Bombing Hitler (15 page)

Immediately after the Munich attack, however, the Federal Prosecutor's Office ordered Strasser to leave Switzerland within four hours—since the Nazi raid in Czechoslovakia, he had been living without authorization as a refugee in the canton of Zurich.

Strasser moved on to Paris on November 13. Once there, he seized the opportunity to pin the blame for the Munich attack on the Nazis. His evidence was shaky—a few weeks before the attack, the owners of the Bürgerbräuhad taken out insurance in Switzerland on the building. Then, impressed by Elser's attack, Strasser got carried away, predicting that the Reich was “ready for a revolution against Hitler.” However, this could only happen under certain conditions: “First, Germany must experience the horrors of war; the Third Reich must suffer its first military defeat; and the effects of the blockade must be palpable.” As a time frame for his predictions he projected early 1940.

Articles like this, and the Swiss German-language press in general, infuriated Berlin. On November 10, 1939, the Ministry of Propaganda weighed the possibility of banning altogether the importation of Swiss newspapers to Germany. It didn't even matter that few newspapers made critical comments about the Nazis—most simply knuckled under, adapted to the circumstances, or avoided the subject.

The Gestapo waited until the end of January 1940 before it demanded massive investigations in Bern. Information on these machinations was yielded by a file on Elser only recently discovered among the Strasser records in the Federal Archives in Bern. This file is a genuine treasure trove; here we learn of matters regarding which records in Berlin were lost and which clearly demonstrate the unscrupulous tactics of the Gestapo. The file also contains Elser's fingerprints, taken on November 15, 1939, and a large number of significant photographs from police records that exist nowhere else.

Reich Security Headquarters in Berlin demanded answers from the Swiss police to an eighteen-page catalog of questions entitled 
Requisitorial.
Most of the questions revolved around the Munich attack; a few concerned the fire aboard the steamer
Deutschland.
The head of the Swiss police, Dr. Heinrich Rothmund, known for his close cooperation with the Nazis, especially on refugee matters, wrote on February 1, 1940, in a cover letter to the Federal Prosecutor's Office that the “Munich explosive attack” was not “a purely political crime,” but that in Germany everything was nevertheless also being investigated from the political perspective: “We therefore strongly urge restraint and caution in dealing with the
Requisitorial,
as well as con-sultation with us and the Foreign Department before answering any questions.”

The
Requisitorial
assailed the Swiss police with 163 questions. In the first part regarding Elser's relationship to Strasser and in the final part covering Elser's arrest at the border, items were men-tioned that appeared in no other interrogation and that were never corroborated by others. Only in the middle section did the Gestapo ask relatively objective questions about details of Elser's life at Lake Constance.

At first it is difficult to decide whether Elser made up the astounding statements while being brutally tortured, simply in order to gain relief, or whether the Gestapo, after receiving the file from the Special Commission on November 20, invented them. The tone of the passages suggests that the Gestapo acted as if the officers of the Swiss police were already under its command, and that its intent was to discover holes in the latter's findings. Basically, the
Requisitorial
was not an official request—rather, it was a blunt interrogation that was being conducted against a sovereign state.

In order to prepare this offensive on Bern, the Gestapo had presumably instructed its foreign service to gather general information, allegations, and accusations from the Zurich area with regard to Strasser—or simply to round up rumors. The foreign arm of the Gestapo in Switzerland was run from Stuttgart and maintained a sizable network of spies in the Swiss Confederation, German as well as Swiss. On Swiss territory, the German embassy in Bern was in charge of these informers. This arrangement enabled the Gestapo to appear to already know the important information and thus need only official confirmation of it.

According to the Gestapo, Georg Elser stated “among other things, that he had been visited by an associate of Strasser's in May, September, and October—or perhaps November, 1939.” In the Gestapo version, this man told him that if the Munich attack did not succeed, another could be arranged. Elser had met this person, according to the report, in 1938 in Konstanz.

Even this opening section appears remarkably senseless. In 1938 Elser had already been living in Königsbronn for a long time and was employed there by Waldenmaier. If he went to Konstanz, it was only for brief visits, in order to check out the border situation. It would not have been possible for him to find the time for protracted visits with the purpose of planning an attack.

Then the Gestapo began to besiege the Swiss police with questions, wanting to know everything about Strasser's travels: where he went, with whom, when, by what route, why. They also asked about his activities and connections. They even asked about his neighbors, his visitors, his financial expenditures, his landlady, any vehicle he might have, his contacts while traveling, and any visitors from Germany. They make the bold claim that Strasser had frequently been visited by Germans. Then, the Gestapo demanded the names of all Germans who were in Zurich at the time and the records of where they stayed.

The next group of questions focused on hearsay. According to one story, two people were driving to Vaduz on November 8, when their conversation was overheard. One allegedly said to the other, “I hope it works out this evening. Too bad we can't be there,” and the other allegedly replied, “In any case, we'll hear about it on the radio—it will probably be on all the stations.” The Gestapo speculated about the involvement these two may have had.

The Gestapo also had information on another conversation about the Bürgerbräukeller that occurred ten days before the attack at a Viennese café in Bern, in which one person said to another, “It must succeed.” (A staff member mentioned that one of them had a “Jewish appearance.”) Based on this alone, the Gestapo wanted to know what kind of people frequented the café and what circles they moved in. What kinds of observations were made by the staff?

A Gestapo informant reported from Switzerland that a woman from the area of Lake Geneva had supposedly said, “Hitler will be murdered soon.” At that time in Europe, many people hoped and said such things—even the Gestapo had to know that. Now, however, the Gestapo wanted to find out everything they could about this woman.

When the subject turned to Elser's time spent at Lake Constance, the questions took on a less paranoid tone. On the subject of Elser's employment at Schönholzer, a small cabinetmaking shop in Bottighofen in the vicinity of Kreuzlingen, the Gestapo asked two dozen detailed questions. Not a single moment, not a single contact was left unexamined.

Following this were questions about a bar in Kreuzlingen for non-drinkers that Elser frequented, a festival for traditional dress that he attended, the smuggling of everyday items, two abortion attempts by his girlfriend Mathilde Niedermann, and purchases Elser made in a grocery store in Kreuzlingen. More questions dealt with the trumped-up claim that the Zurich music-store operator Karl Kuch was involved in the attack. (In the local lore of the Ostalb region, Kuch is to this day occasionally identified as the leader of a group of Communists planning a bomb attack.)

The Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office answered in a submissive tone (they had pulled Strasser in even before the intervention of the Gestapo): “After the Swiss authorities confirmed around the end of October 1939 that Dr. Strasser had made disparaging remarks about the Chancellor of the German Reich in a foreign newspaper and had furthermore railed against the relationship between Germany and Switzerland, his immediate expulsion was ordered, and said order was made known to him at the beginning of November 1939.” On November 13, Strasser was taken by car to the French border, which he then had to cross alone. It was no longer possible, according to the report, to determine whether Strasser had received mail from Germany at certain points; a search of his house turned up no evidence.

The owner of Strasser's apartment in Wetzwil-Herrliberg was a woman named Johanna Lehmann (perhaps a relative of Elser's landlady, Rosa Lehmann, the Gestapo might have wondered). At the end of this investigation, all that the Gestapo really learned was a lot of trivial information. For example, that the “dangerous woman” at Lake Geneva had died. That Elser got the job in Bottighofen through the employment office in Kreuzlingen. That Elser's old boss was also dead. That Schönholzer's son had described Elser as “hard-working, quiet, and respectable.” It struck the Schönholzers as a little strange that Elser frequently left his workbench in the afternoon to go swimming. “But he always more than made up for this time off by working in the evening.” It was a revealing testimony to Elser's independent spirit.

O
NCE IT WAS
clear to the Gestapo that Königsbronn was the place where somebody had hatched a plan to get rid of Hitler, they descended on the village in droves. Officers came from Stuttgart, from Munich, and from State Security Headquarters in Berlin. In Königsbronn, the pressure mounted to a nightmarish level that crippled the quiet little town. In the months following the attack, many were repeatedly picked up for questioning. Over and over they were pummeled with the same questions; and with each interrogation they became increasingly aware that all the previous answers which had been truthfully provided and duly recorded had been a waste of time. The upper echelons of the Gestapo were united in the view that the entire village was a nest of criminals, that nobody was telling the truth, and that only relentless and repeated questioning until subjects collapsed could advance their purpose.

From this point on, the village was stigmatized. Any spot of ground where Elser had set foot or any house that he had entered was feared to be contaminated. In the south, in the wake of the Gestapo, areas of “scorched earth” developed, large and small, in Konstanz, Meersburg, Munich, and Stuttgart. By shining a light on even the most ordinary aspects of life and uncovering any contact, however coincidental, the Gestapo assumed they could track down the ring of agents in league with Elser.

The Gestapo did not need to show restraint—it had been freed by the highest legislative authority of any limitations on its actions. Since everyone at that time was—at least publicly—united in condemning the assassin, there was no concern that police officers would ever be called to account for their methods. And indeed, that is how it turned out: Those in charge of the police terror against Königsbronn and all the other places where Elser had lived never appeared before a court. They were able to enjoy their pensions in peace, while the long-tormented Elser clan received no restitution for their treatment.

Soon after the arrest, the people of Königsbronn began to feel the derision directed at them. Years later, in 1959, as a journalist was tracking down memories of Elser in Königsbronn, he was disappointed. People who had been squeezed for information twenty years before and were quick to tell anecdotes at the time now wanted nothing to do with Elser; his name was taboo. They knew nothing, couldn't remember anything, or just dismissed the interviewer. The generation that Elser had wanted to save from this Second World War had marched across all of Europe with the German armies—and with them marched many from Königsbronn. Now their motto was: “Forget about it!”

When the journalist who was researching Elser went to his old school, the school's caretaker told him his master sergeant's response when he said he was from Königsbronn. “Aha, from Königsbronn,” the sergeant said. “Assassinville. Ten pushups!” Dozens of others from Königsbronn must have had similar experiences.

The trauma began the moment Elser's identity was known; everyone from Königsbronn who was interrogated, arrested, or harassed was warned not to reveal even the slightest detail about what had been said and done—or the punishment would be severe. Everyone understood what that meant: Dachau.

Maria Schmauder's father in Schnaitheim was arrested and subjected to a lengthy interrogation, only because Elser had indicated that he had listened to foreign radio stations at their place—even though such activity was not banned until September 1, 1939. Soon thereafter, on a daily basis, one of the Schmauders was picked up by the Gestapo and taken to Heidenheim for interrogation. The questions could have been handled all at once, but it was more important to humiliate people as all the neighbors watched them being picked up for repeated questioning.

In Berlin, after seeing her brother, head shaved, badly beaten, Maria Hirth had a nervous breakdown. Eleven years later in Stuttgart, as witnesses were being questioned in the course of a Munich investigation, she declared: “It still causes me suffering.” An attempt to receive compensation for her suffering and years of unemployment was unsuccessful. Afterward, she never wanted to hear of the matter again, and up until her death in 1999 the subject was not discussed.

Maria and her husband Karl received the harshest treatment. In their case, as with others, the Gestapo didn't conduct just one thorough search of their house—they returned repeatedly, as if they thought incriminating evidence might suddenly appear out of nowhere. Karl was kept in Berlin longer than the others—until mid-December— but he was soon arrested again in Stuttgart, on December 22. In the meantime, their son Franz was forced into an orphanage. The Hirths were not freed until February 20, 1940, and tainted by their relation to Elser, they were unable to find any work for a long period of time. For many years, Maria was unable to work.