Georg Elser's Bomb Explodes in Munich After Hitler Leaves

The Annual Meeting

Every year on November 8, Hitler spoke at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich to veterans of the Nazi movement, to mark the anniversary of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. In 1939 the Second World War was two months old, and Germany had invaded Poland in September. Georg Elser, a carpenter and cabinetmaker from Württemberg, chose the hall as the place for an attack. He was 36 years old and had been a member of a trade union, not of the Nazi Party.

The Preparations

Elser traveled to Munich several times in 1939 and, according to his later statements, worked on the bomb for weeks. He visited the hall in the evenings, hid there until closing time, and at night hollowed out the pillar behind the speaker's platform to place an explosive charge with a clockwork timer. He had obtained explosives and detonators from a quarry and from a factory where he had worked. He later said that he had acted alone and that his aim was to prevent a larger war.

The Explosion

On November 8 Hitler spoke for a shorter time than in earlier years. He is reported to have needed to return to Berlin by train because fog ruled out a flight, and he left the hall at about 9:07 in the evening. The bomb exploded at about 9:20. The ceiling and part of the hall collapsed. Eight people were killed, among them members of the Nazi Party and a waitress, and more than sixty were injured.

Arrest

Elser had tried to cross into Switzerland near Konstanz on the evening of November 8, and border guards arrested him at about 8:45. He had in his possession a postcard of the Bürgerbräukeller and other items, and when news of the explosion arrived, he was taken to Munich and questioned by the Gestapo. He confessed within days. The Nazi government announced that the British secret service was behind the attack and linked it to the arrest of two British agents at Venlo in the Netherlands on November 9. Elser maintained that he had acted alone.

Imprisonment and Execution

Elser was kept as a special prisoner in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and later in Dachau. Reports from the time say that the Nazi leaders planned a public trial after the war. He was shot at Dachau on April 9, 1945, a few weeks before the camp was liberated. For many years after the war his act received little public recognition in Germany. Research from the 1960s onward documented his role, and there are now memorials to Elser in Berlin, in Munich and in Königsbronn, the village where he grew up.