Bombing Hitler (20 page)

Georg Elser (center), Meersburg, 1932.

Here at rye-threshing time, which usually took place early in the year, people are taking a break; Elser is holding a flail in his hand. It is cool, and the visitors are wearing coats. Elser appears neither shy nor eccentric—the Dutch woman to his left casually rests her arm upon his. He seems rather gentle—at first glance a pleasant-looking person.

The Drehers were monarchists—in this Catholic area around Lake Constance there were still many people with this view. For the father of the family, the Grand Duke of Baden was the only real authority; for the mother, who was originally from Bavaria, it was the Prince Regent Luitpold. Nevertheless, Elser was taken in by them and got along quite well with them—this comity does not seem to fit the image of an eccentric or a fanatic. Both Drehers, however, found Elser too progressive. So it appears that Elser took part in political discussions when the occasion arose.

During the Depression Elser's life fell apart. He had no job, no social connections, no permanent place to live. He only did work that was “off the books” and was dependent on occasional orders for items he could build. He was living from hand to mouth. He seemed to have lost his interest in handicrafts and had no hope of setting up his own workshop. Then a cry for help from his mother reached him in Meersburg. The message was that his father was drinking up the money and that Georg needed to come home immediately to his family to try to keep him from wiping them out completely.

Georg Elser had no other choice, but the return to Königsbronn was very hard on him. It meant going back to the stifling and narrow-minded world that he had fled seven years before. However, the years at Lake Constance had liberated him and helped shape his identity, both personally and politically. This period was to remain as an ideal for him. Waving like a shadow over all his wishes now was the flag of a country to which he passionately wanted to emigrate, yet never could—Switzerland.

D
URING THE BERLIN
interrogation, Elser spoke more openly of the family drama than of other matters that would have implicated outsiders. Here he felt no need to suppress anything. In May of 1932, he said, his mother had written to tell him:

. . . that my father was drinking more and more and that he was selling one plot of land after another just to pay the debts that he ran up with his wood dealings and his drinking. By getting me to come home my mother expected to see my father's behavior improve. . . .My mother and my brother [Leonhard] were very happy to have me back at home. My father was indifferent. I soon learned that my parents had run up large debts because of my father's wood business—I can't recall the amount of the debts. My father incurred these debts primarily because he would bid too high for wood at auctions and then have to sell it at a loss. I found out from my uncle Eugen Elser in Königsbronn that my father was always under the influence of alcohol at wood auctions, and that was why he always paid such high prices.

As he had in the past, the good-natured Georg found himself exploited, this time by his mother; yet he never received any thanks. He was not able to get anywhere with his stubborn father. He fell back into his no-cash life, helping his mother on the farm and his father at the wood business, where he smoothed and trimmed off pieces of wood. His only source of pleasure was a small woodworking shop that he managed to set up at the house, in which he could build furniture on order, as he had done in Meersburg.

Georg Elser with his younger brother Leonhard, 1933 or 1934.

The sacrifice he made by returning was for naught. His father started drinking even more heavily and sold land to pay off his obligations. The family was living off what it could harvest. And as he had done throughout Georg's childhood, his father would come home drunk and create a scene, cursing his wife, Georg, and Leonhard, saying it was their faults that everything was falling apart. In only one way he did seem to have improved: the aging man, who was now sixty and clearly becoming weaker, no longer abused anyone or tore up the furniture, which his sons would then have to repair.

Such a situation might well have provided a strapping young working-class fellow reason enough to straighten out the intergenerational relationship in a physical way, but Georg was too good-natured to ever punch his father. Georg's girlfriend Elsa Härlen would later tell the Gestapo that this man, the assassin, was in every way a friendly and helpful person who could never do anything to hurt anyone.

After an absence of seven years, Elser returned to Königsbronn with the basic views of a Communist. Elser's friend Anton Egetemaier, who played with him in the zither group, later recounted that Elser had never been openly political nor engaged in political discussions, but had brought back from Konstanz “a very firm political view”—translation: a clear and uncompromising enmity toward the Nazi regime.

During the Berlin interrogation Elser admitted that, although he had not been a member of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany), he had always voted Communist in order to do something for the interests of the common worker. He had also always been a member of the Woodworkers Union, which was considered a left-wing organization. So it is not surprising that at a meeting in Königsbronn he made the acquaintance of Josef Schurr, a Communist from Schnaitheim. What is surprising is that a letter to the editor by Schurr, which appeared in a newspaper in Ulm in 1947, was overlooked by Elser researchers. Even if it contained several errors stemming from faulty recollection—a common occurrence in many such sources—the basic political message of the letter is surely accurate.

At the meeting, which was held sometime before 1933, Elser revealed to Schurr, whom he did not know, that he was an ardent anti-Nazi. Elser, who since his return had become more closed off, was rarely this outspoken. Both of these men were practical people, not public speakers, and they wanted to do something. Assuming that Schurr's recollection was not influenced by information acquired later, the opposition that Elser expressed could be described as almost brutal. Carefully working out a motivation was not Schurr's strong suit, and he has been criticized by many historians for this.

Schurr recalled a determined Elser: “He was always extremely interested in some act of violence against Hitler and his cronies. He always called Hitler a ‘gypsy'—one just had to look at his criminal face. We spent a lot of time talking about what could be done and what absolutely had to be done. Elser and I managed to strike a few blows against the Nazis, and they never suspected us.”

What did Schurr mean by “a few blows”? Did they destroy the Party's display cases containing the anti-Semitic paper
Der Stürmer?
Did they burn a flag, break windows at a Nazi's house, or play a trick on the local Nazi official Georg Vollmer? It is assumed that Elser did not produce and distribute leaflets—the classic form of Communist protest. In a rural environment, this kind of action would not have made a great deal of sense.

Their friendship was interrupted when, like many other Communists, Schurr was arrested early in 1933 and incarcerated for five months at the Heuberg concentration camp located near Stetten am Kalten Mark in the Schwäbisch Alb region. When Schurr was released, he got a job at the Waldenmaier armament factory, where he was kept under surveillance. It was probably not a coincidence that in 1937 Elser got a job at the same company and started gathering materials for his time bomb.

After Hitler assumed power, it became almost obligatory to listen to his radio addresses. At the sound of his voice, Elser would get up and leave the tavern. He refused to listen at home as well. Elser was not the type to listen to his enemy and analyze his words in order to combat him. He was opposed to him for good reasons and felt no need to reveal them to anyone. He simply did not want to hear all this agitation and scolding, and would leave without saying a word. He was by no means alone in his views; however, it was soon forgotten that such opposition had existed.

Elser's recalcitrance was also evident when it came to saluting the swastika flag. People on the street were required to publicly acknowledge their allegiance to the regime. In 1933 in the town of Giengen in the Brenz valley, there was an incident involving the SA. When a pedestrian passed by an SA parade and failed to salute the flag, an SA man jumped out of ranks and punched him in the face. The man who had been struck trusted in the justice system and hired an attorney known for his anti-Nazi views to defend him in the municipal court in Heidenheim. His acquittal rested on a key statement by his attorney: “There is no law stating that the
Blutfahne
must be saluted.”

An occurrence witnessed by Egetemaier on May 1, 1938, demonstrated Elser's scorn for the Nazi regime more blatantly. He and Elser were standing near the Weisses Rössle, the most popular inn in Königsbronn, when a procession of brown shirts passed by the inn carrying the
Blutfahne.
According to Egetemaier, everybody on the street saluted except for Elser. When Egetemaier warned Elser that he had to salute the flag, Elser answered bluntly in Swabian dialect, “Nope, just kiss my ass!” Then he turned around, looked down the street in another direction, and starting whistling a tune. Elser's attitude, which he did not care to discuss, was: “I'd rather be shot than move a muscle for the Nazis.” And that was that.

At elections during the Third Reich, Elser was also uncompromising. Once, when his girlfriend Elsa Härlen asked him if he was going to vote, he replied tersely, “No.” She tried to urge him to vote, “because of the townspeople.” But Elser was indifferent to such considerations. He was displeased that she was going to vote, but he did not try to stop her.

Elsa Härlen had similar experiences with Elser when it came to campaigns for the Nazi Party. Elser was very consistent in his statements. “He always said he was for something or against it, but he didn't like discussions. One time when the SA was collecting money in order to buy uniforms, I said I didn't like this way of raising money. And then Elser said: ‘Either you're for it and give them something, or you're against it and you don't.'”

In the working-class environment of the upper Brenz valley, Elser's attitude was not so unusual. In Itzelberg, a village near Königsbronn, as well as in Schnaitheim, the KPD received the most votes in the Reichtag election of November 1932. In the district of Heidenheim, there were more votes recorded for the Communists than the national average, but the Nazis got more votes as well. In Schnaitheim the Nazis lagged far behind in fourth place. The situation was different in Königsbronn, where the quarry owner Georg Vollmer as local Nazi leader wielded his patriarchal scepter. Here the party of the swastika led in elections even before 1933.

Georg Vollmer had been a Party member since 1931. He immediately became the local Party boss and was the de facto head of the municipality; however, he had since ceased any effort to build the Party. Those in the community who held differing views—and he of course knew them—were simply left in peace. In this rural area the political climate was not as heated as it was in the big cities. During the 1934 election, a slip of paper was found in a ballot box with the following bit of folk poetry: “Give Hitler the boot/And beat Röhm, the fruit.” A poll worker claimed it was the handwriting of the Communist Christian Konrad, who resided in Eichhalde. Konrad was generally considered to be a Communist, even though he had never been a party member. As people were trying to decide what to do with the note, Party leader Vollmer came by and put it in his pocket, saying he would take care of it—then promptly ignored it. This type of thing was typical in rural areas. People were among their own, and political strife seemed unnecessary. It wouldn't do to squeal on a member of the community. It was in such an atmosphere that Elser was able to hold his own and continue his criticism of the Nazi regime unscathed.

At the beginning of 1933, Elser joined the Königsbronn zither club, an organization that had been started in 1927. In the Berlin interrogation, he cited his family circumstances as his main reason for joining: “With music I was hoping to find relief from the situation at home.” The club had eight to twelve members, many of whom were related. Hans Elser, who was at the time only twelve years old, recalled that Georg often came to their house and remembered him as “a very accessible, helpful, and affable person” who seemed “completely apolitical.” Many people said that Georg Elser was simply neither an agitator nor one who talked politics. Any political deliberations he engaged in he seemed to have engaged in alone.