Bombing Hitler Read online

  On November 9 at 11:00 a.m., Arthur Nebe arrived from Berlin by plane at Munich-Riem, with his entourage of six Kripo officers. Himmler, head of the SS and the police, had during the night ordered the establishment of a “Bürgerbräukeller Special Commission,” with a “crime scene commission” under Section Chief Hans Lobbes from the Reich Criminal Police, and a “suspect commission,” for which, after a day and a half of fruitless interrogations, a former expert for the Munich Political Police was called in from Vienna—Franz-Josef Huber, chief of Gestapo Headquarters in Vienna. Huber was a good friend of the much-feared Heinrich Müller, who had been head of the Gestapo in Berlin since 1937. The office of the Special Commission was at the Munich Gestapo headquarters in Wittelsbacher Palace at the corner of Briennerstrasse and Türkenstrasse, an area which today includes the chic and affluent district of Schwabing.

  A wave of arrests, which had already started that night, went on for weeks. The total number of people detained cannot be deter-mined, but it must have been at least a thousand. That first night alone there were 120 arrests just at the border crossings. All Communists who weren’t already behind bars were apprehended. Anyone hanging around the scene out of curiosity was dragged to Wittelsbacher Palace for interrogation. During the next few weeks, anyone in Germany who said anything about the attempt that didn’t conform to the Party line fell into the hands of the Gestapo. There was such a bumper crop of denunciations that even the Gestapo was overwhelmed—people trying to settle old scores were reporting their enemies. At first, all names were checked at the Reich security office in Berlin, where a central catalog of suspects was established. In addition, Himmler ordered the employees of the Bürgerbräu—approximately fifty—to be arrested and interrogated. The waitress Maria Strobl was able to avoid arrest only because of her injuries. Instead, Gestapo people, armed with a typewriter, sought her out at home and for days asked her the same questions over and over again, then despite her objections dragged her to Wittelsbacher Palace five or six times for inter-rogations. Many of those involved, most notably the innkeeper of the Bürgerbräukeller, remained in custody for three months.

  Kripo director Nebe, who for years had maintained loose contacts with the military opposition, initially feared that rebellious firebrands from the General Staff might have acted on their own. The timing of the attempt would appear to indicate this, because in the event of war with France, assassination plans had already been worked out by an opposition group within the general staff. But General Staff Chief of the Army Franz Halder thought and thought, hemmed and hawed and delayed, then pushed the job off on Chief of Intelligence (Abwehr) Canaris, but he, in turn, was too patriotic and scrupulous. Intelligence officer Groscurth wrote in his personal diary: “These indecisive leaders make you sick.” On November 1, Major General Hans Oster, the head of Army Intelligence and one of the most active of the military resistance fighters, declared to the diplomat Erich Kordt: “We don’t have anybody we can get to throw the bomb and liberate our generals from their scruples.”

  Nebe became even more concerned when he heard on the radio that morning that British explosives had been used in the attempt. This version also made its way into the Wochenschau, the weekly newsreel from UFA. And indeed the German military opposition favored this material because it was more volatile and more easily workable—the subject never got beyond the discussion stage in these circles.

  When Nebe read the explosives report around noon, he took a deep breath. Now it seemed impossible that the rival Gestapo could, through manipulation, pin the attempt on Intelligence. From this point on, Nebe had not the slightest interest in going easy on the assassin. Duty was duty. According to testimony by Gisevius, it took him until 1944 to recognize that only the Bürgerbräu assassin had the right stuff to get rid of Hitler.

  V

  Reaction to the Attack

  HITLE’R PROPAGANDA MINISTER Joseph Goebbels appeared to be unfazed by the attack. He dryly wrote in his diary, “If the rally had gone off according to plan, as it always had before, then none of us would be alive.” Then he took on the voice of a preacher: “He [Hitler] is, after all, under the protection of the Almighty. He will not die until his mission is accomplished.” On November 10 Goebbels noted with satisfaction: “The mood in the country is excellent.” At the time he was editing the script for the film Jud Süss by Veit Harlan.

  General Rommel, who was one of Hitler’s greatest admirers, wrote on November 15: “The Führer is very determined. The Munich attack has strengthened his resolve.” And in the next line he reveals that he shares Hitler’s delight in war: “It is a pleasure to participate in this experience.”

  This pleasure, however, was not shared by Party philosopher Alfred Rosenberg, who had been seated close to the Führer and the ticking bomb. He wrote in his diary on November 11: “We are all still feeling the effects of the assassination attempt in Munich.” If Hitler had not ended his speech sooner than usual, Rosenberg surmised, “we would have all been buried under the rubble.” During the bombing he recalled the failed Putsch of 1923: “[.. JSixteen years ago I went with Adolf Hitler, pistol in hand, to this same podium where death now awaited us. . . . For fourteen years we had risked our necks—now the same enemies, apparently foreigners, are at work trying to get rid of us for good.” It was clear that the assassination attempt had made him uneasy, and his thoughts turned to his own fate: “If I look at my house, I see that it would be a simple matter in that remote area to toss a bomb into my bedroom window at night.”

  Goebbels, on the other hand, was a professional optimist, and he used his influence to steer public opinion through newspapers, radio, and the film industry. The top headline in the Berliner Lokalanzeiger of November 10 read: “All Germany Reeling from this Dastardly Crime.” The next headline announced: “Civilized World Outraged.” The third article about the bombing—”Wave of Fanatical Outrage Sweeps Reich”—heightened the drama even more. (“Fanatical” was a favorite word of Hitler’s and hence of Nazi journalists.)

  With its network of volunteer members, the Sicherheitsdienst— the intelligence arm of the SS and the Party—was able to gauge the real mood of the people. The SD was often better informed and more realistic in its assessments than the somewhat removed Party leadership. Describing the mood in the days leading up to the Munich attack, the SD reported on October 23, 1939: “Throughout the Reich, it can be confirmed that trust in official reports in press, film, and radio continues at a gratifyingly high level and that the people support and embrace the current manner of conducting propaganda, especially with regard to foreign countries.” And two days later: “The German people are convinced that the battle against England must be con-tinued.” According to their reports, almost no opposition to the war could be found anywhere in the country. This was hardly surprising: Anyone speaking out for peace risked being sent to a concentration camp. Since 1934, any dissenting views fell under the Heimtückegesetz (sedition law); after the start of the war listening to enemy broadcasts became a punishable offense.

  In its report issued two days after the attack, the SD registered, with some satisfaction, a wave of outrage among German citizens. At first there was mistrust toward the press, then the rumor mill went into gear, reporting that Hitler had been badly injured and that “leading men of the Party and the government” had been killed. When it turned out that there was nothing to these reports, the bitterness shifted to “the English and the Jews”—they must surely be behind it. In the report, it was stated that “in some areas there were demonstrations against Jews” and that workers were exhorting Goring to send the Luftwaffe to “reduce London to rubble.” Hitler considered his speech at the Bürgerbräukeller so essential to his mission that he had it issued as a lavishly illustrated brochure, with three million copies distributed throughout Germany.

  Just how deeply the hearts of the Germans were affected by the attack can be gauged from private documents, which mainly conveyed the Party line. A professor wrote Hitler’s chief adjut
ant Brückner: “All of our people are deeply filled with gratitude to Providence. An individual cannot express it to the Führer; but to you, the guardian of the vestibule to the heart of the Führer, who conduct so many streams from the people to him, I may say it . . . it was for me the happiest moment of my long life when I knew the Führer was safe . . .” And the wife of Austrian Fascist Othmar Spann-Rheinisch wrote:

  Once again God’s angels have protected the Chosen One of the German soul. Thanks be to God and to you, o my Führer! What happens to people is in accord with what they are. What happens to you is in accord with your being, with your destiny: Your being is one with the German spirit, which has brought you forth from the obscurity of your forebears and made you into our heart and our head! May friend and foe alike see that you are invincible, like the German spirit, as invulnerable as Siegfried!

  Similar sentiments were on display in businesses throughout Germany. On December 13 the SD announced, “Since the outbreak of war and especially since the Munich attack, business owners in many locations have placed pictures of the Führer in their shop windows.” A liquor store in Kiel inserted a photo of Hitler among a large number of liquor bottles, with a sign that said “We’ll never capitulate!”

  Many German women, however, were not as confident—the same SD report noted that miscarriages and abortions were on the increase. Many women who had recently become pregnant seemed to be worried about the future—what if their children’s providers did not return from the war? And so they took matters into their own hands.

  Concerning the bombing itself, Himmler issued orders in the news-papers that any suspicious remark should be reported to the police. This was unlikely to elicit any concrete results from the rumor mill that was constantly churning among the people. Given the wave of denuncia-tions and the increasing number of detainees, the Gestapo was already overburdened.

  Many rumors and misstatements resulted in a large number of arrests. On the night of the attack, the police put up numerous road blocks in and around Munich in an effort to catch the assassins. The rural police in Unterhaching stopped a taxi at 5:00 a.m. on November 9. While they were checking papers, the passenger, completely drunk, mumbled, “I didn’t mean to shoot the Führer.” Only because he was able to identify himself, and because he had a doctorate and was a reserve officer, was he allowed to go home.

  A woman from Ottobrunn remembered a local mechanic telling her in 1936 that “if right now somebody would get out there and mingle with the crowd, he could easily get off a shot at him [Hitler].” This same man, who lived on the road that Hitler had traveled to get to the Obersalzberg, told another witness that “somebody could easily lie in the woods and open fire from there when he [Hitler] passed by.” Someone else had observed this man carrying “a military weapon that could easily be disassembled.” The head administrator for the district forwarded the charges to the senior public prosecutor.

  In Moorenweis, a village near Fürstenfeldbruck, a postal worker, who was also a Party member, was overheard saying something in local dialect that the police interpreted as “it would have been no loss if Hitler had been dead.” When he was sent to the Gestapo in Munich over the issue, he claimed to have heard the remark from two farm women. When these two women were questioned, it turned out they had heard something quite different. And on it went. Finally the local police officer threw in the towel, realizing that he had been led on a wild goose chase.

  In Berlin, the SD district office itself confirmed how little of the propaganda regarding the positive mood in Berlin was accurate. They collected such statements as “during the period around November 9, great radical changes could be expected.” In Wilmersdorf, there was a rumor that on November 9 Hermann Goring would be named Führer. A sales clerk in a radio shop in Weissensee snitched on a man who made the threatening remark: “Just you wait till the eighth or ninth of November!” The date of the traditional gathering in Munich seemed to have already acquired an almost mythical quality.

  After the assassination attempt, a master painter in Berlin expressed regret: “Too bad it failed!” A metal worker doubted that the English Secret Service had carried out the attack, underscoring his political intuition with the remark: “The people were responsible for the attempt—don’t believe that the people are 100 percent behind Hitler!”

  Hitler supporters in Berlin felt some measure of Schadenfreude directed at them because of the attack. Any number of people assumed that Hitler and others would soon be shot to death. A shop owner, who according to the sign in his window served Jews only between 12:00 and 1:00 p.m., received a threatening postcard on November 11 that read, “You son of a bitch, how is it that you refuse to allow Jewish people to shop until after twelve? Have you completely forgotten that 100 percent of your business used to come from Jewish customers? Get rid of this sign fast, or the glass will fly just like it did yesterday in Munich, where the lousy Nazis got bombed.”

  Starting in November, subversive anti-Nazi literature increased dramatically. A sticker found on a front door in Berlin contained the following message: “Christians, remember the Sermon on the Mount! Declare war on war!” This was very much in line with the motivation of the assassin.

  Deutschland-Berichte (Reports from Germany), a publication of the Social Democratic Party in exile, also painted a picture of the chaotic thinking prevalent among Germans after the attempt, a picture that included civil unrest, wild rumors, mistrust toward the Nazi press, adoption of English phrases, and, above all, reports of people keeping their heads down in fear. From the German underground the Party leadership received five reports, which revealed no uniform assessment of the mood. According to the first report, the popular imagination had taken the English line and creatively modified it: The “Goring clique” had instigated the attempt, and the military had carried it out. Finally, however, people returned to the Gestapo myth of an English conspiracy: What forces are behind this attack and what forces could have succeeded in deceiving Himmler’s Gestapo or in concealing from it that this was about to happen? Somehow, Hitler had to be behind it, they reasoned.

  Another report contained speculation as to why, after the initial spate of conflicting opinions, Nazi propaganda was able to prevail so quickly. It came to the following conclusion: “The notion that all are in the same boat is too widespread and the belief in the promises made previously by the antiwar faction too shaken for the proverbial ‘little man’ to wish that the bomb had achieved the desired result. Besides, people reason, such an attack can never get all the ‘Führers’ at the same time and is therefore pointless. In the best-case scenario, it would result only in internal confusion; and the beneficiary would be the enemy, the war would be lost, and the misery would be even greater than after Versailles—all the efforts since 1933 would have been in vain.” The point was devastating: “So it is with complete amazement that one must conclude that, whoever threw the bomb, the Nazis were the beneficiaries.” The English claim that the attack was “a second Reichstag fire,” i.e., carried out by the Nazis, was given no credence in the report.

  However, this line of reasoning continued to flourish under-ground. Once the assassin had acquired a name, a biography, and a profession, this was the very angle used by those carrying out the assault on his integrity. He would come to be regarded as the stooge of the Nazis.

  The SD report closed by asking what, if anything, could change the political situation. Answer: only “the decisive military defeat of the Reich.” This view was also shared by some elements of the military resistance.

  The bloodbath of the years to come might have been averted if the assassination attempt at the Bürgerbräukellerhad been successful.

  For many of the resistance fighters and members of the opposition, the assassination attempt served as a clarion call. The SD report of November 10 announced that in Berlin “at the shop of the Photo-Hoffmann company at Kochstrasse 10, a shop window had been shattered by a stone. The only items on display in the window were pictures of the Füh
rer.” The Czechs, too, could not conceal their satisfaction. “Among the Czech minority in the Sudetenland the Schadenfreude at the Munich attack was universally apparent.”

  The SD reports did not have much to say about statements by those who supported the attack—this was the purview of the Gestapo. There may have been several hundred Gestapo investigations of people who made remarks about the Munich attack that were suspicious or even supportive. But Gestapo records of reactions to the attacks have been preserved only in Düsseldorf (with seventy files), Würzburg (sixteen files), and Speyer (fifty-eight files).

  One of the few cases to become famous was that of Wilhelm Jung, an innkeeper in Neunkirchen and a former member of the SD. When he read the newspaper report about the attempt while sitting in his pub on November 9, he said to a neighbor: “If the Führer and his closest associates had died in the attack, things would already be looking a lot different in Germany.” He went on to say that the assassin, even if he were sitting there in the bar, would not be turned in by anybody. Jung was a little too sure of himself. His views circulated, he was taken into custody, and the witness stuck to her “patriotic” statement in spite of pleas from Mrs. Jung. Jung, a war invalid, was sentenced by a special court to two years in prison, after which he was transferred, at the age of sixty years and in poor health, to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen and later to Auschwitz, where he died in 1942.