The Venlo Incident

by Nigel Jones

  Gradually I took over the garden, buying my own seeds and plants, laying out paths, and planning my circumscribed landscape to my pleasure. Previously I had never taken the slightest interest in gardening and had, indeed, looked upon those who could find no better way of spending their leisure than digging and weeding with a certain contempt. Then I discovered how delightful it is to prepare the ground, to sow tiny seeds, watch them sprout and tend their growth fending off all approach of inimical weeds. It seems that I have green fingers, for whatever I planted grew and flourished even on the bare sand of a prison yard. The ground was in fact pure sea sand and manure was unobtainable. Paul, though, had a bright idea. He heard that at the beginning of 1943 Kaindl had given orders that all the straw mattresses in the camp were to be refilled with clean straw; something which had probably not taken place since the camp was first opened. Well, Paul managed to lay hands on the filthy stinking straw which came out of these mattresses and this we dug in two spits deep and, as for the result, stable manure simply wasn’t in it. Then I got hold of a big water vat into which the contents of the prisoners buckets were emptied and after this had stood and weathered for some time it gave me a supply of liquid manure which was so appreciated by my tomato plants that they gave me seventy and more fruits each.

  In the main I grew vegetables, for only on this condition could I have run the garden, but on certain beds and along the edge of others I found plenty of room for flowers and, to my eyes at least, my garden was very beautiful. At first I had a little difficulty about the disposal of my harvest as, according to regulations, this had to be turned over to the camp kitchen, but in the end Kaindl allowed me to deal with it as I liked so that I could give my guards such things as potatoes and cabbages and distribute the more dainty produce such as tomatoes, cucumbers, and radishes as an addition to the diet of the other prisoners in the building. Of course, when I say that I did all this I am scarcely being fair to my guards who not only gave me advice and taught me the primary elements of the craft, but also took much of the hardest work off my shoulders; indeed, they became such keen gardeners that it was sometimes difficult to prevent them from doing all the work.

  When I moved from Wing C to Wing B, I was translated into another and much more interesting environment, for most of the more prominent prisoners were housed on Wings A and B, down both of which I could look and, on occasion, catch fleeting glimpses of fellow prisoners. There was one, No. 7, who had the freedom of the house and was never locked in his cell. He was a tall, thin, white-haired man of feeble gait whom I had at first put down as nearly eighty years of age, though later on I learnt that he was only forty-eight. He was a Dr. Luther and had held a fairly high post at the Foreign Office with the rank of Brigadeführer in the SS. One day he had had the temerity to query some items in an expense account of Ribbentrop’s and had been consigned to the Bunker as what was called an Ehrenhäftling (honourable prisoner) to meditate on his sins. At first he was always assuring everyone that he was only ‘in’ for a short spell and orders would soon come for his release, but time went on and no one came near him. One of his sons fell in action and the other was taken prisoner at Stalingrad; his house in Berlin was destroyed by bombs and his wife became a nervous wreck. Gradually, he too, after one or two vain attempts at suicide became the ghostly aged man whom I came to know so well, who wandered about the passages, noticing no one, and engaged in interminable conversation with himself.

  In the cells next to mine there was in No. 44 a Lettish ex-minister and in No. 42 a French Roman Catholic bishop, both of whom took their exercise in front of my window. The first had been taken prisoner during the German advance because of his supposed communist opinions, whilst his wife, parents and children had been ‘transferred’ by the Russians. I have never seen a man who wore such a look of hopeless desperation. He had an insatiable appetite and although the trusties always gave him especially large helpings, if he saw me looking out of the window he always made signs pointing to his mouth and his stomach. I often put some cheese or other food on my window-sill which he took with every sign of gratitude. No. 42’s trouble was lack of smokes for he was rationed to three cigarettes a day. He would start his exercise with one cigarette in his mouth and the other two held between his fingers, ready to light when the first was finished. He was not, of course, allowed to have matches, but I managed to throw some to him and later gave him a tinder lighter. I then threw him lighted cigarettes to smoke during his exercise so that he could save his own to smoke surreptitiously in his cell. Both men vanished after a few months and what happened to them I do not know; after they left none of the prisoners took their exercise where I could see them except a young lad in uniform whom I later discovered to be a Russian flying officer and a nephew of Mr. Molotov. At a later stage I was to get to know him very well, though even while we were in the Bunker we became in a way friends without ever having spoken to each other.

  On several occasions when one of my guards was away unexpectedly, owing to illness or because of some casualty in his family, one of the men doing duty with Georg Elser in Cell No. 13 would come to me for a time. Most of Elser’s guards were youngish men, and it was not long before I had made friends with some of them and so established a link with my fellow prisoner in whom I was deeply interested owing to the manner in which our names had been associated in the German Press. He was not at all popular with his guards for he went out of his way to make their duty as difficult as possible by causing them all manner of petty annoyances and in particular robbing them of opportunities to rest during their off-duty hours. Unlike my guards who had a cell of their own, where they slept and to which they could retire when off duty, his men simply had a bed in his cell on which one could rest while two of them were supposed to be awake and on guard day and night. Obviously, they got little undisturbed sleep at night and wished to make up for it by day, but this Elser would not allow, and as soon as one of them lay down to rest he would at once begin to hammer, saw, or do other work which occasioned the maximum of noise. At one time he even did this at night but other prisoners objected and it was stopped.

  Of course if Elser himself wished to sleep his guards had to be still as mice, as if anything or anyone annoyed him he promptly went on hunger strike. Orders had apparently been given that he was to be kept in safety and in good health, and as he was far from robust his failure to eat had to be reported to the commandant with trouble for all concerned. In some respects his guards were quite fond of him as he could be very good company if he liked, but he was firmly convinced that he was doomed to execution and took pleasure in, as it were, daring people to get on with it.

  It was a puzzle to everyone why he had never been brought to trial, and what was behind his story that he had planted the bomb in the Bürgerbraukeller at my behest, and that I had bribed him to do this by a promise of forty thousand Swiss francs. He told this story to all his guards though none of them who knew me believed a word of it, and I had never noticed anything since my arrival at Sachsenhausen which indicated that I was suspected of collaboration in an attempt on Hitler’s life, so the whole business was very much of a mystery to me. Why should this little German workman who had been pilloried in the Press as a traitor, who had not only attempted to assassinate Hitler, but had also caused the death of a number of his associates be treated as one of the most privileged prisoners in the building?

  Like myself, Elser was a chain smoker. After a bad attack of bronchitis he was for some time limited, on doctor’s orders, to three cigarettes a day, and as I was then in enjoyment of almost unlimited supplies of tobacco I often sent him presents of cigarette paper and tobacco through one of his guards. In return he made various things for me, a parallel ruler, a darning mushroom, etc., and gradually he seemed to form a sort of affection for me and to look upon me as his friend. At the end of March 1943 Eccarius brought me some bookshelves for which I had asked and as these lacked a flat top which I needed for my big Stieler’s Atlas I arranged with him that Elser shou
ld make one. When I came in from exercise a few days later I found that this had been done and that I had now a space where my atlas could lie open for ready reference. I was surprised though to find that the shelf which Elser had made did not seem to be quite true but was inclined to wobble, so I took it off and immediately noticed that there was some tightly folded paper wedged under one side which, when I opened it, turned out to be a long and closely written letter. In this Elser gave me an account of his early life and the main events leading to the so-called ‘Bürgerbraukeller Bomb Plot’ of 8th November, 1939, and his adventures since that date.

  The letter was badly worded, the writing was minute and very difficult to read, as he had used an indelible pencil which was rather faint, but when I succeeded in making out most of what he had written I was astounded and deeply interested. This was only the first of many letters which we were able to exchange during the following twelve months as one of the trusties agreed to help us. During this time I did everything I could to obtain all the information possible from Elser, and I believe that the following account is as close to the true facts as we shall ever be able to get. Several people have written about this matter before but I can safely say that no one besides myself heard the story from the chief actor himself, whilst information which I later received from other sources all tended to bear out the truth of what Elser told me.

  Self portrait by Marie ‘May’ Payne Best, the author's wife.

  Pages from one of the author’s diaries, showing part of an account of his capture written about a month later.

  He was born in Munich and when he was quite small his mother died in giving birth to a dead sister, and his father was killed in action shortly afterwards. An uncle, the only relative of whom he had ever heard, a railway guard and a childless widower, had taken charge of him and brought him up in a rough and ready fashion. Young Elser must have run pretty wild for he had one or two clashes with the police which nearly ended in his being sent to the German equivalent of a Borstal establishment. He seems though, to have given evidence at school of having brains above the average and one of the masters, the only person of whom he wrote with any affection, helped him to escape punishment. This man seems to have been the teacher of handicrafts and endeavoured to induce Elser to continue his studies after he left school at a technical college.

  When he was fifteen or sixteen his uncle died leaving him only a small sum, quite insufficient to pay for further schooling, and he was placed in charge of the Munich municipal children’s officer. He was apprenticed to a joiner who took him to five in his house and generally acted as his guardian. Here too, his insubordination was a frequent cause of trouble but his intelligence and aptitude for his work soon made him a valuable assistant and after the end of his apprenticeship his master tried to induce him to remain in his service. As soon though as young Elser was free, nothing would hold him and with his tools and other few possessions in a bag on his back he set off on the traditional wanderings of the German journeyman.

  His travels took him through most of south Germany and even into Switzerland and at first he had little trouble in finding work. For a time he said, he had a responsible job as model maker at one of the biggest Bavarian engineering firms, the manufacturers of the B.M.W. cars, but from what he wrote, all his jobs seemed to end with a row with his immediate superiors and in the autumn of 1937 he found himself back in Munich without a penny in his pocket, his tools sold or pawned, and with but faint hope of finding further employment. By that time the Nazis had such a firm grip on all matters connected with labour organization that it was practically impossible for a man who would not at least pay lip service to the party to obtain employment; above all things, Elser hated the Nazis. As was natural under the circumstances he drifted into the society of other out-of-works like himself and got mixed up with a band of Communists. Somehow or other these men were always able to get hold of funds and although he never joined their party, he did help in the printing and distribution of leaflets and so was tacitly accepted as one of the group. He really enjoyed this life with its element of danger and the feeling that he was actively engaged in a fight against authority, and all went well until one evening the café where he and his friends used to congregate was surrounded in a police raid, and the whole lot of them were bundled into a police van and taken to the ‘station’. Although no definite evidence was found against any of them, as none was usefully employed, they were labelled ‘anti-social and work-shy’ and taken off to the concentration camp at Dachau for re-education.

  The first months which Elser spent here always remained for him the most horrible experience of his life. Not, as far as I could gather, because of any ill-treatment which he suffered, nor because of atrocities which he witnessed, but merely because for the first time in his life he felt the full naked force of irresponsible authority which crushed out every trace of individuality and illusion of freedom. At first he had to labour with pick and shovel like all other newcomers, but very soon his talent as a carpenter and joiner was discovered and he was set to work in the camp furniture-making factory.

  Elser was very far from being of the ordinary run of workmen for he was really something of an artist who worked best from his own designs. I was often shown cabinets and other articles of furniture which he made at Sachsenhausen for the commandant and the warders, and really I have never seen their like except in museums. Amongst other things, while he was at Sachsenhausen he made a full-sized lathe cutting all gears and making all parts by hand; I also saw a length of chain that he made cut out of a single rod of wood with every link as perfectly finished as if it had been machine made from metal.

  He had not been long employed in the Dachau carpenter’s shop before something attracted the commandant’s attention to his work, and from then on he was exclusively employed in making articles of furniture for him and his friends. As time passed he was granted many privileges including freedom from attendance at the morning and evening roll calls and eventually he was put on the SS ration strength and so received good food as well. I imagine that while he had work he was about as happy as it was his nature to be, though in his letters he kept saying how much he had hated his life at Dachau and how intense was his longing for freedom. As far as I could make out, freedom for him meant ‘girls’, for he was a man who suffered intensely from the forced continence of prison.

  One day early in October 1939 he was called to the Kommandantur where he was interviewed by two men who asked him a number of questions about his antecedents, and in particular about the names of former associates and relations. As for the latter he had none as far as he knew and friends, well he knew them as Paul, Heinz, or Karl, just as they knew him as the little Georg—surnames were not much used in the circles he had frequented.

  A week or two later he was again called for and again met the same two men. On the first occasion he had been questioned while standing at attention, but this time he was taken into another office, was told to sit down, and was given a cigarette. The men were extremely friendly, told him that the commandant had shown them some of his work and that really it was a shame that so good a workman should be wasting his life in a concentration camp. Would he not like to regain his freedom? To this suggestion Elser expressed cordial agreement. Well, this could easily be arranged if he would only be absolutely discreet and obey orders without question; all that they wanted from him was that he should do a little job in his own Line, and when this was finished he would be handsomely rewarded and sent to Switzerland where he would be free to live as he liked and hold whatever opinions he pleased. As Elser put it: “What else could I do but say yes. If I had refused, I should certainly have gone up the chimney that evening.” This was the expression used by the inmates of concentration camps to describe the process of execution and cremation.

  I do not know whether it was on this or on a later occasion that he was told the story of a plot against Hitler in which some of his closest associates were involved. Hitler was to speak at the Bür
gerbraukeller in Munich on 8th November in commemoration of his comrades who fell during the 1923 Putsch, when he made his first attempt to overthrow the government. After Hitler had finished speaking it was his custom to stay a while talking to his old associates, and certain scoundrelly traitors had conceived the plan of hustling him to one side and shooting him. Although the names of the people involved in the plot were known it was not considered advisable to arrest them, as this would occasion a big scandal which, now, in war-time, must be avoided, and it was therefore intended to adopt other measures to liquidate the traitors. The idea was to build an infernal machine in one of the pillars in the cellar which could be exploded immediately the Führer left the building, which he would do directly his speech was finished; in this way all the conspirators would be exterminated, lock, stock, and barrel, and no one need hear anything more about their plot.

  Elser was not such a fool really to believe that after he had been told so much he would be set free or even left alive, but since it was a question of certain immediate death or liquidation at some uncertain future date, he naturally promised to do what was required of him.

  After this interview Elser was not allowed to return to his old quarters in the camp, but was put in a comfortable cell in a building used to house important political prisoners. Here, instead of his striped prison garb, he was given civilian clothes, and he was also brought good food and as many cigarettes as he wished. Next day, as he expressed a desire to finish some work which he had on hand, a carpenters’ bench was brought to a large cell in the building and he was given his tools.

  In the first week of November 1939 Elser was on two occasions fetched at nightfall by the same two men and taken by car to the Bürgerbraukeller where he was shown the pillar into which the bomb was to be built. This pillar was covered with an ornamental wood panelling over bricks, so all that he had to do was remove part of the panelling and extract a couple of bricks. Into the recess thus formed, he inserted the explosive, which was of a putty-like nature, the inside of an alarm clock, and a fuse. From the fuse he was instructed to make an electric lead to a push button in an alcove near the street level entrance to the building. The whole job was to him mere child’s play and he was at a loss to understand why such a fuss had been made about it.