Hitler

military – from acting.
    The plotters in the Abwehr, Foreign Ministry, and General Staff headquarters were as astonished as all other Germans when they heard of an attack on Hitler’s life that had taken place in the Bürgerbräukeller on the evening of 8 November 1939. They thought it might have come from someone within their own ranks, or been carried out by dissident Nazis, or some other set of opponents – Communists, clerics, or ‘reactionaries’ – and that Hitler had been tipped off in time. In fact, Hitler, sitting in the compartment of his special train and discussing with Goebbels how the showdown with the clergy would have to await the end of the war, was wholly unaware of what had happened until his journey to Berlin was interrupted at Nuremberg with the news. His first reaction was that the report must be wrong. According to Goebbels, he thought it was a ‘hoax’. The official version was soon put out that the British Secret Service was behind the assassination attempt, and that theperpetrator was ‘a creature’ of Otto Strasser. The capture next day of the British agents Major R. H. Stevens and Captain S. Payne Best on the Dutch border was used by propaganda to underpin this far-fetched interpretation.
    The truth was less elaborate – but all the more stunning. The attempt had been carried out by a single person, an ordinary German, a man from the working class, acting without the help or knowledge of anyone else. Where generals had hesitated, he had tried to blow up Hitler to save Germany and Europe from even greater disaster.
    His name was Georg Elser. He was a joiner from Königsbronn in Württemberg, thirty-six years old, a loner with few friends. Before 1933 he had supported the KPD in elections, but because in his view it stood for improving the lot of the working classes, not on account of an ideological programme. After 1933 he said he had observed the deterioration in the living-standard of the working class, and restrictions on its freedom. He noticed the anger among workers at the regime. He took part in discussions with workmates about poor conditions, and shared their views. He also shared their anxieties about the coming war which they all expected in the autumn of 1938. After the Munich Agreement he remained convinced, he said, ‘that Germany would make further demands of other countries and annex other countries and that therefore a war would be unavoidable’. Prompted by no one, he began to be obsessed by ways of improving the condition of workers and preventing war. He concluded that only the ‘elimination’ of the regime’s leadership – by which he meant Hitler, Göring, and Goebbels – would bring this about. The idea would not leave him. In autumn 1938 he decided that he himself would see it was done.
    He read in the newspapers that the next gathering of party leaders would be in the Bürgerbräukeller in early November and travelled to Munich to assess the possibilities for what he had in mind. The security problems were not great. (Security for the events was left to the party, not to the police.) He worked out that the best method would be to place a time-bomb in the pillar behind the dais where Hitler would stand. During the next months he stole explosives from the armaments factory where he was currently working, and designed the mechanism for his time-bomb. At the beginning of August he returned to Munich. Between then and early November he hid over thirty times during the night in the Bürgerbräukeller, working on hollowing out a cavity in theselected pillar and leaving by a side-door early next morning. The bomb was in place, and set, by 6 November. Elser was leaving nothing to chance. He returned on the night of 7 November to make sure it was functioning properly. He pressed his ear to the side of the pillar, and heard the ticking. Nothing had gone wrong. Next morning he left Munich for Konstanz, en route – as he thought – to Switzerland, and safety.
    That evening, as always on 8 November, the ‘Old Guard’ of the party assembled. Hitler’s annual address usually lasted from about 8.30 p.m. until about ten o’clock. It had already been announced that, in the circumstances of the war, this year’s meeting would begin earlier and that the two-day commemoration of the putsch would be shortened. Hitler began his speech soon after his arrival in the Bürgerbräukeller, at 8.10 p.m., and finished at 9.07 p.m. Escorted by a good number of party