Bombing Hitler Read online

  Elser’s objective of preventing Hitler from unleashing a war took precedence over everything else—his professional pride, his modest savings, his family relations, his friendships, even his love affairs. From now on Elser had only one goal—and he kept it secret from everyone. His feeling of righteousness is well documented; everywhere he went he used his real name. This kind of behavior does not bolster the theories that he was a henchman for the Nazis or for a foreign power.

  Starting in the summer of 1937, Elser worked at Waldenmaier in the shipping department of the main division responsible for the materials that were to be of great significance to him. It is not likely that Elser came to work there by chance, as he tried to claim; he must have played a role in gaining this position. When there was something he wanted, he had an irresistible way of pleading, almost like a child, until he got it. His Munich landlady Rosa Lehmann had watched in amazement as Elser cajoled the craftsmen in the neighborhood into letting him use their shops.

  In the shipping department, samples of detonators and detonator parts were received, which Elser, after checking the shipment, was to send on to individual specialists. At his post Elser learned everything he needed to know without having to take anyone into his confidence, and he had the authority to go at any time to any department of special interest to him. Without arousing suspicion, he could wait for an opportunity to gain access to key materials.

  The first thing Elser did was travel to Munich on November 8, 1938. At that time, Maurice Bavaud of Switzerland was lurking around town, looking for a chance to eliminate Hitler with a pistol. Here too, security was lax. Even as a French-speaking Swiss citizen who knew barely a word of German, Bavaud was able to get to the platform at the Feldherrnhalle. But the sea of flags and the many arms raised in salute as the hordes marched by prevented his assassination attempt. He would in any event have had little chance; the small-caliber (6.35 mm.) so-called “lady’s pistol” he had purchased in Basel was effective at a distance of at most three yards.

  As Georg Elser proceeded to Munich, he did not have a preconceived plan; he wanted to adapt his approach to the circumstances he observed at the site. When he arrived at the Bürgerbräukeller, he was at first unable to register anything but the hysterical enthusiasm of the crowd. Hitler’s histrionics, later used to explain people’s susceptibility to mass psychosis, had no effect on Elser. For Elser, Hitler did not, as he did for many Germans, represent the expression of their secret desires. For Elser, Hitler was an absolute catastrophe that had to be removed. Elser was not waiting for a savior to rescue the German people from humiliation; he wanted to liberate the Germans and the peoples of Europe—and liberate them permanently—from this deadly menace. In the midst of pseudo-religious fanaticism, Elser remained the rational technician with a keen eye, seeking out vulnerable spots at this cult landmark.

  Arriving around 8:15 p.m. at the intersection of Rosenheimer Strasse and Hochstrasse near the Bürgerbräukeller, Elser found the street barricaded. He waited among the crowds on the street until 10:30 p.m. without getting a glimpse of Hitler and concluded that this would not be a good spot. Once the street was reopened, he moved on to the Bürgerbräukeller and found everything open. He passed through the main entrance and proceeded through the cloakroom directly into the hall. There were a few people inside, but no one asked him what he was doing there. He walked around the room and observed that the speaker’s platform was against the wall in the middle of the hall, not by the front wall. He made note of any important features, but did not work out his assassination strategy until later on, when he was back at home.

  Part of the strategy involved making contact with the staff. His strength was always his simple, straightforward approach to people, a trait that made the Gestapo nervous. His best disguise was his natural guilelessness, which was immediately apparent. He walked through the cloakroom into the Brãustübl of the establishment and ordered a late supper. It was 11:00 p.m., but on a special day like this, anything was possible. Soon a fellow Swabian, the manager of the slaughterhouse, sat down at his table and the only thing he noticed about the future assassin was that he drank very little beer.

  The next day, November 9, 1938, was a holiday. Elser returned to the Bürgerbräukeller in order to observe the organization and execution of the traditional march to the Feldherrnhalle. This time he at least got to see Hitler drive up. Afterward he walked around town for a while, then returned to Königsbronn. If he had stayed another day, he would have gotten to see the city after the Kristallnacht pogrom instigated by Goebbels.

  Georg Elser was a thorough man, for whom ideas took a long time to form, but once formed remained firmly rooted. In this case, it took only two or three days for him to realize that the Bürgerbräukeller was the only possible location for an assassination attempt, but he needed another few months to work out how it was to be executed. During the Berlin interrogation Elser gave a good description of his mental work habits: “In the course of the next few weeks I slowly worked it out in my head that it would be best to pack explosives into this particular pillar behind the speaker’s platform and then by means of some kind of device cause the explosives to ignite at the right time.”

  In April 1939, Elser worked for a short time at the Vollmer Quarry in Königsbronn and there he learned from explosives expert Georg Kolb that the explosive material should be placed as close to the floor as possible. However, the base of the column in the hall was not an option, since Elser might have been easily discovered at his nocturnal labors. So Elser chose the bottom of the column on the gallery—and in the process assured a far greater effect during the explosion. During all of his careful contemplation at home, Elser also came to the conclusion that he would need a timed detonator.

  From the very outset he calculated the effects: flying debris striking people on and around the speaker’s platform, the ceiling caving in. When the commissars coyly asked him if he had been aware of who was seated around the speaker’s platform, Elser, unfazed, responded: “No. But I knew that Hitler was going to speak and assumed that the leadership would be sitting closest to him.”

  Before his visit to Munich, Elser’s parents had gotten back together and moved into their half of the double house on Wiesenstrasse. Georg refused to vacate the room to which he felt entitled, and paid no rent even though his mother desperately needed the money. But he now needed the money even more—for his months of arduous work in the Bürgerbräukeller.

  From this point on, he started gaining the reputation of being heartless, stingy, and inconsiderate. And he indeed became stranger. But it was not until his assassination plans began taking shape that out of the great need for secrecy he started to take on the personality that people generally ascribed to him after the war: He became an eccentric, but only vis-à-vis the world from which he had to absolutely shield himself, for security reasons. From the very beginning he took into consideration the likelihood of gossip and Gestapo snooping.

  He put three locks on his wooden suitcase and built two secret compartments into it, then he constructed an ingenious double bottom for it. He always carried the keys to the suitcase with him. He installed two new locks on the door to his room and never allowed anyone inside. He continued to work at his project but knew that he could no longer afford to carry on such dangerous activities in the workshop at the house. Eventually his parents called in the village authorities, and while Elser was at work, Officer Michael Aigner opened the room with a master key. There they found clockworks, tubes, and springs lying on the table—just things for tinkering, nothing dangerous. Twenty years later, Aigner would boastfully proclaim that these were “parts of the bomb.” Obviously, Aigner would have turned Elser over to the Gestapo if he had had the faintest suspicion.

  After the trip to Munich, Elser increased the pace of his prep-arations. By the end of 1938 he was already thinking of making his escape through Konstanz. On a trip there, he found conditions between the Kreuzlingen customs office and the Emmishofer customs office unch
anged. He started selling off everything he no longer needed, including his bass. By the time of his departure, his savings amounted to a total of between 350 and 400 marks, a substantial sum for the time. According to the calculations of the Kripo as well, one would have been able to get by for three months on this amount, assuming a lifestyle as frugal as Elser’s.

  Elser took advantage of his position at Waldenmaier, acquiring, over a period of five months, 250 compressed pellets of powder. In his conscientious manner, he recalled the size: “Such a sheet of compressed powder was 9 mm. (3/8”) thick and had a diameter of 19 mm. (3/4”).” The disappearance was not noticed because in this area, too, there were no checks. And Elser exploited his advantage—with an apparently clear conscience and steely nerves he would stroll through the special area and take something, as he described it, “inconspicuously and quickly.” Later on, this black powder would rain down in the Bürgerbräukeller as thick black dust and become the first evidence to allay Nebe’s fears that this might have been the work of the German military opposition “fooling around” with English explosives.

  Elser’s camouflage act slowly became almost comically grotesque— by feigning “normal” behavior he was able to avoid all suspicion. He would pack the pilfered discs of explosives in paper and store them in his wardrobe, which he locked, and then cover everything with clothes— quadruple security, since the room was also locked.

  As soon as the explosive device took shape in Elser’s head, he started having misgivings about the dimensions. He was afraid the apparatus might exceed the maximum size possible for the chamber at the Bürgerbräukeller. In March 1939, he gave notice at Waldenmaier.

  Now he was free, and on April 4, 1939, he traveled to Munich a second time, in order to take measurements of the column in the Bürgerbräukeller. Twice he walked around the hall without being stopped, taking measurements with a measuring stick and writing them in a notebook, just as a craftsman does when planning a job. His contact with the staff increased, and every day he had a meal or something to drink there. Right away Elser made the acquaintance of a servant boy and, by giving him a written promise of fifty marks, made him promise to help him get his job when the boy was called up for military duty. With the same camera he used to photograph the column, he took a snapshot of three of the waitresses. Allowing himself time to become part of the scene, Elser didn’t return home until April 12.

  Early in 1939, the situation at his parents’ place was getting worse. Georg was supposed to move out in order to make room for his brother and his wife, but he didn’t want to. When Elsa visited him around the end of February 1939, and he took her up to his room, his mother threw him out of the house. The only place he could go was Schnaitheim, where he had established close ties with the Schmauder family, whose address was Benzstrasse 18. In his disarmingly unselfish way, he had continued to help these people remodel their place after he got off work at Waldenmaier—rather sociable behavior for an “eccentric.” He would pitch in wherever he was needed, whether it was digging or carpentry. At ten-thirty in the evening, he would take the last train back to Königsbronn.

  Even though he had been evicted from one home, Elser was nonetheless capable of creating a new one for himself by making himself useful. The official registration of his residence did not occur until May 4, 1939, and the address given was Benzstrasse 16. Prior to that he camped out for a while in the shed out on the Flachsberg with his father, with whom his relationship had improved since he was thrown out.

  For his assistance with the Schmauders’ remodeling project, Georg Elser received free lodging and laundry. He seemed content to have a storage room to sleep in, located in their daughter’s house next door at Benzstrasse 16. After fetching his tools, he placed his wooden suitcase with the materials for the assassination attempt next to his bed. From that point on he would not be separated from his “bomb trunk.” He remained at Benzstrasse exactly three months. It was the most intensive period of his preparations for the assassination attempt.

  Since his return from Munich, Elser knew that he needed to acquire much more explosive material. Furthermore, he did not yet have a clear picture of the detonating device. He began to hang around at Vollmer’s quarry in Itzelberg, making himself useful in various operations and helping out here and there. When asked by the boss what he was doing there, he answered in his disarming manner that he was unemployed and bored. Needing workers at that moment, Vollmer hired him on the spot. His work consisted of loading up the debris onto trolleys after an explosion. On the job, Elser would stay as close as possible to the area where Kolb was setting up an explosion. He was observant: “Kolb always brought more explosive from the concrete hut than was needed for the blast.” So some was always left lying around, and Elser made note of where it was. Since controls were nonexistent at the quarry too, he was able to get hold of several explosive cans over a period of time. When leaving for the day he would take them out in his knapsack, which he always had with him.

  But things were moving too slowly for Elser. So he would accompany the explosives expert to where the supplies of explosive were stored—at the entrance to the quarry, just to the left of the old main building in a concrete hut, which is no longer there. It was five feet deep and three feet wide. Elser decided to “pay a visit” to the supply depot at night, as he phrased it to the Gestapo. Probably in an attempt to protect the quarry owner, he claimed that he returned at night with a bunch of old keys. In reality, however, the hut was in such unbelievable disarray that the boss got a year and a half in the Welzheim concentration camp for it. If the key to the iron exterior door couldn’t be found, it was just yanked open, and the wooden interior door could no longer be locked.

  The house in Heidenheim-Schnaitheim, in which Elser began designing his explosive device. In a workshop attached to the house, he carried out his first tests with gun shells and firing caps.

  The crew of the Vollmer Quarry in Königsbronn, around 1930. Fourth from left in the first row is owner Georg Vollmer; second from left is explosives expert Kolb.

  Later on, as the Kripo and the Gestapo learned of these conditions, they just shook their heads in disbelief—such lack of security at the company of a former local Nazi leader! To round out this scene, it turns out that the bookkeeper kept no books on the purchase and use of the explosives despite the regulations requiring it. The local police officer Aigner (who had been so diligent in investigating Elser) was part of the picture: It was his job to monitor the records of the explosive materials, but he never made even one attempt to do so. The quarry owner pushed responsibility off on the explosives expert. So Himmler sent the owner and his two employees away to the Welzheim concentration camp for a year and a half, while the policeman went free.

  Given the easy access to the explosives, Elser made frequent nocturnal “visits” to the quarry, obtaining over sixty cartridges of the industrial explosive Donarit 3. He then found detonator caps in the hut. Even though he needed only two or three, he carried off a con-tainer of 125 of them.

  In a sewing machine shop in Heidenheim, Elser bought rifle ammunition. In order to acquire the necessary knowledge of explosive techniques, he purchased “a booklet designed for the training of Pioneers,” according to the Gestapo. Ironically, under Hitler it was possible, with some determination, to obtain all the materials and information necessary to carry out a professional assassination. In the militarized society everything necessary was made available. After Stauffenberg’s failed attempt, Nebe would maintain to his friend Gisevius that any Pioneer could have positioned the explosive better than Stauffenberg did. Elser’s little “Pioneer” booklet would have made it clear. In the meantime, Elser was working on his detonation device, at first in his head and in sketches, then with experiments using wood blocks. He mounted three blocks on a board, drilled holes through them, stretched a spring across them, and used a nail as a firing pin to strike the firing cap of a rifle shell. The powder ignited and caused the blasting caps to explode. While the Schmaud
ers were away, Elser conducted his first detonation experiment down in his workshop and was amazed at how well it worked, even knocking some plaster off the ceiling. When the owners noticed the results afterward, Elser just commented on the poor work of the plasterers.

  From this point on, Elser’s preferred testing site was his par-ents’ fruit orchard on the Flachsberg. Here as well, he demonstrated what great control he had—although an amateur at this sort of activity, he knew exactly what he could get away with. Even though his father, unable to walk, was living in the remodeled garden shed, Elser conducted four test explosions close by which caused a ter-rific bang. His father could hear the noise, but he had long since quit caring about anything. Nearby, an uncle of Elser’s heard the explosions while working in a field with two horses. It was July 1939. Upon hearing the bang, the horses reared up, and he almost lost control of them; then he saw Georg looking out from the shed. When he asked him that evening about the noise, it, Elser told him: “I’m trying something out. When it’s finished, you’ll find out about it.” When the uncle left to go home, he noticed an object on the table in the shed that looked like “some kind of clock that had gotten too big.” Attached to it was a cable that ran out into the yard. Elser tossed the smashed wood blocks from the tests into the bin of wood scraps in his workshop at the Schmauders’ place. This was where the Stuttgart Gestapo found them six months later along with his first design sketches.

  This phase of the construction—the detonation—is the only one that Elser executed first through experiments; all other problems he worked out with sketches. His pride in his methods is still evident during his interrogations by the Gestapo. His next challenge was to transfer the preset detonation point from a clock to an ignition mechanism. In mid-May 1939, an accident Elser had at the quarry provided him with the time needed for the execution of his drawings. Having suffered a broken leg, he was put on sick leave for two months. Lying on a couch in the kitchen at the Schmauders’ place, he would listen to foreign radio stations and work on sketches of his explosive device. He would take the most useful ones and hide them under the false bottom in his suitcase.