The Lone Assassin

by Helmut Ortner

  He opened the train window and leaned out. “Take care. I’ll write to you … and again—many thanks for everything.”

  The train slowly began to move. Maria stood on the platform with tears in her eyes. As long as he could see her, Georg waved from the window. She returned his silent farewells with subdued gestures. Then he closed the window. He gazed out at the passing landscape. Was it a good-bye forever? He knew there was no going back.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Nights in the Hall

  It was dark in the Bürgerbräu Beer Hall, with the emergency lighting only faintly illuminating the outlines of objects. The place smelled of stale beer, cigarette smoke, and dust—a pungent mixture. Erni Magerl left the Bräustüberl kitchen, walking down the corridor and through one of the wide, wooden doors that led under the gallery into the hall. The glow of her flashlight was the signal for the cats, which scurried over from all directions and crowded around the plate, greedily devouring the kitchen scraps. She had been working as a cigarette woman in the Bürgerbräu for more than ten years, and from the beginning, she had fed the cats every evening shortly before she got off work. Over the years, she had developed a personal relationship with the animals. She had given several of them names and ensured that some of their newborn kittens ended up in good hands, so that the number of cats remained in appropriate proportion to the size of the hall.

  It was about half past ten when Erni was startled by an unfamiliar sound. Was it coming from the gallery? Was someone there? For a moment, she stood still and listened in the quiet hall.

  Maybe it was a drunk? With rapid steps, she went back to the door to call for the janitor. “Coming,” Xaver Hartgruber said, reassuring his colleague as he hurried over. A somewhat stout, round man of almost fifty years, he had long been—as the waiters liked to quip—part of the “inventory.” Hartgruber regarded it as a “professional honor” to be the janitor of the Bürgerbräu Beer Hall. A party member himself, he was proud that the “old fighters” had their annual meetings in “his” hall. Unprompted, he glowingly told everyone about the “great moment” when the Führer had personally shaken his hand once after the event. He had a photo of it in his living room at home. Hartgruber was a proper, nationally minded, “patriotic” janitor.

  At around eleven o’clock, he entered the gallery. The glow of his flashlight illuminated the rear wall, but he found nothing suspicious and didn’t hear a sound. Shaking his head, Hartgruber left the gallery by the back staircase. As he did every evening at that time, he locked the doors to the hall.

  Georg Elser heaved a sigh of relief. His heart was pounding. He slowly felt his way out of the dark room in which he had hidden for more than half an hour—a storeroom, full of empty cardboard boxes, the entrance to which was covered by nothing but a folding screen facing the gallery. Once again he stood still, straining to listen in order to make sure that there really wasn’t anyone in the hall anymore. Only then did he creep out of his hiding place.

  It was only a few paces to the column. He knelt down at the foot of it and gingerly opened part of the wood paneling. This inconspicuous construction facilitated his further effort; he had worked on it by the glow of his flashlight for the past three nights until the early morning hours. Tonight he wanted to begin to hollow out the column, an equally arduous and time-consuming task. He carefully used his mason’s chisel. The plaster could be removed without difficulty, bit by bit. He had set a schedule for all his preparations. He knew he had many nights ahead of him.

  A week earlier, he had arrived in Munich. On his arrival, he had a porter bring him and his suitcases to Blumenstrasse, where he took up quarters with the Baumann family. He had received an offer from them in response to his ad in the Münchener Zeitung, which he had placed weeks earlier from Schnaitheim. The room on the third floor was not exactly inexpensive: The monthly rent was thirty-five reichsmarks, and breakfast was an additional twenty, but he accepted nonetheless. Time was running short. He had to get to Munich. His decision had to be put into action.

  The Baumanns were approachable, friendly, and in no way intrusive. Not until two days after his arrival did they ask their tenant what he was doing in Munich. Elser told them that he was there to attend a polishing course, because that was a worthwhile additional skill for his occupation as a carpenter.

  Though they noticed that in the first days Elser left his room only for meals and was often out at night, this apparently did not arouse their suspicion.

  When they asked, I told them that I was pondering my invention at night and that I sat on a bench outside for that purpose, Elser later said. What his invention was did not seem to particularly interest the Baumanns. I wasn’t asked further questions about it.

  His daily routine proceeded according to a strict schedule: After breakfast, he retreated to his room to make further sketches and drawings. He was still working out unresolved details of his explosive device. In the afternoon, he occasionally helped Frau Baumann with the shopping, or he rested on the sofa for his nightly work. Around seven in the evening, he left his room on Blumenstrasse and headed to the Bürgerbräu Beer Hall.

  When I worked at night in the Bürgerbräu Beer Hall, I always went between eight and ten o’clock to the restaurant of the Bürgerbräu for supper. I would sit at a table in the middle of the restaurant, eat à la carte, and have a glass of beer. I always paid around ten o’clock. I would then leave the restaurant, proceeding from there through the coatroom into the unlocked hall. In the beginning, the emergency lighting was on in the hall. Later—that is, after the outbreak of the war—there were no longer any lights on. At that time, there was only the light coming from the kitchen and the coatroom. I stayed in my hiding place until the hall was locked.

  On the fourth evening after his arrival in Munich, Elser had already begun his work, as he later testified:

  First I carefully removed the wooden strip on the baseboard of the paneling on the column, then the upper strip on the paneling—that is, I had to cut from the baseboard the strip that was milled on the upper part of the board, which was of one piece with the rest of the board. The upper strip was only a molding, which I could remove easily. That way I could saw out a piece of the column paneling so that after reattachment of the moldings, no saw cuts could be seen. I converted this cut-out board into a door by mounting pivot hinges on the top and bottom in the corner of the column. The other long side of the door board was not noticeable, because it overlapped with a natural joint with moldings milled on it. I attached a bolt to this door. Without removing any moldings or strips, I could open this bolt with a flat knife I could insert into the natural, vertical joint. Of course, in order to move the bolt from the outside, I had to cut the so-called tongue—that is, the protruding part of the adjacent board, which fit into the detached board under the molding.

  It took me about three nights to make the door. That way, I could always begin my work immediately once I had opened the door, and at the end of my night’s work I only had to close the door in order to conceal completely what was being done inside the column. Even if someone had looked at the column very closely during the day, he wouldn’t have noticed any change to it at all. My work area was not blocked by tables or chairs, though there were some next to it.

  Next Elser began to chip away at the side joints in order to remove the bricks bit by bit—an arduous task. He made only gradual progress, because he had to go about his work very carefully in order to make as little noise as possible.

  I could only remove the bricks by using a brace and auger to drill holes close together in the brick joints filled with hard mortar, chipping away with the chisel at the mortar that remained, and then prying out the bricks with a longer chisel, bit by bit. Because rather coarse stones were contained in the mortar, which made a really loud noise whenever the auger struck them, I wrapped the back part of the auger in a piece of cloth and pressed firmly against the stone while working in order to somewhat muffle the sound. I wanted to prevent the noise to
some extent, because the slightest sound echoed a great deal in the empty hall at night. I had to go about my work very carefully in general, and for that reason the work took a long time. I had to make sure with every break and with every turn of the auger to make as little noise as possible.

  The fact that the toilet facilities in the Bürgerbräu Beer Hall automatically flushed every ten minutes was to his advantage. He used the few seconds during which the flushing broke the silence for a few forceful strokes of the chisel. Kneeling, repeatedly feeling around with his hands in the growing cavity, he worked for hours in the faint glow of his flashlight, which he had covered with a handkerchief in order to dim the light.

  He caught the debris generated by chipping away at the bricks, the drill dust, and the stones in a sack he had made himself out of a towel, which he hung from a wire ring in the opening of the column. When the bag was full, as it was relatively small, I emptied the contents into a cardboard box that could be closed with a cardboard cover. I always left this box in my hiding place on the gallery with the other boxes that were there.

  That night, Elser worked until half past two. Afterward, he put his tools into the opening of the column, closed the paneling, and neatly wiped up the remaining debris and dust that had fallen next to the bag. He went into his hiding place, took off his blue work pants, which he wore over his street clothes while he worked on the column, and left them in a corner of the room. He tried in vain to sleep for a few hours on the floor and waited until morning. As always, the doors to the hall were opened between seven and eight o’clock. He then left the hall, either through the coatroom or through the rear exit. At home, he retreated to his room; exhausted, he immediately fell asleep.

  Not until the afternoon did he leave the apartment again with his brown suitcase, heading to the Bürgerbräu. Now he could enter the hall unhindered. Via the rear entrance, he proceeded to his hiding place in order to fetch the accumulated debris without drawing attention to himself. After a few minutes, he left the Bürgerbräu with the full suitcase and went down to the area behind the public bathhouse, where he dumped the debris into the Isar. He intended to remove the debris from the hall the same way in the weeks to come.

  He then returned to Blumenstrasse, where he had things to do. While I was working at night in the Bürgerbräu Beer Hall, I devoted myself during the day to the final exact design and construction of my machine.

  A complicated construction: Two built-in clocks were to set off the three explosive charges at a predetermined time. He had gone over the details of the plans again and again, rejecting, improving, and revising. Ultimately, he wanted his bomb to succeed so perfectly that its workings would astonish even the Gestapo.

  Elser left nothing to chance, thinking everything through. During his work in the Bürgerbräu, a number of dances took place in the hall, which was often decorated for that purpose. To prevent the hollow space in the column’s paneling from being discovered when nails were driven into it, he lined the wood on the inside of the door with a two-millimeter thick sheet of iron. That way, even if someone knocked on the column, the hollow space could not be discovered—another example of Elser’s meticulousness.

  Despite all his precautions, he was surprised once by a man when leaving his hiding place.

  This man wanted to fetch a cardboard box from my hiding place and noticed me. After he had taken a box, he went away without saying anything to me and then came back onto the gallery with the manager. The man came from the left and the manager from the right. In the meantime, I had left my hiding place and taken a seat at a table on the eastern gallery, where, for the sake of appearances, I was writing a letter. When questioned by the manager, I explained to him that I had a boil on my thigh that I had wanted to squeeze. When he asked me what I was doing in the back room, I told him that I had wanted to open the boil there. I also told him that I had wanted to compose a letter at the table. The manager merely instructed me to write the letter in the garden, because I had no business being on the gallery. I then proceeded to the garden of the Bürgerbräu Beer Hall, where I had a coffee in order to avoid arousing suspicion. It was the same manager with whom I had already spoken on Easter in 1939.

  Even though Elser had tried to get a job from him earlier that year, the manager did not seem to remember his face or the fact that because of this man he had admonished his busboy to stay out of personnel matters. Elser had never again heard anything about the busboy.

  At home in his room in the Baumanns’ apartment, Elser was safe from such unpleasant surprises, which endangered his plans. Nonetheless, he ended his stay with the Baumanns in late August. On September 1, a Friday, he moved into a new room, in the home of the Lehmann family in the Schwabing district, Türkenstrasse 94.

  The room came to my attention through an ad in the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, which I placed there at the end of August 1939. I had no previous acquaintance with the Lehmann family, just as I had had none with the Baumann family. There I had a small room for which I had to pay seventeen reichsmarks and fifty pfennigs, not including breakfast. As before, I registered my residence with the police under my real personal data and gave the Lehmann family information about my background and my profession when they asked. Once again, I told them that I was working on an invention and that I had moved to Munich for that reason, without providing further details. I continued to spend most of my time during the day in my room, leaving only to have lunch and dinner and to perform the preliminary work in the Bürgerbräu Beer Hall, which could be done only at night. Now and then, I also went to the Baumann family’s home, where I chopped wood. For that, I received lunch, dinner, and some tip money. For the move I again used a porter, whose name I don’t know. There, too, I kept my wooden suitcase locked all the time, so that no one could look inside of it.

  The same day that Elser moved into the Lehmann family’s home, a session began in the Berlin Reichstag at ten o’clock in the morning, in which Hitler—wearing a soldier’s uniform—legitimized the attack against Poland, launched without a prior declaration of war.

  In his speech, which was broadcast by all German radio stations, Hitler avoided the word “war.” The goal of the invasion of Poland was solely to solve the problems of Danzig and to establish a “Polish Corridor.” Hitler justified his attack on Poland as a response to the assault by Polish soldiers on the Gleiwitz radio station, which had in reality been staged by SD officers in Polish uniforms.

  At the Lehmann family’s home on Türkenstrasse in Schwabing, the voice of the Führer blared from the radio that morning.

  Representatives, men of the German Reichstag, for months we have all been suffering from the agony of a problem that was bestowed on us by the Versailles dictate and that, in its deterioration and degeneration, has become unbearable to us. Danzig was and is a German city. The Corridor was and is German …

  I have therefore resolved to speak to Poland in the same language that Poland has been using toward us for months …

  Last night, for the first time, Polish regular soldiers fired on our own territory. Since 5:45 AM, we have been returning fire.

  Hitler was lying, but the German people burst into shouts of “Sieg Heil!” Almost no one spoke of war, let alone an attack on Poland; instead, it was solely a matter of the “active protection of the Reich,” as the invasion was called in a Wehrmacht report. The Reich Propaganda Ministry had declared that there were to be “no headlines in which the word war appears,” and the Nazi-coordinated press followed this policy.

  On that day, Georg Elser was busy unpacking his suitcases in his new room. He pushed his large wooden suitcase unopened under his bed. In it were clock parts, clock weights, a shell case, packets of powder, blasting caps and cartridges, various wires and screws, and finally—underneath all that in the double bottom—the last detailed drawing of his bomb. As always, he kept the key to the wooden suitcase on him. He was happy with the change of residence. He had more space to work and didn’t have to be mindful of the fine fu
rniture as he had in the room at the Baumanns’. Though the room was furnished simply and functionally, it was sufficient for his plans, and the rent there was half the amount it had been on Blumenstrasse.

  Elser lay down on the narrow bed and looked out the large window into the courtyard. He thought about Hitler’s speech, to which he had been able to listen only briefly. Invading Poland? That was the beginning—that was war. At that moment, he was convinced more than ever of the necessity of his attack. It had to succeed—it was the only way to eliminate this bellicose leadership and prevent a war.

  The days that followed confirmed his prognoses. On September 3, Ambassador Robert Coulondre delivered the French declaration of war to German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. France was thus at war with the German Reich. The British government had already handed Ribbentrop a note in Berlin, threatening to fulfill the British obligation to Poland if the Germans were not prepared promptly to withdraw their forces from Polish territory.

  The invasion of Poland and the declarations of war from France and Great Britain brought about abrupt changes in everyday life in the German Reich. As of September 1, a complete blackout was imposed and the public was instructed to take cover in bomb shelters when the air raid sirens sounded. No bombs were falling yet on the cities; it was still only British and French propaganda leaflets.

  Starting in early September, anyone who listened to enemy radio stations was threatened with prison or the death penalty, because—according to the suspicions of the Nazi regime—every word was designed to “harm the German people.” For the politically and racially persecuted, more than anyone, the outbreak of war meant new, escalating repressions: Jews were required to obey nightly curfews—in summer as of 9:00 PM and in winter as of 8:00 PM—and numerous unionists, social democrats, and communists were arrested as enemies of the state. By decree of the chief of the security police and the security service Reinhard Heydrich, anyone who publicly voiced doubts about a German victory could be “liquidated.” But the National Socialists didn’t need to worry, as the majority of the German people were still cheering, still raising their arms in the Hitler salute—there was still “one people, one Reich, one Führer.”