Bombing Hitler: The Story of the Man Who Almost Assassinated the Führer
The 1944 effort to assassinate Hitler, centered on Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, was the last but not the only attempt on Hitler’s life. In 1939, a young woodworker, Georg Elser, planted a bomb in a Munich beer hall where Hitler was to give a speech to old Nazi comrades. Like the Stauffenberg effort, the attempt failed due to an unlucky fluke, since Hitler had to cut his speech short and left before the bomb detonated. Elser, who was captured trying to cross the Swiss border, endured a prolonged and brutal interrogation during which he consistently maintained he was the sole perpetrator, despite Gestapo efforts to prove a wider conspiracy. Haasis uses the extensive Gestapo record of the interrogation to reveal Elser as a stubborn, highly motivated, and dignified individual who could not be broken despite savage beatings, including one conducted by Heinrich Himmler. Unlike the Stauffenberg conspirators, who were mostly conservative and upper class, Elser was an “ordinary” man who displayed extraordinary courage as well as the foresight to realize the hellhole Germany was approaching. --Jay Freeman