Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

had pulled out of giving his usual address to the ‘Old Fighters’ on the anniversary of the Beerhall Putsch, and was to be replaced by He?. The bomb-attack would, therefore, have been unnecessary. But Elser knew nothing of this, nor of Hitler’s decision then to give the speech after all. Elser was, remarkably enough, not really interested in politics. He took no part in political discussions, and was not ideologically well-versed. He had, it is true, joined the Communist Roter Frontkampferbund (Red Front Fighters’ League), and had been a member of the woodworkers’ union, but he had taken an active role in neither. Before 1933 he had supported the KPD in elections, but because in his view it stood for improving the lot of the working classes, not on account of an ideological programme. After 1933 he said he had observed the deterioration in the living-standard of the working class, and restrictions on its freedom. He noticed the anger among workers at the regime. He took part in discussions with workmates about poor conditions, and shared their views. He also shared their anxieties about the coming war which they all expected in the autumn of 1938. After the Munich Agreement he remained convinced, he said, ‘that Germany would make further demands of other countries and annex other countries and that therefore a war would be unavoidable’. Prompted by no one, he began to be obsessed by ways of improving the condition of workers and preventing war. He concluded that only the ‘elimination’ (Beseitigung) of the regime’s leadership — by which he meant Hitler, Goring, and Goebbels — would bring this about. The idea would not leave him. In autumn 1938 he decided that he himself would undertake ‘the elimination of the leadership’.²⁴³

He read in the newspapers that the next gathering of Party leaders would be in the Burgerbraukeller in early November and travelled to Munich to assess the possibilities for what he had in mind. The security problems were not great. (Security for the events was left to the Party, not to the police.) He worked out that the best method would be to place a time-bomb in the pillar behind the dais where Hitler would stand. During the next months he stole explosives from the armaments factory where he was currently working, and designed the mechanism for his time-bomb. In early April he travelled again from Konigsbronn to Munich and returned to the Burgerbraukeller. This time he reconnoitred more carefully, making detailed sketches and taking precise measurements. His new work, at a quarry, now enabled him to steal dynamite. In the next weeks he constructed a model of the bomb in the most minute detail and carried out a practical test with the exploding mechanism in his parents’ garden. At the beginning of August he returned to Munich. Between then and early November he hid over thirty times during the night in the Burgerbraukeller, working on hollowing out a cavity in the selected pillar and leaving by a side-door early next morning. So meticulous was he that he even lined the cavity with tin to prevent any hollow sound, should anyone tap on the pillar, or damage the bomb-mechanism by nailing up decorations. The bomb was in place, and set, by 6 November. Elser was leaving nothing to chance. He returned on the night of 7 November to make sure it was functioning properly. He pressed his ear to the side of the pillar, and heard the ticking. Nothing had gone wrong. Next morning he left Munich for Konstanz, en route — as he thought — to Switzerland, and safety.²⁴⁴

That evening, as always on 8 November, the ‘Old Guard’ of the Party assembled. Hitler had announced the previous day that he would, after all, give his annual address.²⁴⁵ Usually, this lasted from about 8.30p.m. until about ten o’clock. It had already been announced that, in the circumstances of the war, this year’s meeting would begin earlier and that the two-day commemoration of the Putsch would be shortened.²⁴⁶ Hitler began his speech soon after his arrival in the Burgerbraukeller, at 8.10p.m., and finished at 9.07p.m. The speech itself was one long tirade against Britain, highly sarcastic in tone, well tailored to his raucous audience of Party fanatics.²⁴⁷ Hitler normally spent some time after his speech chatting to the Movement’s ‘Old Fighters’. This time, escorted by a good number of Party bigwigs, he left immediately for the station to take the 9.31p.m. train back to Berlin.²⁴⁸

At twenty past nine the pillar immediately behind the dais where Hitler had stood minutes earlier, and part of the roof directly above, were ripped apart by Elser’s bomb. Eight persons were killed in the blast, a further sixty- three injured, sixteen of them seriously.²⁴⁹ Hitler had been gone no more than ten minutes when the bomb went off.

He attributed his salvation to the work of ‘Providence’ — a sign that he was to fulfil the task destiny had laid out for him.²⁵⁰ In its headline on 10 November, the Volkischer Beobachter called it ‘the miraculous salvation of the Fuhrer’.²⁵¹ There was, in fact, nothing providential or miraculous about it. It was pure luck. Hitler’s reasons for returning without delay to Berlin were genuine enough. The decision to attack the West had been temporarily postponed on 7 November, with a final decision set for the 9th. Hitler had to be back in the Reich Chancellery by then. It was more important than reminiscing about old times with Party stalwarts in the Burgerbraukeller.²⁵² Elser could have known nothing about the reasons for the curtailment of Hitler’s quick trip to Munich. It was mere chance that the Swabian joiner did not succeed where the generals had failed even to mount an attempt. Whether the generals would then have acted, had Elser’s attempt been successful, and once the main object of their putsch plans had been removed, is open to question. But with Elser’s failure, the possibility of more ‘moderate’ forces taking over and pulling back from the brink of all-out war with the West had gone.

Elser himself was already under arrest at the customs post near Konstanz when the bomb went off. He had been picked up trying to cross the Swiss border illegally. It seemed a routine arrest. Only some hours after the explosion did the border officials begin to realize that the contents of Georg Elser’s pockets, including a postcard of the Burgerbraukeller, linked him with the assassination attempt on Hitler. On 14 November, Elser confessed. A few days later he gave a full account of his actions, and the motives behind them. He was interned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and treated, remarkably, as a privileged prisoner. Probably Hitler, who continued to believe that Elser was the front-man of an international conspiracy, intended a post-war show-trial to incriminate the British Secret Service. At the end of 1944 or in early 1945 Elser was brought to Dachau. There was to be no show- trial. With the war as good as lost, Elser had no more value to the regime. Shortly before the Americans liberated Dachau, he was taken out and killed.²⁵³

Elser had acted alone. But the concerns which had motivated him — worries about living-standards, anxieties about extending the war — were widespread in the autumn of 1939. Reports abounded of unrest in the working class around that time. The War Economy Decree of 4 September had brought an instant worsening of living standards, higher taxes, abolition of higher rates for overtime and weekend work, and other restrictions. A wage-freeze had followed.²⁵⁴ Industrial indiscipline, including absenteeism and refusal of overtime, eventually forced the regime to back down.²⁵⁵ But longer hours, rises in food prices, and an acute coal shortage affected the poorer in society most of all that autumn. And for those stepping out of line, increased police presence in factories was a constant reminder of the threat of the labour camp.²⁵⁶

Euphoria over the victory in Poland had soon faded. Alongside the daily worries were those of an extension of the war. The ‘Phoney War’ (as American journalists dubbed the autumn and winter months of 1939—40), with no action from the West, raised hopes. Above all else most people wanted the war to be over. In his anxieties about the war, Elser spoke for many. He was on far less sure ground with his attribution of blame for the war to the Nazi leadership. The signs are that propaganda had been successful in persuading most ordinary Germans that the western powers were to blame for the prolongation of a war which Hitler had done all he could to avoid.²⁵⁷ Whatever criticisms — and they were many and bitter — people had of the Party and the regime, Hitler still retained his massive popularity. The view of one Munich upper-class conservative, antagonized above all by the assault on Christianity, that there was no one in the city who did not regret the failure of Elser’s attempt, was no more than wishful thinking.²⁵⁸ Few would have applauded a successful assassination attempt. Vast numbers would have been appalled. The chances of a backlash, and a new ‘stab-in- the-back’ legend, would have been great. As it was, the failure of the attempt brought, as could be expected, a new, great upsurge of support for Hitler, accompanied by feelings of intense hatred for Britain, held to be behind the bomb-attack. Not only internal reports stressed that ‘the devotion to the Fuhrer has deepened still further’.²⁵⁹ The underground opponents of the regime also acknowledged that Elser’s bomb had brought a ‘strengthening of determination’. People were saying that if the attempt had been successful it would have resulted in internal confusion, benefit to Germany’s enemies, loss of the war, worse misery than was caused by Versailles, and the upturning of everything achieved since 1933.²⁶⁰

Hitler’s hold over Germany was as strong as ever. The failure of those in positions of power to move against him and the repercussions of Elser’s bomb-attack demonstrated that his authority was unchallengeable from within the regime’s elites and that he was still immensely popular with the masses. He played on this latter point when he addressed a gathering of around 200 commanding generals and other senior Wehrmacht officers in the Reich Chancellery at noon on 23 November.