Bombing Hitler (28 page)

Usslepp, who considered himself Elser's “real confidante” and even called himself the “executor of his estate,” claimed that in 194344 he mapped out a plan of escape with him. He was going to simply take Elser, who weighed very little, and stuff him into a garbage bag with wood shavings and just take him out of the camp right past the SS guard. But Elser, he says, finally backed out of the plan because he felt he would not be able to count on any assistance once out-side. Even if he had such fantasies about escaping and idly chatted about them on occasion, there was never any chance that they could succeed. Moreover, it is simply not believable that an SS man like Usslepp would risk his life for an assassin. Perhaps there is behind all of this some information planted by the Gestapo in order to test Elser.

In 1944, Elser had a map hanging on the wall of his cell on which he followed the progression of the front by moving little flags. In the process, he compared the announcements from the BBC in London with those of German radio. He clung to life to the very end. But he had been so ravaged by his imprisonment that he no longer possessed the same unshakable will as before. At first he would rejoice when the Allies advanced, but then he would get depressed because he knew full well that he would be executed first: “Even if it means my own death, at least I know that Hitler will not outlive me by much.” During air raids he refused to proceed to the bunker—he had nothing more to lose. He preferred to get up on his nightstand and watch the bombers in the sky and the glow from the fires in Berlin.

While Usslepp could at least be considered a reliable source regarding Elser's living conditions, the British Secret Service agent Sigismund Payne Best was simply a wild-eyed fantast. Even though by his own admission he never spoke with Elser, he nonetheless claimed to have found out from him everything about his life. He claimed that Elser, who rarely wrote anything, wrote secret messages over a period of twelve months and smuggled them to him—even though such activity was strictly prohibited. Why then did Best, who after the war prided himself on the diary he kept while in captivity, keep none of these messages—or at least copy them down?

Best was terrible at spinning tales. He simply repeated everything fed to him by the Gestapo. According to him, Elser's biography went as follows: He was born in Munich, lost his parents in the First World War, was raised by an uncle, printed and distributed Communist leaflets in Munich in 1937, was arrested as “antisocial” in a police raid and taken to Dachau, and was ordered by the camp commander in 1939 to carry out the bombing at the Bürgerbräukeller in order to liquidate a group of traitors in Hitler's inner circle.

As early as Venlo, it was clear that Best was a dilettante at his trade. Here he claims that on the one hand Elser built a timing mechanism into the bomb, yet on the other hand that he laid an electric cable in the cellar—which of course nobody noticed. He goes on to say that Elser, after his arrest at the border, was promised 40,000 Swiss francs if he would state at a trial that he had been in contact with Otto Strasser and the British Secret Service. His story makes no sense from beginning to end.

The last living witness from Elser's time in the camp prison was Franz Josef Fischer, who was born in Czechoslovakia in 1916 and lived in Gruibingen on the Schwãbisch Alb. In 1931, Fischer became actively involved in the Czech resistance against the Nazis in the neighboring area of Silesia and was opposed to the Sudeten German Henlein Party. In 1938, when the Germans marched in, he refused to serve in the German Wehrmacht and was placed in Gestapo custody for two years, where he was severely mistreated. After being acquitted by the People's Court in Leipzig in April of 1940, he was sent to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen. By March 1943, he was working as a supervisor in the clothing stores for the SS at a field warehouse in Berlin-Lichterfelde. After a bombardment, this office was scheduled to be moved to Schlackenwerth Castle near Karlsbad, and Himmler had to decide whether the Sudeten German Fischer should be transferred along with it. So Fischer was moved to Himmler's SS business office, located in Berlin-Lichterfelde at Unter den Eichen 126. While he was waiting in an alcove in the corridor, he noticed a bushy-headed man whom he didn't know. The man was called in first, but was soon ejected with a kick in the rear by Himmler.

Before Fischer's turn came up, the two had a chance to speak. The stranger said: “Don't you know me? I'm the one they say is an assassin. I just wanted to avoid a great disaster—even more killing. So I said the leadership's got to go.” At that point Fischer realized that this was Elser. Elser was well known in the Resistance; his actions served as encouragement. Then after Fischer too had been thrown out, the conversation resumed for another half hour. Elser said: “I'm alone and I did everything by myself—the arrest at the border was just bad luck. They all talk a lot about me, but none of them know anything.” Fischer was liberated from the concentration camp at Theresienstadt in 1945.

During a devastating bombardment of Berlin on February 3, 1945, the headquarters building of Reich Security was also severely damaged, and Elser's time at Sachsenhausen came to an end. Those arrested in connection with the events of July 20 had to be moved to the south. The Gestapo control center created one of its backup locations in the Bavarian town of Hof. Himmler had already given the order to evacuate Sachsenhausen on February 1. On February 6, 1945, news arrived in the concentration camp at Dachau, where a typhus epidemic had been raging since November 1944, that 10,000 prisoners from Sachsenhausen were on their way to Dachau. Presumably around this time Elser was picked up by a Gestapo car.

Franz-Josef Fischer, who spoke briefly with Elser in Berlin in 1943.

I
N EARLY FEBRUARY
1945, Elser, accompanied by four SS men, entered the concentration camp at Dachau. The SS man responsible for the bunker, Edgar Stiller, carried Elser's zither in a wooden case. It was very cold and Elser was wearing an overcoat. Upon his arrival security measures were tightened—Elser, the SS men grumbled to the other inmates, was “a very special prisoner.” Soon everyone learned that he was Hitler's personal prisoner.

The concentration camp at Dachau was in the process of being closed down and was in catastrophic condition. For months concentration camps located further to the east had been evacuating their occupants to Dachau. The trains, which were frequently carrying Jewish prisoners, arrived with thousands of corpses on board. When the boxcars remained stationary for several days, the stench of death permeated the entire area.

As the war progressed, the makeup of the SS forces changed. The younger SS men, who were the bane of the prisoners, went to the front; the older generations taking their places were more concerned about saving their own skins, so they tried to get along with the prisoners. The clever ones were already thinking about trying to get a denazification certificate, called a “Persilschein.”

Waves of typhus had swept through the camp, so the crematorium could no longer keep up with the piles of corpses. The SS people scarcely dared to leave their building. More and more, the inmates were left to fend for themselves.

The bunker in Dachau was immense in size—Dachau served as the model for all the other camps. It was a one-story building, 643 long by thirty-one feet wide. In the center section, measuring forty-five feet by forty-five feet, there were four rooms: a guard room, an admission room, a medical examination room, and the interrogation room of the “Political Department.” In the two wings located to the left and right of the center section, there were approximately 140 cells, each 9' 6” by 7' 3”, an area of sixty-nine square feet—significantly smaller than at Sachsenhausen. The special political prisoners were housed in the front part of the left wing; the section for the SS prisoners was located behind an iron door. The right wing was reserved for members of the clergy, who were separated from the other prisoners and provided with their own exit into the prison yard.

The Munich SS official Franz Xaver Lechner was charged with guarding Elser. Lechner had been wounded in the war and his right arm was paralyzed. His thoughts were more about Mozart than the world of terror perpetrated by an SS now on the verge of disappearing. Lechner had wanted to attend the Munich Conservatory while serving in the military. With some pride he declared in 1959 that a quite distinguished group had been assembled in the camp prison: “I had two SS generals, a recipient of the
Blutorden,
a
Reichshauptamtsleiter,
two high-level SS judges, the entire Rumanian Iron Guard, scientists, artists, and inventors.” In addition, there was a Greek Orthodox arch-bishop, the former Dutch minister of war, the Italian partisan General Sante Garibaldi (a grandson of the famous Italian liberation fighter), a count and his daughter, the abbot of a monastery, Pastor Niemöller, and other clergymen.

When Elser was brought in, Lechner was on duty. According to Lechner, “Elser was unimpressive, bedraggled, emaciated—a wreck. . . . He was decidedly unresponsive. He showed interest in nothing. A human wreck.” Orders on how to deal with Elser came by telephone from the commandant's office in the guard house at the camp entrance. Elser was to occupy cell 6, his name was not to be entered into the register, and he was to be guarded day and night. Under no circumstances was he to be allowed to come into contact with other prisoners. No one else was to be allowed even to see him.

From this point on, there was an SS man on a stool sitting outside Elser's cell, and there were two guards in his cell at all times. Soon Elser was moved to cells 2 and 3, and three days later, as a privilege, he was provided with a workbench, tools, and wood, with which he would occupy himself when he wasn't lying apathetically on his bed.

Elsa's photograph had disappeared. Plagued by extreme nervousness, Elser had become a chain smoker, and he alone received a special daily allowance of forty cigarettes. And with his poor appetite, he continued to go downhill.

Elser liked to carve figures, and in the evenings he enjoyed playing his zither. Even Lechner, the discerning devotee of classical music, found the sound very pleasant. In Munich, Lechner purchased a collection of Viennese songs for a zither. Elser was ecstatic upon finding his favorite song from Sachsenhausen among them. The song became Elser's main consolation: “In my heart I carry a bit of old Vienna, a bit of bliss from those days past.” Even though Elser had never been to Vienna, tears came to his eyes and his voice choked up when he played the song for the first time.

“My days are numbered—I've known this for a long time,” Elser frequently told Lechner. Once Elser asked him bluntly, “You know the score here. What's better—gassing, hanging, or a being shot in the back of the head?” Astonished, Lechner tried to calm the prisoner, but Elser wouldn't have it: “I know better—I'm not going to live much longer.” One last time Elser was subjected to an interrogation, in which he was repeatedly asked whether he acted alone. Each time he would say the same thing he had always said: “I acted completely alone.” He had not been in Lechner's charge long enough for the rumors from the SS and the political prisoners to make their way in. He stated that the only person to assist him was an old man who helped him find workshops and ran errands for him. He was pleased to learn that the Gestapo still had not been able to track him down.

According to SS man Lechner, Elser revealed to him his motive for the attack:

I had to do it because, for his whole life, Hitler has meant the downfall of Germany. You know, Herr Lechner, don't think that I'm some kind of dyed-in-the-wool Communist—I'm not. I have some sympathy for Ernst Thälmann, but getting rid of Hitler just became an obsession of mine. I knew I was taking a great risk, but I never thought I could be caught. But, as you can see, I'm sitting here in front of you—I got caught, and now I have to pay for it. I would have preferred it if they had executed me right away.

Lechner noted that Elser's hands were trembling.

Around the beginning of March the prisoners heard the thunder of the American artillery drawing closer. Rather than being elated by this development, Elser said to Lechner, “I don't regret what I did—it wouldn't make any difference anyway. I believed I was accomplishing an important task. I didn't succeed, and now I have to pay the con-sequences. I'm afraid of these consequences; day and night I wonder what kind of death I will suffer.”

Lechner's impressions of Elser revealed his sense of superiority over his prisoner. He described Elser as “the simplest and most primitive special prisoner. . . . Elser was a harmless, simple man— almost simpleminded. One certainly cannot ascribe great intelligence to him.” Lechner was careful not to condemn those whom he had observed committing murder in Dachau. It is likely that he did not want to risk offending anyone who might come into favor once again.