Bombing Hitler (23 page)

In the shipping department, samples of detonators and detonator parts were received, which Elser, after checking the shipment, was to send on to individual specialists. At his post Elser learned everything he needed to know without having to take anyone into his confidence, and he had the authority to go at any time to any department of special interest to him. Without arousing suspicion, he could wait for an opportunity to gain access to key materials.

The first thing Elser did was travel to Munich on November 8, 1938. At that time, Maurice Bavaud of Switzerland was lurking around town, looking for a chance to eliminate Hitler with a pistol. Here too, security was lax. Even as a French-speaking Swiss citizen who knew barely a word of German, Bavaud was able to get to the platform at the Feldherrnhalle. But the sea of flags and the many arms raised in salute as the hordes marched by prevented his assassination attempt. He would in any event have had little chance; the small-caliber (6.35 mm.) so-called “lady's pistol” he had purchased in Basel was effective at a distance of at most three yards.

As Georg Elser proceeded to Munich, he did not have a preconceived plan; he wanted to adapt his approach to the circumstances he observed at the site. When he arrived at the Bürgerbräukeller, he was at first unable to register anything but the hysterical enthusiasm of the crowd. Hitler's histrionics, later used to explain people's susceptibility to mass psychosis, had no effect on Elser. For Elser, Hitler did not, as he did for many Germans, represent the expression of their secret desires. For Elser, Hitler was an absolute catastrophe that had to be removed. Elser was not waiting for a savior to rescue the German people from humiliation; he wanted to liberate the Germans and the peoples of Europe—and liberate them permanently—from this deadly menace. In the midst of pseudo-religious fanaticism, Elser remained the rational technician with a keen eye, seeking out vulnerable spots at this cult landmark.

Arriving around 8:15 p.m. at the intersection of Rosenheimer Strasse and Hochstrasse near the Bürgerbräukeller, Elser found the street barricaded. He waited among the crowds on the street until 10:30 p.m. without getting a glimpse of Hitler and concluded that this would not be a good spot. Once the street was reopened, he moved on to the Bürgerbräukeller and found everything open. He passed through the main entrance and proceeded through the cloakroom directly into the hall. There were a few people inside, but no one asked him what he was doing there. He walked around the room and observed that the speaker's platform was against the wall in the middle of the hall, not by the front wall. He made note of any important features, but did not work out his assassination strategy until later on, when he was back at home.

Part of the strategy involved making contact with the staff. His strength was always his simple, straightforward approach to people, a trait that made the Gestapo nervous. His best disguise was his natural guilelessness, which was immediately apparent. He walked through the cloakroom into the Brãustübl of the establishment and ordered a late supper. It was 11:00 p.m., but on a special day like this, anything was possible. Soon a fellow Swabian, the manager of the slaughterhouse, sat down at his table and the only thing he noticed about the future assassin was that he drank very little beer.

The next day, November 9, 1938, was a holiday. Elser returned to the Bürgerbräukeller in order to observe the organization and execution of the traditional march to the Feldherrnhalle. This time he at least got to see Hitler drive up. Afterward he walked around town for a while, then returned to Königsbronn. If he had stayed another day, he would have gotten to see the city after the Kristallnacht pogrom instigated by Goebbels.

Georg Elser was a thorough man, for whom ideas took a long time to form, but once formed remained firmly rooted. In this case, it took only two or three days for him to realize that the Bürgerbräukeller was the only possible location for an assassination attempt, but he needed another few months to work out how it was to be executed. During the Berlin interrogation Elser gave a good description of his mental work habits: “In the course of the next few weeks I slowly worked it out in my head that it would be best to pack explosives into this particular pillar behind the speaker's platform and then by means of some kind of device cause the explosives to ignite at the right time.”

In April 1939, Elser worked for a short time at the Vollmer Quarry in Königsbronn and there he learned from explosives expert Georg Kolb that the explosive material should be placed as close to the floor as possible. However, the base of the column in the hall was not an option, since Elser might have been easily discovered at his nocturnal labors. So Elser chose the bottom of the column on the gallery—and in the process assured a far greater effect during the explosion. During all of his careful contemplation at home, Elser also came to the conclusion that he would need a timed detonator.

From the very outset he calculated the effects: flying debris striking people on and around the speaker's platform, the ceiling caving in. When the commissars coyly asked him if he had been aware of who was seated around the speaker's platform, Elser, unfazed, responded: “No. But I knew that Hitler was going to speak and assumed that the leadership would be sitting closest to him.”

Before his visit to Munich, Elser's parents had gotten back together and moved into their half of the double house on Wiesenstrasse. Georg refused to vacate the room to which he felt entitled, and paid no rent even though his mother desperately needed the money. But he now needed the money even more—for his months of arduous work in the Bürgerbräukeller.

From this point on, he started gaining the reputation of being heartless, stingy, and inconsiderate. And he indeed became stranger. But it was not until his assassination plans began taking shape that out of the great need for secrecy he started to take on the personality that people generally ascribed to him after the war: He became an eccentric, but only vis-à-vis the world from which he had to absolutely shield himself, for security reasons. From the very beginning he took into consideration the likelihood of gossip and Gestapo snooping.

He put three locks on his wooden suitcase and built two secret compartments into it, then he constructed an ingenious double bottom for it. He always carried the keys to the suitcase with him. He installed two new locks on the door to his room and never allowed anyone inside. He continued to work at his project but knew that he could no longer afford to carry on such dangerous activities in the workshop at the house. Eventually his parents called in the village authorities, and while Elser was at work, Officer Michael Aigner opened the room with a master key. There they found clockworks, tubes, and springs lying on the table—just things for tinkering, nothing dangerous. Twenty years later, Aigner would boastfully proclaim that these were “parts of the bomb.” Obviously, Aigner would have turned Elser over to the Gestapo if he had had the faintest suspicion.

After the trip to Munich, Elser increased the pace of his prep-arations. By the end of 1938 he was already thinking of making his escape through Konstanz. On a trip there, he found conditions between the Kreuzlingen customs office and the Emmishofer customs office unchanged. He started selling off everything he no longer needed, including his bass. By the time of his departure, his savings amounted to a total of between 350 and 400 marks, a substantial sum for the time. According to the calculations of the Kripo as well, one would have been able to get by for three months on this amount, assuming a lifestyle as frugal as Elser's.

Elser took advantage of his position at Waldenmaier, acquiring, over a period of five months, 250 compressed pellets of powder. In his conscientious manner, he recalled the size: “Such a sheet of compressed powder was 9 mm. (3/8”) thick and had a diameter of 19 mm. (3/4”).” The disappearance was not noticed because in this area, too, there were no checks. And Elser exploited his advantage—with an apparently clear conscience and steely nerves he would stroll through the special area and take something, as he described it, “inconspicuously and quickly.” Later on, this black powder would rain down in the Bürgerbräukeller as thick black dust and become the first evidence to allay Nebe's fears that this might have been the work of the German military opposition “fooling around” with English explosives.

Elser's camouflage act slowly became almost comically grotesque— by feigning “normal” behavior he was able to avoid all suspicion. He would pack the pilfered discs of explosives in paper and store them in his wardrobe, which he locked, and then cover everything with clothes— quadruple security, since the room was also locked.

As soon as the explosive device took shape in Elser's head, he started having misgivings about the dimensions. He was afraid the apparatus might exceed the maximum size possible for the chamber at the Bürgerbräukeller. In March 1939, he gave notice at Waldenmaier.

Now he was free, and on April 4, 1939, he traveled to Munich a second time, in order to take measurements of the column in the Bürgerbräukeller. Twice he walked around the hall without being stopped, taking measurements with a measuring stick and writing them in a notebook, just as a craftsman does when planning a job. His contact with the staff increased, and every day he had a meal or something to drink there. Right away Elser made the acquaintance of a servant boy and, by giving him a written promise of fifty marks, made him promise to help him get his job when the boy was called up for military duty. With the same camera he used to photograph the column, he took a snapshot of three of the waitresses. Allowing himself time to become part of the scene, Elser didn't return home until April 12.

Early in 1939, the situation at his parents' place was getting worse. Georg was supposed to move out in order to make room for his brother and his wife, but he didn't want to. When Elsa visited him around the end of February 1939, and he took her up to his room, his mother threw him out of the house. The only place he could go was Schnaitheim, where he had established close ties with the Schmauder family, whose address was Benzstrasse 18. In his disarmingly unselfish way, he had continued to help these people remodel their place after he got off work at Waldenmaier—rather sociable behavior for an “eccentric.” He would pitch in wherever he was needed, whether it was digging or carpentry. At ten-thirty in the evening, he would take the last train back to Königsbronn.

Even though he had been evicted from one home, Elser was nonetheless capable of creating a new one for himself by making himself useful. The official registration of his residence did not occur until May 4, 1939, and the address given was Benzstrasse 16. Prior to that he camped out for a while in the shed out on the Flachsberg with his father, with whom his relationship had improved since he was thrown out.

For his assistance with the Schmauders' remodeling project, Georg Elser received free lodging and laundry. He seemed content to have a storage room to sleep in, located in their daughter's house next door at Benzstrasse 16. After fetching his tools, he placed his wooden suitcase with the materials for the assassination attempt next to his bed. From that point on he would not be separated from his “bomb trunk.” He remained at Benzstrasse exactly three months. It was the most intensive period of his preparations for the assassination attempt.

Since his return from Munich, Elser knew that he needed to acquire much more explosive material. Furthermore, he did not yet have a clear picture of the detonating device. He began to hang around at Vollmer's quarry in Itzelberg, making himself useful in various operations and helping out here and there. When asked by the boss what he was doing there, he answered in his disarming manner that he was unemployed and bored. Needing workers at that moment, Vollmer hired him on the spot. His work consisted of loading up the debris onto trolleys after an explosion. On the job, Elser would stay as close as possible to the area where Kolb was setting up an explosion. He was observant: “Kolb always brought more explosive from the concrete hut than was needed for the blast.” So some was always left lying around, and Elser made note of where it was. Since controls were nonexistent at the quarry too, he was able to get hold of several explosive cans over a period of time. When leaving for the day he would take them out in his knapsack, which he always had with him.

But things were moving too slowly for Elser. So he would accompany the explosives expert to where the supplies of explosive were stored—at the entrance to the quarry, just to the left of the old main building in a concrete hut, which is no longer there. It was five feet deep and three feet wide. Elser decided to “pay a visit” to the supply depot at night, as he phrased it to the Gestapo. Probably in an attempt to protect the quarry owner, he claimed that he returned at night with a bunch of old keys. In reality, however, the hut was in such unbelievable disarray that the boss got a year and a half in the Welzheim concentration camp for it. If the key to the iron exterior door couldn't be found, it was just yanked open, and the wooden interior door could no longer be locked.