Bombing Hitler (14 page)

Rudolf Hess speaks with greater dignity than Hitler did in the Bürgerbräukeller—more slowly and evenly, in the manner of an experienced priest, with many repetitions for rhetorical emphasis. The
Völkische Beobachter
published an edited transcript of the speech, from which the repetitions are deleted.

“At this time,” Hess intones, “the German people take their sad leave of the victims of a gruesome crime, a crime almost unparalleled in history.” On the one hand, the attack was a “ruthless act of murder”; on the other hand, the dead were victims of a preordained fate—they were “destined to die” at the Bürgerbräukeller. It was the loyalty of these seven, he proclaims, that made it possible for Hitler to “steer the movement through all storms.” Germany owes a debt of gratitude to the
Alte Kämpfer,
who have “made it possible to withstand this attack by foreign enemies.” It is only because of the
Alte Kämpfer,
says Hess, that Hitler was able to build the great Wehrmacht and liberate Germany.

Hess addresses the dead directly with the bold assertion that “all of Germany” is in mourning, and with the stock promise never to forget. “Eternal is the river of blood that flows for Germany, eternal the commitment of German men to their people; thus, Germany, too, will be eternal—this Germany for which you gave your lives.”

But Hess also manages to extract from these deaths some folk wisdom and political benefit—the attack has its good side. The deaths of these seven victims have served to “fully arouse the bitterness and the passion of the German people,” he says, adding: “The perpetrators of this crime have succeeded in teaching the German people to hate. They have heightened immeasurably the commitment of the German people to this battle that has been forced upon them, as well as its willingness to give its all to the cause.” The spirit prevailing among the German people, he goes on, is best expressed in the words of the wives of two of the victims. Hess does not shrink from exploiting the widows in their grief—it is after all the duty of the individual to subordinate himself to the overall political purpose. He declares that two of them had said: “What the death of our husbands means to us can be felt only by those who have lost their closest loved ones. But more important than the lives of our husbands is knowing that the Führer is alive.”

No feelings are expressed for the bereaved—these are all reserved for Hitler's deliverance. Hess then makes allusions to Hitler as Germany's messiah: “With the miracle of his salvation, our faith has become unshakable: Providence has protected our Führer; and Providence will continue to protect our Führer, for it is Providence that sent him to us.” Next, as in Christian liturgy, comes a statement of faith, paralleling that of the Apostles' Creed:

In recent days, Providence has protected our Hitler from harm, as it protected him during his service in the World War—in the drumfire of the World War; as it protected him on the march to the Feldherrnhalle; as it protected him while he repeatedly risked his life in battle, and now in the Polish campaign. Providence was always at the side of the Führer; and whatever his enemies plotted against him, Providence ultimately turned all to his advantage and thereby to the advantage of the German people.

As the faithful disciple of his lord, Hess is “of the rock-solid conviction that . . . this enormous crime, this war which was forced upon us, will turn out in favor of the Führer, in favor of Germany—in favor of Germany and of the entire world.” Hitler will bring about utopia for mankind and establish eternal peace—but apparently only for the Germans. “But to our enemies, the perpetrators of this crime, we call out: You attempted to take our Führer from us, but you brought him closer to us than ever. You wanted to make us weaker, but have only made us stronger than ever. You hoped you could rob us of our belief in the future, but have only strengthened our belief in a Providence which is on the side of Germany. You hoped you could take away our confidence in victory . . .” Never, Hess claims, have the German people been “more certain of victory” than on this day. At the end, Hess even challenges the netherworld: “And if you put the forces of Hell itself into motion, victory will still be ours. For victory will be our thanks to the dead.”

Next the offerings to the victims are presented: the wreathbearers take position in front of the coffins and we hear the sounds of “Der gute Kamerad,” long the favorite song of the German military crowd. As soon as Hitler steps in front of one of the coffins, an honor guard standing in the Hofgarten fires off a salute, which echoes off the walls of the surrounding buildings. Hitler places a wreath of chrysanthemums at each coffin, then steps back and lifts his arm in salute.

Then, very slowly, “Deutschland über alles” is played, followed by the Party anthem the “Horst Wessel Lied” at a much brisker tempo, intended after all the standing to put people in a marching mood. Hitler shakes hands with each of the family members. “Silently, he looks into the eyes of each one,” according to the
Völkischer Beobachter.
Then he expresses his sympathy to them. It ends as it began—military units swarm across the square: “Formations, halt!”; “Present arms!”; “Shoulder arms!”; “Funeral procession, march!”; “By the right flank, march!”. The sound of boots, the
Prasentiermarsch,
the church clock striking eleven-thirty. Leading off the departing procession is the
Blutfahne,
followed by funeral cars carrying participants in the 1923 march, and finally by formations from the Wehrmacht and the Party.

The funeral procession wends its way along the hour-long route across the Odeonsplatz and Ludwigstrasse, out through the Siegestor, and across Leopoldstrasse and Ungererstrasse to the Nordfriedhof (North Cemetery)—to the alternating accompaniment of drum rolls and funeral marches. Curious onlookers line the streets—according to the official reports, “all of Munich.” However, as the SD of the SS admitted: “The participation by the citizens of Munich in the state funeral for the victims of the attack was relatively weak; only at Odeonsplatz were larger crowds observed, and they did not appear to be particularly moved by the occasion.”

Goebbels' propaganda machine managed to extract from the irrationality of the death cult one bit of rationality: A film of the ceremonies was made, which was shown to Elser shortly before the end of his interrogation in Berlin in an effort to shock him into revealing the names of the instigators behind the attack.

At the Nordfriedhof the entire ceremony is repeated, but in a shorter version. Up until the end everything remains firmly in the hands of the Party—the
Blutfahne
is at the gravesite as well. The “program” approaches its conclusion: “The coffins are set down. The family members and the bereaved assume their positions. When they are in place, Party member Wenzel gives the sign to lower the coffins. As the coffins are being lowered, the Trapp Chamber Orchestra very solemnly plays the song ‘Hakenkreuz am Stahlhelm' (‘Swastika on the Steel Helmet').”

O
N THE NIGHT
of the attack, while on their private train, Hitler and his followers had already speculated about possible instigators behind the attack. Hitler's “chain of agitators,” as he had called them in his Bürgerbräu speech, led him immediately to suspect England. Later on he thought of Otto Strasser as well, with whom a feud had been raging for a long time. From a freedom radio station in Czechoslovakia, Strasser had broadcast attacks on the regime, and from time to time he had succeeded in planting explosives in Germany.

In Hitler's view, an effective attack like the one in the Bürgerbräukeller was unimaginable without instigators behind the scenes. The assumption that there were powerful people involved seemed particularly likely to him, since without such power he would have remained a nobody. After all, Hitler had been able to rise so rapidly only because of benefactors and patrons in the justice system, in the government, in the police, and most of all in influential and wealthy circles. Left on his own, he prob-ably couldn't have even earned a living for himself.

In the search for the identity of the assassin, the Nazi leadership fell victim to its own strategy: They had so barricaded themselves against the outside world that wherever they looked they saw only enemies. Deciding on one or the other became an arbitrary choice.

In spite of all the propaganda generated over many years, Hitler suddenly lost sight of his chief enemy: Why shouldn't Jews be behind the attack? Herschel Grynszpan's assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris the year before—one of the few successful attempts—had proved that a Jew was capable of such an act. And why shouldn't bolshevists have plotted the assassination? The GPU had people at its disposal who had the necessary training. In fact, as a routine part of its investigation, the Gestapo in Munich went after Communists, thereby proving its total ignorance of the Communist resistance strategy, which did not include bomb attacks. In any event, the Communists were paralyzed because of the German-Soviet Pact.

If a future wartime enemy like England was supposed to be the mastermind behind the attack, why wasn't France also considered? In the Alsatian city of Strasbourg, there was a well-organized radio station that broadcast to foreign audiences and was influential in the south of Germany. It never occurred to anyone in Hitler's coterie that the attack might have been planned in France. Hitler kept his gaze fixed on England like a snake charmer staring at his cobra.

All the serious evidence that the Special Commission gradually assembled pointed internally to the area within the Reich, thus contradicting Hitler's anti-English conspiracy theory. As interesting as the details were regarding the nature of the explosive device, the construction of the device, or the Munich craftsmen who unknowingly rendered assistance, none of this had anything to do with the political big picture as Hitler needed to see it. The Gestapo, on the other hand, mistakenly focused on two avenues of suspicion leading abroad, thereby demonstrating whose intellectual offspring they were, even in matters of criminology. The false trail leading to Switzerland has to this day been ignored, and it adds an odd aspect to the entire account of the assassination attempt.

On November 22, 1939, all German newspapers ran the same article, in which Himmler portrayed Elser as the assassin. But without a shred of evidence in support, he simultaneously put out a lie: “The principals and financiers of this operation were from the British Intel-ligence Service; the crime was organized by Otto Strasser.” Edited to match this article was the report on the Venlo abduction, which appeared at the same time. The British Secret Service agents Best and Stevens, who were taken at gunpoint on Dutch soil and transported to Germany, were touted as “instigators.” The SS gloated “how England's Secret Service was outwitted.” According to them, the pair had crossed the border into Germany in order to make contact with the German opposition. The assault and abduction were kept quiet.

At the same time, DNB, the Nazi press agency—which otherwise showed little sign of activity abroad—issued an announcement intended for Switzerland that was not allowed to appear in Germany. It stated that on November 5, Elser had crossed the border and traveled to Zurich in order to meet with his employer, Otto Strasser.

The following day, the Nazi press reported that the Gestapo had tricked the English Secret Service into carrying on radio contact for twenty-one days via a secret transmitter that, interestingly, had been delivered by the English themselves to the supposed German resistance group, which then ambushed the two feckless spies at Venlo. Bold headlines smugly heralded the success: “Radio Con-tact Maintained Between Gestapo and British Secret Service until Yesterday: How the London Masterminds Behind the Attack Were Exposed.” Himmler could not resist expressing his
Schadenfreude
in print, reporting the final radio communication as follows: “After a while it becomes boring to converse with such arrogant and foolish people. You will understand why we are signing off. Best wishes from your friendly ‘German Opposition.' The German Gestapo.”

At Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8—Gestapo headquarters in Berlin— the jokesters were probably splitting their sides laughing. Everything else in the press was usually fabricated by the Gestapo. More interesting was what the papers had to say about Otto Strasser; Germans got to hear for the first time about his resistance activities. The press let down its guard enough to admit that in 1935 two German SS men had illegally entered Czechoslovakia and destroyed Strasser's radio transmitter.

Upon seeing the allegation that Strasser had organized the attack from a location in Switzerland, the newspapers in Switzerland took on the issue. Even the mere suspicion could become dangerous; their German neighbor was well known to be violent—and feared. Starting in 1933, individuals had frequently been abducted in Switzerland and taken to Germany; not only German emigrants—Swiss citizens considered “inconvenient” were also taken.

On November 23, the
Appenzeller Zeitung
in Herisau ran an article on Strasser that mentioned his last published work, in which he made the plea for a new Europe, “a Europe of freedom, justice, and peace.” According to the article, Strasser had in the meantime moved on to Paris, where he had given an interview stating, “I don't know Elser, and it is certain that he is not one of my people. I knew neither Best nor Stevens.” He considered it “an honor” that the Gestapo accused Strasser's organization
Schwarze Front
(Black Front) of being involved. He stated further that the Gestapo had attempted several times to murder him, and that the last time he had been warned by a Gestapo official.

The
Appenzeller Zeitung
reported on investigations by the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office in Bern and by the Political Police. In Bern the concern primarily seemed to be for precautionary obedience to its violent neighbor. Immediately after the attack, the Federal Prosecutor's Office independently initiated an inquiry into any possible Swiss connections, focusing not only on Strasser, “but also on other elements unfavorably disposed toward the present-day German government.” The results were negative.