

MURDERING HITLER - the failed attacks on Hitler’s life

A lot of murder attempts on Hitler were planned. Here’s a list with a lot of the efforts made to kill him



München November 1921

Location: unknown

Assassination attempts on Hitler's life began long before he ascended to political power. The first recorded attempt occurred in Munich in 1921. In November of that year Hitler spoke at a beer hall rally that was attended by a large audience, which included some three hundred people who were either members of opposition groups or merely violently hostile to him. The crowd included members of the Independent Socialist Party, the Majority Socialist Party, and the Communist Party.



Hitler's speech "Who Are the Murderers?" was a vitriolic denunciation of the assassination on 25 October 1921, of Majority Socialist Reichstag Deputy Erhard Auer. It was routine at such gatherings for the audience, both proand anti-speaker, to consume beer in inordinate quantities and to cache the empty Steins under the tables to use as ammunition in the inevitable melee. During Hitler's speech sharp remarks were exchanged between members of the gathering; this triggered first an avalanche of Steins, then the throwing of chairs, and finally a brawl that erupted throughout the hall. In the midst of the ensuing battle, the twenty-five Nazi Storm Troopers on hand for just such an eventuality managed to shepherd most of the three hundred opponents out of the building before the police appeared in sufficient strength to secure the hall. Before the police arrived several unknown assailants fired shots at Hitler, none of which hit the target.



The gunfire was returned, possibly by Hitler himself, who always carried a pistol. These shots also failed to find a target. By the time the SA men cleared the hall of opponents many people had been injured, however, none seriously. Incredibly, Hitler persisted with his tirade for fully twenty minutes more, until police reinforcements finally closed the hall and dispersed the crowd into the street. Police reports show that some 150 Steins were smashed, together with a number of chairs and tables, and the hall was strewn with lengths of brass pipe, brass knuckles, and similar weapons commonly used in civilian riots. Thuringia and Leipzig 1923

Location: unknown

In 1923 Hitler again narrowly escaped death. Two attempts were made on his life by unknown assassins. The first occurred in Thuringia where shots get fired at Hitler from a crowd; a second, in which shots were fired at his car, in Leipzig. Berlin 1929

Location: Sportpalast

In 1929 an SS soldier on guard duty at the Sportpalast reportedly secreted a bomb under the speaker's platform minutes before Hitler was scheduled to appear. After the usual introductions, Hitler began a speech anticipated to last several hours. The SS guard felt a sudden need to use the men's room; confident that there was ample time in which to set off the bomb, he left his position for what he expected would be only a brief absence. Unfortunately for him and the rest of the world, he was accidentally locked in the toilet. Unable to free himself from the locked room in time, he failed to trigger the bomb. Hitler escaped injury or death because of an odd twist of fate. A friend later called it the joke of the century. "The history of the world might have been changed if he hadn't had to go to the bathroom". Berlin 1932, January

Location: Hotel Kaiserhof

Hitler often dined at the Hotel Kaiserhof with members of his staff. One night in January 1932 he dined at the hotel with his staff as usual but within an hour of eating the meal most of his table had fallen ill with food poisoning. Hitler was the least affected, possibly because he ate a vegetarian diet. Nobody died and nobody was charged.



Train 1932, March 15

Location: between München and Weimar

Hitler was travelling from Munich to Weimar with Josef Göbbels and William Frick. Shots were fired at the carriage they were travelling in but no one was hurt.



Car 1932, June

Location: near the town of Straslund

Hitler was travelling in a car near to Straslund. A group of men were waiting at a tight turn with the intention of ambushing the car and killing Hitler. However the car managed to get away.



Car 1932, July

Location: Freiburg

Hitler made a speech to mass of people at Freiburg on 29th July. Just before or just after the speech a crowd threw stones at his car. One stone hit him on the head but he was otherwise unhurt. Assner 1933, February

Location: unknown

After Hitler became Chancellor, the assassination attempts not only persisted but in fact increased. Hardly a week passed without an assassination plot being unearthed, or at least a report of one filed with the police authorities. In February a schoolteacher reported a plot to poison Hitler, and the Bavarian Legation in Berlin revealed that Ludwig Assner, a former Nazi turned communist, claimed that Hitler was a madman who would plunge Germany into misery and that he, Assner, would kill him to prevent this from happening. Although police were on alert for the would-be assassin, his threats against Hitler were dismissed as trivial when he demanded a large sum of money in exchange for abandoning his plans.



Throughout 1933 and 1934, reports of planned attempts on Hitler's life were received almost weekly by police. They included bizarre stories of exploding fountain pens, tunnels crammed with explosives dug under buildings in which he was to appear, poison squirted in his face, and dozens of others including one claiming his plane would be shot down over East Prussia. Many of these rumors were not taken seriously, largely because of the sources; however, at least fourteen were deemed sufficiently valid to merit earnest investigation by criminal police officials. Bomb 1933, March 4

Location: Königsberg

On 3 March 1933, one day before the newly appointed Chancellor was to address a political rally in Königsberg to campaign for his slate of candidates in the 5 March Reichstag elections, police moved against a communist group whose leader, a ship's carpenter named Kurt Lutter, had organized a plot to blow up the speaker's platform while Hitler spoke. The plan took form during two clandestine meetings held in February that were infiltrated by a police informer who leaked the information to the authorities. An investigation failed to uncover the explosives, and since none of the conspirators would confess to the crime of attempted political assassination, which carried the death penalty, Lutter and his group were ultimately released after being detained for several months .



Tag von Potsdam 1933, March 21

Location: Potsdamer Garnisonskirche

Hitler was due to attend a ceremony to commerate the opening of the new Reichstag building and the agreement that had led to the passing of the Enabling Act. Known as the Day of Potsdam the ceremony was to take place in the Garrison Church (Garnisonskirche) on March 21st. The day before the ceremony authorities discovered a tunnel that had been recently constructed beneath the church. It was thought that the tunnel would be packed with explosives and detonated while Hitler and Hindenburg were in the church. Berlin 1933

Location: Old Reichskanzlei

Beppo Römer, a communist and former leader of a Freikorps, came into the Reichskanzlei. When he got discovered they send him to Dachau concentration camp. In 1942 he was killed. Obersalzberg 1933

Location: Berghof area

Hitler's life was threatened by a would-be killer at Hitler's country house not far from Berchtesgaden. The hilly countryside surrounding the house was crisscrossed with numerous walking paths along which Hitler liked to stroll, usually accompanied by a small entourage of security people and political followers. The Führer generally led the column while his disciples alternated walking alongside him to exchange a few words of intimate conversation. The security men maintained a discreet distance and performed their duties as unobtrusively as possible. However, since the grounds through which Hitler's party strolled were public property, it was not unusual for them to meet other strollers, sometimes even exchanging pleasantries. Repeated observances of a man in an SA uniform who was acting in a suspicious manner and was watching Hitler's group carefully did not escape the attention of the security forces. During a routine security check, a personal search revealed that he was carrying a loaded handgun, a serious violation of law, and he was immediately arrested.



Rosenheim 1933

Location: road between Rosenheim and Obersalzberg

After Hitler picked up friends from München in Rosenheim, unknown people shoot at the car of Hitler, somewhere on the road between Rosenheim and the Obersalzberg. Bad Wiessee 1934

Location: Road München-Bad Wiessee, exact location unknown

An alleged coup attempt against the Führer in 1934 by the leaders of the SA, remains an enigma to this day. The SA leader, Ernst Röhm, had long advocated replacing the German army with his own organization. Unproven rumors persisted that Röhm coveted the position of Führer for himself. Whether the rumors were valid or Hitler simply decided to appease his army generals and rid them of a nuisance, the alleged plot was Hitler's pretext for the arrest and murder of several hundred SA leaders from 30 June 1934, through 2 July 1934. Hitler himself participated in Röhm's arrest while the latter was vacationing in Bad Wiesse, south of Munich. With the arrests accomplished and the prisoners en route to Stadelheim prison near Munich, Hitler and his entourage, including an SS security contingent, prepared to drive to Munich. Minutes before they were to leave, a truck carrying heavily armed SA bodyguards known as the Stabswache drove up. Learning that their leaders had been arrested, the SA men assumed combative positions against Hitler's cadre, creating a highly charged and dangerous situation for the Führer. Hitler somehow persuaded the SA team to retire. Reluctantly they returned to their truck and started out on the road to Munich. Minutes after leaving Bad Wiesse, the men had a change of heart and resolved to kill Hitler, disarm his security force, and rescue the SA leaders. Concealing their truck well off the highway, they established a deadly ambush. Machine guns set up on both sides of the road created a lethal field of fire that could not fail to annihilate Hitler's party. However, Hitler distrusted the SA group and decided to take an alternate route to Munich as a precaution against just such a contingency. Had Hitler traveled the main road, it is likely the SA unit would have killed him. Lacking documented hard evidence that the SA leaders planned to murder Hitler, and since Röhm and his closest confederates were executed, it will never be known whether the plot actually existed . Hitler's brutal action against the SA caused many former Nazis to join a growing list of those who wanted him dead. Berlin 1935

Location: unknown

In 1935, a right-wing group hatched an elaborate scheme to kill Hitler. The group's leader, Dr. Helmuth Mylius, was head of the Radical Middle Class Party, an industrial entrepreneur, and editor of a right-wing newspaper. Mylius and retired Navy Captain Hermann Ehrhardt developed a plan to infiltrate Hitler's SS bodyguard units with their own supporters. So successful were they that 160 men penetrated SS security and began accumulating data on Hitler's movements. The coup never came about because the Gestapo, having been informed of the plan, infiltrated the group and arrested most of the participants.



Berghof 1935

A SA man, named Kraus, according to Bridget Hitler, who was granted permission to present a petition personally to the Führer, was the would-be assassin who came nearest to succeeding. At the Berghof, Hitler's Bavarian Alps' retreat, he fired a single shot at Hitler and missed. He was shot at five times by the guards and died instantly. His motives are unknown but it might be surmised that they had something to do with the murder of Röhm, SA leader in 1934.



Berghof 1935

Another version of an attack motivated by Röhm's assassination was brought forward by Otto Strasser in his book "Flight from Terror" (NY 1943). It seems much more credible than the Bridget Hitler's version. Another SA man named Heinrich Grunow, who had not swallowed Ernst Röhm's murder, got in touch with Otto Strasser, head of the Black Front opposition movement to Hitler, and set up a plan to kill Hitler while the Führer was driven to his beloved Berchtesgarten retreat. Grunow was a member of the close guard protecting Hitler at Berchtesgarten and knew that at some spot on the road the car had to slow down to less than 15mph and argued to Strasser that it would be a propitious location to shot at Hitler. Strasser agreed to the plot and Grunow went to execute his murderous task. Unfortunately, according to Strasser, Hitler had taken the wheel on this day and Grunow shot the driver in the back seat while Hitler escaped alive. The irony is that Grunow, persuaded that he had succeeded in his attack, committed suicide on the spot while Hitler-the-driver scared to death rushed out of the car that he had put to a sudden halt. Hitler's chauffeur, Julius Schreck, was hit in the chest, the jaw and his right temple. Officially he died of a tooth infection. Wien 1935

Location: unknown

Communists planned an attack on Hitler, Blomberg, Göring, Göbbels and Hess. Group Markwitz 1935

Location: unknown

The group Markwitz wanted to kill Hitler, but the Gestapo infiltrated the group. All the members of the group were killed.



Hagana 1936

During 1936, David Frankfurter, a Jewish medical student living in Berne, killed Wilhelm Gustloff, Hitler's deputy in Switzerland. Gustloff became Frankfurter's substitute target when the assassin realized his primary target, Adolf Hitler, was beyond his reach. A year later it was learned through SS contacts with the Hagna, the Jewish intelligence service in Palestine, that Gustloff's murder was part of a failed assassination plan against Hitler by a Paris-based group known as the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Strasser’s Plan December 1936

Location: Nürnberg Stadium

In December 1936, a young German Jew who had been living in Prague infiltrated into Germany as part of a plot to kill Hitler by blowing up a building in the Nuremberg Stadium. Helmut Hirsch, acting under the influence of Otto Strasser, one of Hitler's most virulent opponents, agreed to plant the bomb built by another of Strasser's followers. Hirsch arrived in Stuttgart on December 20, three days before the scheduled meeting with his contact, a Strasser disciple who was to deliver the bomb. Hirsch did not know his contact had been arrested crossing the German-Polish border with the bomb, and under questioning by the Gestapo he revealed the bombing plan and identified the would-be bomber. Since Hirsch had used his own name at the hotel when he completed the forms required of all guests, it was a simple matter to track him down and arrest him. On 8 March 1937, Helmut Hirsch was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by beheading. The execution was carried out on 4 June in Plötzensee.



Otto Strasser probably instigated more than a few death plots against Hitler. Otto and his brother, Gregor, were socialists before joining Hitler's National Socialist Party. Gregor entered into an unqualified allegiance to Hitler, but Otto held some serious reservations. He openly disagreed with Hitler on important issues such as a major strike by metalworkers in Saxony. Otto Strasser championed the workers; Hitler, who was being subsidized by wealthy industrialists, was ordered by them to disclaim Strasser and condemn his support for the strikers. Hitler and Strasser met twice in Berlin's Hotel Sanssouci on 21 and 22 May 1930, to reconcile their differences. Neither man budged from his position and they parted enemies. Expelled from the Party, Otto Strasser formed his own socialist organization, which he called the Schwarze Front (Black Front). When Gregor Strasser died in Hitler's attack on the SA, Otto realized that he had lost the protection his brother's position in the Nazi Party had afforded him and that his own life was now in danger. He fled Germany and continued to scheme against Hitler from asylum in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and later Paris. Throughout 1937 and 1938, German intelligence uncovered a steady flow of information revealing plots to kill Hitler by the Black Front, as well as other opponents of the Führer, many of whom were German émigrés.



Josef Thomas 1937, November 26

Location: Reichskanzlei Berlin

A mentaly ill man called Josef Thomas from Ebersfeld ran around in the Reichskanzlei. He got arrested. No one ever heard from him again. Bomb 1937

Location: Sportpalast Berlin

An unknown person puts a bomb in the speakers platform of the Sportpalast. It is said that the bomb didn’t go off because the guy who placed it got, in some way, stuck in the toilets.



Dohnanyi 1937

Dr. Johannes von Dohnanyi of the Abwehr, personal advisor to Reich Minister of Justice Franz Gurtner, had disapproved of Hitler and his Nazi Party almost from the beginning when, through his post in the attorney general's office, in Hamburg, he was exposed firsthand to Nazi brutality. As early as 1937 Dohnanyi tried to recruit Hitler's adjutant, Hans Wiedemann, in a plot to shoot the Führer. Maurice Bavaud 1938

Location: various

The year 1938 was a busy time for another would-be assassin, Maurice Bavaud. Through a strangely twisted logical reasoning, Bavaud concluded he must kill Hitler because the German dictator had reneged on his promise to squash the communists. Bavaud was a Swiss citizen attending a French Catholic seminary in Brittany when he came under the influence of another seminarian, Marcel Gerbohay. Gerbohay founded a small secret society of seminarians who called themselves the Compagnie du Mystère. This group was pledged to fight communism wherever it appeared, especially in Russia. Gerbohay portrayed himself as a descendant of the Romanov dynasty that had ruled Russia for over three hundred years. He prophesied they would rule again when the communists were overthrown. Hitler, whom many thought would be the instrument for the destruction of the Russian communists, was now showing every indication that he intended to co-exist peacefully with the Soviet Communist regime.



At Gerbohay's bidding, Bavaud set off from the seminary on a mission to assassinate Hitler because of his outward tolerance of the communists. He returned to his family's home in the west Switzerland town of NeuchU00E2tel and lived briefly with his parents and his five brothers and sisters. While he earned his keep helping his mother in a small grocery she ran to supplement her husband's postal workers salary, Bavaud studied German and read the French translation of "Mein Kampf".



On October 9 he bid his family farewell and set off on an odyssey that would crisscross Germany in pursuit of Adolf Hitler. He told his family he was going to Germany to find work as a draftsman, a trade he had learned before joining the seminary. He spent a fortnight visiting relatives in the German resort town of Baden-Baden. Telling these relatives he was going to Mannheim to seek work, he instead left Baden-Baden and proceeded south to the Swiss border town of Basel, where he purchased a 6.35-millimeter Schmeisser automatic pistol. He then traveled four hundred miles by rail to Berlin, where he expected to find Hitler.



In Berlin Bavaud learned that the Führer was at his mountain retreat near Berchtesgaden. Determined to kill his quarry, Bavaud immediately entrained for the resort three hundred miles to the south. Arriving in Berchtesgaden on October 25, he checked into an inexpensive hotel, the Stiftskeller, and found a source where he purchased extra ammunition for his pistol. To improve his nonexistent shooting skills he went deep into the woods and used trees for target practice. He decided that he would be able to shoot Hitler if he could get within twenty-five feet of him. It apparently did not occur to Bavaud that there was no guarantee that if he was successful in shooting Hitler the Fü hrer would necessarily die.



Unfortunately, Bavaud again missed connections when Hitler left Berchtesgaden shortly after he arrived. Dejected over this second failure to find his target, Bavaud decided to plan more carefully by learning as much as possible about Hitler's movements before taking further action. However, his German was only rudimentary, and he was severely handicapped in these inquiries.



One afternoon while eating lunch he met two French instructors with whom he carried on a lively conversation, claiming to be an ardent admirer of Hitler who wanted to meet the Führer. Although his companions could not be of any help, the conversation was overheard by a police captain sitting at the next table who spoke French. Captain Karl Derkert told Bavaud that he was connected with Hitler's security and assured the young Swiss that to arrange a personal audience with Hitler would require a letter of introduction from a high-ranking foreign official. But if he only wanted to see Hitler up close, Deckert advised, he should go to Munich in time for the anniversary of the 9 November 1923 Putsch. Hitler traditionally led a parade through the city's streets that retraced the route he and his band had taken in 1923.



On October 31 Bavaud once again boarded a train, this time for Munich, where he rented a furnished room. Using a tourist map, Bavaud plotted the route of the march during the days preceding the celebration, looking for a vantage point from which to shoot Hitler. A series of grandstands had been constructed along the route, and for one of them he was able to obtain a ticket by impersonating a reporter for a Swiss newspaper.



Not entirely confident with his marksmanship, he located a suitable site about twenty-five miles from the city where he could safely practice his shooting skills.



The morning of November 9 was cold and clear. Dressed in a heavy overcoat, with his pistol inside the coat pocket, Bavaud made his way through the thousands who thronged the streets of Munich and arrived at the grandstand near the Marienplatz with time to spare. He found a front-row seat and sat quietly, hoping to remain inconspicuous while he waited for Hitler. The street in front of him, as well as along the entire march route, was flanked on both sides with two rows of burly SA men who stood shoulder to shoulder to keep the crowd from rushing into the streets. The intended assassin knew he would have to shoot Hitler from the grandstand because it would be impossible for him to push his way through the brown-shirted guards. Suddenly the cry went up, "The Fü hrer is coming!"



Rising as one, the people in the grandstand, Bavaud included, stood to view the approaching parade. Inside his pocket his hand gripped the pistol tightly, ready to remove it quickly when Hitler came within range. With his heart pounding, the young man stood poised to act as the line of marchers approached. When the parade drew abreast of Bavaud, disappointment gripped him as he realized that Hitler was marching on the opposite side of the street, not in the center as he had expected.



This placed his target more than fifty feet away, twice his confidence range with his weapon. Bavaud released his hold on the Schmeisser and could do nothing except watch Hitler and his entourage turn a corner and disappear from view.



Bavaud was disappointed but far from discouraged. He purchased some tastefully expensive stationery and envelopes and returned to his room, where he proceeded to forge a letter of introduction to Hitler from French Foreign Minister Pierre Flandin.



The letter stated that Bavaud carried a second letter that was to be read by Adolf Hitler only. It was a poorly conceived ruse born of desperation. That Bavaud even imagined such a letter would gain him admittance to Hitler's presence is incredible. To believe that the foreign minister of France would use this young Swiss citizen to carry important correspondence to the Führer of Germany instead of his own ambassador was the height of foolishness.



Hearing erroneously that Hitler had returned to his retreat, Bavaud again boarded a train for Berchtesgaden. At the station he hired a taxi to take him to the Berghof, but he was prevented from entering the grounds by the armed guards who told him Hitler was not there, but still in Munich. Bavaud rushed back to the railroad station and took the next train to Munich, arriving there about the same time Hitler's private train left on its way to Berchtesgaden.



Frustrated and nearly out of money, Bavaud gave up his quest to kill Hitler and decided to leave the country. He did not have enough money to travel to Switzerland, so he hid aboard a train bound for Paris where he hoped to obtain from the Swiss embassy sufficient funds to return to his parents' home. When he was discovered by a railroad conductor he was turned over to the police at Augsburg, who handed him to the Gestapo because he was a foreigner and because he was carrying a gun and letter addressed to Hitler. For some insane reason Bavaud had failed to dispose of the incriminating letters and the weapon he intended to use against Hitler.



Under arduous interrogation Bavaud eventually confessed his plan to the Gestapo. He was put on trial, found guilty, and on 14 May 1941, was beheaded Having traveled hundreds of miles pursuing his fantasy to kill Hitler, Marcel Bavaud succeeded only in bringing about his own demise. Perhaps he would have accomplished his mission had he been a bit more imaginative and more resourceful, but he was doomed from the beginning because of a grievous lack of planning. Even when certain failure became apparent, the poor fellow was not smart enough to rid himself of the evidence that ultimately incriminated him.

Maurice Bavaud (January 15, 1916 in Neuchâtel - May 14, 1941 in Berlin-Plötzensee) was a Roman Catholic Swiss citizen who in 1938 attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Bavaud was a Catholic theology student, attending the Saint Ilan Seminary, Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, and a member of an anti-communist student group in France called Compagnie du Mystère. The group's leader, Marcel Gerbohay, had a lot of influence over Bavaud. Gerbohay claimed that he was a member of the Romanov Dynasty, and convinced Bavaud that when communism was destroyed, the Romanovs would once again rule Russia, in the person of Gerbohay. Bavaud believed what Gerbohay had told him, became obsessed with the idea that killing Hitler would help the plans to materialise, and finally decided to carry out the assassination himself. On 9 October 1938, Bavaud travelled from Brittany to Baden-Baden, then on to Basel, where he bought a Schmeisser 6.35 mm (.25 ACP) semi-automatic pistol. In Berlin, a policeman, Karl Deckert, overheard Bavaud saying that he would like to meet Hitler personally. Deckert advised Bavaud that a private audience could be arranged if Bavaud could obtain a letter of introduction from a suitable foreign VIP. Deckert advised him to travel to Munich for the anniversary of the 1923 "Beer Hall Putsch", which Hitler attended every year. Bavaud followed those instructions by buying a ticket for a seat on the reviewing stand by posing as a Swiss reporter, intending to shoot Hitler as the latter passed during the parade. Bavaud abandoned this attempt when, on November 9, Hitler turned out to be marching in the company of other Nazi leaders whom Bavaud did not want to injure. Bavaud next purchased expensive stationery and forged a letter of introduction in the name of the French nationalist leader Pierre Taittinger, which claimed that Bavaud had a second letter for Hitler's eyes only. He travelled to Berchtesgaden in the belief that Hitler had returned there, only to find that Hitler was still in Munich. When Bavaud returned to Munich, he discovered that Hitler was just leaving for Berchtesgaden. Having exhausted his money, Bavaud stowed away on a train to Paris, where he was discovered by a conductor who turned him over to the police. He was interrogated by the Gestapo and admitted his plans to assassinate Hitler. Bavaud was tried by the Volksgerichtshof on 18 December 1939, naming as his motives that he considered Hitler a danger to humanity in general, to Swiss independence, and to Catholicism in Germany. Swiss diplomacy made no effort to save Bavaud; Hans Fröhlicher, the Swiss ambassador to Germany even publicly condemned Bavaud's assassination attempt. An offer from the Germans to exchange Bavaud for a German spy was turned down, and Bavaud was sentenced to death. He was executed by guillotine in the Berlin-Plötzensee prison on the morning of 14 May 1941. Aftermath Bavaud's father Alfred attempted to rehabilitate his son's name and reputation, resulting in a court decision on 12 December 1955 reverting the death sentence but posthumously condemning Bavaud to a five-year sentence, arguing that Hitler's life was protected by law just as any other life. A second verdict of 1956 reverted the prison sentence and Germany paid Bavaud's family the sum of CHF 40,000 in reparation. In 1976, Rolf Hochhuth idealized Bavaud as a "new William Tell", while in 1980 Klaus Urner relativized Hochhuth's heroic picture, analyzing psychological aspects of Bavaud's motivation. In 1989 and again in 1998, the Swiss Federal Council admitted that the Swiss authorities did not make a sufficient effort to save Bavaud. Finally, in 2008, the Swiss government honored the life and effort of Bavaud. In 2011, a small monument was erected in Hauterive near Neuchâtel. Oster group, 1938, September 28

Location: unknown

Members of the resistance were scattered throughout the army, the Foreign Ministry, the police, and nongovernmental circles and were essentially a small minority in a totalitarian state that engaged freely in terror, imprisonment, and murder against its enemies, real or imagined.. They could not meet in large numbers to engender support for their struggle against the Nazis without arousing Gestapo interest in them. Nor could many of them risk being seen with each other because of government restrictions. Contact between different government agencies was strictly limited and in some cases forbidden, such as between officials of the Foreign Ministry and the General Staff, unless the individual involved was a liaison officer. Gestapo and SS secret police units worked ceaselessly to uncover opponents of the regime. Considering the overwhelming resources against them, it is miraculous that practically anyone who joined the 1938 resistance movement survived long enough to be executed by the Nazis in 1944 and 1945.



During 1938 latent anti-Nazi and anti-war sentiment among individual officers in the German army gradually coalesced into a hardcore group determined to depose Hitler. Early in the year the first tentative beginnings of an organized coup took form. By year's end a solid nucleus of ranking officers was plotting to kill the Führer. However, many of the generals who recognized that Hitler's plans for conquering Europe harbored the seeds of Germany's destruction rejected assassination, opting instead for arrest and imprisonment.



Lieutenant Colonel Hans Oster, Chief of Staff of the Abwer, the counterintelligence section of the military High Command, was a much-decorated veteran of World War I. He was a deeply religious parson's son, a highly charged and temperamental man, without personal ambitions. Oster viewed Nazism as anti-Christian and persisted in his efforts to depose Hitler until his own execution in 1945.



A group of military conspirators around him planned a coup when the troups to enter Czechoslovakia were mobilised. Hitler's ultimate fate had not yet been decided, but most senior officers believed he should be tried on charges of treason for committing Germany to a senseless war, or declared insane and committed to an asylum. Little is known about the detailed military plans for the coup. Except for General Franz Halder, a deeply religious and sensitive man from a background steeped in military tradition, none of the ranking army officers who were involved survived the war. General Halder stated that he left the details to General Erwin von Witzleben, keeping for himself only the final authority to issue the order that would begin the coup.



Everyone now waited for the order to come from General Halder, who in turn waited for Hitler's orders to prepare to attack Czechoslovakia before he would commit the coup's forces to action. During this slack period the conspirators debated Hitler's fate. Although Halder despised the Nazis and deplored their tyrannical rule over Germany, he also believed strongly in his personal oath of loyalty to Hitler. Halder opposed outright assassination, which might besmirch the army's reputation. If Hitler had to die, Halder preferred it to happen in some way not directly connected with the army or the army's actions in conducting the coup. Other senior officers, including Beck, Witzleben, and Canaris, wanted Hitler brought to trial for the crimes committed by his regime. They wanted the public to clearly understand what these crimes were, so the army could never be accused of stabbing Germany in the back, a reference to the "stab in the back" theory expounded at the end of World War I and which Hitler used to great advantage in his rise to power. The theory, invented by Hindenburg and Luddendorf, held that democratic-minded politicians had stabbed the German army in the back, by calling for armistice, just when it was poised to win its greatest victory in the war.



Hans Oster and others, including Dr. Hans von Dohnanyi, wanted to have Hitler declared insane by a panel of doctors. Dohnanyi had been collecting evidence to submit to such a panel for over five years, and his psychiatrist father-in-law, Professor Karl Bonhöffer, had already agreed to chair the panel.



Major Heinz and his well-armed escort team (which was to fight its way into the Chancellory) thought otherwise. In Heinz's words, "Hitler alive has more weight than all the troops at our disposal". His plan was to entice Hitler into some action that would provoke a gun battle in which the F ü hrer would be killed. At first Oster refused to go along with murdering Hitler, but Heinz's premise that a live Hitler was too dangerous a force to permit the establishment of a stable government in Germany was persuasive enough to win him over. They agreed, however, that no senior officer, not even Witzleben, was to know of their decision to kill Hitler. By 15 September 15, Heinz's assault squad was poised for action. They were secreted at the Berlin safe houses maintained by the Abwehr. Throughout Berlin and the surrounding suburbs military officers, police officials, and civilians, all members of the conspiracy to overthrow the Nazi regime, waited tensely for the word to begin. They all felt certain of three facts. First, that Hitler would issue the order to attack Czechoslovakia; second, that Britain and France would declare war on Germany, or at least rattle enough sabers to make it clear that they were about to declare war; and third, that the coup would succeed in deposing the Nazis and the war would be prevented. What they did not expect was the willingness of Neville Chamberlain to throw Czech independence to the wolves and allow Hitler to do as he pleased.



Then the unthinkable happened. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain decided to confer with Hitler personally. On 14 September, Chamberlain announced in the House of Commons that he would meet with the Reich Chancellor the following day.



In Britain the forces for appeasement mobilized to gather public support for Chamberlain's peace plan of giving Hitler what he wanted. Chamberlain's Air Minister, Sir Kingsley Wood, doctored a report from the Air Staff estimating that Germany's entire bomber force was under fifteen hundred planes, with less than one-third of them capable of being a threat to Britain in case of war. The altered report, which was leaked to the press, said that Germany was capable of sending fifteen hundred bombers against Britain, causing a half a million casualties in three weeks. The British public was painted a picture of skies darkened by masses of German bombers turning London and other major cities into infernos.



At the final Munich meeting on 28 September Hitler renounced his plans to destroy Czechoslovakia. France and Britain allowed him to intervene in Czechoslovakia by occupying the Sudetenland with German troops. The threat of war was averted. So, too, was the threat to Hitler's life that had been mounted by the coup's assault squad hidden in buildings all around the Chancellory. The assault squad was dispersed and their weapons returned to the Abwehr warehouse.



Everyone who knew of the planned coup recognized that the regular conscript troops would probably refuse to obey orders to arrest Hitler after such a great victory. Nevile Henderson, the Germanophile British ambassador, wrote to Lord Halifax, "by keeping the peace, we have saved Hitler and his regime".



The full import of the Munich debacle did not become entirely clear until after the war. At the Nuremberg trials, Marshal Keitel was asked whether Hitler would have attacked Czechoslovakia had France and Britain taken a stronger stand behind the Czechs. Wilhelm Keitel, who served Hitler faithfully throughout the war, answered, "Certainly not. We were not strong enough militarily".



American historian William Shirer, in his "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" (1960), took the view that although Hitler was not bluffing about his intention to invade, Czechoslovakia would have been able to offer significant resistance. Shirer believed that Britain and France had sufficient air defences to avoid serious bombing of London and Paris and would have been able to pursue a rapid and successful war against Germany. He quotes Churchill as saying the Munich agreement meant that "Britain and France were in a much worse position compared to Hitler's Germany". After Adolf Hitler personally inspected the Czech fortifications, he privately said to Josef Göbbels, "we would have shed a lot of blood" and that it was fortunate that there had been no fighting. [Josef Göbbels diary, 2 October 1938]

Hitler's bloodless victory in Munich disheartened the resistance. Never before had Hitler's popularity been higher than when the Sudetenland was annexed to the Reich. Some of those who took part in the planned coup would never again consider such activities favorably. They felt betrayed by the Allies' spineless capitulation to Hitler's blackmail.



Others remained dedicated to the cause of overthrowing Hitler: men like General Witzleben, General Beck, Lieutenant Colonel Oster, Gisevius, Schulenburg, and Major Heinz, joined by new resistance members, they regrouped to prepare for a renewed opportunity.

Also active in 1938 had been a group of would-be assassins gathered together by Dr. Wilhelm Abegg, a former Prussian state secretary. Abegg's plan was to build a compact bomb small enough to be concealed inside the clothing of an assassin yet powerful enough to cause widespread damage when it exploded. Abegg sought to eliminate as many Nazi leaders as possible along with Hitler.



Abegg devised an imaginative scheme to accost Hitler and the other Nazis with a deception that just might have worked. He formed a team of ten assassins, all former Prussian police officers who had served time in Nazi concentration camps and who had been ransomed by Abegg. The Prussians were to be dressed in stolen uniforms of Italian army courier officers. Each man was assigned a target whom he would approach, presumably with an important message from the Italian government. The man assigned to Hitler was to blow himself up along with his target, while the others were to shoot their assigned targets at the same time.



Abegg's plan was never activated because he had difficulty constructing a suitable bomb. After learning through contacts in the military that high-ranking officers were planning a coup against Hitler, he decided to step aside and leave Hitler's assassination to the generals. He believed they could carry it out much more effectively than he could.



During the period between the signing of the Munich accord and the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, the resistance movement, which had been less an organized movement and more a disjointed series of anti-Nazi or anti-war groups and individuals who had managed against all odds to unite in the 1938 coup, suffered dismemberment. Military officers were moved to new postings, and government officials, especially those in the Foreign Ministry, were transferred to new locations throughout the Reich.



General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord 1939, September

The coming of war, followed two days later by declarations of war against Germany by Great Britain and France, generated a flurry of activity among officers and others who felt that Germany was doomed unless Hitler was dead. In one instance, Albrecht von Kessel and Adam von Trott zu Solz, both members of Weizsäcker's Foreign Ministry circle, proposed to Lieutenant General Alexander von Falkenhausen that he invite Hitler to inspect the fortifications on the Bohemian border. Once there, Hitler's schedule would include a tour of a bunker where the general or a close aide would detonate a live grenade. The scheme was a bit bizarre, and Falkenhausen, although a coup sympathizer, did not think the plan was workable. He never sent the invitation.



Hitler did receive another invitation, however. This one was from Colonel General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, an independent-minded and tough officer who despised Hitler and the Nazis. Having retired as Commander-in-Chief of the army in 1933, he was recalled during the mobilization for the Polish invasion and appointed commander of Army Detachment A on the Lower Rhine. Although frustrated because his headquarters was in Cologne, far from Hitler, Hammerstein-Equord began plotting ways to kill Hitler as soon as he arrived at his command.



Since it was impossible for him to travel to Berlin without express permission, Hammerstein-Equord decided to invite Hitler to visit him. His persuasion for this visit was that the Allies would hear about Hitler inspecting the western defenses, and this would encourage their belief that Germany's western frontier was well defended. Once he lured Hitler within his reach, he would "render him harmless once and for all." Confidants who knew of his intention to kill Hitler did not doubt that this general, known as the "man of iron nerve," could do it if Hitler accepted his invitation.



Adolf Hitler was acutely aware of General Hammerstein-Equord's sentiments toward the Nazi Party, and he had no wish to jeopardize his safety by placing himself within the general's reach. He declined to visit Cologne. Shortly afterward, Hammerstein-Equord was transferred to Silesia and then quickly placed into permanent retirement. Before he died in April 1943, he confided to a friend his disappointment at the generals' placid submission to Hitler's authority, and how most refused to support the movement to overthrow the Nazis. "These fellows," he said, "make me, an old soldier, an anti-militarist." It is unfortunate that in 1938, when the case for action against Hitler became apparent, Hammerstein-Equord had no troops under his command and could not carry out an earlier pledge to kill Hitler if he were given troops.



Although both Britain and France declared war on Germany after the invasion of Poland, the Allies took no direct military action against Germany. This absence of real war, which later became known as the "phony war," gave many Germans hope of escaping another war of the magnitude of the 1914 to 1918 conflict. The absence of actual fighting between the Allies and Germany gave rise to the premise that a compromise could be found to re-establish peace.



All possibility for a peaceful solution vanished on September 27, 1939, when the Führer told the officers commanding the army, air force, and navy that he was determined to "destroy the enemy." He would, he told them, attack France and Great Britain. The neutrality of Belgium and Holland would be swept aside as German forces overran the French in their own country, leaving Great Britain to carry on alone.



As word spread of Hitler's intention to start a shooting war with the Western Allies, the resistance was given a new life and a new cause, to save the peace by preventing a war almost every competent observer knew would ultimately mean the destruction of Germany. Many of the men now proposing to depose the dictator had also been involved in the aborted coup of September 1938. Again they risked the possibility their actions might result in a civil war between their camp and the masses of new army recruits and the civilian population, most of whom viewed Hitler as a modern Caesar. In addition, what weighed heaviest on General Halder's mind was the fact that Germany was now officially at war with Great Britain and France. He did not want a coup attempt to cause turmoil within Germany that the Allies could exploit by invading the country during the transition from one government to another.



It is significant that the men who planned the overthrow and killing of Hitler did so because they were German patriots. While they had no quarrel with many of Hitler's earlier policies, especially reclaiming territory taken from Germany by the treaties following World War I, they did not want to acquire the land by force. Many believed that despite their just cause, force would lead to retaliation against Germany and finally to another war, perhaps another World War.



Warsaw 1939, October 5

Location: crossing Aleje Jerozolimskie - Nowy Swiat

The Polish army wanted to blow up Hitlers car, when it crossed the (now called) Square Charles de Gaulles. A human error prevetend the bomb to explode. Himmler's Bomb Plot 1939, November 8

Location: Bürgerbräukeller, München

Heinrich Himmler was undeniably Adolf Hitler's most sadistic henchman, an epitaph befitting the abominable crimes he committed against humanity. When this unimposing, pudgy little man wearing pince-nez spectacles bit open a cyanide capsule lodged between two teeth on the right side of his mouth during an examination by a British army doctor on 23 May 1945, he took many secrets with him. The most ominous was his role in a bombing that barely missed killing Hitler in 1939. Hitler customarily participated at the annual meeting in Munich commemorating the failed putsch of November 8-9, 1923. The meeting, held in a large hall of the Bürgerbräu keller, was always well attended by the "Old Fighters" who had participated in Hitler's first attempt to seize power.



The SS routinely began guarding closely any facility in which the Fü hrer was scheduled to appear at least several days before his arrival. This tight advance security was calculated to preclude the possibility of a political antagonist placing a bomb in the building set to explode during Hitler's visit. The "Old Fighters" convention was no exception to this practice. Several days before the meeting, crack SS guards placed the hall under maximum security.



Despite stringent security precautions, a thirty-six-year-old artisan named Georg Elser who was both a trained carpenter and master electrician unaccountably managed to slip undetected into the vast beer hall over a span of several nights just before the meeting. Elser had only recently been discharged from the concentration camp at Dachau where he was serving an indeterminate sentence for his activities as a member of a communist organization, the Red Front Fighters League.



Each night Elser worked quietly at his deadly task alone in the darkened hall. A diminutive man with a pale complexion and long dark hair offset by bright darting eyes, Elser bent to his work preparing the instrument for Adolf Hitler's demise with a special dedication.



Directly behind the platform from which Hitler traditionally delivered his speech was a pillar that was a main support for the roof. Dark wood paneling encased the support column. Elser cut an opening into the paneling allowing him entree to a narrow space between the panel and the support. The opening was sufficiently wide to permit him access to the space, yet small enough to escape notice by a casual observer. He fashioned a tiny door from a matching piece of paneling to disguise the opening. Elser's only fear was that a close examination of the pillar would expose his miniature door.



Incredibly, Elser managed to conceal himself inside the hall, undetected, on thirty-five separate occasions. As the date for Hitler's speech drew near, Elser worked feverishly to complete the preparations for his bomb.



As part of his death plot he had taken a job at a quarry specifically to enable him to steal Donarit, an explosive with the properties he required. He added to the Donarit some black powder and the explosive removed from a stolen 75-millimeter shell. The final touch was two Westminster clocks synchronized to pinpoint the timing of the explosion.



Because the Fü hrer was in the midst of the invasion of Poland, and because Germany was technically at war with both France and Britain, the meeting organizers planned a scaled down program for the 1939 ceremonies. At first Hitler decided to forego his customary speech and delegate his second in command, Rudolf Hess, to broadcast a nationwide radio address commemorating the anniversary. At the eleventh hour Hitler changed his mind. He would attend the ceremonies and deliver the speech in person.



On November 8 Hitler flew to Munich, but in deference to the foggy November weather he ordered that his personal train meet him there for the return trip. To avoid disrupting the normal train traffic, Hitler's train was scheduled to leave the Munich station at 9:31 P.M. that evening. To meet this departure time he would have to leave the beer hall no later than 9:10 P.M. Hitler's previous habit at these gatherings was to begin his speech at 8:30 P.M., speak for about one hour, and then spend approximately thirty minutes sipping weak beer and chatting with the rank and file members who had supported him from the early years.



When the Führer arrived, the large hall, gaily decorated with flags and banners, was packed with three thousand celebrants. The Blood Banner, the Nazi flag that had been used on the day of the putsch, was in its place of honor, and the party luminaries who were attending had taken their seats. Most prominent among them were Heinrich Himmler, Josef Gö bbels, Hans Frank, and Alfred Rosenberg.



The crowd rose to its feet and cheered when Hitler strode in at 8:00 P.M. He waved and smiled broadly. Hitler stepped to the platform and waited the better part of ten minutes, allowing the ovation to die down before beginning his speech. When the room was finally quiet he launched into a diatribe against Great Britain that lasted nearly one hour.



Predictably, Hitler accused Britain of fighting in World War I and then, just a month earlier, declaring war on Germany again purely for her own imperialist motives. He denounced the British claim that they were fighting for liberty and justice, and he mockingly shouted that God had rewarded Britain's good deeds with 480 million people around the world to dominate. Again and again his speech was interrupted by wild cheering.



Seated in the front row was a nervous Max Wünsche, the Fü hrer's young military aide, who kept checking his watch. He feared Hitler's speech would run too long and he would miss the train. Wünsche had given the train crew strict orders to leave the station precisely at 9:31 P.M., as Hitler had instructed. While a backup train would arrive a short time later as a security precaution, the young officer did not relish the prospect of waiting around the empty station for the alternate train while the Führer's temper rose.



As Hitler continued his attack on Great Britain, only a few feet behind him Georg Elser's two Westminster clocks quietly ticked away the minutes.



Hitler laughed at the British claim that they were fighting for civilization, and he questioned whether the civilization for which they fought was to be found in the mining districts of Newcastle or the urban slums of London. Meanwhile, the Westminster clocks ticked off their inexorable countdown to destruction.



At seven minutes after nine Hitler ended his speech. Joined by Himmler, Gö bbels, and his personal bodyguard, he promptly left the hall amid the deafening cheers of his supporters. Hitler's party boarded a fleet of waiting automobiles and sped directly to the railroad station. Wünsche was enormously relieved; the convoy would arrive in time to depart on the first train.



Thirteen minutes after leaving the hall, as the entourage proceeded through the city toward the station, a loud explosion was heard coming from the direction of the hall. Everyone turned instinctively to the rear window of their cars, but they were too far from the explosion to see what had caused the blast. By the time they arrived at the station the night was filled with the sounds of police and ambulance sirens and the ringing of fire bells.



Minutes before Hitler's train left the station, Eva Braun and her close friend, Herta Schneider, were welcomed aboard. As the train gathered speed through the darkness, the privileged passengers partied, with Hitler the only teetotaller aboard. When the train arrived in Nuremberg, Göbbels got off and entered the stationmaster's office to send several messages and receive the latest dispatches.



The propaganda chief returned pale and obviously shaken. In a trembling voice he told Hitler of the bombing of the Bürgerbräukeller. At first Hitler thought Göbbels was joking, but when he realized it was true he too turned pale and sat quietly for a few minutes to regain his composure. As the color returned to his face he spoke with controlled emotion. He attributed his timely exit from the hall only minutes before the explosion to a benevolent Providence and insisted it was a sure sign he was destined to reach his goal. Hitler spoke by telephone with SS General von Eberstein, the Munich police chief (who had been flatly forbidden to encroach on this strictly Party preserve with regular police security measures), and consoled the anguished SS general: Don't worry-it was not your fault. The casualties are regrettable, but all's well that ends well." By 7 A.M. the news was that six people had been killed (the death toll later rose to eight) and over sixty injured.



- David Irving, "Hitler's War"

Hitler then commanded his personal adjutant, Julius Schaub, to ensure that everything possible would be done for the victims of the explosion.

Georg Elser's bomb caused a section of the Bürgerbräukeller's roof to collapse on the Nazi Party gathering. Eight people died and sixty-three were injured. Eva Braun's father was among the injured. The ensuing peculiar series of events defies logic.



Ever wary of the omnipresent British Intelligence, Hitler quickly concluded that two British agents operating in Holland were responsible for the bombing. The two agents, Major R. H. Stevens and Captain S. Payne-Best, were negotiating with a man they believed to be a member of an anti-Nazi conspiracy in the German High Command. The man was actually an SS double agent.



Late that night Himmler telephoned the agent, SS Major Walter Schellenberg, in Venlo, a hamlet just across the Dutch border. He instructed Schellenberg to break off negotiations with the two British officers, kidnap them, and bring them into Germany. Schellenberg was hesitant at first, but Himmler made it clear the order came directly from Hitler.



The following day Schellenberg waited at a cafe in Venlo for his scheduled meeting with Stevens, Payne-Best, and a Dutch military intelligence officer, Lieutenant Klop. When the Buick carrying the three arrived at the cafe at precisely 4:00 P.M., the man known to them as Major Schä mmel was seated on the cafe terrace casually sipping an aperitif. Suspecting nothing, the trio stepped from the car and immediately came under deadly fire from a crack squad of SS Security Service men commanded by the notorious Alfred Helmut Naujocks.



Naujocks had been responsible for the staged attack on a German radio station in Gleiwitz, using prison camp inmates dressed in stolen Polish army uniforms. The incident had provided Hitler with an excuse for attacking Poland. A man of useful SS talents, Naujocks later disguised German soldiers as Dutch and Belgian border guards to prepare for the German invasion of those countries in May 1940.



In the gunfight that erupted behind the Venlo cafe, Lieutenant Klop was mortally wounded and both British officers taken prisoner. The SS squad then towed the disabled Buick across the frontier, less than two hundred feet away.



On the same day, Georg Elser was arrested near the town of Constance as he attempted, along with thousands of others, to flee into Switzerland. A search uncovered a large amount of incriminating evidence, including an unused postcard from the Bürgerbräuk eller, drawings of detonators and shells, parts of a detonator, his old membership card in the Red Front Fighters League, and a substantial sum of money in Swiss and German currency.



The kidnapping of Stevens and Payne-Best proved futile. Intense questioning of the two men failed to produce the slightest shred of evidence that they were even remotely connected to the Munich bombing. Elser, however, confessed to setting the bomb but refused to implicate anyone else. He told his interrogators that he had acted alone and had told no one of his scheme to kill Hitler. When they demanded to know why he wanted to kill the Fü hrer, Elser said he thought it was the only way to prevent Germany from going to war.



Despite repeated beatings and torture by Gestapo agents, Georg Elser insisted he had acted alone. Meanwhile, Hitler publicized the bombing as an "English plot." He wisely recognized the propaganda value of the assassination attempt, and he shrewdly used it to incite German public resentment against Great Britain. On November 21, Hitler declared he had incontrovertible proof that the British Secret Service was behind the bombing and that two British agents had been arrested near the Dutch border.



Finally, in the official explanation of the conspiracy to kill him, Hitler strung together every faction or individual that had ever opposed him. Elser was labeled a communist activist (to which there was some truth) who had been persuaded to become a British agent by Hitler's old National Socialist nemesis, Otto Strasser. The British were accused of supplying Elser with the materials to construct the bomb and promising him safe passage to sanctuary in Switzerland after the assassination.



In a Gestapo-produced film, Georg Elser actually demonstrated how he had manufactured the bomb that devastated the Bürgerbräukeller meeting hall, and he explained how he had planted it behind the wood paneling covering the support pillar. When Himmler brought the film and the Gestapo report to the Fü hrer, he refused to view the movie. Hitler categorically denounced the conclusion, which Himmler supported, that Elser had acted alone. Hitler rejected the report and attacked Himmler personally for failing to expose the conspiracy.



Himmler's advocacy of the conclusion that Elser acted alone in spite of his knowledge that Hitler believed the bomber was part of a conspiracy -- and wanted the Gestapo investigation to indicate so -- is out of character for a man whose reputation was one of total subservience to the Fü hrer's wishes. The logical position was for him to agree with Hitler and place the blame on the two British intelligence officers whom Schellenberg had kidnapped. It was completely unlike Himmler, and without explanation, to take the position he did, unless he was withholding information about the bombing from Hitler.



Major Stevens and Captain Payne-Best spent five years in various concentration camps but managed to survive the war. Shuttled from camp to camp, the two were eventually confined at Niederdorf in South Tyrol. There American forces liberated them on 28 April 1945. Several survivors of plots to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944, were rescued at the same time.



Himmler rewarded Schellenberg for his kidnapping of the two British officers by promoting him to major-general in the SS. He soon became a specialist in foreign espionage, and in early 1940 he furnished Hitler with a report that claimed to prove the existence of close ties between British military intelligence and Dutch military intelligence agencies. Hitler cited that report as part of his justification for invading Holland, which was a neutral country.



Georg Elser's punishment for attempting to kill Hitler was most unusual. It raises provocative questions about exactly who was actually behind the Bürgerbräuk eller bombing. Dictators such as Hitler and Stalin relish a prominent, well publicized trial of their enemies, real or imagined. It allows them to convince the public that evil men and women exist who plot against their authority, thereby justifying the need for draconian security measures. Holding these show trial victims up as examples, even if the evidence is fabricated by the prosecution, serves as a powerful deterrent to other potential opponents. There was ample precedence to expect that the Nazis would parade the Munich bomber before the public in a show trial, presenting all manner of evidence to implicate Hitler's personal and public enemies, especially the British. Incredibly, no such trial ever took place. Not until after the war was lost did Elser pay with his life for the attempted assassination.



Instead of a trial and public execution, Georg Elser was interned as a prisoner with special privileges by Himmler's SS. In a succession of concentration camps he was treated decidedly better than other inmates. He was referred to as a "special prisoner" known under the code name "Eller." In his biography of Adolf Hitler, Robert Payne described Elser as a prisoner who was to be feared or at least respected because he possessed important state secrets.



Ironically, although Elser did not know Stevens and Payne-Best, who were both alleged by the Nazis to be his accomplices, he met them in prison. At Sachsenhausen Elser met Payne-Best, whom he learned the Nazis wanted to implicate in the bombing. Elser told the Briton a fascinating story about how he had come to plant the bomb.



According to Elser, he was arrested as a communist activist in Munich during the summer of 1939 and sent to Dachau for re-education training. One day during his stay at Dachau he was summoned to the commandant's office, where he was questioned about his carpentry and electrical skills. His interrogators confided to him that several high-ranking Party officials were suspected of plotting to kill Hitler, but despite sufficient evidence the Gestapo was reluctant to arrest them because of the chaos it would cause in the upper echelons of government while the country was at war. Elser was asked if he would build and plant a bomb timed to explode shortly after Hitler completed his speech at the annual Munich celebration. In return for his co-operation he would be released from the camp, given a large sum of money, and allowed to escape to Switzerland.



Elser accepted the offer. After he fulfilled his part, he was arrested in a gross breach of the agreement. Following his arrest he was told it was a mistake because several overzealous border guards had not been informed of the plan. While he was held in custody, Gestapo agents coached him in testimony he was to deliver implicating both Stevens and Payne-Best in the bombing. Unaccountably, the expected trial never took place.



Later, after he was transferred from Sachsenhausen to Dachau, Elser related essentially the same story he had told Payne-Best to a noted Dachau inmate, the prominent anti-Nazi pastor, Reverend Martin Niemö ller.



Georg Elser finally paid for his crime four and one-half years later, just weeks before the end of the war. In the declining months of the Third Reich, many opponents of the regime being held in concentration camps and prisons were slaughtered by the Nazis. Elser's death was made to look as if it happened during an Allied bombing raid.



Among the documents uncovered after the war was a letter from Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller to the commandant of Dachau, SS-Obersturmbannführer Eduard Weiter, instructing him to kill Elser during the next air raid. Mü ller even told Weiter the exact words to use when announcing Elser's death. On 16 April 1945, Weiter announced that Georg Elser had been mortally wounded during an Allied bombing raid.



Unfortunately for historical accuracy, the elusive answer to the question of who was actually behind the bombing of the Munich beer hall will probably never be resolved. Three viable possibilities exist: (1) Himmler arranged the bombing with Hitler's approval to stir up anti-British hatred among the German population; (2) Himmler arranged the bombing, without Hitler's knowledge, for whatever personal reason he may have had; and (3) Elser accomplished the entire task by himself.



Taking the last first, practically no one with any understanding of the workings of Nazi Germany could conclude that Georg Elser, a man of limited intelligence, could possibly have succeeded in placing the bomb undetected by security agents. Most historians agree that Himmler, for some unclear motive, planned the entire incident. At the time of the bombing, William L. Shirer wrote in his diary the phrase, "smells of another Reichstag fire". Robert Payne concluded that Elser had been Himmler's tool.



If in fact Shirer and Payne are correct and Himmler actually did arrange the bombing, an important new question requires an answer. Was the bomb planted with Adolf Hitler's knowledge and approval? This question may be easy to answer by looking at the political result of the explosion. Hitler used the attempt on his life to arouse German resentment against Britain. He accused the British of trying to win the war by killing him. His strategy worked. Hitler's wild, unsupported accusations radically increased anti-British feelings among the German population.



It is difficult, though, to imagine Adolf Hitler allowing Himmler or anyone else to plant a time bomb just a few feet away from where he stood. It is even more difficult to imagine Hitler permitting a known communist and enemy to plant the bomb. Without question, if the bomb had exploded while Hitler was speaking, he would have died. It is hard to believe that even Hitler would take such a chance with his life merely for propaganda reasons. Surely the same thing could have been accomplished by the arrest of known British agents, such as Stevens and Payne-Best, and by prosecuting them before a Nazi court on fabricated charges using bribed or coerced witnesses to testify that the two had planned to kill Hitler. The effect might have been less spectacular than a bomb that killed eight people, but the result would have probably been no less effective in its impact on the public's perception. It is unlikely that Hitler would actually risk his life to achieve such a questionable propaganda advantage.



When all the facts are assembled, it seems reasonable to assume that Heinrich Himmler plotted the bombing. If, as is likely, Hitler knew nothing of the plan in advance, it is clearly possible that Himmler, an ambitious schemer who longed for great military power (as evidenced by his ultimately building the SS into a private army of thirty-five divisions), could have contrived to kill Hitler so he could replace him as Germany's triumphant head of state just as the Third Reich stood on the verge of military conquest.



Georg Elser has been the subject of rumours and various conspiracy theories since the Bürgerbräukeller bombing. After the war, Protestant pastor and theologian Martin Niemöller, also in custody in the 'Bunker' at Sachsenhausen, gave credence to the rumour that Elser had been a member of the SS and that the whole assassination attempt had been staged by the Nazis to portray Hitler as being protected by Providence.



In 1948 Allen Welsh Dulles, the future Director of Central Intelligence (de facto head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency) possibly summed up the full range of conspiracy theories when he wrote: "On 8 November a bomb exploded in Bürgerbräukeller in Munich shortly after Hitler had given his annual speech on the anniversary of the beer hall putsch of 1923 and after he had left the building. This event still remains unresolved. "Some evidence suggests that the infernal machine was exploded with the knowledge of Hitler and Himmler in order to consolidate the German sense of community, or, as in the case of the Reichstag fire, to give rise to a new wave of terror. I heard there were photographs showing a high-ranking SS officer standing next to Hitler with a watch in hand, to take care that the leaders escaped in time. Others claim the attack was the work of communists acting independently and without the knowledge of other anti-Nazi groups. A new report presents the plot as the attempted assassination of an illegal socialist group". Julius Schaub, who was responsible for seeing to it that his chief reached the railroad station on time, nervously passed him cards on which he had scrawled increasingly urgent admonitions: "Ten minutes!" then "Five!" and finally a peremptory "Stop!"-a method he had previously had to use to remind his Führer, who never used a watch, of the passage of mortal time. "Party members, comrades of our National Socialist movement, our German people, and above all our victorious Wehrmacht: Siegheil !" Hitler concluded, and stepped into the midst of the Party officials who thronged forward. A harassed Julius Schaub managed to shepherd the Führer out of the hall at twelve minutes past nine. The express was due to leave from the main railway station in nineteen minutes.



- David Irving, "Hitler's War" In 1969 historical research by Anton Hoch based on "The Gestapo Protokoll" (interrogation report) dated 19–23 November 1939, found that Elser had acted alone and there was no evidence to involve the Nazi regime or any outside group in the assassination attempt.

Coup 1939, November

Location: unknown

By late October 1939, General Halder was surrounded by coup conspirators. His deputy and senior quartermaster of the General Staff, General Karl Heinrich von Stülpnagel, was an active participant in urging Halder to begin planning for a new coup attempt to avoid a shooting war with the Allies. Other officers of colonel and lower rank rallied behind Stülpnagel, including one, Lieutenant Colonel Henning von Tresckow, who would eventually head a future conspiracy to kill Hitler.



Finally, events began to take shape when Hitler announced that his attack on the neutral countries would take place between November 15 and 20. The coup planned for 1939 was not as well organized or armed as the coup planned in 1938, but it still had a chance to succeed if Halder could gather the courage to give the command. Halder was already sensitive about his role in the impending coup. He remembered the June 1934 massacre Hitler had perpetrated on the SA, and he surmised that Hitler had learned of their plans and intended to do the same to the OKH. He envisioned army headquarters surrounded by armed SS groups, the building searched by Gestapo agents, and possibly the members of the General Staff murdered like Röhm and his associates. This fantasy drove Halder to desperate measures, since not enough armed guards were posted at OKH headquarters to withstand an assault by the SS.



Halder proposed to Admiral Canaris he would be ready to act if the Abweher chief would take the responsibility of killing Hitler. The Admiral exploded in anger and replied that Halder should "shoulder the responsibility in a clear-cut fashion."



The men who had spent tense hours anxiously waiting for the coup to begin heard nothing from Halder. His promised order never came, and they now sat around in small groups at OKH and Abwehr wondering what to do next. Although they were clear about their goals, without a leader they could not order out the troops necessary for the coup.



Hitler began a new series of postponements of the offensive, first to November 19, then November 22, then December 3. His indecision continued until May 1940, when the attack was finally launched. During this time people like Oster, Gisevius, Groscurth, Canaris, and the other hard line plotters tried unsuccessfully to persuade Halder to set the coup in motion before the shooting began. As each new date was fixed, the coup leaders reacted with increased tension not unlike the anticipation felt by soldiers who, knowing an attack is about to start, wait tensely for the final order to begin. After each emotional high of preparation there was a letdown in frustration as Hitler once again postponed the attack. Further, many resistance members saw this interval as their last opportunity to elicit from the Allies an agreement to refrain from attacking Germany while a coup was in process. They expected that after the violation of neutral countries and the spilling of French and British blood, the Allies would be in no mood to deal with any Germans, Nazi or not.



The irresolute behavior of top army leaders, which led to the failure of the two planned coups, the first in 1938 and the second in 1939, convinced most of the conspirators that an elaborately organized coup might not be the best way to topple Hitler. What was required was to present the leading generals with a fait accompli, Hitler's death. From now until 1944, elaborate coup plans took a back seat to efforts by individuals and small groups to assassinate Hitler.



Group Oster 1939, November

Location: Reichskanzlei

Erich Kordt of the Foreign Ministry decided to take an action that he hoped would free the generals from their oath of allegiance to Hitler. He was one of the few conspirators who had access to the Führer, although it was limited to Hitler's anteroom. He was well known in the Chancellory and could enter the anteroom with impunity. Now his visits became more frequent and his behavior more conspicuous, a tactic calculated to ensure that all the guards got to recognize him as a routine visitor. Oster promised to furnish explosives from the Abwehr supply for Kordt's use. His plan was simple. When Hitler emerged from his inner office and entered the anteroom (as was his practice either to give instructions to an aide or to welcome his next appointment), Kordt would approach him, grab him tightly, and explode the bomb, which would kill both men.



The opportunity never materialized because the Gestapo had assumed control of all explosives in the Reich, including those in the Abwehr arsenal. Gestapo control meant that the distribution of explosives was strictly limited to those who could demonstrate an approved need, which few conspirators could. This answers the many critics who ask, "Why didn't someone blow Hitler up during a meeting, or simply shoot him?" It was almost impossible to enter the Führer's presence without being searched, and carrying a weapon was forbidden. Kordt would certainly have been arrested if he was discovered with his pistol in Hitler's presence.

Erich Kordt (10 December 1903 – 11 November 1969), was a German diplomat who was involved in the German Resistance to the regime of Adolf Hitler. A convinced Anglophile, Kordt spoke perfect English after gaining a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. He joined the German Foreign Office in 1928, and was posted to Geneva and Bern in Switzerland. He then served as Legationsrat (counsellor) in the London Embassy under Ambassdor Joachim von Ribbentrop, for whom he developed both a personal dislike and a professional disdain. Despite this, he became a member of the Nazi Party in November 1937, and in February 1938, when Ribbentrop became Foreign Minister, he was appointed head of the Foreign Office's "Ministerial Bureau". Both Erich Kordt and his brother, Theodor, played a part in the Oster Conspiracy of 1938, which was a proposed plan to assassinate Adolf Hitler if Germany went to war with Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland. Theodor Kordt, who acted as Chargé d'Affaires at the London embassy, was considered a vital contact with the British on whom the success of the plot depended; the conspirators needed strong British opposition to Hitler's seizure of the Sudetenland. Erich used his brother as an envoy to urge the British government to stand up to Hitler over the Czechoslovakia crisis, in the hope that Army officers would stage a coup against Hitler. However, in the event, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, apprehensive of the possibility of war, negotiated interminably with Hitler and eventually conceded to him. This destroyed any chance of the plot succeeding since Hitler was then seen in Germany as the "greatest statesman of all times at the moment of his greatest triumph". In June 1939, Kordt went to London to warn Robert Vansittart, the diplomatic advisor to the British government, of the secret negotiations between Germany and the Soviet Union which were to lead to the Nazi-Soviet Pact. He was dismayed that all approaches made by the German resistance movement within the German Foreign Office were ignored by the British. In April 1941, Kordt was posted to Tokyo as German embassy First Secretary and later to Nanking as German Consul, where he worked as an agent for the Soviet spy Richard Sorge until 1944. He narrowly avoided being killed by a Japanese hitman when Japanese Intelligence discovered his espionage activities. Postwar In June 1948, at the Nuremberg Trials, Kordt testified on behalf of Ernst von Weizsäcker, State Secretary of the Foreign Ministry of Nazi Germany, and later German ambassador to the Vatican. Weizsäcker was on trial for his role in Hitler's aggressive foreign policy. Partly as a result of Kordt's testimony, Weizsäcker was acquitted. This aroused the hostility of Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who blocked Kordt's return to a career at the Foreign Office. From 1951, Kordt was a professor of international law at the University of Cologne.

NKVD attack 1939

Location: Osteria Bavaria, München

English agents of the Russian NKVD investigated Hitlers habits in order to kill him. They plan to blow Hitler up in the restaurant Osteria Bavaria. When Germeny reached an agreement with Russia the plans get cancelled.



Paris 1940, July 27

Location: Champs-Elysées

All chance of organizing a coup ended, at least temporarily, on 19 May 1940, when German panzers stormed into Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and France with startling success. In a stunning defeat, France signed an armistice on June 22 conceding to Germany the right to occupy half the country. The Low Countries had capitulated within days of the attack.

Decisive victory boosted Hitler's stature with the German people to even greater levels, while the generals who predicted disaster looked patently foolish. The resistance members now faced the prospect of having no support from troop commanders. Even General, now Field Marshal, Witzleben, a firebrand of anti-Hitlerism, said he had abandoned all hope of a coup because Hitler was far too popular with the people. He said the younger army officers and men would not support a coup because they could see no reason why the man who had restored Germany's national pride and regained the territory taken from her in 1918 should be replaced by force.

With plans for a coup suspended indefinitely, the more virulent anti-Nazis now turned to the remaining alternative, a simple assassination of Hitler. If it succeeded, they hoped the army would act to prevent Göbbels, Himmler, or Göring from taking power. Much like the earlier attempts on Hitler's life by political opponents, assassination plots developed by military officers usually involved a tight circle of conspirators and placed the plotters in grave danger.



At this point in the war, as Hitler began preparations to invade the Soviet Union, virtually every ranking member of the conspiracy against him -- including its leaders, General Beck -- was reconciled to the inescapable truth that arresting and imprisoning Hitler was no longer a viable option. The Nazi organizations, especially the SS, had grown too large and powerful and would not abdicate their privileges without a struggle, which would result in a civil war. This was especially true if Hitler remained alive and his supporters thought there was a chance they could free him. Except for a small few whose religious beliefs forbade tyrannicide, everyone agreed with Major Wilhelm Heinz, who had commanded the assault squad designated to shoot Hitler in the 1938 coup: "The Living Hitler must die".



During the next four years no fewer than twelve bona fide attempts to kill Hitler were made by military officers. Many took their lead from General Hammerstein's 1939 strategy and sought to induce the Führer to visit an army field headquarters.



The first of these assassination intrigues was scheduled soon after the French signed the armistice. Plans were immediately made for a victory parade in Paris, which everyone expected the Führer to review. The parade was set for July 27, and a flood of troops were moved toward the former French capital to take part in the celebration.



In Paris, two men planned Hitler's death. They were Lieutenant Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg and Dr. Eugen Gerstenmaier. Schulenburg was a reserve officer who, as vice president of the Berlin police, had been an active participant in earlier attempted coups in Berlin. He was called to active duty in May 1940. Gerstenmaier was an official of the Evangelical Church who worked in the Information Division of the Foreign Ministry. The two had talked earlier in Berlin of organizing a small officer's cadre to arrest Hitler, but nothing came of it. Now they decided to carry out their mission to unseat the Nazis by killing the Party leader, Adolf Hitler. The coming victory parade in Paris provided the opportunity they needed. Their plan called for shooting Hitler while he stood in the reviewing stand along the parade route.



On July 20 Hitler cancelled the parade. He quietly slipped unannounced into Paris in the early morning hours of July 23 and visited several places of personal interest, including Napoleon's tomb, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, and the Palace of Justice. Just as discreetly he left the city, his would-be assassins unaware of his brief sojourn there.



Paris 1941, May 21

Location: unknown In May 1941, a parade of German troops was again scheduled for Paris. German army and SS divisions were assembled and a reviewing stand for Hitler and other dignitaries was constructed near the Place de la Concorde for the parade on the Champs-Elysées. A plan to kill Hitler while he reviewed the parade was worked out by staff officers of Field Marshal von Witzleben's headquarters. Witzleben was Commander-in-Chief West, with headquarters outside Paris in St. Germain. The staff members and an operations officer from the Paris commander's staff were to shoot Hitler point-blank. If they failed to kill him, another officer was assigned to throw a bomb at him. The shooters were Captain Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld and Major Hans Alexander von Voss, both of Witzleben's staff, and Captain Graf von Waldersee of the Paris staff. Hitler frustrated his enemies once again, declining at the last minute to make the trip to Paris. A third Paris-based attempt on Hitler's life, of which little is known, allegedly involved Witzleben's replacement as Commander-in-Chief West, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, SS-Sturmbannführer Hans-Victor von Salviati, and Major Achim Oster. The plotters again invited Hitler to visit Paris in 1942, but the wary Führer refused their invitation.



Most assassination plots relied on Hitler's adherence to a predetermined agenda, but the assassins were invariably thwarted by Hitler's practice of avoiding routine or established schedules in his travels. Hitler's policy was to live his life "irregularly," as he put it. "Walk, drive and travel at irregular times and unexpectedly" was his personal formula for security against assassins.



Borisov 1941, August 4

Location: Heeresgruppe Mitte

War with Russia, which began on 22 June 1941, with a threepronged German attack across Soviet borders, opened new opportunities to eliminate Hitler. Because many German field marshals and generals considered the invasion a potential disaster rivaling Napoleon's ill-fated 1812 Russian campaign, several of them flirted, although briefly, with the resistance, but some came to stay.



Major General Henning von Tresckow.was a Prussian who had served as a platoon commander during World War I, traveled internationally for a bank following the war, re-entered the army in 1924, and served in various posts, including several years on the General Staff.



Growing disgust for the Nazi war crimes enabled Tresckow to expand his resistance base. He used his position as senior operations officer on Field Marshal von Bock's staff to mold the staff into the core of a new resistance movement against Hitler. Among the dissenters who operated at Army Group Center under Tresckow's leadership were Lieutenant Fabian von Schlabrendorff, the man who had informed the British of General Hammerstein's plan to kill Hitler; Lieutenant Colonel Hans Alexander von Voss, who had planned to shoot Hitler in Paris during the planned May 1941 parade; Lieutenant Colonel Georg Schulze-Buttger; Lieutenant Colonel Berndt von Kleist, who maintained communications with the resistance in Berlin; and Colonel Rudolf-Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, who would later make a suicide attempt on Hitler's life.



Schlabrendorff, who survived the war and wrote his memoirs of the resistance, traveled to Berlin in October 1941 to examine the possibility of rescuing the coup with resistance leaders there. He met with von Hassell to explore the Allies' attitude toward fostering a change of government, and he was told that the German resistance could expect no help from the Allies but could doubtlessly negotiate a reasonable peace if Hitler was removed.



Tresckow first planned to assassinate Hitler in the late summer of 1941, while the Russian campaign was still going well for the Germans. Bock's troops were only two hundred miles from Moscow, which many of the generals deemed the most important target in the Soviet empire, when Hitler issued an order to divide Army Group Center's Panzer and other mobile forces in half, transferring half to Army Group North for its thrust against Leningrad, and half to Army Group South to help von Rundstedt's drive to capture Kiev, capital of Ukraine. Army Group Center would then have basically only infantry troops for its attack on Moscow.



Halder and Brauchitsch at OKH, and Bock at Army Group Center, objected strenuously to Hitler's plan -- so strenuously that the Führer decided to visit Army Group Center to personally deliver the order to Bock. Tresckow and Schlabrendorff welcomed this opportunity to kill Hitler and arranged, with a small group of officers, to shoot him when he entered one of their headquarters buildings.



Unfortunately, the conspirators were committed to fighting a war, and their energies were divided between pursuing combat plans and organizing the assassination. Also working against them was Hitler's obsession with the "irregular" in his actions.



The visit was scheduled several times only to be cancelled, rescheduled, then cancelled again.



Finally, in early August a fleet of cars arrived from the Führer Headquarters in East Prussia to await Hitler's arrival. Hitler refused to use cars supplied by the army for fear they might be booby trapped with explosives. When he finally arrived at Bock's headquarters in Borrisov, Tresckow and his fellow conspirators were overwhelmed at the amount of security people that accompanied him and the rigid security measures they imposed. The would-be assassins barely caught a glimpse of Hitler, much less an opportunity to shoot him. Orsja 1941, November 13 (not proven and unconfirmed attack)

Location: unknown

Stalin heard from the English that Hitlers train Europa came to Orsja on 13 November. The place where the train stood was bombed. But Hitler wasn’t there. He was at the Wolfschanze at that time. The story was never confirmed, not by the Russians and not by the Germans. There’s no proof of a bombing at all. Moskow 1941

Location: unknown, not important

The NKVD made plans to kill Hitler in Moskow after the city fell in German hands. But it didn’t. Poland 1942, June 8

Location: railway between Dirschau (Tczew) and Konitz (Chojnice)

There are stories about the Polish resistance derailing a train. They thought it was Hitlers train Amerika, but it wasn’t. There’s not much sure about this story, though. Soviet planes 1942

Location: unknown

Sovijet planes shoot at Hitlers plane. Some bullets hit the plane. Airfield Zaporozje February 1943

Location: east of the city

When Hitler met Manstein in Zaporozje, his pilot was waiting for him on the airfield. Russian tanks came very close to the airfield, but because they didn’t have enough fuel and because they thought there were a lot of heavily armed Germans in the area, they decided not to attack. This obviously doesn’t really count as an attack on Hitlers life. Poltava 1943

Location: Headquarters Heeresgruppe B

Another plot to assassinate Hitler was hatched at Army Group B Headquarters at Walki near Poltava in the Ukraine. This time the conspirators were General Hubert Lanz, his Chief of Staff, Major-General Dr. Hans Speidel and Colonel Count von Strachwitz, the commanding officer of the Grossdeutschland Tank Regiment. The plan was to arrest Hitler on his anticipated visit to Army Group B in the spring of 1943. Hitler, at the last minute, changed his mind and instead decided to fly to Zaporosje, further east, on 15 February 1943 to meet Fieldmarshall Von Manstein instead of going to Poltava.



Cointreau bomb March 1943

Location: Smolensk, Heeresgruppe Mitte

Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, commander of Army Group Center on the eastern front, finally managed to lure Hitler into visiting his headquarters at Smolensk. Colonel Henning von Tresckow, who hated Hitler and the Nazis, together with Lt. Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Colonel Rudolf von Gersdorff and Cavalry Captain Georg von Böselager had hatched plans to get rid of their Führer. The final one was to destroy Hitler's plane in midflight. This option had several distinct advantages: Field Marshal Kluge's approval was not necessary, and Hitler's death would not directly involve army officers who could have underlying misgivings because of their oath.



It did, however, require two vital ingredients: (1) a detailed schematic of Hitler's plane, especially the armored compartment where the Fü hrer stayed during flight, and (2) enough sophisticated explosives to do the job. The force of the explosives was critical because Hitler's armored compartment was constructed in such a manner that if his plane was disabled the compartment could be detached from the aircraft and float gently down, using special parachutes that were connected to it. It was therefore vital to destroy the armored section of the plane to succeed.



Tresckow contacted Captain Ludwig Gehre, a member of the conspiracy in Berlin, and asked him to obtain copies of the prints for Hitler's Condor aircraft. Gehre called a close friend and member of the resistance, Otto John, who was employed by Lufthansa, and invited him to his house. Swearing John to secrecy, Gehre outlined the scheme to bomb Hitler's personal aircraft and asked John if he could get plans of the craft. John cautioned Gehre that it would be next to impossible to plant a bomb on the Führer's Focke-Wulf 200 Condor. The aircraft was kept under tight security by armed SS guards who searched every person approaching the plane, including the ground crews who serviced and cleaned it. John, however, was able to get drawings of the craft, and these were forwarded to Tresckow in Smolensk.



Next Tresckow and Schlabrendorff needed the explosives with which to do the job. It would seem that senior officers attached to a frontline army headquarters would have easy access to explosives, but this was not the case. All explosive materials in the Third Reich were kept under tight inventory control by the Gestapo. The material for their bomb would have to be acquired in small amounts over a period of time.



Tresckow assigned this task to Colonel Rudolf-Christoph Baron von Gersdorff, the Army Group Center Intelligence Officer. What was required, Tresckow explained to Gersdorff, was an explosive material that was compact yet yielded a high energy explosion using noiseless time delay fuses.



Gersdorff told Tresckow that German-made time delay fuses were unworkable because they all emitted an audible hiss. He canvassed several Abwehr supply depots, finding what he needed at an arsenal maintained by the Sabotage Division. Explaining that he was training a cadre to counteract disruptive partisan activity, he asked the officer in charge of the arsenal if he could demonstrate several different types of explosives his teams might use.



Gersdorff settled on "Plastic C," a volatile substance the British regularly supplied to partisan bands throughout occupied Europe. Quantities had fallen into the Abwer's hands when German army units either tracked British parachute drops or recovered them from captured partisans. Plastic C consisted of over 88 percent hexogen, with the remainder an amalgam of materials such as axle grease to prevent the hexogen from crystallizing. An officer who was knowledgeable in the use of Plastic C proudly showed Gersdorff what less than a pound would do, when he detonated it under the turret of a captured Soviet tank. The force of the explosion blew the turret off the tank, hurling it more than twenty yards away.



Gersdorff asked the arsenal commander, Lieutenant Buchholz, for samples of Plastic C, along with various fuses and detonators to demonstrate the explosive for Field Marshal Kluge. After signing the required receipts and receiving thorough instructions on handling the material and the detonators, he was provided a modest quantity. A few more trips to other supply depots gave Gersdorff enough Plastic C to make several test runs, with enough left to sabotage Hitler's plane.



Tresckow, Gersdorff, and Schlabrendorff experimented with the explosive and found its only disadvantage was that at temperatures below zero degrees Centigrade it sometimes failed to explode. Satisfied that Plastic C would do the job, providing the temperature was not too cold, they fashioned a package to look like two bottles of Cointreau, a premium brandy bottled in square decanters. The square shape was easy to duplicate, making the package appear authentic. The package was heavily wrapped and tied tightly with cord to discourage closer inspection.



An ingenious device to detonate the bomb was chosen from Gersdorff's selection. When a small vial of acid in the device was crushed, the acid spilled into a wad of cotton. The acid then ate through a tiny trip wire that released a plunger that drove the detonator into the explosive. Once the capsule was broken, the acid would require thirty minutes until it was absorbed by the cotton and the spring was released.



When the deadly package was ready, Schlabrendorff kept it inside a metal box in his quarters, awaiting Hitler's visit. The conspirators at Army Group Center now had preparations solidly in place for two alternative plans to kill Hitler. No one connected with the plot doubted that if one misfired the other would succeed. As far as the plotters were concerned, when Hitler made his expected visit he was as good as dead.



On 13 March 1943, the sky over Smolensk was a cloudless blue expanse. The operations officer at the small airfield near headquarters heard the steady drone of approaching aircraft and watched the distant specks take sharper form as he called Kluge's duty officer with the news that the Fü hrer's plane was about to land. Tresckow and the field marshal hurried into staff cars for the short ride to the airstrip. Overhead, three Condors approached the runway escorted by a formation of Messerschmidt-109 fighters. While Kluge and Tresckow went to greet Hitler, Schlabrendorff telephoned Gehre in Berlin to alert him that Operation Flash was about to begin. Gehre immediately informed Olbricht, then Dohnanyi, who promptly told Oster. Oster, in turn, contacted Beck with the news. The resistance waited anxiously for the word to strike.



The Condors landed and taxied off the runway to allow the fighter escort room to land. Hitler stepped from the lead Condor, descended the steps, and greeted Kluge and his staff warmly. He declined Kluge's invitation to drive him to headquarters in his staff car. Hitler, appearing older than most of those present remembered him, and exhibiting a noticeable stoop, proceeded to his personal car, which his chauffeur, Erich Kempka, had driven to Smolensk. The detachment of SS guards that accompanied Kempka was supplemented by a platoon flown in on the second Condor.



Rounding out the entourage were several staff officers; Hitler's personal physician, Dr. Theodor Morell; a stenographer; Hitler's personal chef; and a photographer to record highlights of the visit for posterity. The chef personally prepared all Hitler's meals. Dr. Morell, who like his arch-rival Göring had grown rich and fat off his relationship with the Führer, always tasted Hitler's food in his presence before the Führer ate anything.On an earlier visit to a frontline headquarters several Soviet tanks had come ominously close to Hitler's plane, prompting the SS to beef up the Fü hrer's security force. His escort for this visit was double the usual complement. Sensing Hitler's preoccupation with security, Army Group Center seized on this opportunity to volunteer a squadron of Cavalry Regiment Center's troops, under command of Major König, to augment Hitler's security shield. The officers of this squadron, who had sworn to shoot Hitler, were now perfectly positioned to kill him while he walked from his car to the headquarters building, or when he was returning to the car. An earlier suggestion to shoot Hitler while he ate in the mess was rejected by Kluge because he felt it unseemly to shoot a man while he was eating. Also, there was the risk of hitting one of the officers seated with Hitler, possibly even Kluge, whom the conspirators expected would assume command of the entire front and stabilize the situation until a truce was arranged.



The assassins in Cavalry Regiment Center never received the order to shoot, possibly (as explained later by Major König) because Hitler changed his original route and the mounted gu