The Lone Assassin

by Helmut Ortner

  * * *

  Night after night, Elser was busy hollowing out the cavity in the column so that he could finally get the exact measurements he needed in order to finish his work on the explosive device. For that, he enlisted the help of craftsmen, commissioning several small jobs or buying material from them under the guise of working on an invention. He developed a closer relationship with Karl Bröger, a master carpenter who allowed him to work in his nearby workshop, where he built the case for his explosive device. Later Elser recalled: Of course, as time went on, he often asked me what I was working on or why I needed this or that. I always told him it was an invention. When he asked further questions, I told him that it was a secret for the time being. When he asked later whether what I was making was the sort of alarm clock that also turned on a lamp when it went off in the morning, I said, “Yes, something like that.”

  Elser kept his contact with his landlords to a minimum. In the meantime, the Lehmanns had become accustomed to the somewhat strange habits of their tenant, such as his idiosyncrasy of always locking his room and the fact that he was never home at night. It must have been an unusual “invention” indeed that their taciturn tenant was working on. “Maybe he’s not an inventor at all, but a crackpot,” said Herr Lehmann, a practically minded man, who was a paperhanger.

  “But he always pays his rent on time and is friendly and helpful,” his wife replied. Both shook their heads. They couldn’t figure out this Georg Elser …

  In early October, when he had to spend a few days in bed because his right knee was extremely swollen and inflamed, Frau Lehmann had taken care of him, and Elser had groaned about being thrown off schedule with the preparations for his invention due to the ailment. He had been really nervous, she told her husband. When Elser gave notice in the middle of the month for November 1, informing them that he was returning to his hometown, the Lehmanns believed it had to do with the “invention.” Perhaps, they thought, their tenant had not finished it. “He overextended himself, and now he has run out of money,” Herr Lehmann scoffed.

  On the afternoon of Saturday, October 28, Elser was lying in bed in his room, thinking about Elsa. He had written her only two letters from Munich, just a few lines of no consequence. He hadn’t answered her letters. He knew that they had no future together. The attack lay ahead of him, the last decisive preparations—there was no space for Elsa. Was there space for anyone?

  He had even lost contact with Eugen. The last time he had seen him had been in July in Königsbronn. On that occasion, he had met him with his wife, and they had spoken about his plans to go to Munich. They had also talked briefly about politics and the Nazi regime. The leadership had to be eliminated, Georg had blurted out, and Eugen had looked at him with surprise. Since then, they hadn’t seen each other. In September, he had sent Eugen a letter with his Munich address and the request to pass it on to his father. He had not wanted to send it to him directly at home, lest his mother or his brother Leonhard find out his address.

  Despite his difficult and often humiliating experiences with his father over the previous years, he had gravitated toward him ever since the quarrels over the inheritance of the house. His father had taken his side when he had decided to leave the house. He had broken off all contact with his mother and Leonhard. He kept in touch only with his sister Maria, who lived with her husband and her small son in Stuttgart. A few days earlier, he had written her a brief letter.

  Dear sister, Karl and Franzle!

  How are you doing? I will probably pay you a visit in early November. Please let me know whether you can use the following objects: suits, shirts, socks, sweaters, camera, two pairs of shoes, my carpentry tools, umbrella, three hats. Please let me know immediately whether you have a use for these things. With warm regards,

  Georg

  After a few days he received an answer. I’m astonished at your letter. I don’t understand it. I’m happy that you will visit me. These days, one can always use those things, his sister wrote, asking in bewilderment: Are you joining the military or going abroad?

  “Abroad,” Georg thought, as he scanned the lines. “There’s a long way to go before then. First the assassination—then the escape.”

  Evening was approaching. He felt lonely. He lived in a city that was foreign to him, where he knew no one. The psychological strain from the isolation during the attack preparations made it hard for him to speak to anyone. He was alone. In recent weeks, he had even attended a church service for the first time in a long time.

  In the course of the year, I started going to church more often, perhaps about thirty times. Recently I have occasionally gone to a Catholic church on weekdays to say the Lord’s Prayer, when there was no protestant church nearby. In my view, it doesn’t matter whether you do this in a protestant or a Catholic church. I admit that these frequent church visits and prayers were connected with my deed, which was weighing on my mind, for I probably would not have prayed so much if I had not been preparing and planning the deed. It is true that I always felt somewhat calmer after praying.

  With the help of his acquired piety, it was possible for him to draw strength for his plan. He was not a religious man, but his worldview was strongly influenced by Christian belief. I believe that God created the whole world and human life. I also believe that nothing happens in the world without God’s knowledge. People certainly have free rein, but God can intervene when he wants, he later said during his interrogations.

  The fact that God did not intervene at that time, that he stood idly by and did not simply end the war, that he tolerated a dictatorship and a cruel oppressive state—all this troubled Elser. His religious values foundered on social and political reality. Was there no right to resist—no duty to kill a tyrant like Hitler?

  He pushed his doubts aside. As to whether I regard the act I committed as a sin in terms of protestant doctrine, I would like to say, “In a deeper sense, no!” I believe in the continued life of the soul after death, and I also believe that I would go to heaven if I still had a chance to prove by my further life that I intended good. Through my deed, I wanted to prevent even greater bloodshed, he later stated. Nonetheless, it can be gleaned from his remarks that he agonized for a long time over the thought that he might have to accept the deaths of innocent people. Would the bomb actually strike Hitler?

  * * *

  It was dark when Elser set off for the Bürgerbräu. In accordance with his nightly routine, he entered the Bräustüberl around half past eight, ordered his meal, and proceeded around half past ten through the coatroom into the hall. He went up onto the gallery to do the last work on the cavity he had chiseled into the column.

  For the past several nights, he had worked on the opening until the early morning hours. He had to make up for the time he had lost because of his damaged knee, which still hurt. Alternately crouching and kneeling, he removed the last of the debris from the column. He was glad that he had finished the loud chiseling work some time ago, because ever since the beginning of the war, air raid guards were stationed in the small downstairs hall, the Alt-Münchener-Saal, and so he had to proceed especially quietly and inconspicuously. But the final masonry work presented no problems. Now the explosive device could be installed.

  At 6:30 AM, he left his hiding place as usual through the rear exit, which led out onto Kellerstrasse. No one noticed the small man in the dark blue worsted suit, black shoes and a coffee-brown sweater.

  When leaving the hall, in order to avoid arousing any suspicion, I never used particular caution. I always entered and left the hall only in the way I’ve described. I never broke in, Elser later explained under questioning.

  It was a Wednesday, the first day of November, when he parted from the Lehmanns. He had packed up his things and stored them in Karl Bröger’s workshop, which was in the back of a courtyard only a few houses down on Türkenstrasse. Elser brought the rest of his belongings—three suitcases and boxes full of linens and tools—to the main train station to send them to his sister Ma
ria, whom he still planned to visit in Stuttgart before his escape to Switzerland.

  That evening, he began the final, decisive preparations.

  Once I had assembled everything, I tested the component parts, including the clocks, several times to make sure they were working properly—without, of course, installing percussion caps and blasting caps or explosives. At home that evening, I filled the explosive container with the explosives—that is, only with gunpowder—and screwed the lid shut. I then inserted the blasting cap into the hole, packed this explosive container as well as the detonation apparatus in my suitcase, and brought it to the Bürgerbräu….

  On the gallery of the hall, in the glow of my flashlight covered with a blue handkerchief, I opened in the usual way the door of the cavity I had made. I first placed the shell case, around which I had bound a metal frame at home, in the rearmost corner of the cavity. At home I had also fastened one of the filled clock weights onto the shell case with a metal strip, so that the second explosive container was on the shell case.

  The next night, he filled the container with the explosives; he also planted the remaining gunpowder and explosive cartridges in the cavity. Once again, he was unobserved.

  Finally, on the night of November 3, he wrapped the clocks in packing paper, tied them up carefully, and walked to the Bürgerbräu Beer Hall—but there was an unexpected complication. For some reason, the doors to the hall were locked. Where would he spend the night now? Because the storeroom of the carpenter’s workshop was inaccessible to him due to a passage that Karl Bröger locked at night, Elser had only one choice: He slept in the garden of the Bürgerbräu Beer Hall, where the beer barrels were stored. Not until the next day, November 4, was he able to set to work installing the clocks in the column.

  Because I knew that a dance was being held in the hall that evening, a Saturday, I entered the Bürgerbräu from Rosenheimer Strasse, bought a ticket, and proceeded to the gallery, where I put the clocks I’d brought with me in my hiding place. I took a seat on the gallery near the music podium and watched the dance from there. I had no company. At the end of the dance—this was on November 5, around one o’clock—I proceeded from my seat into my hiding place and waited there until the hall had been emptied and locked. By waiting about half an hour, I made sure that there was no one left in the hall. I then went to install the clocks in the column, but realized that the front area where the case was to be put in was too narrow. Although I chipped away at the front area, I did not manage to insert the clock case, so I closed the door again, packed up my clock, and waited for daybreak in my hiding place. Early in the morning, I left the hall by the side emergency exit near the kitchen, which had been unlocked in the meantime.

  I went through the brewing facilities to Kellerstrasse and from there to Bröger’s storeroom. There I rounded off the rear corners of the clock case by sawing and rasping. By my estimation, the clock case would now definitely fit into the front area of the cavity in the column of the Bürgerbräu.

  This did not place his systematic plan in danger. The next evening, he returned to the Bürgerbräu with the wrapped-up clock cases. As on the evening before, a dance was being held in the hall. Once again, Elser bought a ticket and proceeded to the gallery.

  That day the dance was over around midnight. After about an hour, I proceeded to the column from my hiding place, opened the door, and confirmed by inserting the clock case into the front area of the hollow that it now fit. I fastened the clock case with metal strips and then inserted wire ropes, which I had bound together slightly near their ends, into the eyelet of the retention bolt, tightening them by twisting the free end. Finally I had to restart the two clocks, which had of course stopped during the transport, and set the correct time by synchronizing them with a pocket watch. In order to do so, I opened the front of the clock case, which I had, as a precaution, converted into a door as well. Later I closed it again and let things run their course.

  At six o’clock he was finished. He had finally done it. Three months had passed since he had begun to remove the first bricks from the column. For more than thirty nights, he had worked on the gallery of the Bürgerbräu Beer Hall—always by himself, always in the dark, always in danger of being discovered. Now he had achieved his goal.

  As he left the hall that morning one last time through the side emergency exit near the kitchen, the psychic pressure drained away from him—at least for a few minutes. Feeling content, he went down to Isartorplatz to have a cup of coffee at a kiosk. From now on, the clock is running, he thought. From now on, the bomb is ticking that will shake Nazi Germany from its slumber. He took a hefty sip.

  That same day, Georg Elser left Munich. Shortly before ten o’clock, wearing a gray-blue suit and a double-breasted coat, a gray hat on his head, he boarded the local train to Ulm. From there he would travel on to Stuttgart. As hand luggage, he carried a brown suitcase and two packages.

  He took off his heavy coat, laid it carefully over the suitcase on the luggage rack, and took a seat. Shortly thereafter, the train began to move. Georg thought of his sister Maria. When had they last seen each other? She had been married to Karl for four years. After the wedding, he had helped the two of them set up their apartment. A gong rod on a grandfather clock had broken during the move, and he had repaired the clock. The last time he had seen Maria and Karl had been in January—he could no longer remember the exact date. They had been surprised when he had visited without any particular reason or advance notice. That weekend he had first taken the train to Esslingen, where he had met Elsa, who had in the meantime found work there. He had told her of his plans to go to Munich. She had asked him repeatedly why it had to be Munich, of all places. Because it was a beautiful city, he had answered untruthfully. They had spent the night at an inn near the train station, and he had known then that it would be their last night together. Afterward, he had traveled on to Stuttgart.

  Georg had walked to Lerchenstrasse, where Maria lived with her husband, Karl, and their son, Franz. At the apartment, he had found only Karl and little Franz. Because her husband was unemployed, Maria had accepted a job in a clothing factory. Later they had taken a long walk together and picked up Maria from work. After dinner, Georg had gone back to Königsbronn. His sister had said to him: “Come visit us more often. Stuttgart isn’t at the other end of the earth.”

  Now, ten months later, they would see each other again. Slowly, the train arrived in Stuttgart. The clock showed that it was almost half past two. Georg got off the train, brought his luggage to the storage facility, which was directly opposite the station, and walked across the square to the Württemberger Hof hotel to meet Karl, who had in the meantime found a job as a butcher there.

  A hotel employee told me that his workplace was a few houses down on the same street. I found my brother-in-law busy with menial work, because he apparently didn’t have much to do at the moment as a butcher. My brother-in-law accompanied me back to the train station, helped me pick up my luggage, summoned a porter with a three-wheeler, and then returned to his workplace. I rode with the porter on his vehicle to Lerchenstrasse 52, where I found my sister at home.

  That evening, they sat together in the living room and talked about Königsbronn, their family, and the state of their father’s health. “I want to go and see Father one more time,” said Georg. “I want to visit the Sauler family in Schnaithaim one more time, too.”

  Maria and her husband made pensive faces. “Do you have to go abroad?” Maria asked.

  “Yes, I have to go over the fence,” Georg answered tersely. “Nothing can be done about it.”

  Neither his sister nor his brother-in-law asked any further questions. Didn’t they want to know more? Georg assumed that Maria believed he planned to go abroad because of his alimony payments. The suspicion bothered him, but he didn’t say anything.

  Shortly thereafter, he retreated to the bedroom where Maria had made half of the marriage bed for him. Beforehand, Karl had said good-bye to him. “Thank you for the
things; I’ll take good care of them, and if you ever need anything, you can gladly have it back,” he said, offering Georg his hand. Georg shook his head. “Go ahead and keep it—I won’t need it anymore.”

  That day, Georg bequeathed all that he owned to his sister and his brother-in-law:

  I gave everything in the suitcases, boxes, and packages to my sister and brother-in-law. In them were screws, nails, and tools with which I worked and built at home. In the large wooden box were my suits, clean underwear, [and] two half-finished clock cases, as well as a cardboard box containing three or four clock mechanisms. These were meant for table clocks….

  I opened the suitcase, the packages, and the boxes in the presence of my sister and brother-in-law. The two of them took the things into safekeeping. I showed my sister the double bottom in the large wooden box. I merely unscrewed the double bottom and screwed it back down, without any further explanation.

  The next morning, he had breakfast with Maria and his nephew in the kitchen. That day, his sister didn’t go to the factory. Once again, they talked about Königsbronn and the family problems. They discussed how the conflict over the house had torn the family apart, and Georg confided in Maria about his deep-seated anger over the injustice he had suffered. He had broken off all contact with their other siblings. “Either there is justice or there is none,” he said to her. Maria nodded thoughtfully.