Killing Hitler (10 page)

His first priority was to chip out a cavity in the stone pillar to
hold the bomb. But, finding that the pillar was now dressed with wooden cladding, Elser was forced to spend three nights sawing a hole in the wooden surround. Every sound had to be muffled, every speck of sawdust collected and disposed of. He could afford to leave no evidence of his presence. Even the sawn wooden panel was fashioned into a flush-fitting secret door.

Having accessed the pillar, he could now begin to dig out a recess for the bomb. Using a hand drill and a hammer and chisel, he spent most of the following month loosening mortar and prising out bricks—all of which, of course, had to be meticulously tidied and removed from the scene in a cloth sack. Progress was painfully slow. In the cavernous hall, every hammer blow he struck echoed like a gunshot, and to escape detection he had to time his blows to coincide with external sounds, such as the passing of a tram or the automatic flush of the toilets.
³⁶
Working by night preparing the pillar in the Bürgerbräukeller, he labored by day putting the finishing touches to his bomb and, of course, the elaborate timing mechanism.

Elser had planned to be safely in Switzerland by the time his bomb exploded, so he needed to build a timer, linked to a detonator, that could be set several days in advance. His solution was ingenious. By modifying a clock movement with extra cogs and levers, he created a timer that could run for a maximum of 144 hours before activating a lever. That lever then triggered a system of springs and weights to launch a steel-tipped shuttle, which struck the percussion cap of a live rifle round (with the bullet removed) embedded in the explosive.
³⁷
For good measure, Elser then added a second clock mechanism to act as a fail-safe.

For the finishing touches, Elser enclosed the timing mechanism in a wooden case lined with cork to muffle its telltale ticking. He then attached a sheet of tinplate to the inside of the outer wooden door so that the area would not ring hollow if knocked. On the night of 2 November, two months after he had started work in earnest, he finally installed his bomb in the pillar. Three nights later he added the timer. It was set to explode at 9:20 p.m. on 8 November—right in the middle of Hitler’s speech.

•                •              •

Hitler arrived in Munich in the afternoon of 8 November. He had flown down from Berlin, accompanied by Joseph Goebbels and a secretary. He was a man in a hurry. His war was barely two months old: Poland had been overrun, and the British and French were entering the so-called Phony War, dropping leaflets instead of bombs, imploring Germany to desist. His planning for a western offensive, meanwhile, was well advanced. Three days earlier, on 5 November, the order for the attack on France had been given, detailing the twelfth of that month as “X-Day.”
³⁸
On the seventh, that order was then rescinded due to an unfavorable weather forecast, and a final decision had been postponed until the ninth—the day after Hitler’s scheduled visit to Munich.

For this reason, Hitler had initially wanted to cancel his Bürgerbräukeller speech on the evening of the eighth. Though this was unrealistic—commemoration of the Beer Hall Putsch was one of the highlights of the Nazi calendar—he had stressed that he certainly wanted to be back in Berlin that same night to attend to business. However, his personal pilot feared that fog might prevent a return flight, so it was decided to return by train, thereby necessitating a shortening of the traditional program of events. The address to the “old fighters,” therefore, would begin earlier than usual—at 8:00 p.m.

Inside the hall of the Bürgerbräukeller, military music set the mood. An audience of around three thousand was seated at long wooden tables laden with beer jugs. Most wore the field gray of the Wehrmacht, though a few sported the black of the SS or the brown of the SA. They chatted and laughed, reminiscing about past struggles and looking forward to new successes. As their leader approached, a momentary hush descended. In the gallery, some stood on the tables to get a better view.

The first of Hitler’s party to enter the hall was a standard-bearer holding aloft the holiest relic of Nazi Germany, the
Blut-fahne
from the failed putsch of 1923. Behind him followed Hitler, accompanied by Goebbels, Heydrich, Hess, and a number
of other prominent Nazis. They were welcomed by Christian Weber, a former confidant of Hitler and a veteran of 1923, who presented the hall for a mock inspection and, after a short but incoherent speech, gave a triple “
Heil!
”
³⁹

Against a backdrop of huge swastika flags, Hitler took his place on the podium in front of the pillar in which Elser’s bomb silently ticked. For a moment he paused, surveyed the room, glanced down at his notes, and drew breath. He began in customary fashion, paying tribute to the veterans of 1923. His tone was subdued, his delivery halting. As he warmed to his task, he turned his vicious and sarcastic rhetoric on the new enemy, the English:

Today, an English minister steps up, tears in his eyes, and says: “Oh, how we would love to come to an understanding with Germany. If we could only trust the word of the German leadership!” The same is on the tip of my tongue! How we would love to come to an understanding with England. If only we could trust the word of its leadership! When has there ever been a people more vilely lied to and tricked than the German
Volk
by English statesmen in the past two decades?

What happened to the promised freedom of the peoples? What happened to justice? What happened to the peace without victors and vanquished? What happened to the right of all peoples to self-determination? What happened to the renunciation of reparations?…

All lies. Broken promises.

He went on, his delivery growing more animated, his volume steadily increasing. He gleefully compared English and German cultural achievements:

The English cannot tell us Germans anything about culture: our music, our poetry, our architecture, our paintings, our sculptures, can more than stand a comparison to the English arts. I believe that a single German, let us say, Beethoven, achieved more in the realm of music than all Englishmen of the past and present together!

Hitler spoke for around an hour, giving an outline of the achievements of the Nazis and the perfidy of their enemies. As he neared his conclusion, Hitler the actor took over. He rolled his eyes skyward and gesticulated wildly, clenching his fists, clutching at his chest. His words poured out, some spat with passion, some rolled for emphasis. He concluded on a typically defiant note:

This is a great time. And in it, we shall prove ourselves all the more as fighters.

In so doing, we shall best honour the memory of this first sacrifice made by our Movement. I cannot end this evening without, as always, thanking you for your loyal following throughout those long years, or without promising you to hold up high our old ideals in the future. We shall stand up for them and we shall not shrink from putting our own lives on the line to realise the programme of our Movement, that programme which demands nothing but to secure our
Volk’s
life and existence in this world.

This is the first commandment of our National Socialist profession of faith and it also is the last one which hangs over every National Socialist when, after the fulfilment of his duties, he departs this life.

Siej Heil!
—to our Party Comrades of the National Socialist Movement, to our German
Volk
, and above all to our victorious
Wehrmacht!
⁴⁰

To tumultuous applause, Hitler brought the evening to a close. He then left almost immediately for the train station, accompanied by the party hierarchy. It was 9:07 p.m.

Some minutes later, as the dying tones of
“Das Deutschlandlied”
rang through the hall, the “old fighters” were collecting their possessions, saying their goodbyes, and preparing to file out into the cold November air. Of the three thousand who had packed the hall, only around one hundred now remained, mainly
musicians and bar staff clearing the glasses. Then, at 9:20 exactly, Elser’s bomb exploded.

The bomb had the desired effect. It smashed the central pillar in which it had been planted, and brought both the gallery and the hall ceiling crashing down into the room. In a flash, the hall filled with smoke and dust, briefly obscuring the falling masonry. A blast wave raced through the building, shattering windows and blowing out doors. The tables and stools closest to the pillar were splintered to matchwood. The dais and lectern were crushed.

One eyewitness was Emil Wipfel, an SA man who was busy dismantling the sound system when the bomb went off. “Suddenly,” he recalled,

there was a bright light, and in the same instant we heard a terrible blast. I was thrown back two meters, falling into the rubble, while all hell broke loose above me. When I came to my senses, I was lying on my stomach with my right arm over the foot of my comrade, Schachta. I did not know at the time that he was already dead. I couldn’t move my left arm, and my feet were stuck fast…. I realised later that a section of the roof, that had fallen across the Führer’s podium, was on me. I suspect that it was only held up and prevented from crushing me by a broken table nearby, and perhaps by the body of my comrade.
⁴¹

In the aftermath, three lay dead and sixty-seven more were injured, five of them fatally. Those who were able sought to free themselves from the rubble. Cries for help mingled with groans and coughing. The survivors emerged, covered in dust, bloodied and bruised, many of them assuming that they had fallen victim to an air raid. One of their number was more perceptive, however, and quickly concluded that it had been a bomb intended to kill their Führer. “My God,” he gasped, “what bestial brain could have conceived and carried out such an atrocity?”
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Once the dust had settled, and the dead and injured had been removed, the detectives of the Munich
Kriminalpolizei
began their painstaking investigation of the crime scene. The heap of
rubble in the hall was methodically sifted and searched. Splinters were collected, photographs taken. By the early hours of the following morning, they were already feeling their way toward the correct interpretation of events: the bomb had been substantial and had been placed at the base of the pillar behind the dais.

Hitler, meanwhile, was already en route to Berlin. His train had left Munich at 9:31 p.m. and would not arrive in the capital until the following morning. He learned of the attack only when the train stopped at Nuremberg. At first he thought the news was a joke. He blanched when he realized that no one was laughing. While pondering this latest brush with death, he drew the conclusion that providence was once more sparing him for great things. Himmler, meanwhile, was drawing conclusions of his own. That night he wired his minions with news of the attack. He concluded, “There’s no doubt that the British Secret Service is behind it.”
⁴³

Like his target, Elser was many miles away from the scene of the attack. He had left Munich on the morning of 6 November and traveled to his sister in Stuttgart. Strangely, having exhausted his savings, he borrowed 30 Reichsmarks and actually returned to Munich on the seventh, to check that his bomb was still ticking. Around 10:00 that night, he once again stole into the Bürgerbräukeller, hid in his usual spot, and made sure that the timer was still running true. At dawn the next morning, he crept out again and headed for the railway station. At 10 a.m. he caught a train, via Ulm, to Friedrichshafen, where he took a ferry across the lake to Constance, arriving a little after 9:00 on the evening of the eighth—the evening of the speech.

He reached the Swiss frontier around forty minutes later. As part of his meticulous preparation, Elser had reconnoitered this stretch of the border the previous year and had found it unmanned. Now, however, in the autumn of 1939, with Europe once again at war, it was closely controlled. His only option would be to make a run for it and hope to avoid attracting attention. Loitering close to the frontier fence, however, he was challenged by
two German border guards. He told them lamely that he was looking for someone. When they offered to help, he reluctantly agreed to accompany them into their guard post. On entering the building, it was said, Elser turned and cast a last longing glance at the fence, and Switzerland beyond.
⁴⁴

The questioning initially was routine, and Elser remained calm and composed, sticking to his story that he was looking for an old friend. When he was asked to empty his pockets, however, he began to arouse serious suspicions. His possessions that night read like a confession. As well as a pair of pliers to cut the fence, he was carrying a postcard of the Bürgerbräukeller, a fuse, a Communist Party badge, and sketches detailing the design of his bomb. Perhaps they
were
a sort of confession. Perhaps he was hoping to impress the Swiss authorities with proof of his authorship of the attack that was taking place almost at that very moment. Elser’s problem, however, was that the contents of his pockets were confessing to the wrong set of border guards. He was handed over to the Gestapo for further questioning. And when news filtered through later that night of the bomb attack in the Bürgerbräukeller, his fate was sealed. The following morning, he was driven back to Munich.