Bombing Hitler (13 page)

It is not until this point that Elser tries to reflect the prevailing ideology—he has simply had enough: “By making the effort to be part of the
Volksgemeinschaft
(“people's community,” in Nazi ideology) and to work within it.” Inevitably he is asked whether he could do this. Elser's response: “I've changed my views.” What changed them, they want to know—his arrest? The Gestapo commissars realize how absurd it seems to argue with one who has been defeated. Now Elser works himself up to the final sentence of the entire written record, a self-criticism based on the course of history, a secularized determinism. The Nazis had prated about “Providence”; now Elser states: “No, I definitely believe that my plan would have succeeded if I had had the correct views. After it failed, I became convinced that it was not meant to succeed and that my views were wrong.” Only his
views
were wrong—perhaps about setting the two clocks? The act itself stands oddly apart—the hatred of Hitler has in no way been recanted. Anyone reading the transcript will find no indication of changed views. Elser seeks to appease with empty words; there is no trace of repentance and contrition.

For the Gestapo the interrogation was a grim disappointment because Elser refused to invent any instigators. When Himmler read the final report and saw that his expectations had not been fulfilled, he flew into a rage and scrawled in the green ink reserved for him on the red cover of the printed report: “What idiot created this report?” The “idiots” were
Reichskriminaldirektor
Nebe and the leaders of the two subgroups of the Bürgerbräu Special Commission.

The voyeurism of the Nazi brass on day three of the interrogation led to an unexpected result. A journalist from the DNB agency, from which the press took its reports in lockstep, was so impressed with Elser's integrity that he erected a written monument to the assassin. In his report on Elser's guilt, the journalist allowed his impressions to take precedence over his political convictions:

We have seen this man. He is the murderer; the dead are the victims of his dreadful plan. This is the man whose intended target was the Führer and with him the leadership of the Reich. All of these things we must always bear in mind, for this man does not have the obvious physiognomy of a criminal; rather, he has intelligent eyes and expresses himself in a way that reveals cautious reflection. The hearings go on interminably. He weighs each word carefully and at length before he gives his answer; and when one observes him doing so, one forgets for a moment what a satanic monster this is and what a ghastly burden this conscience is apparently capable of bearing with ease.

I
N ORDER TO
understand the assassination attempt not just as an isolated event but in the larger context of the effect it had, one must not ignore the extent to which the regime made the victims into instruments of propaganda.

Since its new beginning following Hitler's release from prison in Landsberg at the end of 1924, the Nazi Party had developed a cult in which defeat and death could be transformed into victories. If the original intention was to counteract the low morale following the failed Putsch of 1923, the Putsch was recast after the Nazi assumption of power as a preliminary step on the way to victory: the bloody end on the street in a hail of bullets fired by the Bavarian state police became glorified as the beginning of a triumphal march to power. Hitler's escape and disappearance were converted by the Nazi lie into heroism. The memorial ceremonies for the Putsch were blended into the ceremonies commemorating the fallen of the World War. Thus the failure of the march on the Feldherrnhalle gained national significance; the Putsch appeared as a first attempt to erase the defeat in the World War and expunge the “shame of Versailles.” Mourning became militarized with the presence of high-ranking officers and military formations—all in all it was an occasion for standing at attention and marching around to the sound of lively music.

As might be expected, the main celebration always took place in Munich. The nighttime general assembly before the Feldherrnhalle began after Hitler's speech in the Bürgerbräukeller; the rousing words were accompanied by lighting effects. Sheathed in red and brown, there were funerary columns in the ancient Egyptian style, each topped with a large shallow vessel containing a burning flame. Attached to the columns were plaques, each containing the words “Last Roll Call” and the name of one of the sixteen killed at the Putsch. Thus the religious ur-experience of the numinous became a public staged event, a theatrical production for the masses, with a political purpose.

Grief was transformed into glorification of the victims; reflecting on the historic defeat became a celebration of Nazi triumph. This moral and political exploitation culminated in the call to emulate those who had died. During this period, the dead were in general considered to be the greatest—there was, apparently, nothing finer than to die for the “movement.” Anyone at all who lost his life had sacrificed himself for Hitler so that Hitler could live on and be Germany's salvation. There were no tears of widows or children here. Everything was manly, bursting with the will to prevail. The faces were stony; all were silent. Except for Hitler, the high priest of the party, no one was called upon to speak. There they were, the rank and file in huge formations as if cast in bronze—thousands of boots, their stamping like the gigantic drumbeats of a death march.

The Party insinuated itself into the spiritual history of salvation. The Christian religion served as a model; Christian liturgy was constantly plundered in the design of theatrical events. It was only a short symbolic step from the sacrifices of the
Alte Kämpfer
and those fallen to the sacrificial death of Jesus: the historic defeat became the Good Friday of the Party, and the victory its Resurrection, a national Easter. In this scenario the notion of “victory” could be expanded: first the acquisition of power, soon a victory over England, and at the end victory over all the evil forces in the world until Germany finally achieved salvation. This inversion of defeat and death into victory and new life draws upon Pauline theology—it is on the cross, in death, that the victory of faith has its foundations.

On November 9 around noontime, columns of men clad in brown and in black moved in—the Hitler Youth, accompanied by the somber thump of the Landsknecht drums. The only evidence of the cult remaining at the Feldherrnhalle was a memorial, which was guarded year round by two SS sentries. A sixteen-gun salute was fired in honor of the sixteen who died in the Putsch. For the first time, the procession from the Bürgerbräukeller to the Feldherrnhalle did not take place—too many
Alte Kämpfer
were at the front. Moreover, the wreckage that was once the hall was now in the hands of the Special Commission; with the extensive damage, it had lost its sacred character. The leaders, under the command of Rudolf Hess, subsequently proceeded to Königsplatz for the laying of the wreath. Three years before, the sixteen sarcophagi had been brought here and placed in the two pantheons located on the narrow side of the newly remodeled square. At Königsplatz, Hess welcomed individually the family members of those killed in 1923.

Two days later, on November 11, it is necessary to hold another ceremony in the same style. On the evening of the previous day at 9:45 p.m., a procession begins that takes the seven coffins with the victims of the assassination attempt to lie in state. By 9:00 p.m., three hundred Hitler Youth are waiting in the courtyard of the Residenz with torches, ready to accompany the coffins, which are to be placed at the Hofgartentor by 9:40. The coffins are followed by fourteen
Alte Kämpfer
carrying seven wreaths from Hitler.

At 10:00 p.m., accompanied by the roll of drums, the Combat Support Force appears, surrounding the square and thus making it into a “holy space.” The procession of torchbearers and
Alte Kämpfer
bearing wreaths moves to the square before the Feldherrnhalle. The SS presents arms and a marching band plays the
Präsentiermarsch.
The wreath bearers place their wreaths at the coffins, and then step behind the coffins. Now the SA guard takes up its position and remains there the entire night.

Official ceremony for the victims of the assassination attempt in the Bürgerbräukeller— November 11,1939, at the Feldherrnhalle.

The coffins are placed in front of the hall; from a vessel within the hall, a commemorative flame casts an eerie light. “Germany is cloaked in darkness,” proclaimed a grandiloquent article in the
Völkischer Beobachter,
“since this brazen declaration of war. In the smoldering flame from this single vessel, our pain—the collective pain of all Germans—appears to burn unabated.” A swastika-emblazoned flag drapes each coffin. “Motionless, SA men stand silent watch.” Then for hours on end the people of Munich file past the coffins. As they pass, in their thoughts they “hold discourse with the dead, and a manly answer to the eternal question ‘Why?' may be found in these solemn moments.” The dark night and the single flame are the stuff of mass religious spectacle—the square is “a vast nighttime cathedral.”

In the darkness, a mystical bond is established: “The never-ending queue of mourners continues quietly past. From the darkness of the city it emerges, moving into the mournful light of the flame, then disappearing again into the darkness. And so it is: A great people pays its last respects to the mortal remains of the victims and lays down its thoughts, its pain, and its sadness there with the dead. We, all of us, were in this procession.” This marks the end of the lying in state on November 10.

For the official ceremony on the following day, November 11, orders have been issued to fly all flags at half staff on public buildings throughout the Reich. At private residences flags are hoisted to half staff as well. At the Feldherrnhalle, the “altar of the movement,” it is reported that ten thousand people have gathered—for a city the size of Munich, this is a relatively small number. Starting at ten o'clock that morning, honor guards of the Party, including the Reich Labor Service with spades on their shoulders, march from the north across Ludwigstrasse onto Theatinerstrasse. From the south come units from the SS, the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe. The SA guard standing night watch over the coffins is relieved. Approaching from Residenzstrasse are the hearses, each escorted by a dozen
Alte Kämpfer;
accompanying the hearse of the waitress killed in the attack are members of the Nazi Women's League.

The organization of the assembly in the “holy space” originates at the Feldherrnhalle. Located directly in front of the hall is the podium for the main speaker, Hess. Arranged in a row before the podium are the seven coffins—the eighth victim has not yet died—and beside each coffin an
Alter Kämpfer,
or a woman from the Nazi Women's League. Seated on chairs before the coffins are the family members of the victims and, in two groups, guests of honor of the government, the Party, and the military.

Shortly before 11:00 a.m. the Grossdeutsche Rundfunk (Greater German Radio) begins its broadcast. Millions are listening. At first it is difficult to make out anything but a few commands being barked out, such as “Formations, attention!” or “Present arms!” and the sound of boots slapping the pavement. The
Alte Kämpfer
march in from the Hofgartentor in the rear, and then the family members of those killed take their seats on the chairs in front of the coffins.

Next the holiest of objects is carried in: the
Blutfahne
(Blood flag), the flag from the 1923 Putsch, spattered with the blood of those shot during the confrontation. It is carried here by Grimminger, a participant in the 1923 Putsch and a Nazi Party city council member. As the
Blutfahne
enters the Feldherrnhalle and is planted in front of a large pylon in the “altar room” behind the central arch, the
Prasentiermarsch
is played. Then there is silence, in anticipation of the arrival of Hess and Brückner, Hitler's adjutants. An announcer fills the time by giving the names of the deceased and highlights of their political biographies. They were all, according to the announcer, “fervent defenders of the ideas of the Führer.”

The bells on the nearby Theatinerkirche strike eleven; the congregation is assembled and the Party church service can begin. The second announcer proclaims: “Flanked by the deputy Führer and Gauleiter Wagner, Adolf Hitler himself now returns to his fallen comrades. The Führer is here.” There is some movement in the crowd, evidence of joyous feelings as Hitler appears, wearing a field-gray overcoat and a black band of mourning on his left arm.

There follows a lengthy pause. Silently, Hitler assumes the position of the high priest—only he may enter the space between the family members and the coffins. The announcer: “Adolf Hitler stands before the victims torn from our midst by a cowardly act of murder.” During the entire speech by Hess—over half an hour—Hitler stands motionless. Then softly, the orchestra starts to play a melody beloved by the German culture of mourning of that time, “Aase's Death” by Edvard Grieg.