The Lone Assassin Read online

  Berlin, November 21—The SS-Reichsführer and chief of the German police announces: Immediately after the nefarious attack in the Bürgerbräu Beer Hall on November 8, 1939, measures were taken that seemed appropriate to solving the crime and facilitating the arrest of the perpetrator or perpetrators. In the course of this search operation, all German borders were immediately closed and border control was intensified.

  Among those arrested that same night was a man who tried to cross the German border illegally into Switzerland. This was the thirty-six-year-old Georg Elser, most recently residing in Munich. The findings made in the meantime by the special commission sent to Munich by the security police yielded numerous clues to the preparation and execution of the deed.

  By now at least some of the subjects connected to the crime have already been arrested. For further information the following questions are directed at the public:

  – Who knows Elser?

  – Who can provide information on his circles?

  – Who can identify people with whom Elser associates?

  – Where has Elser been over the past several years?

  – Where or from whom has he made purchases or placed orders?

  – Who remembers Elser working on inventions, technical drawings, designs, etc.?

  – Who has seen anyone else with drawings or plans of the Bürgerbräu Beer Hall?

  – Who has seen Elser in restaurants, in train stations, on trains, on buses, etc., alone or with other people?

  – Who has seen Elser outside the country? When, where, and with whom?

  Under the headline “The Munich Attack—The Most Horrible and Ingenious of All Crimes,” the German News Agency disseminated another report. This one pulled out all the stops of National Socialist propaganda.

  The interrogation of any criminal requires feeling out and getting to know his psychological substance. When the circle of suspicion had closed around Elser—when all his personal ties, his life’s path, his associations were able to be precisely determined—it became possible in several further interrogations and confrontations to achieve certainty that the true perpetrator had been apprehended.

  Under the weight of the evidence and the details that had since been secured in his places of refuge, the criminal’s confession could ultimately only confirm the result of the investigation.

  We have seen this man. He is the murderer of the victims of that terrible plan, the man who attempted to strike the Führer and with him the leadership of the Reich. One must repeatedly remind oneself of all this, for this man has no conspicuous criminal physiognomy, but intelligent eyes and a soft, deliberate manner of expression. The interrogations go on endlessly, he thinks long and hard about each word before he answers, and when one can observe him doing so, one forgets momentarily that one is standing before a satanic monster, whose conscience is capable of bearing so lightly such guilt, such a dreadful burden.

  The history of crime knows no precedent for this most horrible and ingenious of all crimes…. In addition to the already available clear clues to the background of this disgraceful crime, the German public will now gather countless small pieces of information in conjunction with the security police, so that an unbroken, complete chain of evidence will be the undoing of everyone it implicates beyond any doubt.

  In the meantime, not even the Propaganda Ministry could dispute Elser’s guilt any longer, but the “chain of evidence” had to be pursued. No one needed a lone assassin, who on top of that had “no conspicuous criminal physiognomy” and even had “intelligent eyes.” What they needed were masterminds. The official direction of the propagandistic exploitation of the attack had long been predetermined.

  Seemingly by chance, the German Intelligence Service followed up that same day with a second “special report” on the arrest of two British secret service officers.

  Berlin, November 21—The central office of the British Intelligence Service for Western Europe in The Hague has attempted for a long time to instigate plots in Germany and organize attacks or make contact with what they suspect are revolutionary organizations. Based on information from German emigrants that was as criminal as it was foolish, the British government and its Intelligence Service were of the opinion that an opposition existed in the state, in the party, and in the Wehrmacht with the goal of precipitating a revolution. In light of these circumstances, members of the security service of the SS were tasked with making contact with this British central office of terror and revolution in The Hague. In the belief that they were actually dealing with revolutionary German officers, the representatives of the British Intelligence Service revealed to them their intentions and plans, and in order to maintain ongoing contact with these supposed German officers, they even provided them with a special British radio transmitter and receiver by means of which the German Secret State Police has maintained contact with the British government to this day.

  On November 9, the heads of the British Intelligence Service for Europe, Mr. Best and Captain Stevens, attempted to cross the Dutch border near Venlo into Germany. They were overpowered by the German border guards and delivered to the state police as prisoners.

  A day after the attack in the Munich Bürgerbräu Beer Hall, two SS agents of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA, Reich Security Main Office), Walter Schellenberg and Alfred Naujocks, posing as resistance fighters, had lured the two officers of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) into a trap. Near Venlo in the Netherlands, the two British men had been abducted and taken into Germany as prisoners.

  The Munich attack was to be blamed on the British secret service in the time-tested manner, with the goal of an additional legitimization of the impending western offensive.

  Until November 21, the arrest of Best and Stevens had been kept from the public, in anticipation of an especially “useful” date for propaganda purposes. Now, after Elser’s confession, the right time seemed to have come.

  Though the special report did not assert a connection between the arrested officers and Elser, the proximity in time and the nature of the report suggested just that. All that was missing was a liaison between the two, and there was no better candidate for that than Otto Strasser, whose Black Front activities directed against the Nazi regime were widely known. The only link between Elser and Strasser arose from the fact that Elser had attempted to escape to Switzerland and Otto Strasser was himself in Switzerland at that time. The propagandists swiftly constructed evidence that the British secret service was part of this plot as well.

  An official announcement on November 23, 1939, declared that Strasser had departed for England “in a hurry” on the day after the attack. In reality, however, Strasser had not left Switzerland until November 13, and he had not gone to England but to France.

  Strasser’s decision to leave Switzerland had nothing to do with the attack. Due to his political activities, the Swiss authorities had not extended his residence permit, forcing Strasser to leave his place of exile.

  But who was interested in the truth in those days? By depicting Elser as the instrument of his master Otto Strasser and implying the influence of the British secret service behind the scenes as the organizer and financial backer, the Nazi propagandists painted the picture of a conspiracy—with success.

  The SS-Reichsführer and chief of the German police Heinrich Himmler had his officers summarize the results in another report on the internal political situation. On November 22, the “General Mood and Situation” was described as follows.

  The apprehension of the Munich assassin was first announced to the public on Tuesday night via radio. The news was only made widely known by the newspapers on Wednesday morning. It made a tremendously strong impression on the public. Over the past few days, there had still been frequent discussion of the Munich attack among the public, stimulated in particular by the weekly newsreel in the movie theaters, though numerous rumors were also circulating, some of which contained nonsensical suspicions regarding the perpetrators. The announcement that has now b
een made of the result of the investigations carried out up to this point has had a very positive effect on the public mood, as far as could be determined so far. The disclosure that the organizer of the attack had been the British secret service and the news of the arrest of the members of the British secret service at the Dutch-German border have reinforced the hostile mood toward Great Britain, which had already been expressed in the past few days in the expectation of an imminent attack against England.

  The same report noted approvingly that even the Catholic clergy had abandoned its refusal to take a position on the attack in light of the new results of the investigation. As evidence of this, the report quoted an article from the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Freiburg from November 19.

  When such attacks succeed, whole peoples always bear the devastating consequences. Time and again, we learn that it was foreign powers at work. No wonder that when this abhorrent crime occurred, SS-Reichsführer Himmler declared that the tracks of the perpetrators led outside the country…. How much more the idea of God’s providence imposes itself in this case, when the life of the Führer, the fate of the whole German people faced a profound threat at a moment of intense outward struggle for existence. Only thirty minutes earlier, Adolf Hitler himself had spoken the words: “We believe that what happens was intended by providence…. In grief the German people confronts the great misfortune of the dead and wounded, but in faith it turns to the Führer of its fate, whom providence so visibly protected.”

  The propaganda machine could not work better. Foreign powers were portrayed as the actual string pullers; the myth of providence protecting the Führer was invoked once again as confirmation that the fate of “the whole German people” was bound to him.

  * * *

  Georg Elser knew nothing of the role that the Nazi propagandists had assigned to him in the days after his confession. He knew nothing of the raids and arrests that had become everyday occurrences in his hometown of Königsbronn. Friends, acquaintances, neighbors, employers, and colleagues were all interrogated. He had no idea that his parents and siblings, as well as Elsa, his last long-term girlfriend, had been arrested and were sitting on a train to Berlin guarded by Gestapo officers.

  He lay on the plank-bed and looked up at the cell window. Through the barred square he could see gray clouds rapidly drifting by. A sky with bars—all of Germany is one big prison, he thought. He heard muffled sounds from outside. He felt lonely.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Secret Gestapo Matter

  Berlin, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8. An address before which the Nazis’ political opponents and the ideologically persecuted in Germany trembled. Here, in a former hotel building, all the threads of National Socialist terror converged. On September 27, 1939, Himmler had issued a decree ordering the merger of the Hauptamt Sicherheitspolizei (Main Office of the Security Police), which was a state organization, and the Sicherheitshauptamt (Security Main Office), which was a party organization. Now the most important organs of the Nazi politics of persecution, oppression, and extermination were concealed behind the collective name Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office). This was where the Schreibtischtäter (the “desk perpetrators,” as they became known) worked. In a perverse mixture of bureaucratic procedure and unrestrained arbitrariness, they planned, organized, and controlled the National Socialist terror apparatus. It was they who chose the personnel of the Einsatzgruppen, special task forces whose mass executions claimed hundreds of thousands of victims. It was also staff members in this office who developed the gas van that was used for a period of time to murder Jews.

  The protective custody department decided on internments in the concentration camps. Office IV, responsible for combating political opponents, was in charge of spying, arrest, life, and death. State officials as well as members of the party and the SS pursued their bloody work in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt.

  Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8, the official address of the SS-Reichsführer and his staff, was the central site of the bureaucracy of tyranny.

  By the late summer of 1933, the Gestapo had already built an “in-house prison” in the building. It was used primarily to confine prisoners who were to be interrogated there, largely serving as an internal detention center of the Gestapo’s central office. As a decree from 1935 ambiguously put it, it was “police custody of a special sort.”

  Those brought to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse had to fear for their lives. By all available means, Gestapo men sought to clear up suspicious affairs and uncover real or supposed resistance against the regime. They recoiled from no act of cruelty. When it was deemed necessary, the most brutal methods of torture were employed to find out connections, organizational networks, foreign contacts, or mere confidants.

  In the early years, the torture took the form of terrible beatings. Prisoners were often beaten unconscious with sticks, belts, and whips. Later the torture was euphemistically designated “enhanced interrogation,” bureaucratically regulated, and systematized. A report described a typical case.

  The detained prisoner was brought to one of the offices on the top floor, which belonged to the departments that dealt with communists and social democrats. Here—and not in the basement—the interrogations and torture were carried out. The Gestapo officer asked a direct question, often introduced by some harmless remarks. If he did not receive the desired information, the prisoner was beaten by the interrogator himself or by summoned “assistants.”

  The second round of questioning usually followed immediately. If the prisoner still could not or would not make a statement, another orgy of beatings ensued.

  If the prisoner was so battered that there was no way he could answer any longer, he was sent back to his cell, where he was often left for twenty-four hours without food and water and then once again interrogated, beaten, and tortured. For many prisoners, these abuses went on for weeks.

  Who were the inmates of the in-house prison, which in 1939 consisted of thirty-eight individual cells and one communal cell for about fifty prisoners? Where did they come from? In most cases, they were communists, social democrats, and unionists, as well as members of the socialist youth movement and smaller socialist parties and resistance organizations. Many of them came from Berlin, which, as the former stronghold of the labor movement, remained a center of resistance against National Socialism. On the other hand, the Gestapo had prisoners brought to Berlin from hundreds of miles away if the case in question had national significance. In those cases, special investigative commissions were formed, which subjected “their” prisoners in the building to incessant interrogations.

  * * *

  Georg Elser was one of those prisoners. His case was a secret Gestapo matter of a highly charged nature.

  Himmler, who had personally taken on the case, could be pleased with the extent to which Nazi propaganda had so far been able to capitalize on the attack—but who was Georg Elser really? An inconspicuous craftsman? A strange outsider? A lone malcontent against the war, the Reich, and the Führer? Himmler granted his officers complete authority to find out the truth.

  * * *

  Waiting. Georg Elser sat on the wooden plank-bed in his cell and looked at the gray wall. You can’t even stretch out your arms without hitting the walls, he thought. Walls wherever you reach. The cell—a musty, cramped rectangle, less than ninety square feet. In the back, a small window with bars, as big as two shoeboxes. At the foot of the bed, a massive wooden door with iron fittings and a peephole. Next to it, the toilet bucket, a stool, a small folding table. Over the previous days, he had left the cell only to shower. The guards had escorted him to a completely tiled room. Five showers, five washbasins, for more than fifty prisoners. The rest of the time, he sat in his cell and waited.

  Elser sat waiting between four walls for the interrogations that took place daily, feeling as if he were hanging from invisible threads. His strength had diminished. The next day, the interrogations would continue. His head was teeming with questions—questions like snakes wh
ose bites he knew were deadly. He found only simple answers, despite the danger.

  Waiting. Evening had fallen. Elser heard the sounds of keys outside. Were they coming to take him to an interrogation at this hour? To lead him through a labyrinth of gated corridors, passing him from one guard to another, just as he had experienced daily since his arrival here in Berlin? No, the sounds ceased.

  Elser still knew nothing of the role that the Nazi propagandists had publicly ascribed to him since his confession. He knew nothing of the raids and arrests in Königsbronn.

  A few days after the attack, a veritable invasion of the Gestapo had befallen the tranquil village. In nearby Heidenheim, half a dozen officers were residing in the König Karl hotel and another four in the Hirsch hotel in Oberkochen. Every day, they came to Königsbronn, where they had converted the town hall into a gigantic interrogation center. Everyone had been questioned: the members of the zither club, the choir, the dance group, the hiking club, all Elser’s friends and acquaintances, and especially his family members. And the interrogations were still in full swing—the Gestapo did not give up so easily.

  On November 13, they had Elser’s entire family arrested. His mother described the events years later.

  We were not told by the detectives why we were being taken. At the same time, our homes were searched, but we ourselves were not allowed to be present.

  Along with my husband and me, all our children were arrested: our daughters living in Stuttgart and in Schnaitheim, our daughter living in Königsbronn, and our son Leonhard. First we were brought to the Königsbronn town hall and held there for a while.

  In Königsbronn, we were not interrogated, but transported to Heidenheim, where we were locked up. We stayed in Heidenheim only until the evening of November 13, 1939. From there, we were taken to Stuttgart by car. There we were put in prison again, and we were divided. Each family member was confined separately….