Bombing Hitler (24 page)

The house in Heidenheim-Schnaitheim, in which Elser began designing his explosive device. In a workshop attached to the house, he carried out his first tests with gun shells and firing caps.

The crew of the Vollmer Quarry in Königsbronn, around 1930. Fourth from left in the first row is owner Georg Vollmer; second from left is explosives expert Kolb.

Later on, as the Kripo and the Gestapo learned of these conditions, they just shook their heads in disbelief—such lack of security at the company of a former local Nazi leader! To round out this scene, it turns out that the bookkeeper kept no books on the purchase and use of the explosives despite the regulations requiring it. The local police officer Aigner (who had been so diligent in investigating Elser) was part of the picture: It was his job to monitor the records of the explosive materials, but he never made even one attempt to do so. The quarry owner pushed responsibility off on the explosives expert. So Himmler sent the owner and his two employees away to the Welzheim concentration camp for a year and a half, while the policeman went free.

Given the easy access to the explosives, Elser made frequent nocturnal “visits” to the quarry, obtaining over sixty cartridges of the industrial explosive Donarit 3. He then found detonator caps in the hut. Even though he needed only two or three, he carried off a con-tainer of 125 of them.

In a sewing machine shop in Heidenheim, Elser bought rifle ammunition. In order to acquire the necessary knowledge of explosive techniques, he purchased “a booklet designed for the training of Pioneers,” according to the Gestapo. Ironically, under Hitler it was possible, with some determination, to obtain all the materials and information necessary to carry out a professional assassination. In the militarized society everything necessary was made available. After Stauffenberg's failed attempt, Nebe would maintain to his friend Gisevius that any Pioneer could have positioned the explosive better than Stauffenberg did. Elser's little “Pioneer” booklet would have made it clear. In the meantime, Elser was working on his detonation device, at first in his head and in sketches, then with experiments using wood blocks. He mounted three blocks on a board, drilled holes through them, stretched a spring across them, and used a nail as a firing pin to strike the firing cap of a rifle shell. The powder ignited and caused the blasting caps to explode. While the Schmauders were away, Elser conducted his first detonation experiment down in his workshop and was amazed at how well it worked, even knocking some plaster off the ceiling. When the owners noticed the results afterward, Elser just commented on the poor work of the plasterers.

From this point on, Elser's preferred testing site was his par-ents' fruit orchard on the Flachsberg. Here as well, he demonstrated what great control he had—although an amateur at this sort of activity, he knew exactly what he could get away with. Even though his father, unable to walk, was living in the remodeled garden shed, Elser conducted four test explosions close by which caused a ter-rific bang. His father could hear the noise, but he had long since quit caring about anything. Nearby, an uncle of Elser's heard the explosions while working in a field with two horses. It was July 1939. Upon hearing the bang, the horses reared up, and he almost lost control of them; then he saw Georg looking out from the shed. When he asked him that evening about the noise, it, Elser told him: “I'm trying something out. When it's finished, you'll find out about it.” When the uncle left to go home, he noticed an object on the table in the shed that looked like “some kind of clock that had gotten too big.” Attached to it was a cable that ran out into the yard. Elser tossed the smashed wood blocks from the tests into the bin of wood scraps in his workshop at the Schmauders' place. This was where the Stuttgart Gestapo found them six months later along with his first design sketches.

This phase of the construction—the detonation—is the only one that Elser executed first through experiments; all other problems he worked out with sketches. His pride in his methods is still evident during his interrogations by the Gestapo. His next challenge was to transfer the preset detonation point from a clock to an ignition mechanism. In mid-May 1939, an accident Elser had at the quarry provided him with the time needed for the execution of his drawings. Having suffered a broken leg, he was put on sick leave for two months. Lying on a couch in the kitchen at the Schmauders' place, he would listen to foreign radio stations and work on sketches of his explosive device. He would take the most useful ones and hide them under the false bottom in his suitcase.

From the beginning, Elser was adept at reining in the curiosity around him with his little white lie about an “invention,” thereby achieving his desired objectives of secrecy and respect. In March 1939, he started preparing for the move to Munich. He had planned for the eventuality that the Waldenmaier Company might not release him, and so he placed a personal ad in a Munich newspaper seeking marriage to “a young lady or widow with apartment.” His intention was to take a response to the ad to the employment office and present it as proof that he was moving to Munich and getting married. He in fact received two responses, but since he found that he could move to Munich anyway, the marriage ruse was no longer necessary.

The Schmauders in Schnaitheim were in the best position to observe Elser closely during these final three months before his move to Munich. Elser was, according to a report given by Berta Schmauder: “very handy, he helped them carry the furniture into the new addition; he was helpful, modest, pleasant, reliable, and punctual. He was extremely hard-working. They [the Schmauders] could not recall ever seeing him just sitting around. They also could not recall seeing him eating. Around noon he would just say, ‘I'm going out now—I'll be right back.' Then he disappeared and came back a little while later. They assumed that he ate in a pub.”

Karoline Schmauder was also struck by something else: “During this period he [Elser] always seemed to be thinking about something, and it often happened that if you were sitting next to him and asked him a question he wouldn't even hear it and didn't answer. He was always complaining about headaches back then, too, which had to be caused by all that thinking.”

This perceptive observation made the connection between his concentration on the assassination and his isolation, which was essential to his purpose. Around the beginning of August Elser became ill, exhibiting psychosomatic symptoms resulting from the continued tension. The things that he could not discuss with anyone he had to work out in his head, and it was clearly taking its toll on him.

Under such conditions Elser's relationship with Elsa Hãrlen had no chance. Elsa moved in with her parents in Jebenhausen and worked in Esslingen. The two visited each other from time to time, but Elsa found that he sometimes seemed strange to her. Something was going on inside him that was bothering him, but he wouldn't talk about it. When she confronted him, asking why a skilled craftsman would go to work in a quarry, Elser told her he was only doing it temporarily because he had to go to Munich.

During his last visit in Stuttgart in early 1939, he took one last photograph of Elsa, which he would keep on his table in the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen. Twenty years later she recalled him fondly: “He wasn't tall, just medium height, but he had pretty black hair and artistic hands that were smaller than mine. He took my hands in his, then hugged me and said, ‘Else, wait for me—be faithful to me! I have to do something, I can't tell you what, but it will turn out well and it has to be done. I want to marry you when it's all over, and then we'll leave and go to Switzerland!' Then he sobbed openly and couldn't say another word.”

In Munich, Elser was so absorbed by his work on the assassination that he did not maintain contact with Elsa. In her love letters she asked him where he was working and how much he was making, and remarked bitterly that he wouldn't answer her questions. So in December 1939, she married another man, who soon became a casualty of the war that Elser had wanted to prevent.

When Georg Elser moved to Munich, he took his wooden suitcase with the explosives and the detonator parts on the train with him. He had his boxes of tools and clothes shipped separately. On August 4, he rode his bicycle to Königsbronn to visit his father and say good-bye. On the way, his friend Eugen Rau saw him and called him over. After the usual small talk, Elser blurted out to him in dialect: “Times ain't gonna get better in Germany, the future ain't gonna be no better till this government gets blowed sky high. And I'm tellin' ya, I'm gonna do it—I am,” to which Eugen answered, “Hey, Georg, you can't do that!” Georg then said: “Just you don't tell nobody, okay!” Similarly, Josef Schurr recalled Georg's parting words: “[I would] soon read his name in the papers if his plan succeeded. . . . But he asked me not to repeat that remark.”

O
N AUGUST
5, 1939, Georg Elser arrives at the main train station in Munich with his huge wooden suitcase full of explosives. It's a bit like a scene from the theater of the absurd. The assassin takes the lethal case down from the baggage net and lugs it past unsuspecting passengers. He has a baggage handler take him in his small delivery van to the room he has rented from Joseph Baumann, a tax official; it is located on the second floor of Blumenstrasse 19, south of Marienplatz. It is a pleasant, almost luxurious furnished room, large but unsuitable for Elser's purposes; he won't be able to do any work on his construction there or make sketches—the furniture is too elegant. The rent is soon too much for him—35 marks a month for rent and 20 marks for breakfast—and he must save his money. So he soon looks for cheaper, simpler lodgings in which he will be undisturbed; but when he moves, he leaves on good terms with the Baumanns. He looks in on Frau Baumann from time to time and, in keeping with his custom, offers to barter odd jobs for a meal.

First, Elser has to wait until his other suitcases arrive with his tools and clothes. He varies his cover story for being in Munich: He says he is taking a master's course in woodworking and working on an invention. The people here want to know more, but Elser keeps quiet. The first difficulties arise when he starts staying out over-night, catching up on his sleep during the day on the sofa. Explaining this change in his habits requires all his acting skills: Since he is working on his invention, he says, he has to spend the night outdoors on a bench. This is an odd excuse, since it would no longer have worked once winter came. The image of the eccentric takes root, but at least Elser achieves peace and quiet. And he is always handy, helping out here and there; he is quiet and friendly and pays his rent in advance.

Within a few weeks the shadows of war catch up with Elser. On August 28, the first food ration stamps are issued; at first bread, flour, and potatoes are exempted. The explanation given for the rationing is that the Poles are mobilizing, but there will surely be no war. There is no word about German preparations for war, but the first draft notices start to appear in mailboxes. Women storm the shops. Soon they will have to get training in areas important to a war effort, such as antigas defense and medical service. Economizing on food becomes a high priority, and low-budget recipes are in demand. With the start of the war in Poland on September 1, 1939, there are mandatory blackouts. Foreign radio stations are now called “enemy stations”; from this point on listening to them is considered “sedition” and a punishable offense. On the same day, Hitler signs the decree approving euthanasia. After this, he will sign no further orders to kill. Two days later, the first air-raid trenches start cropping up—they are useless but provide work. One particular measure hits the people of Munich especially hard: a ten-pfennig war tax on beer. By comparison, a workman's meal at the Bürgerbräukeller costs sixty pfennigs.

There are some in Munich who are not taken in by all the war activities. In the district called Berg am Laim behind the East train station, at Schweppermannstrasse 9, the Communist locksmith and building superintendent Karl Zimmet produces leaflets—an approach Elser never considered. In an August leaflet Zimmet issues a call to action: Anyone wanting to protect himself and others from war “must protest this abominable war and do everything possible to prevent it. Anyone opposing the warmonger Hitler and his Nazi system is part of the struggle to stop the war. Anyone fighting against Hitler's criminal war is fighting for Germany.” It is powerful language, but without any practical consequences. How should one protest? How can one express opposition without immediately landing in Dachau? Besides, things like this don't bother Hitler and his military machine in the slightest. The calls for action in flyers like this are of no use.

It works to Elser's advantage that he is not a Moscow-style Communist Party member; on August 23, 1939, Stalin and Hitler sign their nonaggression pact, and Poland is divided. Until Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union, the Communists are politically crippled. For this reason alone they were never able to identify with Elser's attack, even after much time had passed; they chose to maintain their silence regarding the woodworker at the Bürgerbräukeller.