer Beobachter (National Ob-
server), where he spent much of the night composing articles and
dictating proclamations for the morning edition. The following
day, emergency legislati0n—the Decree for the Protection of
People and State—was passed by the president. In it, many of the
fundamental human rights previously enshrined in the German
constitution were formally suspended, including the right of assoiations
sociation, freedom of the press, and freedom of expression. Violations
could be punishable by death. The first foundation stone
of the Nazi dictatorship had been laid.
One of the first to feel the full force of the new legislation was
the suspect captured at the scene. Marinus van der Lubbe was a
twenty-four-year-old former bricklayer from Leiden in Holland.
Invalided in an industrial accident, he had become a militant
communist and was in almost constant trouble with the authorities.
After several attempts to reach the Soviet Union, he finally
traveled to Berlin in 1933, as he claimed, to help foment proletarian
revolution against Nazi rule. Though suggestions were made
at the time that the Nazis had torched the Reichstag themselves
to provide a pretext for suppressing their political opponents,
little evidence has emerged to support this theory, and the most
plausible conclusion is that van der Lubbe had indeed set
the fire himself. Arrested and tortured into a confession, he
claimed to have worked alone. He was tried, found guilty, and
duly beheaded. The venerable institution that he was supposed to
have torched was itself abolished a little over a month later.
Within weeks of his appointment, therefore, Hitler began the
“coordination” of German political life. By a series of measures
combining the quasi-constitutional with the downright illegal, he
contrived to eliminate his political rivals. Within a month, playing
on the fear of a communist uprising, the Nazis forced the so-
called Enabling Act on the Reichstag, now meeting in a cramped
Berlin opera house and easily cowed by Hitler’s storm troopers.
The act’s clauses provided for the formal suspension of the constitution
and for rule by decree. The communists were then outlawed
and the socialists were terrorized into exile and dissolution.
The formidable trade unions were forcibly absorbed into the
Nazi-led Labor Front. The parties on the right were similarly
“persuaded” to dissolve. Those who resisted were taken care of
by the burgeoning network of concentration camps. By the spring,
the Weimar constitution, which Hitler had solemnly sworn to up-
hold less than two months before, was already a dead letter.
Within only a few months of the Reichstag fire, Hitler’s political
dictatorship would be all but complete.
German society took somewhat longer to “coordinate.” lust
as in the political sphere, rival social organizations were forcibly
amalgamated, while opposition groups were outlawed. Social divisions
meanwhile, were smoothed by stressing the existence of a
Voltgemeinschaft, a, “national community” that would embrace
all Germans and transcend class and creed. This was not an entirely
spurious concept. Many Germans had tired of the rancor of
politics and longed for a return to the sense of community and
patriotism that they had witnessed during the First World War.
Coercion, then, was not always necessary, but it was nevertheless
ever-present.
The first degree of coercion under Nazism was the omnipres-
ence of the party. Though much less influential than the Com-
munist Party had become in the Soviet Union, the Nazi Party was
still the driving force behind the transformation of German soci-
ety. Pressure to join the party was relentless, and after 1933,
opportunism, cowardice, and an instinct toward subservience
conspired to sap the public’s fragile will to resist. Party member-
ship brought with it privileged status, preferential treatment, and
in some cases even legal immunity. It was the key to political and
social advancement and could also aid progress in the professions.
In 1935, for example, it was decreed that 10 percent of civil
service vacancies should be filled by party rnembers. Already by
that point, over 60 percent of senior state employees were card-
carrying Nazis.
Whether one became a member or not, the party’s influence
penetrated every aspect of life. At the lowest level was the Block-
wart, or block warden, whose job was to keep the residents of
each block under close surveillance. The block warden circulated
the party collecting tin, ensured that the swastika was flown on
red-letter days, and was authorized to snoop into all aspects of an
individual’s affairs.° He was a lowly, often despised figure, but he
was a part of a system that had the power to deprive a recalcitrant
of his livelihood, his status, and even his life. Noncompliance
could be fraught with danger.
Those who failed to comply faced the wrath of the SS and
Gestapo. In theory, the Gestapo, or state police, defended the
state, while the SS protected the party. Yet in truth, as the state
and party merged, the Gestapo and the SS became ever more
closely related; all Gestapo men, for example, were obliged to be
members of the SS? Their task was not only the purely defensive
one of rooting out dissent and checking opposition activity but
also the preemptive one of inspiring conformity. The Gestapo and
SS, with their network of agents and informers, operated as a
state within a state. Their task was secretly to penetrate every aspect
of German public and private life. Their power was vast.
They could arrest a man and consign him to a concentration
camp without recourse to the formal legal process. There was no
appeal. As Hitler himself explained, apparently without any hint
of irony: “[E]very means. . .is considered legal, even though it
may conflict with existing statutes and precedents.”3 Many Ger-
mans lived in fear of the knock at the door. The experience of one
was typical of those who dared to resist:
One morning, the Gestapo knocked at our door. . . .They
searched our apartment, confiscated our diaries and took
us away. . . .They left me sitting in a cell for eight days be-
fore coming to question me. I heard footsteps above me
and footsteps in the courtyard. Once I heard a woman’s
voice, which I thought could be my mother’s. Perhaps
they had picked her up too. . . . I wondered if they had al-
ready shot my father. Heaven only knew. . . . I was afraid. I
was afraid of anything that might lead to my being taken
to prison again, and that was exactly what they wanted. . . .
[That] fear made me very timid and passive, just com-
pletely inactive.
One of the most important targets for the Nazi Party and its
agencies was to win over the working class. It was one of the
largest and most influential social groups, and working-class
support was essential for the Third Reich to function as it did.
Accordingly, a masterly seduction was planned. Widespread acceptence
of the new regime was initially ensured by the fact that
Hitler’s government provided work. After the long years of the
Depression, that commodity was too valuable for many to allow
political or ideological objections to intercede. Thus pacified, the
workers reacted with a combination of rage and resignation when
their political and trade union organizations were subsequently
abolished. Yet the new regime did much to court the working
class and ensure their continued support. May Day, for example,
was transformed into a national paid holiday, when the German
worker (or “plant follower,” as he was officially known) was
feted. As the economy boomed and labor became increasingly
scarce, the employers had to battle to keep staff Some intro-
duced initiatives such as subsidies for house purchases, and else-
where holiday entitlement was doubled. Wages, meanwhile, were
subjected to a statewide freeze.
Even the field of welfare provision was taken over by the
party. The Nazi People’s Welfare organization, known by its Ger-
man initials NSV, was established as an umbrella for a huge num-
ber of independent charities, which were then forcibly absorbed.
It practiced an especially involuntary form of voluntary donation.
Not only did it circulate the ubiquitous collecting tins and make
deductions from workers’ wages, it would also admonish those
who failed to contribute, even threatening “protective custody”
for persistent nondonors, to “pre-empt popular outrage.” The
NSV was little more than a vehicle for licensed extortion. But its
collection campaigns did have the ulterior motive of inculcating
in donors a heightened sense of community. The distribution of
its funds, through programs such as the annual Winter Aid drive,
was also ruthlessly exploited, predictably, for propaganda purposes
Leisure time, too, was regulated and exploited. The German
worker could avail himself of cut-price opera tickets, buy a subsidized
wireless, or even go on a package holiday. In 1938, one
German worker in three enjoyed a vacation“ hosted by the Nazi
organization Strength Through Joy, often at purpose-built complexes
such as the enormous Prora resort on the island of Rugen
in the Baltic, which was to house twenty thousand holiday makers
and employ over two thousand staff” Other destinations
included Lake Constance, the Black Forest, or the Harz Mountains
The fortunate few could even enjoy a cruise to Madeira or
the Norwegian fjords aboard a purpose-built liner such as the
Wilhelm Gustloff Whatever destination the worker chose, he
could rest assured that all the necessary measures were in hand to
continue his effective indoctrination. The Wilhelm Gusrloff for
example, had 156 loudspeakers for the relaying of propaganda.
Nazi influence reached even the most apparently apolitical of
groups. All commercial, industrial, and professional bodies were
“coordinated” in the summer of 1933.14 The Following year,
the majority of youth organizations, from the Scouts to sports societies
to chess clubs, were incorporated into the Hitler Youth.
One recruit, the young Helmut Schmidt, For example, later chan-
cellor of West Germany, automatically became a Hitler Youth
member when his rowing club was absorbed.” Hitler Youth mem-
bership increased 3,500 percent as a result of this expansion, to
over three million.'“ Few German boys could resist its heady
mixture of uniforms, war games, and small-arms drill. The girls of
the associated German Girls’ League, meanwhile, were instructed
in physical culture, eurythmy, and domestic science. They were
all obliged to swear loyalty to the “Supreme Father”—Adolf Hitler.”
The Force that prepared and underpinned the “coordination”
of German life in the Third Reich was propaganda. Described as
the “genius” of the regime, propaganda in many ways made up
for the ideological shortcomings of Nazism.18 With its pyrotechnics,
fanfares, and screeching editorials, it could be relied upon to
induce compliance, even when the eclectic mishmash of ideas be-
hind Hitler might have failed to inspire. Its power became leg-
endary. As Hitler once asserted: “By the clever and continuous
use of propaganda, a people can even be made to mistake heaven
for hell, and vice versa.”
The genius behind the Nazi propaganda machine was Joseph
Goebbels. Born in Rheydt on the Lower Rhine in 1897,
Goebbels was an archetypal misanthrope. Highly gifted intellec-
tually, he was tormented by feelings of physical inadequacy as a
result of his weak constitution and clubfoot. After gaining a doc-
torate in literature in 1921, he was Frustrated as a writer and
drifted toward the socialist wing of the Nazi Party. He was to
become one of its most impassioned and eloquent spokesmen.
Despite ideological disagreements with Hitler, he eventually
came under the latter’s spell and was rewarded with the post of
Gaulleiter of Berlin in 1926. There, his energy, organizational talents,
and demagoguery began the transformation of the capital
from a bastion of the left into a stronghold of the right.
Goebbels’s methods were deceptively simple. Backed by the
ever-present threat of violence, he used every means at his dis-
posal to browbeat, taunt, and humiliate his opponents. He never
allowed the truth to cloud his judgment. The essential aspect of
propaganda, he asserted, was that it “achieved its purpose"; whether
it was true or not was immaterial.” Defamation, therefore, was a
specialty, and at one point Goebbels was defending five separate
libel actions.“ He would ridicule his enemies as simpletons, nin-
compoops, or philanderers, start scurrilous rumors, and make
outrageous accusations. His words, honed with consummate
skill, would almost drip with malice and cynicism. When the Ger-
man chancellor Gustav Stresemann died after a long illness in
1929, for example, he was accorded little respect by Goebbels.
Despite being a Nobel laureate and the architect ofWeimar Ger-
many’s brief flirtation with stability, Stresemann was described by
Goebbels as having been “executed” by heart failure.”
Commensurate with his skills, Goebbels enjoyed a rapid political
rise. Elected a Reichstag deputy in 1928, he was appointed
national head of party propaganda two years later. In 1933, he was
awarded the top prize—leadership of the newly created Ministry
for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, with the entire German
media under his control. At his first press conference, he was
remarkably candid about the new ministry’s purpose. It was,
he said, to make people “think uniformly, react uniformly, and
place themselves at the disposal of the government, body and
s0ul.” Thereafter, his position was unassailable. Through the
editorials of the Nazi press, especially the breathtakingly menda-
cious Volkischer Beobachter and the ever-burgeoning radio sector,
he was free to propagate the Nazi worldview to an audience that
was increasingly unable to discern the truth from lies.
But Goebbels’s talent was not confined to the printed and
spoken word. He was also a gifted stage manager. His marches,
rallies, and torchlight parades provided the model for Nazi cere-
monials, utilizing every means available—flags, fanfares, banners
—to induce near-ecstasy in the watching public. His vision of
National Socialism was as an “experience,” encompassing every
aspect of the follower’s life: a fusion of politics with religion.“ It
was not enough, he thought, for the German public to simply accept
National Socialism; they had to participate in it, celebrate it,
and believe in it.
Everyday life under the Third Reich required every individual
to make his or her own compromise with the regime. The expe-
rience of the majority, admittedly, was not that of SS terror, con-
centration camps, and extrajudicial murder. Many would reminisce
with some fondness about the peacetime years, stressing the eco-
nomic boom, “the guaranteed pay packet. . .adequate nourish-
ment . . . and the absence of disarray in political life.” It has been
argued, for example, that unless one had the misfortune to be-
long to a specific risk group—]ews, communists, Gypsies, homo-
sexuals, and so on—and unless one actively conspired against or
resisted the regime, one could live comparatively free from fear.
This is probably accurate. After all, the Gestapo did not resort to
the randomized terror then employed in the USSR. Their victims
were usually identified via denunciations and were usually guilty
of at least a minor transgression or misdemeanor.
Yet everyone, regardless of their enthusiasm for the regime,
was expected to conform. They were expected to contribute to
the People’s Welfare, to hang out the swastika when required,
and to listen to Hitler’s speeches on the radio. At work, they were
expected to be members of the required state and party bodies.
When they married, they would receive a complimentary copy of
Main Kampff Their children would be expected to join the Hitler
Youth, attend schools purged of “unreliable” teachers, and learn
from “revised” textbooks.
The Nazi state, therefore, was almost omnipresent and virtu-
ally omnipotent. Those who refused to conform and resisted its
threats and blandishments did so at great personal risk. They were
taking on a network of agencies that demanded unquestioning
obedience and which could exercise the power of life and death
over their opponents. In these circumstances, it took a great deal
of integrity, courage, and downright bloody-mincledness to resist
the Nazi onslaught. Some chose what was called “internal emi-
gration”—a form of moral and intellectual self-sufficiency that
did not openly challenge the regime but rather sought to avoid its
attentions by effecting a withdrawal from all public and political
participation.
A few opted actively to resist the strictures and seductions of
the Third Reich. Some did so by attending illegal dance clubs,
tuning in to foreign radio broadcasts, or hosting political discus-
sion groups. Fewer still set out to confront the regime by the use
of violence. One of the latter was Georg Elser.
Georg Elser was born in the village of Hermaringen, in eastern
Wiirttemberg, in Ianuary 1903.26 The eldest of five children,
with a pious mother and a violent father, he grew up in modest
surroundings. His family worked on the land, trading in lumber,
tending a mill, and managing their smallholding.
The young Georg was very much the product of his child-
hood environment. Small in stature, with unruly dark wavy hair,
he often bore a pinched, slightly troubled expression. He was not
unintelligent, but he was an average pupil, distracted from his
studies by the burdens of being an oldest child, working for his
father, and looking after his siblings. He was also somewhat of a
loner. He made few friends and was content with his own company.
But, perhaps most importantly, Georg developed one par-
ticular character trait in response to the nightly violence visited
on the family by his father: a profound sense of justice.
After finishing secondary school in the summer of 1917,
Georg briefly worked for his father before finding an apprentice-
ship in a local foundry. Health problems then forced a change of
career, and he was apprenticed as a cabinetmaker. He was consci-
entious and hardworking, and he demonstrated a genuine talent
for woodworking. He had found his métier. His patience and per-
fectionism meant that he left the technical school in Heidenheim
at the top of his class. At age twenty-two, a qualified cabinet-
maker, he left home, with all its unhappy memories, to make his
living as a journeyman.
Elser found employment in a succession of jobs. He worked
as a simple carpenter, building fiirniture, clock housings, and
even wooden propellers. But when the economic crisis of 1929
broke, his modest existence became unsustainable. He regularly
found himself unemployed, and was eventually forced to return
to his family.
While little had changed at home, Georg had matured. He
was still largely uninterested in politics per se, but he had devel-
oped a clear political standpoint: a visceral and uncompromising
opposition to the Nazis. This was in part due to his background.
Hitler’s slogans perhaps reminded him of the loudmouthed bom-
bast of his drunken father. But he also believed that only the
Communist Party could deliver improved wages and conditions
for workers and craftsmen such as himself. Consequently, he
voted for the German Communist Party and was briefly a mem-
ber of its affiliated paramilitary “defense force,” the Rate Front-
kampferbund.
Elser was no ideological communist, however. He was a practical
man at heart and was not interested in political discussions.
He had no desire to change other people’s minds, but he stead-
fastly refused to make any accommodation with the new regime.
When Hitler’s speeches were broadcast, he would silently leave
the room. One incident illustrates his attitude very clearly. In May
1938, a Nazi parade threaded its way through his hometown of
Konigsbronn. Elser, like many others, turned out to watch, but as
those around him gave the Hitler salute, he refused to do like-
Wise. \/Vhen a colleague reminded him that it might be sensible to
conform, he replied curtly: “You can kiss my ass.”27 He then os-
tentatiously turned about and started whistling to himself.
How Elser metamorphosed from a small-time nonconformist
to an assassin is unclear. He certainly held a deep and personal ha-
tred for Hitler, but that was not so unusual. He gave a clue to his
motives when he later claimed that he had made his decision to
assassinate Hitler in the autumn of 1938.28 At that time, war with
Czechoslovakia appeared imminent, and indeed was averted only
by the licensed treachery of the Munich Conference. But Elser,
like many others, was convinced that Munich would not spell the
end of Germany’s aggressive designs. He believed war, with all its
attendant miseries, to be inevitable.”
However, there were many in Germany who felt the same ha-
tred and the same fear, yet did nothing. Other factors, therefore,
must have contributed to Elser’s radicalization. For one thing, his
home life was as unbearable in 1938 as it had been in 1922. His
father’s business had finally failed and the family unit had begun
to disintegrate in acrimony. His own circumstances were little
better: he was chasing a married woman and paying support for a
child he had never wanted.3° He was also struggling for work.
After cutting ties with his parents, he once again scratched out a
living as a jobbing carpenter but was shocked at how the hourly
rate had sunk as a result of the Depression; it was barely possible
to make even a modest living. By 1938, he simply had nothing
left to lose.
So in the autumn of 1938, Georg Elser began to plot. By his
own admission he had no idea of how he might carry out his at-
tack. But the perfectionist went to work with a will. That No-
vember, he traveled to Munich to observe the commemoration
of the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. After Hitler’s evening speech
in the BLirgerbriiukeller—the traditional curtain-raiser of the
celebrations—-—he entered the hall posing as a regular customer.
Unnoticed by the lingering group of Nazi bigwigs and body-
guards, he noted the layout of the room, the position of the
lectern, and the patent lack of effective security measures. The
following morning, he returned to observe the start of the pa-
rade——the very same parade that Maurice Bavaud had hoped to
disrupt so spectacularly. He then caught the train home.
As a result of his reconnaissance in Munich, Elser now had a
clearer idea of a possible way to hit his target. The following year,
he decided, he would plant a bomb in the Biirgerbriiukeller to kill
Hitler and as many of the leading cadre of Nazis as possible. He
gave himself twelve months to collect the necessary hardware and
to design and build his bomb.
First, he stole a fuse and a quantity of gunpowder from his
employer, an armaments manufacturer in Konigsbronn. He then
found another job in a nearby quarry, where he was able to acquire
explosives and a detonator with comparative ease. Working
evenings and weekends in his workshop, he drew up plans and ex-
perimented. Having no experience of explosives, he tested pro-
totype bombs in the fields around his home before satisfying
himselfon the amount required for the task. In the spring, he re-
turned to Munich to take measurements and make more detailed
sketches of the hall of the Biirgerbriiukeller.3l He also saw the
ideal location for his bomb: behind the dais and lectern was a
thick stone pillar supporting an upper gallery that ran the length
of the hall. An explosion there, he reckoned, not only would kill
those in its immediate vicinity but also could bring down the
heavy balcony above.
Throughout more than eight months of plotting, Elser be-
trayed nothing of his activities to his family, his work colleagues,
or his few friends. The only time he risked discovery was when,
during his short stay in Munich in the spring of 1939, he tried in
vain to get a job in the Biirgerbriiukeller.” Beyond that, he kept
the entire operation secret. If asked what he was making, he
would reply simply: “An invention.”33 When pressed by an in-
trigued colleague if his invention was an alarm clock that would
ring and simultaneously activate a light, he answered evasively:
“Yes, something like that.”
In early August 1939, Elser finally left his home and traveled
to Munich. With him, he took a wooden chest containing his
tools: planes, hammers, saws, files, and, hidden in a special com-
partment, his bomb, with a further 50 kilograms of explosives, six
clock movements, detonators, wire, and a battery.” After regis-
tering under his own name with the authorities and finding ac-
commodation, he set to work.
His modus operandi was shockingly simple. He would visit
the Biirgerbréiukeller every night at around 9:00 to take his
evening meal. An hour or so later, he would sneak up to the
gallery of the function room, where he would hide in a storeroom
until the bar closed and the building was locked. Thereafter, he
was free to work by flashlight until the bar staff returned at
around 7:30 a.m., when he would sneak out of a back entrance.
His first priority was to chip out a cavity in the stone pillar to
hold the bomb. But, finding that the pillar was now dressed with
wooden cladding, Elser was forced to spend three nights sawing
a hole in the wooden surround. Every sound had to be muffled,
every speck of sawdust collected and disposed of. He could afford
to leave no evidence of his presence. Even the sawn wooden panel
was fashioned into a flush—fitting secret door.
Having accessed the pillar, he could now begin to dig out a
recess for the bomb. Using a hand drill and a hammer and chisel,
he spent most of the following month loosening mortar and pris-
ing out bricks—-all of which, of course, had to be meticulously ti-
died and removed from the scene in a cloth sack. Progress was
painfully slow. In the cavernous hall, every hammer blow he
struck echoed like a gunshot, and to escape detection he had to
time his blows to coincide with external sounds, such as the pass-
ing ofa tram or the automatic flush of the toilets.“ Working by
night preparing the pillar in the Biirgerbraukeller, he labored by
day putting the finishing touches to his bomb and, of course, the
elaborate timing mechanism.
Elser had planned to be safely in Switzerland by the time his
bomb exploded, so he needed to build a timer, linked to a deto-
nator, that could be set several days in advance. His solution was
ingenious. By modifying a clock movement with extra cogs and
levers, he created a timer that could run for a maximum of 144
hours before activating a lever. That lever then triggered a system
of springs and weights to launch a steel—tipped shuttle, which
struck the percussion cap of a live rifle round (with the bullet re-
moved) embedded in the explosive.37 For good measure, Elser
then added a second clock mechanism to act as a fail-safe.
For the finishing touches, Elser enclosed the timing mechanism
in a wooden case lined with cork to muffle its telltale ticking.
He then attached a sheet of tinplate to the inside of the outer
wooden door so that the area would not ring hollow if knocked.
On the night of 2nd November, two months after he had started
work in earnest, he finally installed his bomb in the pillar. Three
nights later he added the timer. It was set to explode at 9:20 p.m.
on 8th November—-right in the middle of Hitler’s speech.
Hitler arrived in Munich in the afternoon of 8th November. He
had flown down from Berlin, accompanied by Joseph Goebbels
and a secretary. He was a man in a hurry. His war was barely two
months old: Poland had been overrun, and the British and
French were entering the so—called Phony War, dropping leaflets
instead ofbombs, imploring Germany to desist. His planning for
a western offensive, meanwhile, was well advanced. Three days
earlier, on 5th November, the order for the attack on France had
been given, detailing the twelfth of that month as “X-Day.”38 On
the seventh, that order was then rescinded due to an unfavorable
weather forecast, and a final decision had been postponed until
the ninth—the day after Hitler’s scheduled visit to Munich.
For this reason, Hitler had initially wanted to cancel his Burg-
erbraukeller speech on the evening of the eighth. Though this
was unrealistic—commemoration of the Beer Hall Putsch was
one of the highlights of the Nazi calendar—he had stressed that
he certainly wanted to be back in Berlin that same night to attend
to business. However, his personal pilot feared that fog might
prevent a return flight, so it was decided to return by train,
thereby necessitating a shortening of the traditional program of
events. The address to the “old fighters,” therefore, would begin
earlier than usual—at 8:00 p.m.
Inside the hall of the Burgerbraukeller, military music set the
mood. An audience of around three thousand was seated at long
wooden tables laden with beer jugs. Most wore the field gray of
the Wehrmacht, though a few sported the black of the SS or the
brown of the SA. They chatted and laughed, reminiscing about
past struggles and looking forward to new successes. As their
leader approached, a momentary hush descended. In the gallery,
some stood on the tables to get a better view.
The first of Hitler’s party to enter the hall was a standard-
bearer holding aloft the holiest relic of Nazi Germany, the Blut-
falme from the failed putsch of 1923. Behind him followed
Hitler, accompanied by Goebbels, Heydrich, Hess, and a number
of other prominent Nazis. They were welcomed by Christian
Weber, a former confidant of Hitler and a veteran of 1923, who
presented the hall for a mock inspection and, after a short but in-
coherent speech, gave a triple “Heil!”
Against a backdrop of huge swastika flags, Hitler took his
place on the podium in Front of the pillar in which Elser’s bomb
silently ticked. For a moment he paused, surveyed the room,
glanced down at his notes, and drew breath. He began in cus-
tomary fashion, paying tribute to the veterans of 1923. His tone
was subdued, his delivery halting. As he warmed to his task, he
turned his vicious and sarcastic rhetoric on the new enemy, the
English:
Today, an English minister steps up, tears in his eyes, and
says: “Oh, how we would love to come to an understanding
with Germany. IF we could only trust the word of the
German leadership! ” The same is on the tip of my tongue!
How we would love to come to an understanding with
England. If only we could trust the word of its leadership!
When has there ever been a people more vilely lied to and
tricked than the German Volk by English statesmen in the
past two decades?
What happened to the promised Freedom of the
peoples? what happened to justice? What happened to the
peace without victors and vanquished? What happened to
the right of all peoples to sell’-determination?
What hapened to the renunciation of reparations? . . .
All lies. Broken promises.
He went on, his delivery growing more animated, his volume
steadily increasing. He gleefully compared English and German
cultural achievements:
The English cannot tell us Germans anything about culture
our music, our poetry, our architecture, our paintings,
our sculptures, can more than stand a comparison to
the English arts. I believe that a single German, let us say,
Beethoven, achieved more in the realm of music than all
Englishmen ofthe past and present together!
Hitler spoke for around an hour, giving an outline of the achieve-
ments of the Nazis and the perfidy of their enemies. As he neared
his conclusion, Hitler the actor took over. He rolled his eyes skyward
and gesticulated wildly, clenching his fists, clutching at his
chest. His words poured out, some spat with passion, some rolled
for emphasis. He concluded on a typically defiant note:
This is a great time. And in it, we shall prove ourselves all
the more as fighters.
In so doing, we shall best honour the memory of this
first sacrifice made by our Movement. I cannot end this
evening without, as always, thanking you for your loyal
Following throughout those long years, or without promising
you to hold up high our old ideals in the filture. We
shall stand up For them and we shall not shrink from putting
our own lives on the line to realise the programme of
our Movement, that programme which demands nothing
but to secure our V0l1e’s life and existence in this world.
This is the first commandment ofour National Socialists
profession of faith and it also is the last one which
hangs over every National Socialist when, after the fulfilment
of his duties, he departs this life.
Sieg Heil.'—to our Party Comrades of the National
Socialist Movement, to our German V0112, and above all to
our victorious Wehrmacht!
To tumultuous applause, Hitler brought the evening to a close.
He then left almost immediately for the train station, accompanied
by the party hierarchy. It was 9:07 p.m.
Some minutes later, as the dying tones of “Das Deutschland-
lied” rang through the hall, the “old fighters” were collecting
their possessions, saying their goodbyes, and preparing to file out
into the cold November air. Of the three thousand who had
packed the hall, only around one hundred now remained, mainly
musicians and bar staff clearing the glasses. Then, at 9:20 exactly,
Elser’s bomb exploded.
The bomb had the desired effect. It smashed the central pillar
in which it had been planted, and brought both the gallery and
the hall ceiling crashing down into the room. In a flash, the hall
filled with smoke and dust, briefly obscuring the falling masonry.
A blast wave raced through the building, shattering windows and
blowing out doors. The tables and stools closest to the pillar were
splintered to matchwood. The dais and lectern were crushed.
One eyewitness was Emil Wipfel, an SA man who was busy
dismantling the sound system when the bomb went off. “Suddenly,"
he recalled,
there was a bright light, and in the same instant we heard
a terrible blast. I was thrown back two meters, falling into
the rubble, while all hell broke loose above me. When I
came to my senses, I was lying on my stomach with my
right arm over the foot of my comrade, Schachta. I did
not know at the time that he was already dead. I couldn’t
move my left arm, and my feet were stuck fast. . . .I realised
later that a section of the roof, that had fallen across
the Fuhrer’s podium, was on me. I suspect that it was only
held up and prevented from crushing me by a broken
table nearby, and perhaps by the body of my comrade.
In the aftermath, three lay dead and sixty-seven more were in-
jured, five of them fatally. Those who were able sought to free
themselves from the rubble. Cries for help mingled with groans
and coughing. The survivors emerged, covered in dust, bloodied
and bruised, many of them assuming that they had fallen victim
to an air raid. One of their number was more perceptive, how-
ever, and quickly concluded that it had been a bomb intended to
kill their Fuhrer. “My God,” he gasped, “what bestial brain could
have conceived and carried out such an atrocity?
Once the dust had settled, and the dead and injured had been
removed, the detectives of the Munich Kriminalpolizei began
their painstaking investigation of the crime scene. The heap of
rubble in the hall was methodically sifted and searched. Splinters
were collected, photographs taken. By the early hours of the fol-
lowing morning, they were already feeling their way toward the
correct interpretation of events: the bomb had been substantial
and had been placed at the base of the pillar behind the dais.
Hitler, meanwhile, was already en route to Berlin. His train
had left Munich at 9:31 p.m. and would not arrive in the capital
until the following morning. He learned of the attack only when
the train stopped at Nuremberg. At first he thought the news was
a joke. He blanched when he realized that no one was laughing.
While pondering this latest brush with death, he drew the con-
clusion that providence was once more sparing him for great
things. Himmler, meanwhile, was drawing conclusions of his own.
That night he wired his minions with news of the attack. He concluded,
“There’s no doubt that the British Secret Service is be
hind it.
Like his target, Elser was many miles away from the scene of the
attack. He had left Munich on the morning of 6th November and
traveled to his sister in Stuttgart. Strangely, having exhausted his
savings, he borrowed 30 Reichsmarks and actually returned to
Munich on the seventh, to check that his bomb was still ticking.
Around 10:00 that night, he once again stole into the Burger-
briiukeller, hid in his usual spot, and made sure that the timer was
still running true. At dawn the next morning, he crept out again
and headed for the railway station. At l0 a.m. he caught a train,
via Ulm, to Friedrichshafen, where he took a ferry across the lake
to Constance, arriving a little after 9:00 on the evening of the
eighth--—the evening of the speech.
He reached the Swiss frontier around forty minutes later. As
part of his meticulous preparation, Elser had reconnoitered this
stretch of the border the previous year and had found it un-
manned. Now, however, in the autumn of 1939, with Europe once
again at war, it was closely controlled. His only option would be
to make a run for it and hope to avoid attracting attention. Loitering
close to the frontier fence, however, he was challenged by
two German border guards. He told them lamely that he was
looking for someone. VVhen they offered to help, he reluctantly
agreed to accompany them into their guard post. On entering the
building, it was said, Elser turned and cast a last longing glance at
the fence, and Switzerland beyond.“
The questioning initially was routine, and Elser remained
calm and composed, sticking to his story that he was looking for
an old friend. VVhen he was asked to empty his pockets, howeyer,
he began to arouse serious suspicions. His possessions that night
read like a confession. As well as a pair of pliers to cut the fence,
he was carrying a postcard of the Biirgerbriiukeller, a filse, a
Communist Party badge, and sketches detailing the design of his
bomb. Perhaps they were a sort of confession. Perhaps he was
hoping to impress the Swiss authorities with proof of his author-
ship of the attack that was taking place almost at that very mo-
ment. Elser’s problem, however, was that the contents of his
pockets were confessing to the wrong set of border guards. He
was handed over to the Gestapo for further questioning. And
when news filtered through later that night of the bomb attack in
the Biirgerbriiukeller, his fate was sealed. The following morning,
he was driven back to Munich.
On 13th November, five days after his arrest, Elser finally confessed.
He had been caught out when his interrogator asked to see his
knees. Though he had worn protective pads, weeks of working at
ground level had left his knees badly bruised and suppurating.
And when he failed to explain the injuries convincingly, he aban-
doned his resistance and conceded that he had indeed planted the
bomb.
The following day, Himmler took Elser’s interrogation file,
along with the signed confession, to show Hitler. The Fuhrer was
fascinated. He studied the file and asked to see photographs of his
would-be killer. He commented favorably on his appearance: his
intelligent eyes, high forehead, and determined expression. But
when presented with a preliminary Gestapo report concluding
that Elser had worked alone, he was incredulous. “What idiot
conducted this investigation?” he demanded.“ It was just not
possible, he thought, to imagine that Elser was a lone wolf.
To many Nazis, Elser was simply an enigma. He was an ordi-
nary German. He exhibited none of the typical signs of “degen-
eracy” that they claimed to be combating: apart from his brief
flirtation with communism, he was a virtual teetotaler, was not
promiscuous, did not consort with Iews, and was not close to the
Church. In fact, he was exactly the sort of solid, upstanding,
working-class German that they thought they had won over———
and, indeed, that had become the backbone of the Nazi Party.
Perhaps for this reason, they simply could not believe that he
had worked alone. They initially arrested over a hundred suspects
in connection with the Munich bombing, but they realized fairly
swiftly that Elser was their man. Yet as the investigators at the
scene pieced together his plot, coming to see its thorough plan-
ning and high standards of workmanship, foreign complicity was
assumed almost as a precondition. Elser, the ordinary German,
they thought, must have been led astray; he must have been aided
and abetted by the nefarious agents of Germany’s enemies.
That assumption fitted neatly with the requirements of the
German propaganda machine. In the winter of 1939, the “per-
fidious English” were portrayed as being behind every kitten
stuck up a tree. Thus, officially at least, a bizarre conglomerate of
domestic communists, the exiled Black Front, and British intelli-
gence was blamed for Elser’s attack. Elser, meanwhile, though
most forthcoming and cooperative under interrogation, was little
help in uncovering any wider conspiracy. Despite repeated beat-
ings, torture, and hypnosis, he stuck doggedly to his implausible
tale: he had had no accomplices and had received no foreign as-
sistance. And when told to build a second example of his Complex
bomb, timing mechanism, and detonator, to prove that he had
acted alone, he complied, skillfully re-creating his invention, to
the astonishment of his interrogators.
Himmler even took it upon himself to torture Elser personally.
A witness noted:
With wild curses [he] drove his boots hard into the body
of the handcuffed Elser. He then had him removed by a
Gestapo official . . .and taken to the lavatory. . .where he
he howled with pain. He was then brought back at the
was beaten with a whip or some similar instrument until I
double to Himmler, who once more kicked him and
cursed him."
Elser, by this point, was said to be “beside himself,” but he stuck
to his story.
So if Elser would not name his accomplices, then the Nazi
Sicherheitsdienst (SD) would name some for him. On the day
after the Munich attack, at Venlo, on the Dutch border, SS-
Sturmbannfuhrer Alfred Naujocks was preparing an exercise in
unorthodox warfare. Fresh from his adventure in Gleiwitz
he headed a kidnap squad aiming to snatch two
British agents from neutral Holland. On the German side of the
frontier, he had twelve burly SD men arranged on the running
boards of two Mercedes cars. At the agreed signal, he was to lead
them in a dash across the frontier to a cafe, where the British had
been lured by a German officer posing as a member of the resistance.
The British agents had thought they were on the verge of
masterminding a coup that would remove Hitler and restore
peace in Europe. They were an odd pair. Major Richard Stevens
had worked in intelligence for some years before being appointed
head of the British intelligence office in The Hague. His brief
there was to oversee espionage activities in Germany. His col-
league. Captain Sigismund Payne Best, had worked in military
intelligence during the First World War but had resigned his com-
mission and settled into a comfortable life as a businessman in
Holland. He had then been reassigned to the service on the out-
break of war in September 1939. The two had contacts with the
deputy chief of M16, Stewart Menzies, and their plan had been
approved at the highest level.“
They were, however, being lured into a trap. Their German
contact, a Wehrmacht officer going by the name of Captain
Schaemmel, was in fact Walter Schellenberg, a major in the SS
and Reinhard Heydrich’s chief of counterintelligence. He had
been wooing the British agents for some weeks, promising nego-
tiations with high-ranking anti-Nazis seeking to overthrow
Hitler.“ But, following Elser’s attack, Schellenberg was ordered
to seize his contacts and bring them to Germany for questioning.
He offered a meeting with a senior anti-Nazi as bait. Naujocks
was to provide the muscle.
Soon after 3:00 that afternoon, the British arrived at the ren-
dezvous. Almost immediately, they were accosted by Naujocks
and his SD squad, who had crashed through the barrier at the
border. After a brief tussle and exchange of fire, they were bun-
dled into the cars and whisked to Berlin for interrogation.” In
time, they would furnish the SD with a great deal of information,
including the names of numerous agents and details of all MI6
operations on the Continent. British intelligence would be fatally
compromised and exposed as plodding and amateurish, but a
bona fide link to Elser would not be established.
Despite this failure, Elser’s bombing would prove a boon for
the Nazi regime. Goebbels’s propaganda machine swung into ac-
tion, accusing the British of all manner of things, from the Mu-
nich bombing to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Goebbels
forbade his newspaper editors from printing anything that might
incriminate any other opposition groups within Germany, such as
the Iews, the monarchists, or the clergy. The popular wrath had
to be targeted specifically against the British. Accordingly, the
news report about the Biirgerbréiukeller bomb was given to the
German press direct, with the instruction that it was to be quoted
on the front page of every newspaper with every sentence in the
same order.5° The banner headline left little room for doubt:
“Miraculous Escape for the Fiihrer—Chamberlain’s Fervent
Hopes Are Not Fulfilled.”
The propaganda campaign was necessary to inflame passions
in a public that was in danger of growing tired of the Phony War.
With the euphoria of victory over the Poles already fading, it
sought to prepare the ground for new enemies and new offen-
sives. It was also notable in signaling Hitler’s new obsession with
defeating the British. It had the desired effect: popular support
for the war strengthened markedly.”
Aside from inciting hatred for the British, Elser’s attack was
also exploited to boost Hitler’s popularity. The German press
went into overdrive, lauding Hitler’s survival as a sign of divine
intervention. Messages of congratulation poured in. The lead was
taken by Pope Pius XII, who sent a telegram expressing his con-
gratulations on the Fiihrer’s survival. The German churches
swiftly followed suit: a Te Deum was sung in Munich Cathedral,
while the Protestants held a special thanksgiving service.53 Many
foreign heads of state also expressed their best wishes. Mussolini
sent his congratulations but was criticized by some for giving the
impression of insincerity.
Ordinary Germans, too, sent countless letters and telegrams.
Some expressed their anger and dismay over the attack; others
gave thanks to God for Hitler’s survival. Many sent donations as
a reward for the capture of the culprits or to aid the families of the
victims.55 A few ventured to express their feelings in verse. One
poetess eloquently gave voice to the adoration that many Ger-
mans felt for “their” Fuhrer:
He lives! The enemy’: plems were thwarted!
He lives.’ Our thanks to the Almighty,
That the death of our Fiihrer does not leave
A sorrowful Germany—a people to grieve.
The aftermath of the attack also provoked much more sinister
events. Tip-offs from the public about potential assassins multi-
plied, as did the list of suspects and conspiracies uncovered (or
imagined) by Nazi agents and informants abroad. The German
legation in Berne, for example, received a report of two suspi-
cious individuals meeting conspiratorially in a cafe in the city
shortly before the attack; tellingly, it was noted, one of them
spoke with an English accent.” The consulate in Zurich, mean-
while, was informed of an Austrian Iew who was considered to be
a suspect because she had allegedly cursed her misfortune that
Hitler had not been killed in the attempt.“ Another suspect had
apparently bet a colleague that Hitler would not survive until
194O. Other reports came from farther afield. One, from
Venezuela, linked Elser to the dissident Nazi Otto Strasser,59
while another, this time from Connecticut, suggested that the
authors of the Biirgerbriiukeller attack were in fact “highly emo-
tional fanatics,” who frequented a pool hall in the city of Hartford.
Countless innocent Germans also fell victim to anonymous
denunciations, many of them for merely expressing a lack of en-
thusiasm for Hitler, in some cases many years before.“ In such in-
stances, arrest, interrogation, and a sentence of imprisonment
almost inevitably followed. Barely six days after the attack, a
lengthy new directive ordered that all such reports from the pub-
lic were to be given the closest scrutiny. Hints were even in-
cluded for those investigators unclear of their task: Did the
suspect display a special interest in Hitler’s Munich speech? Did
the suspect express surprise that the speech had concluded with-
out incident? And had the suspect remarked recently that the
Nazi gov'ernment’s days were numbered?
The regime naturally also exploited the attack as an excuse to
deal with dissidents and perceived opponents of all shades. In
Dusseldorf alone, more than seventy arrests were made. Forty
Bavarian monarchists were also taken into custody. And in
Buchenwald, an unknown number of Jews were simply taken out
and shot.
For Hitler, the attack seems to have been an almost mystical
experience. While Goebbels cynically pushed the divine interven-
tion angle for all he was worth, Hitler appears to have actually be-
lieved it. When he first heard of the attack, he took it as a sign.
“Now I am completely content!” he exclaimed. “The Fact that I
left the Btirgerbraukeller earlier than usual is a corroboration of
Providence’s intention to let me reach my goal.”°‘* Each time the
story was told and retold, it was embellished and gilded a little
more. Hitler would later recall that during the Biirgerbriiukeller
speech, a “little voice” had repeatedly told him, “Get out! Get
0ut!” He gave a more dramatic version to his photographer,
Heinrich Hoffmannz “I had the most extraordinary Feeling and I
don’t know myself how or why—but I felt compelled to leave the
cellar just as quickly as I could.” A later concoction claimed that
he had changed his plans that very morning after a seemingly in-
significant conversation about his security arrangements.“
It is probable that Hitler really did believe these imagined and
post hoc justifications for his fortuitous survival. But what is most
telling is that he now felt that he had empirical proof of his status
as Germany’s anointed savior. From this point on, he would only
become more trenchant in his beliefs, more convinced of his own
opinions, and more contemptuous of the advice of others. He
was slipping into megalomania.
On one point at least, however, Hitler was perhaps right to as-
cribe his survival to the intercession of a higher power. It certainly
had nothing to do with his security regime. One of the most as-
tounding aspects of the attack is the incredible ease with which
the assassin was able to work. Elser routinely stole explosives and
detonators and purchased ammunition without hindrance. Once
in Munich, he worked undetected in the Biirgerbraukeller for
some thirty-five nights, allowing himself to be locked in, and es-
caping through a back door at daybreak. Until his arrest, he was
never challenged by security guards, SS sentries, or policemen.
He even returned one last time to check his bomb the day before
it was scheduled to explode. Again he spent the night undetected.
Hitler was due to appear the very next day and the country was at
war—yet no security checks were carried out and no searches
were undertaken.
For some, this apparent laxity was taken as proof of the com-
plicity of the German authorities in the attack. The truth is prob-
ably more prosaic. The lack of any systematic security measures in
the Biirgerbraukeller was the result of an administrative squabble
and of Nazi nepotism. In 1936, a dispute had arisen between the
chief ofthe Munich police and Christian Weber about who was to
be responsible for security at the beer hall event. Hitler had de-
cided in favor of his crony Weber, presumably on the logic that he
had run the party meetings in the early years, and the Burger-
braukeller speech was essentially a repeat performance with many
of the same faces present. What he didn’t realize, however, was
that Weber had graduated from a pimp and bruiser to a notorious
sybarite, grown fat on the corruption and hedonism available
to him under the Nazi state. Weber had won the turf war over
the beer hall meeting, but he had done nothing to discharge his
new responsibility. The other security organs, the Leibstandm-‘re
and the RSD, had been passed over in favor of the party and
one of Hitler’s clique—with Fatal consequences. Elser’s ingenu-
ity and Weber’s laxity made a general overhaul of security in-
evitable.
That process was completed by the spring of 1940. In a sixty-
page directive, Reinhard Heydrich aimed at a thorough review of
all security procedures, to sharpen awareness and root out com-
placency. “The protection of the Fuhrer,” he wrote, “must take
priority over all other tasks.”"8 To this end he argued For closer
cooperation between the existing agencies, but he could not re-
sist establishing yet another body under his own supervision.
Heydrich’s new player was the “special protection service,” orga-
nized within his power base, the Reichssicherheitshaupmmt(Reich
Security Head Office). It was to serve as a central agency in the
assessment of risks, the investigation of tip-offs, and the coordi-
nation of activities. Though it contained little that was new, and
was still technically subordinated to the RSD, it gave a welcome
boost to a network that had become jaded and inefficient. Se-
curity for all events was reviewed, with revised, more proactive
procedures. Surveillance was revamped: spot checks and precau-
tionary arrests were authorized, and the purchase of explosives
and firearms was tightly controlled.”
Other innovations included another new body: the Sicherheits-
Kontrolldiienst, or Security Control Service, to oversee security
in the New Reich Chancellery, and yet another, the Fuhrer
Begleitbattalion, or Fuhrer Escort Battalion, to accompany Hitler
into military theaters and defend his military headquarters. Both
domestic and travel arrangements were altered. All mail and gifts
for Hitler were to be handled by trained SS personnel, while all lug-
gage carried by the Fiihrer’s party was to be kept under constant
guard. The supreme irony was that the author of this raft of reforms,
Reinhard Heydrich, would himself fall victim to an assassin.
It would appear that many postwar historians shared the perplexity
of the Nazis in their interpretations of Georg Elser. Like
Hitler, they found it difficult to square the sophistication of his
attack with the simplicity of his motives. As a result, a number of
myths developed, some of which have tenaciously clung to the
story almost until the present day.
The first of these was the account that was given at the time-
that Elser was in league with the British and that Payne Best and
Stevens, who had been seized at Venlo, were his controllers. It
was widely trumpeted that all three would be tried for espionage
and exposed to the full penalty of German law. But in reality,
given the complete lack of evidence, no trial could be convened,
so all three men were quietly consigned to a concentration camp.
Tellingly, even senior German intelligence personnel and those
responsible for the interrogations denied the link.7° Nonetheless,
the official story stuck and the unhappy trio were kept incarcer-
ated pending the expected German victory, whereupon they
would probably have featured as star witnesses in a show trial of
prominent British politicians.
The second, more persuasive interpretation was that Elser was
a Nazi stooge. Almost from the outset, opposition elements, such
as Otto Strasser, viewed the Munich attack as a “provocation.”
The earlier Reichstag fire, they claimed, had been engineered by
the Nazis so as to give an excuse to clamp down on the political
left. The Munich bomb plot, they suggested, was a “second
Reichstag fire,” a ruse to generate enthusiasm for an unpopular
war. Elser, therefore, was described as “Lubbe Number 2,” in ref-
erence to the ill-fated Dutch arsonist of 1933.71 He was portrayed
as a simple patsy, plucked from a concentration camp and sent to
create a diversion, an “incident” that the authorities could then
exploit for their own ends.
Given the Nazis’ proven fondness for such ruses, this idea also
took root with a generation of postwar historians.” Despite a
complete lack of documentary proof, it appeared to be confirmed
by circumstantial evidence and rumor: Hitler had left the Burger-
braukeller early that night, missing the explosion by a matter of
minutes, and no security personnel were ever reprimanded over
the incident. This theory was supported by the erroneous as-
sumption, common at the time, that Hitler’s speech at the Burg-
erbraukeller had been shorter than on previous occasions and
that he had even spoken more hurriedly than was customary.”
Unreliable memoirs also lent it credibility. Payne Best, interned
with Elser in Sachsenhausen, claimed to have been told that the
latter had been hauled from Dachau to plant the bomb. In 1946,
the theologian and anti-Nazi Martin Niemoller went further, re-
lating that he had heard on the concentration camp grapevine
that Elser had been a sergeant in the SS and that the attack had
been personally ordered by Hitler.”
These myths were finally put to rest by two German histori-
ans in the 19705.75 Elser, it appeared, had indeed worked alone.
He was not the tool of others, neither the creature of British in-
telligence nor a Gestapo stooge. Unaided and undetected, he had
built a bomb and planted it, coming within a whisker of killing
Hitler. He could finally be cleared of all the accusations of com-
plicity and was at last free to take his place among the ranks of the
German resistance. In 1998, sixty years after his murderous deed,
a memorial to Georg Elser was finally unveiled in his hometown
of Konigsbronn.
By way of a coda, it is fitting to bring Elser’s story to its conclu-
sion. After his confession, Elser was sent to Sachsenhausen con-
centration camp outside Berlin. However, given his importance
to the regime as a fraudulent witness against the British, his life
could not be put at risk, and he was kept as a Soszdcrhdflling, a
“special prisoner.” He was afforded some creature comforts. He
was given two rooms and was permitted to turn one into a small
workshop. He was also granted a generous ration of
cigarettes and
was allowed to play a homemade zither. But he was kept in isola-
tion for five years, with an SS guard permanently posted outside
his door. Elser is usually described, perhaps unfairly, as a loner.
But even he must have felt the chilling lack of human contact.
As the end of the war loomed and a German victory slipped
from improbable to implausible, Elser became surplus to require-
ments. He would never take the stand in a show trial against
Churchill and his “clique of warmongers and criminals.” He
would never utter the damning lines that had been scripted For
him. He had outlived his usefiilness. In early February 1945, he
was transferred to Dachau, on the outskirts of Munich.
A couple of months later, on 9th April—barely a Few weeks
before the German surrender—Elser was called once more for
interrogation. A doleful glance shared with a fellow prisoner
showed that he knew what was coming.” On the direct orders of
Himmler, all “special prisoners” were being put out of the way,
where they could not embarrass the dying regime. The comman-
dant of Dachau was curtlv informed that Elser was to meet with
a fatal accident during one of the next air raids on Munich. That
very evening, Elser was taken out by a young SS man and shot in
the back of the neck. His body was burned. A week later, his
death was reported in the press as the result of an Allied bombing
raid. In the frantic last davs of the Third Reich, few would have
noticed the report. Even fewer would have remembered Elser’s
name.
