Beer putsch
The assassination attempt on Hitler, which occurred on November 8, has a background. 16 years earlier, the Beer Hall Putsch took place. On November 8, 1923, Hitler and his supporters came to the huge Bürgerbräukeller beer hall, accommodating 1,830 people, where the future Fuhrer announced the overthrow of the government of Bavaria in Munich and the Weimar Republic in Berlin. According to him, at that time the Reichswehr (the armed forces of the Weimar Republic) had already entered Munich with banners with swastikas. It was all a bluff, but the frightened people believed it.
On the morning of November 9, a column of three thousand Nazis set out for the city center. The police blocked their way and a shootout began. It killed 16 Hitler supporters and three law enforcement officers. The putsch was suppressed. Hitler was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison.
After his release, Hitler continued his path to power. In 1933, upon receiving the post of Chancellor of Germany, he declared martyrs of those who died during the Beer Hall Putsch (officially called the National Revolution). Every year the Bürgerbräukeller began to celebrate the anniversary of the failed coup. Veterans of the National Socialist Party came to meet Hitler in Munich. The Fuhrer did not miss this event, gave a speech and communicated with the “old fighters”.
I wanted to avoid war
Johann Georg Elser, who carried out the first attempt on Hitler’s life, was a German worker. He was born in 1903, in the town of Hermaringen. He trained as a carpenter and joiner, and became a member of the Association of Red Front Fighters. Elser was a supporter of the Communist Party and resolutely rejected National Socialism.
George Elzer.
After the Nazis came to power (the party took a majority of seats in the Reichstag by November 1932), Georg showed his first attempts at disobedience. He refused to listen to Hitler’s speeches broadcast on the radio, did not go to National Socialist demonstrations, and did not accept the outstretched hand greeting.
In 1938, Elser got a job at a weapons factory and began experimenting with explosives. He lived alone, no one interfered with his experiments and the gradual collection of his own bomb.
“I was thinking about how to improve the living conditions of workers and avoid war. I believed that the situation in Germany could only be changed if the leadership – Hitler, Goering and Goebbels – were eliminated. This idea came to me in the fall of 1938. I thought it was possible , if all three are together at the rally. From the newspapers I learned that this will happen on November 8, 1938 in Munich at the Bürgerbräukeller,” Elser later said during interrogations.
He assembled a bomb, quit the factory and began working in the Bürgerbräukeller beer hall – exactly where Hitler celebrated the Beer Hall Putsch every November 8th. Georg chose a place to plant the bomb – a column behind the stage where the Fuhrer usually spoke. In order to implement his plan, for two months, after the end of the working day, Elser had dinner in a pub, then hid in the back room, waited until the room was empty and spent the whole night hollowing out a niche for a bomb in a stone column. In the morning I masked the hole, went home, slept until lunch and returned to work.
On the night of November 1–2, Georg planted explosives in the column. On November 4 and 5, dance parties were held in the pub, so Elser had to buy a ticket and wait until one in the morning before setting the clock mechanism that would trigger the detonator. He set the hands to 21:20. The sounds of the clockwork were muffled by the cork case.
Leaving the Bürgerbräukeller for the last time, the bomber took the train to Friedrichshafen and then went to Konstanz, where he wanted to cross the border into Switzerland.
“Providence” saved
On November 8, 1939, Hitler arrived in Munich and went to the Bürgerbräukeller. But the incredible happened. It was this time that, due to heavy fog, the Fuhrer decided to return to Berlin the next morning. To do this, he had to travel on his private train, which departed from the station at 21.30. The performance time was moved from 21.00 to 20.00.
The event began with the “Banner of Blood” being brought into the hall, with which Hitler took to the streets in 1923 during the “Beer Hall Putsch.” The Nazis believed that it was stained with Nazi blood: it was a shrine of the Third Reich. The Fuhrer shortened his speech from the planned two hours to an hour. He finished speaking at 9:07 pm and immediately left the pub without speaking, as usual, with his supporters.
Adolf Hitler shortly before the terrorist attack during his speech at the Bürgerbräukeller.
The Elser bomb exploded at exactly 9:20 p.m. Only 13 minutes passed between the two events.
This is how photographer and Hitler’s friend Heinrich Hoffmann recalled this day:
“Something clearly haunted him. He finished his speech much earlier than usual and, when leaving, did not shake hands with his old comrades, as he did every year at this celebration. Something seemed to drive him forward, a sense of something urgent and urgent, and the “old guard” looked after him with disappointment when he turned sharply and quickly left the hall. After his departure, the hall was soon empty, and after a few minutes I put away the camera and also left only a few. old associates and service personnel.
A replica of the bomb that exploded on November 8, 1939.
As we were driving across the Ludwig Bridge towards the Rathskeller, I heard the sound of an explosion.
– What is this? – I told the driver. – It looks like an explosion!
The driver shrugged.
When I arrived at the Rathskeller, I was immediately called to the telephone. Gretel Braun, Eva Braun’s sister, called.
– “Bürgerbräukeller” is blown up! – she said excitedly.
– What nonsense! These are stupid rumors! – I objected angrily. – I’m ten minutes from there myself. Don’t pay attention to all the nonsense.
I returned to my table when suddenly I remembered the noise we heard along the way. “What was that?” – I thought. And then they called me to the phone again. This time it was Eve herself on the line.
– Father just returned home covered in chalk and dust. A bomb exploded in the Bürgerbräukeller!
I rushed back to the Bürgerbräukeller to see how damaged it was. Most of the roof collapsed, doctors tended to the wounded, and, unfortunately, many no longer needed any medical attention. A bomb with a remote fuse was placed in a column behind the oratory.
If Hitler, through some inexplicable intuition, had not shortened his speech, he would undoubtedly have been the victim of a conspiracy – and most of those gathered with him.
Elser calculated the force of the explosion so that the wave destroyed the column behind the podium where Hitler was making a speech, and also brought down part of the ceiling slab. Eight people were killed and 63 meeting participants were injured. All of them, with the exception of one, were supporters of the Nazi Party and the ideology of the Fuhrer.
Hitler learned of this assassination attempt during a train stop in Nuremberg. He considered this to be proof that “Providence wants me to achieve my goal.”
The explosion killed eight people and injured 63 people. Photo: dhm.de
Special Prisoner
After the explosion in the Bürgerbräukeller, all roads were blocked, raids and arrests began. On Hitler’s instructions, the head of the Munich criminal police, Arthur Nebe, was appointed responsible for finding the culprit. But Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller received full control of the investigation. Hitler’s closest ally Heinrich Himmler announced a reward of 500 thousand marks for information that would help find the culprit.
Georg Elser was detained in Konstanz while trying to cross the border into Switzerland. On him they found wire cutters, drawings of explosive devices, and a postcard with the interiors of the Bürgerbräukeller. Elser was transported to Gestapo headquarters in Munich. He was beaten every day until Georg gave a full written confession on November 15th.
His relative Elsa Herlen recalled in 1950:
“His face was swollen, black. His eyes were bulging out of their sockets, I was terrified. The officer who sat behind Elser to force him to talk hit him on the back and the back of the head.” Then he admitted that he allegedly acted under the influence of “foreign agents.”
But during interrogations in Berlin, Elser himself made five large drawings of a bomb to convince the Gestapo that he acted alone. As a result, these drawings were included in the field manuals of the Nazi army for training purposes.
Despite the prolonged torture, Georg stood his ground – he prepared the assassination attempt himself, without assistants. He was placed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp as a “special prisoner”. And at the beginning of 1945 they were transferred to a bunker in the Dachau camp. After it became clear that Germany would inevitably be defeated, Hitler ordered the execution of the prisoner – along with those who tried to assassinate him. On April 9, 1945, Elser was shot.
On a plaque erected in his memory in Königsbronn, it is written: “I wanted to prevent even greater bloodshed by my action.”
Source: rodina-history.ru
