Bombing Hitler Page 20
Given this kind of jealousy, the seemingly preferential treatment granted Elser worked to his disadvantage. From that point on, no political prisoner wanted to talk to Elser—a daunting undertaking in any event since there was at all times a double guard in his cell and another posted outside the door. The magazine Eggert referred to was the November 1939 issue of the SS publication Das Schwarze Korps. It was left in the small library at the prison and was much sought after by the prisoners. Anyone looking at the article and the photographs only through the lens of envy failed to notice that in actuality the SS was bitterly attacking Elser. There was no hint that the Nazis were behind any of this.
Amidst the jealousy, it was overlooked that Elser was missing one vital element of survival: the solidarity of the prisoners. He was denied the assistance and the encouragement that prisoners could provide each other. The justification lay in the logic of the political prisoner: Anyone protected by the Nazis had to be their crony. The legend of Elser the Nazi spread like wildfire among the prisoners who set the political tone. Among the many Catholic clerics who were imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau, however, hardly any sub-scribed to this discriminatory gossip.
Emilio Büge, a prisoner who wrote for the “Political Department,” wrote in his secret notes, which he was able to smuggle out: “Elser, the ‘assassin’ at the Munich Bürgerbräukeller (1940), is comfy and happy in a cell here in the bunker, where he has every possible privilege. He has tools and wood available, so he can putter around and build things—not a likely situation for a guy who was out to kill the Führer.”
Martin Niemöller, a special inmate in the camp prison, heard a rumor as early as 1940 in the latrine that Elser was an SS man and that Hitler and Himmler had ordered the attack. At that point, Elser was not even in the prison. Once Elser did arrive, he was greeted with condescension and mistrust. In the camp, truth could no longer be distinguished from fiction—gossip was infectious. The Communist prisoner Rudolf Wunderlich remained in solitary confinement at the prison for ten months and heard nothing about Elser during that time; he was nevertheless certain that Elser was only “the presumed Munich assassin.” As a camp messenger, Wunderlich had access almost everywhere and was therefore an ideal disseminator of such “new information.” And perhaps the camp administrators were content to have the attack in the Bürgerbräukeller ascribed to their organization.
The Communist prisoners played the same game with Herschel Grynszpan, who attempted an assassination in Paris in 1938. As Wunderlich wrote: “Could it be that he [Grynszpan] carried out the attempt on the orders of the Nazis, perhaps so that he could launch something against France?” Proof of this: Grynszpan is said to have had it easy in the camp prison. And in fact he was occasionally allowed to work as a trusty, his head was not shaved and he got to keep his civilian clothes. But privileges like these were also enjoyed by political prisoners who were given functions in the camp.
It is assumed that Elser was moved to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen at the beginning of 1941. As was usually the case with a prominent special prisoner like this one, Elser was transferred at night in a black Gestapo limousine, which drove through the gate and then went right to the small camp where the prisoner was handed over. On orders from the highest levels, three cells were specially arranged for Elser—cells 11-13 on wing B. Today, the walls of the entire cell block are still standing, but access to them is gained from the front left. To get to the walls of Elser’s cells, one must go through wing A (the only wing still standing), then on to the other cell walls, which are outdoors to the front and the right. The basic layout of a cell was 2.5 m. x 3.75 m. (8.2 ft. x 12.3 ft.), or an area of 9.35 sq.m. (100.6 sq.ft.).
With three cells from which the dividing walls had been removed, Elser appeared to be better off than most of the others. But he actually lived in only one cell—the second one contained his workbench and wood, and the third was outfitted with cots for two SS guards who were relieved at twelve-hour intervals. And as in every other cell, the light was kept on all night.
He could be awakened at any time, just like any other prisoner in the cell block. The walls were thin, so the inmates always knew what was going on even if they couldn’t see it. Their sense of hearing became so acute that they could distinguish every sound and knew what was going to happen next. In the yard in front of the cell block, prisoners tied to posts were tortured until their long, tormented cries sounded like those of animals. The SS would handcuff a prisoner with his hands behind his back, then, with a pole thrust between his arms, lift him by his hands until his toes barely touched the ground. The screams of pain, which probably diminished only as death approached, penetrated every cell. Anyone who was released alive after an hour or more was nothing but “a quivering heap, a human being broken in body and spirit,” as the Bavarian prisoner Weiss-Rüthel remarked after watching a friend so treated.
In this interior courtyard, a wooden horse was used for beatings. The prisoner was shackled, then beaten on the buttocks with a bullwhip twenty-five times—the prisoner was required to count the lashes himself. Because of the screams, all the inmates felt somehow that they were participants in the process—especially when they were forced to give the cynical shout “Let’s head for the festival!”
From the shouts of the SS crew, inmates knew when a prisoner had been placed in a “standing cell,” where he would be kept on bread and water in darkness for at least three days and could neither stand nor sit. When there were executions in the interior courtyard, the prisoners could hear the gunshots. They could recognize the footsteps of prisoners by the sound of their wooden clogs and those of the SS men by the sound of the iron taps on their boots. But if the guards in the cell block wanted to catch prisoners (whose cell doors were kept open) while they were engaging in prohibited activities, they crept up wearing socks. When the prisoners heard the command “Clear out!” they had to get out of the corridors—someone else was to be taken away unseen to some unknown destination.
Plan of the cell block in the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen. Cells 11-13 were occupied by Elser and his guards.
If they heard pop music over the loudspeakers, all the prisoners cringed—they knew people were being shot to death in the factory yard next door.
In 1942, the SS murdered 12,000 Soviet prisoners of war here. The stench from portable crematoria penetrated from the camp all the way to Oranienburg. Around this time, ninety-two Dutch hostages were murdered in the same manner. Amid great hubbub, they had arrived the previous day at the camp prison, where they had been crammed into several cells.
If there was a strong stench of corpses on the clothes of the trusties, everyone knew that they had just come from duty at the crematorium. Death was present at all times. Elser had to assume that he could be taken out at any time and eliminated. In the midst of this death camp, his privileges could not be seen as assurance that he would live. The conditions at this special prison, in which Elser too got to hear all the horrors of the concentration camp, were notorious. As Wunderlich wrote: “Every inmate at Sachsenhausen dreaded the cell block.”
In 1942, the Jehovah’s Witness Paul Wauer was a barber in the cell block. Accompanied by an SS man, Elser got a shave from this man every day. Wauer did not know who this diminutive prisoner was until he learned it from a trusty. He too got hold of the SS magazine with Elser’s photograph, but he did not let himself be drawn into the political discrimination against Elser. Wauer attested that during this time, Himmler was in Elser’s cell once. It must have been 1943, and the conversation lasted about an hour.
In December 1942, the People’s Court moved to initiate proceedings against Elser, but the case was never opened. When Elser’s father died on August 11, 1942, the Ministry of Justice ordered “the estate of the enemy of the people” seized, by which it meant Georg Elser’s share of the inheritance. The Elsers had to pay this amount to Gestapo headquarters.
From 1964-1965, former SS man Walter Usslepp gave a detailed account of E
lser’s living conditions. This account is credible, unlike the myths that he drew from the rumor mills of the concentration camp. He was a member of Elser’s special guard during the period 1942-44. According to Usslep, the furnishings in Elser’s cell included a large cupboard and a lectern he had built himself, on which lay his zither. By the bed there was a small nightstand with a receiver for “official” radio stations on it and next to it, in a wooden frame, the picture of a woman he called his bride—it must have been Elsa Härlen. Below the windows, which contained flowerboxes, there was another cupboard.
Georg Elser was a heavy smoker, and he received an allowance of 120 cigarettes a week. Although he was supplied with a good diet and double portions of food, Elser had always been a poor eater. He was known to pass on much of his food to the guards, which contributed to his physical decline. In 1943—14 he weighed at most 115 pounds. On Saturdays, prisoners were allowed to shower and sheets were changed. Elser wore blue metal worker’s trousers and sport shirts. He never received mail or visitors. Reveille was at 6:00 a.m., and then the regular prisoners emptied their slop buckets and went to wash up. Afterwards the special prisoners were taken to the washroom one by one. Breakfast was at 7:00 a.m. Elser was never interrogated while Usslepps was on duty.
The SS permitted Elser to construct a zither, which he played with enthusiasm, yet with melancholy. By the end of his term at Sachsenhausen, he had built three or four zithers. He also built a table for pocket billiards, which he liked to play with his guards. He was often irritable and subject to mood swings. One time, to calm him down, the commandant sent him a woman from the brothel barracks, a prisoner from the concentration camp at Ravensbrück—Elser flew into a rage and sent her away.
With time a familiar tone developed between the SS guards and the amiable prisoner. They all used the familiar “du” with him and called him “Schorsch,” until his name simply became “Little Schorsch.” Niemöller, with his elitist obsession for labels, believed he recognized political complicity in this kind of behavior. In fact, Elser remained mistrustful despite all the overtures. Anytime he left the cell to go outdoors or to the toilet, he would turn the place upside down on his return, looking for hidden microphones. Five or six months passed before he revealed to his guard, Walter Usslepp, who was strictly forbidden to talk about the attack, that he was the Munich assassin. This was in mid-1942.
From that point on, Usslepp’s recollections take on a Münch-hausen character, blending actual events recalled with rumors from the camp. He claims Elser told him that he had carried out the attack on orders from Hitler and Himmler and that he was a member of the general SS. According to Usslepp, Elser claimed that one day he had received a commission from Reich Security Headquarters to carry out a special mission and that Himmler himself had once come to Königs-bronn regarding this matter. Toward the end of his account, Usslepp becomes almost kooky, reporting that during the final week, Elser had difficulty gaining access to the Bürgerbräukeller because of the Gestapo guards in the place. As a reward for his work, Elser was supposed to receive a house and a state pension. These two elements recur in other rumors about Elser, probably reflecting the hopes of the low-level guards themselves. Finally, in Usslepp’s version, Elser decided to go to Switzerland because he mistrusted Hitler. All such claims of Elser’s purported involvement with the SS have long since been refuted.
Usslepp, who considered himself Elser’s “real confidante” and even called himself the “executor of his estate,” claimed that in 194344 he mapped out a plan of escape with him. He was going to simply take Elser, who weighed very little, and stuff him into a garbage bag with wood shavings and just take him out of the camp right past the SS guard. But Elser, he says, finally backed out of the plan because he felt he would not be able to count on any assistance once out-side. Even if he had such fantasies about escaping and idly chatted about them on occasion, there was never any chance that they could succeed. Moreover, it is simply not believable that an SS man like Usslepp would risk his life for an assassin. Perhaps there is behind all of this some information planted by the Gestapo in order to test Elser.
In 1944, Elser had a map hanging on the wall of his cell on which he followed the progression of the front by moving little flags. In the process, he compared the announcements from the BBC in London with those of German radio. He clung to life to the very end. But he had been so ravaged by his imprisonment that he no longer possessed the same unshakable will as before. At first he would rejoice when the Allies advanced, but then he would get depressed because he knew full well that he would be executed first: “Even if it means my own death, at least I know that Hitler will not outlive me by much.” During air raids he refused to proceed to the bunker—he had nothing more to lose. He preferred to get up on his nightstand and watch the bombers in the sky and the glow from the fires in Berlin.
While Usslepp could at least be considered a reliable source regarding Elser’s living conditions, the British Secret Service agent Sigismund Payne Best was simply a wild-eyed fantast. Even though by his own admission he never spoke with Elser, he nonetheless claimed to have found out from him everything about his life. He claimed that Elser, who rarely wrote anything, wrote secret messages over a period of twelve months and smuggled them to him—even though such activity was strictly prohibited. Why then did Best, who after the war prided himself on the diary he kept while in captivity, keep none of these messages—or at least copy them down?
Best was terrible at spinning tales. He simply repeated everything fed to him by the Gestapo. According to him, Elser’s biography went as follows: He was born in Munich, lost his parents in the First World War, was raised by an uncle, printed and distributed Communist leaflets in Munich in 1937, was arrested as “antisocial” in a police raid and taken to Dachau, and was ordered by the camp commander in 1939 to carry out the bombing at the Bürgerbräukeller in order to liquidate a group of traitors in Hitler’s inner circle.
As early as Venlo, it was clear that Best was a dilettante at his trade. Here he claims that on the one hand Elser built a timing mechanism into the bomb, yet on the other hand that he laid an electric cable in the cellar—which of course nobody noticed. He goes on to say that Elser, after his arrest at the border, was promised 40,000 Swiss francs if he would state at a trial that he had been in contact with Otto Strasser and the British Secret Service. His story makes no sense from beginning to end.
The last living witness from Elser’s time in the camp prison was Franz Josef Fischer, who was born in Czechoslovakia in 1916 and lived in Gruibingen on the Schwãbisch Alb. In 1931, Fischer became actively involved in the Czech resistance against the Nazis in the neighboring area of Silesia and was opposed to the Sudeten German Henlein Party. In 1938, when the Germans marched in, he refused to serve in the German Wehrmacht and was placed in Gestapo custody for two years, where he was severely mistreated. After being acquitted by the People’s Court in Leipzig in April of 1940, he was sent to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen. By March 1943, he was working as a supervisor in the clothing stores for the SS at a field warehouse in Berlin-Lichterfelde. After a bombardment, this office was scheduled to be moved to Schlackenwerth Castle near Karlsbad, and Himmler had to decide whether the Sudeten German Fischer should be transferred along with it. So Fischer was moved to Himmler’s SS business office, located in Berlin-Lichterfelde at Unter den Eichen 126. While he was waiting in an alcove in the corridor, he noticed a bushy-headed man whom he didn’t know. The man was called in first, but was soon ejected with a kick in the rear by Himmler.
Before Fischer’s turn came up, the two had a chance to speak. The stranger said: “Don’t you know me? I’m the one they say is an assassin. I just wanted to avoid a great disaster—even more killing. So I said the leadership’s got to go.” At that point Fischer realized that this was Elser. Elser was well known in the Resistance; his actions served as encouragement. Then after Fischer too had been thrown out, the conversation resumed for another half hour. Elser
said: “I’m alone and I did everything by myself—the arrest at the border was just bad luck. They all talk a lot about me, but none of them know anything.” Fischer was liberated from the concentration camp at Theresienstadt in 1945.
During a devastating bombardment of Berlin on February 3, 1945, the headquarters building of Reich Security was also severely damaged, and Elser’s time at Sachsenhausen came to an end. Those arrested in connection with the events of July 20 had to be moved to the south. The Gestapo control center created one of its backup locations in the Bavarian town of Hof. Himmler had already given the order to evacuate Sachsenhausen on February 1. On February 6, 1945, news arrived in the concentration camp at Dachau, where a typhus epidemic had been raging since November 1944, that 10,000 prisoners from Sachsenhausen were on their way to Dachau. Presumably around this time Elser was picked up by a Gestapo car.
Franz-Josef Fischer, who spoke briefly with Elser in Berlin in 1943.
XIX
The End in Dachau
IN EARLY FEBRUARY 1945, Elser, accompanied by four SS men, entered the concentration camp at Dachau. The SS man responsible for the bunker, Edgar Stiller, carried Elser’s zither in a wooden case. It was very cold and Elser was wearing an overcoat. Upon his arrival security measures were tightened—Elser, the SS men grumbled to the other inmates, was “a very special prisoner.” Soon everyone learned that he was Hitler’s personal prisoner.
The concentration camp at Dachau was in the process of being closed down and was in catastrophic condition. For months concentration camps located further to the east had been evacuating their occupants to Dachau. The trains, which were frequently carrying Jewish prisoners, arrived with thousands of corpses on board. When the boxcars remained stationary for several days, the stench of death permeated the entire area.
As the war progressed, the makeup of the SS forces changed. The younger SS men, who were the bane of the prisoners, went to the front; the older generations taking their places were more concerned about saving their own skins, so they tried to get along with the prisoners. The clever ones were already thinking about trying to get a denazification certificate, called a “Persilschein.”