Bombing Hitler Page 4
The reporter then interviews Party member Frank, a Swabian technician or architect who was there during the explosion. This man clearly delights in precision and objective coolness. His technical curiosity informs his report, and he even lets two distinct compliments to the assassin slip out—not at all in keeping with the ranting of the press about instigators behind the scenes. This is the classic technical clinician speaking, unperturbed by the politically tinged surroundings:
I was just about to leave the hall and was perhaps three feet from the exit, when suddenly there was a flash up above in the room. In the same instant [I felt] a hard push from behind . . . not actually a blow—it felt like I was being shoved forward, and in the next instant I found myself five or six feet closer to the exit. At the same moment there was a thunderous noise, a [he imitates the sound]; and then it was all over, actually. Before you could figure out what was going on, you were standing there in a cloud of dust so thick that first, you couldn’t see anything at all, and second, you couldn’t breathe. At first, we couldn’t think about what had happened—we just put our handkerchiefs over our mouths and made sure we got to the exit. Out in the cloakroom it became possible to breathe a little; then, as quickly as possible, we turned around and headed back into the hall. On the ground floor, where the windows were still intact, we broke out the glass in order to get some fresh air in there. And then, after a minute or maybe a minute and a half, the dust began to settle; that’s when we discovered that the ceiling had caved in. And then immediately the first of the injured started coming out, those who had been able to free themselves from under tables or chairs. They were somewhat better off since they were able to get to safety. But the more seriously injured ones we had to gradually dig out.
The reporter then asked him how this all happened, and Frank replied:
After the flash that one saw . . . that came from above. That means the blast definitely didn’t come from below, from the floor; the explosive charge must have been placed at the gallery level, in the first pillar on the side where the Führer’s podium was located—at the gallery level. That is the pillar where we are standing now, which was about ten feet to the right of the Führer’s podium; that’s where the explosive charge [must have been placed]. You see the girders up there are bent and cracked—up here we see the effects of the explosion. So the charge must have been situated on the gallery either under the plank flooring or under the wood paneling on the wall. First, this support beam came down. . . . And since the support beam was gone, the longitudinal beams, which provided support between the gallery and the hall itself, came loose and sagged down. There were two of these: This one here, with stone still attached to it, was at the level of the gallery floor, and the large iron T-girder we see there . . . it tipped downward because the upper part of this vertical beam here also gave way after it had been cracked by the explosion.
Infected now by curiosity, the reporter asked innocently, “So that was the spot from which someone was able to bring down the entire hall?”
Frank had no reservations about expressing praise for the assassin:
Yes, this was technically the most effective spot . . . besides the two longitudinal beams a large transverse beam dislodged—it came loose too and fell down. And lying on top of this transverse beam there was also a steel girder that spanned the middle of the hall and wasn’t supported by the next beam, but was attached to the next beam only by rivets and side plates and supported from above by the roof structure. And because of this structure, which gave way, the girder tilted down; the spot here where it was riveted gave way—the rivets were ripped out—the girder came down, the next one dropped; in addition, the whole roof structure was brought down because that was what the girder was attached to. And therefore an extraordinarily comprehensive collapse could be achieved.
There were no arrests made on the evening of November 8, as there was still a great deal of uncertainty: Who could it have been? Three people died immediately, four of the injured died soon thereafter in the hospital where an additional sixty-three injured people were being treated. On November 13 an eighth died of his injuries.
For a long time afterward, postwar Germany refused to admit that the attempt on Hitler’s life was justified and dwelled instead on the eight “innocent victims” killed in the collapse of the Bürgerbräukeller, rather than on the millions murdered by Hitler in the camps, or the “euthanasia” victims, or the fifty million victims of World War II.
A glance at the Völkischer Beobachter might have dampened this sympathy. Except for the part-time waitress Maria Henle, the dead were all members of the Nazi Party or the SA. In the obituaries, the Party and the families indicated their pride in these recipients of the Blutorden. Many had belonged to the Freikorps Epp and to the Stoss-trupp Adolf Hitler, which in 1923 had set out to destroy the Republic and establish a dictatorship. The obituaries of Michael Wilhelm Weber can serve to illustrate this. As his widow wrote, he had died “for his beloved Führer, for his free Germany.” Weber was the owner of the large perfume concern Bavaria, a Party member, recipient of the Blutorden, recipient of the EKII (Iron Cross 2nd Class) and the Bavarian Military Service Cross, a Freikorps veteran, a Hitler supporter since 1920, a HauptsturmFührer in the NSKK (National Socialist Motor Corps), and deputy Führer of the NSKK-Motorstandarte 86.
Three of the victims who died in the vicinity of Hitler’s podium were members of the Reichsautozug (the organization responsible for motorcade logistics) and were SA Hauptsturmführer or Truppführer. They were on duty. According to Nazi values, one did not need to mourn those who died in the service of the Party; they were accepted into the ranks of Party heroes. Their deaths were considered a noble contribution to the victory of the “Movement.” As Hitler’s followers were told at the official state ceremony of November 11, the tragedy of the individual meant nothing, as long as the Führer was alive.
IV
Searching the Rubble
HITLER HAD ARRIVED with his entourage at the main station in Munich five minutes before the train was to depart. The “simple corporal,” as he liked to think of himself, had as usual exactly a dozen suitcases. At 9:31 p.m. the private train left for Berlin. The mood in the parlor car was cheerful, even boisterous. The topic, as always after such events, was the glorious past of the Party before 1933—the “Kampfzeit” (Time of Struggle). And now there was the Blitzkrieg against Poland, the second country in the East to be conquered in just a few weeks. Hitler had always been right; now he was assured of the absolute support of his people. So what if there was some reluctance in the military? The general staff officers had always had reservations—they never wanted to take any risks, but he had always gotten his way. And now they were to move against England. First, however, they needed to invade France and occupy Paris in another Blitzkrieg.
In the car they were intoxicated with victory. Hitler, as always, drank mineral water, but several in the entourage were deeply into the alcohol. The train would not arrive at the Anhalter Station in Berlin until 10:20 a.m., so there would be plenty of time to sleep it off. Along the route, two stationmasters, one of them in Augsburg, tried in vain to stop the train to tell Hitler about the attack—the engineer kept going in order to maintain the tight schedule.
There was no stop planned until Nürnberg, where Goebbels got off to have some teletypes dispatched and returned as white as a sheet. But Hitler thought the news about the Bürgerbräukeller was a macabre joke—Goebbels after all had a bit of a mischievous bent. Before the bombing, Hitler’s officers had discussed the risk of an attack many times. Hitler was prone to wade into a crowd to bask in the adulation of his followers. His security forces broke out in a cold sweat every time he ignored safety measures in order to have contact with his admirers, accept flowers, or let people get close to his car— any one of them might someday toss a grenade.
However, at this moment the pallor on Goebbels’s face and his seriousness spoke against the possibility of a joke. Hitler wondered if it was simp
ly a false report. But the propaganda minister had already excluded this possibility by contacting Berlin. So indeed, at the very site of the self-glorification of the Party, someone had been out to get Hitler. But the mood on the train was so cheerful, with victory so close, that Hitler reacted in a way that yields deep insight into his mentality. His spontaneous comment was, “A man has to be lucky”— the attitude of a gambler. Until then he had always gotten by with that. Now he wanted to verify the news for himself and got off the train to phone the men directing the operation at the Bürgerbräukeller: Gauleiter Adolf Wagner and Munich chief of police Friedrich Karl Freiherr von Eberstein.
When Hitler returned he looked transformed, according to his secretary. His face, she reported, took on “a determined and hardened appearance. . . . In his eyes there glowed the mystical fire that I had so often seen in him at times of great decisions.” In a flash Hitler determined that attempt on his life proved to be an even greater victory for him, and he shouted into the parlor car: “Now I am completely at peace! My leaving the Bürgerbräu earlier than usual is proof to me that Providence wants me to reach my goal.”
Thoughts turned next to the instigators. Hitler was still so filled with hatred toward England from his speech that his suspicion immediately fell on the British Secret Service. At the following train stations, where new reports from Munich awaited them, the first orders were given out. All night long, it was so hectic aboard the train that Goebbels only managed to get one hour of sleep before they arrived in Berlin. During the night Himmler had launched inquiries. Hitler demanded the best experts for the criminal investigation and charged Arthur Nebe, Reichskriminaldirektor (Commissioner of the Criminal Police, or Kripo) and chief of Office V of the Reichssi-cherheitshauptamt (Central Office of Reich Security) in Berlin, with undertaking the investigation.
Hitler’s idea of holding the British Secret Service responsible was transmitted to Berlin by Goebbels that night. By the next day, November 9, the press releases of the National Socialist news agency DNB (Deutsches Nachrichten Büro) had established the Party line. It wasn’t until November 21 that Hitler gave the press another angle: that the mastermind of the Munich attempt was Otto Strasser, a left-leaning National Socialist, who, at the time, was living as an emigrant in Switzerland. Strasser had been an opponent of Hitler since 1930, and his brother Gregor had been murdered in connection with the bloody assault against the SA in 1934. Otto Strasser had already been held responsible for other assassination attempts in Germany, and Hitler had sent several murderers out after him in Czechoslovakia.
By midnight of November 9, two explosives experts had begun their investigation at the scene of the crime, supervised by Dr. Albrecht Böhme, chief of the central Kripo office (Kripoleits-telle) in Munich. The Munich Gestapo chief actually responsible for investigating incidents of assassination and sabotage was away at the time and was later booted out of his position. Böhme had the Kripo people undertake other investigative duties such as securing evidence, especially fragments of any kind, and using spotlights to take photographs, which would of course have to be taken again the next day in daylight. While executing the recovery of the dead from under the debris, the fire department had already discovered suspicious brass parts. This convinced Böhme to carefully sift the entire mountain of debris the next morning.
The first suspicion about the origin of the attack came from the Alte Kämpfer, who had to defend themselves against the accusation that they had failed to protect the hall and the people in it. They claimed that the explosion lay outside their purview—after all, it had occurred only after they had lifted the security around the hall. When the experts found pieces of the timed detonator, this claim completely fell apart. For a few days, they shored up their public image with the speculation that the explosion had taken place in an empty space above the gallery or in the roof beams. This notion flitted through the domestic and foreign press as news.
In contrast, by 4:00 a.m. on November 9, the explosives experts felt confident of their findings and in their report reached a conclusion, which largely conformed with the observations that eyewitness Frank had made on the radio: “Based on these initial findings, it was assumed that the point of the explosion must have been located here at this column, up on the gallery level.” If the explosive charge had been out in the open, then some fifty kilos would have been required. It would surely have been impossible for the assassin to smuggle so much explosive into the hall and store it unnoticed. This thought steered the experts onto the right path: “It is therefore likely that the quantity of explosive packed into the column would have totaled, in accordance with the standard formula, 8-10 kg.” The modifications necessary for the installation led to the conclusion that “the attack had been prepared far in advance.” The assassin had enhanced the effect enormously by not placing the explosive in the open but instead building it into a pillar—in technical terms, “confining” it—and on top of that, putting it into a load-bearing pillar that supported the ceiling of the hall and the roof.
The experts surmised that:
Since the gallery was covered with wood paneling, both on the side facing the hall and the side toward the exterior wall, it would have been possible for the perpetrator to work without attracting attention by repeat-edly removing the paneling and then replacing it while constructing the bomb chamber. He must, in any case, have been familiar with the conditions at the location as well as the routine procedures of the business. As soon as the bomb chamber had been completed, all that remained to do was install the timing device and then set it.
Thus the experts assumed that this was a timed detonation, calling it a “Höllenmaschine” (Hell’s machine)—a time bomb. Fitting in with their conclusion were the “spiral springs, cogs, and other metal parts” that had been “found on the gallery floor, which was still intact. . . . Given the location where these items were found, it could be concluded that the site of the explosion was also at the level of the gallery floor.” According to the report, the charge was located behind the paneling, “approximately in the center of the pillar.” The experts were seriously mistaken about only one issue, however: They claimed that “an extraordinarily powerful explosive was used, which was far superior to the customary commercial explosives.”
Munich police chief von Eberstein, in his first report of November 9, declared enthusiastically “that this was definitely not a primitive apparatus; it was clearly the product of superior workmanship.” He then dutifully dampened his somewhat grotesque enthusiasm by expressing the suspicion that the perpetrators were “an as-yet-unknown terrorist group.” The police chief expected further revelations from interrogations of Bürgerbräu staff, sanitation department employees temporarily housed in the hall, and all companies that might have had anything to do with construction work, renovation, or interior decoration of the Bürgerbräukeller and might therefore have come into possession of the building plans.
When Dr. Böhme ordered the piles of debris searched for fragments of the explosive device that morning, the Munich watchmakers guild offered him their assistance and sent forty apprentices from the watch-making school. The men from the fire department and the Reich Labor Service carefully shoveled through the debris and secured the area against collapse. In the middle of a dust cloud, which obstructed vision and breathing, the students searched the debris with their trained eyes and skilled fingers. Police commissars plotted the locations where metal parts and other parts were found onto a plan of the hall so that it soon became clear where the explosion came from and with what force. In all, the apprentices found 300 parts made of brass and other metals. In addition, pieces of insulation were found that contained a company stamp and could thus provide an important clue as to the seller of the material and, through him, to the purchaser—the assassin.
From the very beginning, various agencies squabbled over the investigation. This was typical of the governing style of the National Socialists. By having various offices compete against each other, Hitler
felt he could ensure his absolute authority. Thus at 2:30 a.m., without being called, the prosecutor general and the senior public prosecutor appeared at the scene in order to initiate the judicial inquiry. The Gestapo allowed them to proceed, until on November 15, probably after an audience Himmler had with Hitler, there came a categorical declaration, which intelligence officer Groscurth noted in his journal: “Heydrich informed Senior Reich Prosecutor Lautz that it was out of the question for Justice to participate in the investigation of the assassination attempt. Likewise, on orders from above, Reichskriminaldirektor Nebe has rejected the involvement of the prosecutor general in Munich.” A high-level SS officer justified the exclusion of Justice from the investigation of the assassination attempt: “It’s wartime now; all crimes and other such matters should be referred directly to the Gestapo.”
There were further clashes over securing the evidence. When Police Chief Eberstein read the first report by Böhme that morning, he contemptuously tapped his forehead with his finger and lashed out at the Kripo chief: “You think you’re going to find a political crime in this debris?!” He would have much preferred to have everything at the scene cleared away immediately. Böhme made clear that that would be “an inexcusable dereliction of duty.” When Böhme asked what should be done instead, his boss had no answer. The sifting continued. In the morning some Alte Kämpfer came by, wanting to get involved in the investigation, but they were turned away with the warning that there was “danger of collapse” of the building.