The Lone Assassin

by Helmut Ortner

  He sat in the middle of the room on a chair, and I would definitely not have recognized him as my former lover in that condition. His face had been beaten until it was swollen and blue. His eyes protruded from their sockets, and he made a terrible impression on me. His feet, too, were swollen, and I think that he was sitting on a chair only because he could barely stand anymore….

  Before the end of the confrontation, a detective told me that I could now ask Elser something myself. But I could only ask, “Georg, did you do it?” At first, he did not answer, but only gave me a look that I will never forget. Then he opened his mouth very slowly and said, “Elsa.” At that same moment, he received a blow to the neck from the officer standing behind him and was no longer permitted to speak. At the time, I was already firmly convinced, and remain so to this day, that he had wanted to say he was innocent. As his former lover, I could gather that much from his expression and his gestures.

  Completely distraught, Elsa left the interrogation room on that afternoon of November 22. Gestapo officers brought her back to the Hotel Kaiserhof, where she was kept under special guard. She later said:

  The doors were always locked, and guards stood outside them. I saw none of the members of the Elser family, who were also being held in this hotel. From occasional statements and from the behavior of the officers interrogating me, I concluded that I was apparently considered a particularly suspicious person along with Elser. They simply did not want to believe me when I said that I had no connection with Elser and knew nothing about the attack.

  The Gestapo officers still refused to believe that Elser was the lone perpetrator, despite the fact that he had confessed and had sketched the design of the explosive device and made a model before their eyes. Plus, all the information he had provided in the interrogations up to that point had checked out. Could he really be a lone perpetrator—a man without conspirators, confidants, or ringleaders, unaffiliated with a resistance group or underground organization? He had been interrogated for hours, day and night. The previous evening, his questioners had finally lost patience. They conducted “enhanced interrogation”—but the slim man with the Swabian dialect only repeated that he had told them everything and did not know anything else. Not even a last confrontation with his sister Maria and his former lover Elsa had made him any more talkative. The idea that seeing Elser’s wretched appearance would make one of the women reveal additional information had not panned out. But tomorrow was another day, and the Gestapo officers planned to turn the oppositional lone perpetrator into a remorseful member of the people’s community (Volksgemeinschaft). They had mastered the necessary methods for that. It was their trade.

  The heavy door was forcefully closed and bolted. Elser lay down on the plank-bed. He was freezing, weak, and miserable. The dirty walls framed his field of vision. By now, he knew every mark, every scratch, and every tiny crack. The walls struck him as menacing; it seemed to him as if they were in league with his tormentors. Why didn’t they offer him any protection? Why wasn’t he safe from the grasping hands, the beating fists—not even here in his cell? Elser was tired. The long interrogations, as well as the confrontations with Maria and Elsa, had worn him out. His exhaustion had reached the stage when the senses rebel one last time against sleep and are momentarily reactivated. “Hopefully, this will all be over soon,” he murmured, and then his head flopped to the side.

  * * *

  Not far from the in-house prison of the Gestapo, four men in customs uniforms were entering the Reich Finance Ministry. Xaver Reitlinger—the customs officer who had arrested Georg Elser attempting to escape to Switzerland on the evening of November 8—and his three colleagues—the young Zapfer, the head guard Trabmann, and the customs inspector Straube—had been invited to the evening reception. State Secretary Reinhard, also in uniform, praised the four men from Lake Constance, “You have done a great service to customs. We cannot thank you enough.” Then he shook each of their hands, pinned the customs and border protection badge of honor on their uniforms, and presented them with a monetary reward. In recognition of their “exemplary professional ethos,” they were also promoted: Zapfer to customs assistant, Reitlinger from customs assistant to customs inspector, Trabmann from secretary to inspector, and Straube from customs inspector to customs administrator. All four of them were extremely proud.

  Afterward, during a round of drinks, the state secretary took Reitlinger aside. “I have seen to it that you will give a talk at the customs school about the arrest,” he told him, and it sounded like an order.

  Confused, Reitlinger replied, “But isn’t it a state secret? The Gestapo in Karlsruhe forbade us to talk about it.”

  Reinhard put his hand on Reitlinger’s shoulder. “Yes, but you are permitted to speak in front of comrades. You know that the SS is eager to take over customs, so now is the time to show your colors. After all, it was you and your colleagues who seized the assassin—and not the SS.”

  The next day, Reitlinger gave a brief talk in front of over a hundred customs candidates. He had quickly composed notes for it the previous night in the hotel. He did not feel comfortable in his own skin. Ultimately, he thought, it had only been a normal arrest. Who could have known that the illegal border crosser was the Bürgerbräu assassin?

  No, he wasn’t really a hero. He had done his duty and nothing more. Granted, he was somewhat proud. The latest edition of the Völkischer Beobachter lauded the vigilance of the Konstanz quartet and even ran a photo of him and his colleagues with State Secretary Reinhard. That afternoon, Reitlinger bought two copies of the newspaper. “A great memento of Berlin,” he said to Zapfer, who was equally proud of the article.

  That evening, the two of them had to report to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. Once again, Gestapo officers would question them on the events at the border. It quickly became clear to Reitlinger that they faced an entirely different reception from the Gestapo than they had from customs. Here it was of no interest to anyone that they had been promoted and praised for their work and decorated with a medal; here all that mattered were facts, additional information. Reitlinger was to answer the questions—nothing else. He later recounted:

  It was in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt. I entered an office in which there were a few men in civilian clothing; I assumed they were senior officers of the security service. Here I was again questioned about the whole process of Elser’s arrest. As during my earlier interrogations in Konstanz, I couldn’t provide any further information. I had the impression that I was being pressed into the role of the accused. Here, too, I had to sign my statement. Zapfer was questioned separately from me. Afterward we compared notes on our interrogations, and I learned that he had experienced the interrogation tactics the same way I had.

  After the interrogation, they were informed that SS-Führer and police chief Reinhard Heydrich also wanted to speak to them. “I am happy to be able to receive you,” he greeted Reitlinger and Zapfer in his huge office. Then his expression became more serious.

  Heydrich swore us to secrecy with a handshake regarding everything we knew about Elser’s case. He said explicitly that we were accountable for that. We had to pledge our discretion to him with a handshake. Thus Reitlinger later described the brief meeting with Heydrich.

  It was dark when the two of them left the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, accompanied by two Gestapo officers. As they went downstairs to the waiting car, which would bring them back to the hotel, Reitlinger thought for a moment about the man he had arrested at the border. He must have been confined somewhere in this building, waiting for his interrogations in a cell of the in-house prison. Reitlinger wouldn’t have wanted to be in his shoes. Undoubtedly, he would be indicted, and the justice system would make short work of a man who had tried to kill Hitler: Death penalty!

  No, he really wouldn’t want to change places with the fellow. He must be a madman, a fanatic, or a hired assassin. Reitlinger suspected the last of these.

  Zapfer roused him from his thoughts. “Xaver,” he said to hi
m, “tonight we’ll drink some wine and tomorrow we’ll head home.” Reitlinger nodded: “Thank God.”

  While the Konstanz quartet was celebrating its imminent departure from the capital of the Reich over drinks that evening, Gestapo officers were fetching Georg Elser from his cell. The fact that interrogations did not begin until late in the evening was neither unusual nor a matter of chance, but rather by design. The subjects fought against their exhaustion; lack of focus caused them to make careless statements; their power of resistance flagged. The Gestapo officers took advantage of this situation. Elser, too, had often been questioned at night. The interrogations frequently lasted into the morning hours. Now, as the hands of the clock moved to midnight, he had trouble following his guards. The imprisonment, the interrogations, the abuses had worn him down. Elser was a broken man.

  The door to the interrogation room was opened. The guards escorted him to the middle of the room. “Sit down on that chair,” a voice ordered harshly from the background. Elser looked at a small projection screen that had been set up in front of the filing cabinets. “Lights out,” the voice ordered. On the screen flickered images of the funeral for the victims of the Bürgerbräu attack, who had been buried in Munich on November 11 in a state ceremony. Seven coffins were flanked by honor guards; before them was a sea of flowers and wreaths. The camera panned over to the family members—close-ups of weeping faces. “I didn’t want that …” Sobbing, Elser broke down under the impact of the images.

  “Lights!” commanded the voice, which belonged to a tall Gestapo officer who now emerged from the darkness and walked over to the desk. He nodded authoritatively to another officer, who planted himself next to Georg. The transcriber reached for his pencil.

  Question:

  What were you thinking when you inspected your work and closed the doors for the last time on the night of November 7?

  Answer:

  I can no longer recall.

  Question:

  How had you imagined the outcome of the attack at that time?

  Answer:

  I had thought about that several times beforehand.

  Question:

  Did you think that a number of people might be killed?

  Answer:

  Yes.

  Question:

  Did you want that? And whom were you targeting?

  Answer:

  Yes. I was targeting the leadership.

  Question:

  Was that your objective throughout the whole preparation and implementation of the deed, or did you have doubts occasionally about what you were doing?

  Answer:

  (After a long pause for thought) I no longer recall whether I had doubts or not. But I don’t think I had any.

  Question:

  How do you view today what you have done, after your plan failed and you killed eight people?

  Answer:

  I would no longer do it.

  Question:

  That is not an answer to my question.

  Answer:

  The goal was not achieved.

  Question:

  So are you indifferent to the fact that you caused the deaths of eight people?

  Answer:

  No, I am not indifferent to that.

  Question:

  What would you do if you were released today for some reason?

  Answer:

  I would try to make up for what I’ve done wrong.

  Question:

  How?

  Answer:

  By trying to find my place and take part in the people’s community.

  Question:

  Could you do that?

  Answer:

  I have changed my views.

  Question:

  Because you were captured?

  Answer:

  No, I believe firmly that my plan would have succeeded if my views had been correct. Because it did not succeed, I am convinced that it was not supposed to succeed and that my views were wrong.

  The last interrogation took less than half an hour. Shortly thereafter, the typewritten transcript was available. An officer gave it to Elser, who only skimmed the text. He was incapable of reading the content. On the last line were the words Read, approved, and signed. The transcriber handed him a pen. Without a word, he signed.

  When SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller read through the extensive interrogation transcripts the next day, he felt conflicted. On the one hand, as the person responsible for the investigations, he could be satisfied with the work of his officers. On the other hand, there was the fact that, despite “enhanced interrogations,” this Elser had stood by his earlier testimony. It was not only in light of propagandistic considerations that the Nazi regime would be dissatisfied with the results, he knew. Of what use was the fact that the assassin had ultimately been overcome by doubt about the rectitude of his actions? Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich clung to their “mastermind theory,” and wanted proof that the British secret service stood behind the attack, but the results of the investigation provided no support for that at all. Along with a brief memorandum, Müller passed on the investigation results to the Nazi leadership. A few days later, he received a call from Heydrich. “The Führer has ordered that the trial shall take place only after the war, in order to demonstrate what perfidious methods the secret service has employed.”

  Elser became a prisoner in protective custody of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt. In a show trial, he would testify as the key witness against the British secret service. By then, thought SS officer Müller, we will certainly have prepared the fellow …

  A few hours after Heydrich’s phone call, a gray car stopped in the yard of Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8. Two Gestapo officers fetched Elser from his cell. “Where are we going?” he asked, as the Gestapo officers led him through the long corridors of the main prison.

  “We’re taking a trip,” one of the officers answered. Amused, the other added, “Yes, to a camp.” Their laughter resounded through the corridor.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Death of Protective Custody Prisoner E.

  Franz Fachner was a tall, slender man, who wore his blond hair severely parted and had alert blue eyes. In May 1939, he had been drafted into the Wehrmacht. The superior officers were struck by the young recruit’s downright exemplary “Aryan” appearance. After only four weeks, he was transferred to a newly established “SS Police Division,” which was made up of active police forces and was considered an elite troop. Its members were tall, young men “of German appearance,” who were well trained in police service and intended for special missions on the front.

  Fachner participated in the French campaign; after that, it was on to Russia. As a member of an assault squad at Leningrad during the first hard winter of 1941, at forty-five degrees below zero, he was seriously injured. For a year, he was in the hospital, but he never truly recovered. His right arm remained paralyzed.

  Despite his injury, the SS found a use for him. After a long recovery period, he was transferred to Munich. At the Freimann barracks, Fachner got a new uniform and was told the name of his new place of operation: the Dachau concentration camp.

  On the outskirts of Munich, Dachau was the first “official” camp established by the National Socialists. On the grounds of a former munitions factory, five thousand people would be interned. Dachau served as a model for camps that followed. Here the Nazis tested all the nuanced methods of suppression and elimination of political and ideological opponents that they would later employ in the other camps. Dachau became the “primary school” of the SS: The majority of camp leaders who spread fear and terror for years in Germany and the occupied territories had passed through Dachau. Here they had all learned their bloody trade.

  Fachner was detailed to guard the prisoners. At first, he felt uncomfortable with the idea of doing his service in a concentration camp. He had already heard some things about the camp. On March 22, 1933, it had been “put into operation,” an older SS man informed him. From the first day
on, Hitler’s threat to do away with his political opponents after coming to power had been carried out here. Almost all communists who could be caught were sent to Dachau. Unionists and social democrats followed, and shortly thereafter, Jewish citizens as well. When prominent newcomers arrived at the camp, the SS guards came up with a “special program” for each of the prisoners to humiliate and torture them.

  Political functionaries had to wear signs around their necks designating them as an “empty talker” or a “traitor to the workers;” others had to run the gauntlet in front of uniformed SS men who burst into laughter and jeering; academics were assigned to the hardest physical labor in the knowledge that they would soon collapse because they were unaccustomed to it. Many did not survive these harassments and died agonizing deaths.

  From the beginning—later in increasingly perverse forms—there was in Dachau a Strafkompanie, a division of prisoners condemned to penal labor, which after 1940 was housed in two special blocks. These blocks were separated from the rest of the camp by barbed wire. The treatment there was particularly brutal, the food even worse than in the rest of the camp. There was also the so-called “bunker,” a building with dark, musty cells in which prisoners had to spend months, often chained to the walls. The “standing cells” there were a particularly harrowing invention of the SS: On a square no more than two feet wide, prisoners were forced to spend their detention standing for days. It was to this camp that Fachner reported for duty in the summer of 1944, at a time when Dachau was completely overcrowded.

  Beginning in 1939, the prisoner transports reflected the fascist politics of conquest. Besides prisoners from Germany, the camp registers listed mainly Polish, Soviet, Hungarian, Czech, and French inmates. From Poland, whole university faculties had been transported to Dachau in the course of the eradication of the Polish intelligentsia ordered by the National Socialist regime. From France came many resistance fighters, whose ultimate fate—like that of thousands of other prisoners—was known to no one.