The Carpenter Elser Versus the Führer Hitler

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Marcus
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The Carpenter Elser Versus the Führer Hitler

#1

Post by Marcus » 09 Nov 2005, 19:56

This article might be of interest to you:
Many consider Nov. 9 to be a fateful date for Germany. But it was 13 minutes on Nov. 8, 1939 that really changed the course of 20th century history. A carpenter from southern Germany, Johann Georg Elser, almost managed to assassinate Hitler before World War II had engulfed the continent and the world. For decades after the war, though, he remained largely forgotten.
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/interna ... 92,00.html

/Marcus

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Robb
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#2

Post by Robb » 12 Nov 2005, 13:02

Hi Marcus,

A fascinating article. I knew there had been a number of attempts on Hitler's life, but didn't realise there had been 42 of them! :o I have never heard of Elser before. It is interesting to speculate what may have occurred if he had been successful as Spiegel does to a certain extent. We wouldn't have this forum most likely! :cry: Congratulations on an ecxcellent forum Marcus!

Greetings from Downunder


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Re: The Carpenter Elser Versus the Führer Hitler

#3

Post by ahingston » 10 Jan 2012, 14:03

The annual celebration of the Beer Hall Putsch meeting, held at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich on 9 Nov 1939, at which Elser planted his bomb, would have been attended not only by Hitler, but by other chief Nazis as well, presumably as part of Hitler's personal entourage.

However, does anyone know exactly who was present with Hitler, sitting on the stage near the pillar where the bomb was placed? In other words, who among the Nazi chiefs would have been killed along with Hilter if the bombing had been successful? Please provide authoritative resource(s) referrence if possible. Thanks.

PS. In the protocol of his Gestapo interrogation, Elser states that it was his aim, when he first conceived his idea, to kill Hitler, Göring and Goebbels. But Goebbels was not a veteran of the Beer Hall Putsch, so would he have been there? Himmler was a veteran -- was he there? I have read somewhere that Himmler was in Munich, but was not at the Bürgerbräukeller -- instead he was at his hotel, "Vier Jahreszeiten" (The Four Seasons), suffering from one of his frequent intestinal problems.

Are there any photos of Hitler speaking at the meeting?

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Re: The Carpenter Elser Versus the Führer Hitler

#4

Post by Treve » 10 Jul 2012, 04:33

Image

The New York Public Library


Aftermath


Image

http://www.executedtoday.com/2012/04/09 ... ller-bomb/

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Re: The Carpenter Elser Versus the Führer Hitler

#5

Post by Treve » 10 Jul 2012, 04:40

Goebbels was not a veteran of the Beer Hall Putsch, so would he have been there?
Goebbels was present at the event and was with Hitler on the train back to Berlin when they were informed that a bomb had gone off.

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Re: The Carpenter Elser Versus the Führer Hitler

#6

Post by ahingston » 10 Jul 2012, 12:03

Goebbels was definitely on the train there and back. He had insisted on Hitler going, though AH wanted to stay in Berlin to plan invasion of France. However, being on the train does not mean he was in the audience. The annual event was intended for the Old Fighters of Munich. Goebbels wasn't a Bavarian, and the Bavarians disliked and distrusted him. Is there any way to find a written account of who was there? Maybe in one of the party newspapers? Sadly, I can't read German.

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Re: The Carpenter Elser Versus the Führer Hitler

#7

Post by Treve » 10 Jul 2012, 15:05

Goebbels was present although he found many of the 'old comrades' as he called them absent. 'Wild enthusiasm rages though the hall. This speech will be a world sensation' he wrote of Hitler's address. He wrote about this in his diary and the manner in which Hitler responded at first with disbelief on the train.

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Re: The Carpenter Elser Versus the Führer Hitler

#8

Post by valkyrie » 11 Jul 2012, 00:57

Interestingly Elser was murdered in the last days of WWII and the murder was camouflaged/reported as a death from an errant low-flying allied air attack. The secret order staging the fake air attack was found by British spy Payne Best as he was moved through various KZs in the last days of WWII. The Gestapo used the same tactic when they murdered General von Rabenau on April 15, 1945. They still cared about enough optics and legal form in the last days of the war to go through significant effort to hide an extra-judicial execution as a war casualty.

Colin

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Re: The Carpenter Elser Versus the Führer Hitler

#9

Post by ahingston » 11 Jul 2012, 02:39

Treve wrote:'Wild enthusiasm rages though the hall. This speech will be a world sensation' he wrote of Hitler's address. He wrote about this in his diary and the manner in which Hitler responded at first with disbelief on the train.
Treve -- Thanks for this. I hadn't thought of checking G's diaries. Please excuse me for being pedantic, but I have trouble understanding your final sentence. What does 'this' refer to? To what did Hitler respond with disbelief? Anyway, what I am trying to find is a reliable list of who from the Nazi senior leadership was present in the Burgerbraukeller during Hitler's speech.

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Re: The Carpenter Elser Versus the Führer Hitler

#10

Post by Treve » 11 Jul 2012, 04:24

Goebbels wrote about the atmosphere at the meeting - rather briefly. He then described the manner in which they were informed of the bomb going off while on the train and that Hitler responded with disbelief. At first he did not believe the report of a bomb having gone off. Then he thanked providence for 'protecting' him assured he could continue on with his 'mission'.

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Re: The Carpenter Elser Versus the Führer Hitler

#11

Post by ahingston » 11 Jul 2012, 07:45

Thanks for clarifying. Still looking for some form of reliable list of grandees at Hitler's speech. The university where I live has an incomplete set of Volkischer Beobacter. I think I will start there.

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Re: The Carpenter Elser Versus the Führer Hitler

#12

Post by Dan W. » 20 Jan 2013, 00:36

What about this assassination attempt being another Reichstag fire? This is a rather fascinating alternative theory that Elser was used as the fall guy for a bomb planted by someone in the Gestapo or SS. Elser was very well treated in captivity, which further bolsters this theory:

http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/ ... ll-hitler/

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Re: The Carpenter Elser Versus the Führer Hitler

#13

Post by Nautilus » 02 Dec 2013, 15:21

Dan W.: the "Gestapo conspiracy" hypothesis had been popular in the last months prior to the full-blown French campaign. It went more or less like this: the Reich government needed a casus belli to justify an assault on France and Britain and to gain sympathy for the Führer from the general population. Therefore they planted a bomb carefully timed to avoid death or injury for any senior National Socialist and blamed it on the British undercover agents.

The theory got disproved over time by Elser's own testimonies and survivor accounts, but the Gleiwitz Incident was still fresh in the people's memory (contemporary newspaper and survivor diary accounts from around the Gleiwitz Incident show most people in Europe and the USA disbelieved the version of the Polish assault, even as no proof was going to be uncovered prior to Naujocks' trial 6 years later).

Sample of press reaction:

The Spectator, 24 November 1939, Page 2:

The Munich Bomb Story

No one is surprised that Herr Himmler, Chief of the German Police, has succeeded in finding a scapegoat for the bomb explosion in the Munich Beer Cellar on November 8th, or that the investigations have been so manipulated as to attribute the blame to the British Secret Service. The only surprise is that Mr. Churchill is not personally implicated. The German official statement gives a detailed account of the laborious devices by which Georg Elser contrived to commit a crime declared to have been organised by Otto Strasser, and instigated and financed by the British Intelligence Service. Elser was arrested, it is stated, on the night of the crime. The full incriminating evidence is alleged to have been collected by the Police Special Com- mission before November i4th, when Georg Elser, under what pressure of Third Degree examination we are not told, made full " confession " about his own crime and his accomplices. It is strange that the police, when they already had such abundant proof of the author of the outrage and knowledge of all that happened, should continue to offer rewards to anyone who could give information and issue a description of the wanted man. The whole story is a con- coction according to recipe. It is too clumsy to deceive any but the most credulous of Germans. No one outside Germany will give a moment's credence to the invention that the British Secret Service or its agents had anything to do with the crime. This country, no doubt, like every belligerent country, is alert in the search for military news, but its record is a guarantee that assassination is not among its weapons.


A Romanian senior journalist sympathetic to Socialism and Communism wrote in his diary entry for 24 November 1939: "to make it credible, they should have sacrificed a few of their own. Why shouldn't loose, and such loss would be no big deal indeed, say, Goebbels, his dog-like jaw?..." :P

PS A forum poster once asked: if Elser was so sure he left behind no clue to point towards him, why did he attempt to cross the Swiss border having plenty of incriminating objects upon him: sketches, a fuse ...Communist Party membership card? Simply keeping silence and a low profile in the poorer neighborhoods of Munich would hide him like a needle hides in a haystack.

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Re: The Carpenter Elser Versus the Führer Hitler

#14

Post by Nautilus » 02 Jun 2014, 22:47

The quote from the journalist N. D. Cocea's diary:

"9 November 1939

-----------------

And an extraordinary event, just as I've left the pen from my hand. The cataclysm of what I had just spoken! Assassination attempt against Hitler! Six dead. And Hess one of them. And about sixty wounded. The Madman has just escaped. Germany will become mad herself, under a new wave of terror, or joy.

The news of Hess' death infirmed! It appears none of the regime's chieftains has expired. Hitler had been already gone from the meeting, a few minutes before the bomb's explosion. Providence! And England's hand, as the German propaganda suggests.

Or maybe the claw of Hitlerian police. As I feel it's too obvious, this intervention of the Divine, who helps escape the big guys, responsible for slaughter, and kills the little people, who have no other guilt than stupidity or cowardice. Right, not even in everyday life things happen much different. But whatever, at least on holidays, when the attention of the entire world is focused on it, Providence might have had more ability and ingenuity.

First, the attempt should have been organized everywhere else than in a closed hall, where no one could enter, unless he or she is a member of the Party... or police.

Then, they should not create renowned and hard to forget precedents, as the burning of the Reichstag, or the assassination of the former friends of famous Adolf.

They should, just as well, allay suspicion for a moment, leave at least 24 hours for investigation, not jump first, as a moron out of a bathtub, with idiotic announcement England set up the attempt.

Last, they should allow the sacrifice of at least one of the chieftains, or at least a secondary limb of him. Germany was not going to perish if at the place of the crime Hess left an arm, Goebbels his dog-like jaw, or Goering his belly. People would believe, then, England probed this dirty affair with her tail and Providence with her finger. This way, they are going to believe ony what they can see from a mile away: the hand, just as ham-fisted as her imagination, of the German police."

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