Johann George Elser

Every year, on November 8, Hitler and the veteran soldiers of the National Socialist Party would gather to commemorate the failed putsch of November 9,1923. Hitler would usually begin his speech at 8:30 p.m., and would continue speaking until 10:00. On November 8, 1939, Hitler decided to begin his speech approximately half an hour earlier than usual. He finished at 9:07, and left the site. At 9:20, a bomb exploded and shook the beer hall. Hitler escaped an assassination attempt. Nine people were killed.

While Hitler had been speaking in Munich, a man by the name of Johann George Elser was arrested in Constance while attempting to illegally cross the border into Switzerland. A number of suspicious items were found on his person, and he was sent to be interrogated. When news of the assassination attempt was made known, the initial investigation pointed toward Elser, who, after being tortured, confessed to having planted the bomb in Munich. Elser was sent to Sachsenhausen, and from there to Dachau. In April 1945, he was murdered by order of high-ranking government officials.

Officials of the Nazi regime were convinced that Elser had been operating in conjunction with British intelligence. Opposition forces, on the other hand, as well as many outside Germany, were convinced that Elser had, in fact, been employed by the Gestapo as a provocation. Later research showed beyond doubt that Elser had actually operated on his own.

Elser, who was a carpenter by profession, thought that the Nazis rise to power had greatly damaged the labor conditions of the working class. He was outraged by the fact that human beings were no longer free and that the education of children had been taken out of their parents hands and turned over to such institutions as the Hitler Youth. He had decided to assassinate Hitler in the wake of the Sudetenland crisis in 1938, in order to avert the war which he was convinced had become imminent. In August 1939, after the war broke out, he began to plan the assassination. He spent a month hiding in the beer hall after it had closed, and dug a tunnel under a row of floor tiles. Every morning he would cover up the tunnel, and would leave the beer hall after it had opened. When he had completed the tunnel, he planted the bomb, which was set on a timer.