Bombing Hitler (10 page)

After months of investigation, Stuttgart Gestapo official Rappold arrived at a view that reflected the efforts of the threatened community around Elser to distance itself: “Georg Elser was a very talented craftsman, but in his private life he was an eccentric.” The birth of the legend of Elser the eccentric, which still lives on, can be traced to the sense of helplessness felt by those being interrogated as they sat in the presence of the omniscient and unscrupulous Gestapo and saw themselves being treated as accomplices.

O
N THE MORNING
of November 13, 1939, the Gestapo invaded Königsbronn, making arrests: Georg Elser's parents, his siblings, his relatives, and their spouses were all brought in. Everything had to be done in a great rush—simply in order to increase the atmosphere of intimidation. So Georg's brother, who worked at the Königsbronn ironworks, was not allowed to remove his work apron or change clothes; he was taken as he was to Stuttgart. It was not until November 28 that those arrested were to return to Königsbronn from Berlin.

A reason for the arrests was never given. Although they remained top secret, word about them got around. On the first day, people in Königsbronn were rounded up and placed in custody in Heidenheim; in the evening they were transported in cars by the Gestapo to Stuttgart, where they were imprisoned at Gestapo headquarters on Büchsenstrasse. While Georg's mother, Maria Elser, was placed in a common cell with five other women, most of the others were placed in single cells. All were kept isolated from each other. Maria was interrogated once or twice daily, always by a different person. She didn't believe that her Georg was the assassin. (And as late as 1950 she still had doubts—perhaps he had just been used by someone else. She would later report that her husband, who died in 1942, had been assaulted during the interrogations, and that he had talked “a little too much, which he shouldn't have done.”)

Maria Elser was sent alone on the night train to Berlin before the others, where she was taken to the prison at Moabit, brought face to face with Georg, and then, like the other family members who followed, locked up in the Hotel Kaiserhof—in a kind of “informal custody.”

Georg's sister Maria Hirth was subjected to the worst treatment. The reason for this was the baggage that Georg had left with her as well as his last visit to her on November 6. Maria Hirth was considered a co-conspirator because the large suitcase with the false bottom contained sketches, clock parts, detonators, and the like, and in the tool chest there was almost everything that the assassin had used. Thus Georg's sister fell victim to an old saying about the people of Württemberg: They can't throw anything away, especially not when someone has given his all to acquire it and use it regularly. If Elser had taken the tools, sketches, and bomb-making materials and thrown them into the deepest part of the Isar River in Munich, he would have spared his sister much terror and trauma. Georg was a superb craftsman and well experienced at keeping quiet, but he had no concept of the internal workings of the terror apparatus—he lacked the political experience.

In her witness testimony after the war, Maria Hirth said only that she had been “treated very severely” during the interrogations in Stuttgart—a gross understatement by a woman who had clearly been intimidated. Only her sister Anna Lober dared to tell the truth: “During the interrogations, my sister Maria Hirth, who lives in Stuttgart, was the only one they threatened to kill if she didn't tell the truth.” Her tormentor was the notorious Gestapo official Paul Bâssler, who subsequently was kept longer than anyone else in Allied internment camps because of his mistreatment of people in the cellars of the Stuttgart Gestapo. Maria Hirth, the one most seriously affected, was, like all the others from Königsbronn, taken at first to the detention prison in Moabit, then a few days later to the Kaiserhof.

Her sister Anna Lober and her husband were arrested in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen on November 13, taken to Gestapo headquarters on Büchsenstrasse, and booked in like all the others, with fingerprints and photographs. The Elsers, one and all, were considered to be criminals. Despite her inquiries, Anna Lober was given no reason for the arrest, “which really made me angry,” as she stated to the Kripo for the record after the war in a remark truly worthy of her dead brother. But she too did not originally want to believe that Georg Elser had blown up the Bürgerbräukeller; she too was interrogated “in a very harsh manner.” After the war, now without the Gestapo on her back, she managed to reach a conclusion: “It is believable that my brother came up with the idea of executing this attack; he was unquestionably in a position to undertake the technical preparations for the attack on his own.” She nevertheless still had some suspicions that others might have been involved in the instigation and financing of the attack. None of the siblings could see inside Georg—there was a wall of silence between them. It was a family that, according to Georg Elser's statements, was apolitical. From an early age, he had preferred not to speak of politics at home, where there was always strife anyway because of his father's drinking and violent tendencies.

Like his siblings, Leonhard Elser, the youngest, was arrested on November 13, and his wife a few days later. When the Gestapo tried to take her out of the laundry in her work clothes, she insisted adamantly that she had to change, and went up into her apartment. The two secret service men, not wanting to let her out of their sight, tried to follow her into her bedroom. She explained that she wanted to be alone, and quickly shut the door and locked it—a gesture that, with a bit of courage, was possible even in a Gestapo state.

On November 15, Elser's girlfriend Elsa Härlen was also arrested, at her mother's place in Göppingen-Jebenhausen. On the same day, the quarry owner Georg Vollmer was picked up in Königsbronn along with his son Ernst, as well as the explosives expert Kolb and the bookkeeper.

Around November 23, the Gestapo moved all of the relatives being held in the Stuttgart police jail along with Elsa Härlen to Berlin, transporting them on the night train in a special car. Each person was in a separate compartment—only the married couples stayed together. Guards were stationed left and right; not a word could be spoken; even a trip to the toilet could not be made unaccompanied. It gradually became clear to the Elsers that they were on a family trip—to Berlin, for interrogations. In the morning they were first taken from the Anhalter train station to the Moabit prison, then a few days later to the Hotel Kaiserhof, the finest hotel in the government district, located at Ziethenplatz 4 between Wilhelmstrasse and Mauerstrasse. Before the First World War, the massive complex had been the preferred hotel for diplomats and the aristocracy. Before 1933, Hitler had his headquarters at the hotel, and he still liked to stay there—he was fond of the Hungarian orchestra that often performed there.

Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin around 1930, where Elser's relatives were kept under arrest for a week in November 1939.

So the Elsers were in first-class accommodations but under house arrest, with a Gestapo guard outside every door. Anyone who wanted to go to the toilet had to knock and wait to be accompanied; meals were taken in a room together, but no speaking was permitted. Only Elsa Härlen, the outsider in the group, got her meals brought to her room. In the finest hotel, in the center of the capital, directly across from Hitler's Reich Chancellery, the Gestapo had transformed an entire floor into a temporary luxury prison. The inmates were taken by police van to the interrogation sessions, which were conducted, generally at night, in the nearby Reich Security Headquarters at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8. Everyone noticed that the tone here was markedly more polite than it had been in Stuttgart.

Gestapo headquarters could assume different guises; this time, orders had come from above to put on a friendly face with the prisoners. At the same time, however, down in the cellar a hellish atmosphere prevailed. The cells were filled to overflowing: The prisoners were crawling over each other in a dreadful stench; they weren't able to wash and were covered with bugs and filth. The preferential treatment of the Elser family reflects the direct involvement of Hitler, for whom this assassin constituted a psychological enigma. Hitler wanted to keep the whole family in custody, but he wanted to do it with style. It is possible that the transfer to the luxury hotel was connected with the conclusion of Elser's interrogation on November 23.

Most important were the face-to-face meetings with Georg Elser, to which only Elser's mother, his sister Maria Hirth, her husband Karl, and his girlfriend Elsa Härlen were subjected. In the account of the assassination attempt, these encounters have been left out. Elser's mother was the first to be brought in, on either November 20 or 21. Elser was supposed to be gripped by emotion. However, since the dispute over his claims regarding the new house, he had wanted to see neither his mother nor most of the rest of the family except for his father and Maria. In 1950 Maria recalled the situation:

Here in Berlin I was taken into a large room once, where my son Georg was sitting at a long table. I was seated across from him and asked whether this was my son Georg and whether I believed that he had carried out the attack. Here, too, I expressed my conviction that I didn't believe Georg had done such a thing. I didn't speak with Georg himself because I didn't know whether I was allowed to speak with him or not; that's why I didn't dare say anything to him. During this meeting in Berlin, Georg looked good; I didn't notice that he showed any signs of physical mistreatment. Georg cried when I was brought in, but he didn't speak to me.

Vienna Gestapo chief Huber was present at the meeting, which took place in the conference room at Reich Security Headquarters. For propaganda purposes, Huber was supposed to interrogate Elser once more, in the presence of his mother. A film camera for the weekly news had been set up out of sight. Elser's confession was to be shown at movie theaters. But the assassin was “in an obstinate period,” as Huber expressed it, and would not answer at all or only reluctantly. Elser saw through the ruse and didn't want to be turned into a monkey in some Gestapo zoo.

Maria Hirth, who was at first interrogated by Gestapo Müller, learned from her brother the true story of the attempt; unfortunately, her voice was soon lost in a sea of rumors. She later reported:

In Berlin I was also interrogated in the presence of my brother. My brother also had to describe the attack in my presence; he said that he had done the attack alone. I can't remember the details anymore, but I am completely convinced that he executed it alone. At this hearing, my brother still looked good. When I was later taken to see him two or three times, his head had been shaved and his face was completely swollen. Whether his face was swollen because of beatings, I can't say. During the hearing my brother told how he had worked at night in the Bürgerbräukeller and had taken out the debris in a carpet. And in fact, this carpet was among the things that he had sent us from Munich. And so then he said he built a clock into the hole that he had hollowed out. After the meeting with my brother I had a nervous breakdown, and I still have problems because of it.

At the meeting with his brother-in-law Karl Hirth, Elser told the same story. In the words of Hirth: “His face was swollen and one eye had a bruise under it. I assume that this disfiguring was caused by beat-ings.” According to Hirth, Elser said he had carried out the attempt alone and had told no one about it. Another confrontation in the presence of Himmler produced nothing new. Afterward, Karl Hirth was of the opinion that Georg Elser was solely responsible for the attack.

Finally Elser's girlfriend Elsa Härlen, who had been so harshly interrogated that she collapsed, sat before the wreck of a man created by Gestapo terror. This was the worst of the meetings; there is hardly a more chilling description to come out of Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. If Elsa Härlen remembered correctly in 1950, the version she got to hear was the version that suited the Nazis the best and one given by Elser only for a brief period and only after extreme violence had been used.

He was sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, and I would definitely not have recognized him as my fo[rmer] fiancé in the condition he was in. His face was swollen and beaten black and blue. His eyes were bulging out of their sockets, and I was horrified by his appearance. And his feet were swollen, and I believe the only reason he was sitting on the chair was that he was no longer able to stand. In each corner of the room there was a Kripo officer standing with his pistol drawn. An officer said to Elser: “Here is your fo[rmer] fiancée. She is still convinced that you did not commit this attack. Now tell her yourself that you committed it.” An officer placed himself behind Elser and, to make him talk, he kept striking him on the back or on the back of his head. I am convinced that he talked only because he had been physically broken and feared the beatings. Even then he spoke only in fragments and they forced him to keep talking by continually hitting him. What he said was approximately this: He had taken black powder from the Vollmer Co[mpany], and with this he had built a time bomb. He had been induced to do this by foreign agents and had acted on their orders. He had established contact with the agents while working at the Waldenmaier Company, where, as an employee in the shipping department, he had come into contact with people from abroad. I was not able to learn more details—he couldn't talk because they kept hitting him; on the other hand, they kept hitting him in order to make him talk. . . . Before the meeting was ended, a Kripo officer told me that I could now ask Elser something. But the only thing I could ask was: “Georg, did
you
do this?” At first Elser didn't answer but just stared at me with an expression that I will never forget. Then slowly, he opened his mouth and said: ‘Elser.' At that moment he was struck on the back of the head by the officer standing behind him and was not allowed to continue speaking. I was convinced at that time, and I am still convinced today, that Elser wanted to say he was innocent. As his former fiancée, I was able to read that much from his expression and his gestures.