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In the end, 13 minutes were missing.
Had Hitler only stayed a little longer on November 8, 1939, the bomb that ticked behind him in a pillar of the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich during his speech on the 16th anniversary of his failed coup attempt in 1923 would have killed him.
It was built by a simple man, a carpenter.
His name: Georg Elser.
who was he?
What drove him to commit such an act alone and in months of preparation?
For the new WELT podcast “Assassin” we met Franz Hirth, the only living relative who knew Georg Elser.
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Elser was his uncle, his mother his favorite sister;
this winter Mr. Hirth celebrated his 92nd birthday.
We arrange an interview with his uncle Georg Elser - by phone, of course, because of Corona.
WORLD:
How did you get to know your uncle Georg Elser better?
Franz Hirth:
That was in 1932, when I was about four years old, he moved in with us.
And since my parents worked in Stuttgart, my uncle became, so to speak, my “surrogate father”, my contact person.
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WORLD:
You lived in a house with him?
Hirth:
Yes, in Georg's parents' house, where my mother grew up too.
WORLD:
What kind of person was he?
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Hirth:
The Elsers are quiet, withdrawn people.
They don't shy away from the public, but they don't push themselves to the fore.
They were interested in everything, in all news.
And my uncle Georg always knew what to do for me.
We often spent the afternoons together.
I felt protected with him.
WORLD:
You lived under one roof with your uncle until 1935, when the house was sold.
Elser moved one place further, to Schnaithaim.
How did you get in touch again later?
Georg Elser carried out a bomb attack on Hitler
Georg Elser tries to carry out a bomb attack on Adolf Hitler and other members of the Nazi leadership in Munich's Bürgerbräukeller.
Shortly before the end of the war, he was murdered on Hitler's orders.
Source: STUDIO_HH
Hirth:
We always had correspondence, and it was around the middle of 1939 when my uncle asked if there was a possibility that he could leave all his belongings with my mother, in our apartment in Stuttgart.
He wants to go to Switzerland again.
WORLD:
He had already been there as a carpenter during his waltz.
Hirth:
Yes.
My mother said: “Well, we have space downstairs, you can store your things.” And the date was then November 6th.
WORLD:
Then he came to your parents and you.
Two days before the attack.
Hirth:
I was home alone after school, my parents were at work, and so he came in the afternoon with all his belongings.
It was a big wooden box, yes, you have to say a chest, and - I think - there were two suitcases.
He came directly from Munich by train.
In the box, he told me, there were tools and also a slide rule.
“You might need that one day,” he said.
Then he pointed out to me that if we had to hide something, there was a false bottom here in the box.
And he explained to me how to remove this false bottom.
Today I can't tell you exactly how that was done.
But it was this box, this wooden chest, in which he had hidden his explosives.
Georg Elser failed on November 8, 1939 with a bomb attack on Hitler in Munich's Bürgerbräukeller
Source: picture alliance / akg-images
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WORLD:
When he told you that - did you have a childish premonition?
Hirth:
No, I thought he had a personal matter there - it was always good to have a hiding place.
In the evening my parents came back home.
Then there was dinner and a long conversation.
My mother had invited him to stay the night, he could do that in our living room, there was a couch there.
My uncle didn't want to go back to Munich until the next morning, on November 7th.
WORLD: Did
he tell you that?
Hirth:
Not until the evening in the conversation.
I could also hear from there that Georg was against the war.
At the time, on November 6, 1939, it had already been going on for over eight weeks.
My father said to him: “You don't have to be afraid, you were born in 1903, you are now 36 years old.
You will no longer be a soldier. ”Well, my uncle then said that he had decided to leave Germany.
Little did we know that there was something else behind it.
He had already been to work in Switzerland.
WORLD:
Did he look different to you at the moment?
Hirth:
Yes, overtired, you could say.
My mother therefore asked him: “What did you do that you were so exhausted?” Georg replied that he had worked for a carpenter in Munich, where he had to make ammunition boxes almost day and night because the demand was very high.
In any case, he went back to Munich the next morning, on November 7th.
WORLD:
Is it true that after the explosion in the Bürgerbräukeller on November 8, 1939 at 9:20 p.m., days passed before you heard about your uncle?
Hirth:
Yes, it started on November 13th, it's a day I'll never forget.
I came home from school around noon.
And because my parents were working, I had to prepare my own food.
Suddenly the apartment door opened and my father came in with two strange men.
I wanted to ask: “What's going on?” My father said to me: “Shut up and keep quiet.” The men have inspected the apartment, we should come with them, my father gave them the keys to the apartment, and we are then on foot walked along Lerchenstrasse to the Hotel Silber.
Stauffenberg assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler
On July 20, 1944, Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg placed a bomb on the card table next to Adolf Hitler during a meeting.
The explosive charge detonates.
But Adolf Hitler survived.
Source: STUDIO_HH
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WORLD:
The headquarters of the Gestapo in Stuttgart.
Hirth:
My father walked in the middle, between the two gentlemen.
I didn't know who they were.
It was only when we arrived at the Hotel Silber that it dawned on me: “They have something to do with the police.” The Gestapo was basically in civilian clothes.
I then had to sit in a corner there.
The other immediately went up the stairs with my father.
I couldn't say goodbye.
I thought he'd be back.
Then I sat there for hours and asked myself: “When will my father finally be back?” It lasted until it got dark, until eight o'clock in the evening.
WORLD:
What happened after that?
Hirth:
Then one of the two officers came and said to his colleague: "My God, we forgot the boy." Of course I didn't know what it was about.
After a short chat, the man indicated that I would like to go with him.
We then took the tram to a children's home.
That is, to the orphanage on Thüringstrasse.
Franz Hirth, the nephew of Hitler assassin Georg Elser, photographed in January 2015 in Munich
Source: picture alliance / dpa
WORLD:
And you weren't even allowed to see your mother that day?
Hirth:
No, she was arrested at her place of work at the time.
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WORLD:
What happened to you?
Hirth:
I was in the children's home and only had what I was wearing that morning with me.
After a few days, an officer brought me a suitcase with some laundry and my school supplies.
I didn't know anything, the only thing they said to me was: “Your parents will pick you up again.” But somehow I suspected that all of this had something to do with my uncle.
I hardly have any memories of the time in the home, but November 21st was my birthday and I thought: "They have to do something special for me now." There was a nurses' room that I kept walking past, and in it stood a people's receiver.
And on this day I received this special report that the assassin had been caught in Munich.
It is about the carpenter Georg Elser.
WORLD:
How did you react?
Hirth:
At first I didn't understand the name exactly.
I had only passed the Volksempfänger in the nurses' room because I was hoping that one of the nurses would see me and remember that it was my birthday.
The second or third time, it hit me like lightning where it struck me.
And then I just wanted to hide in the last corner because I thought: “They know that I'm Georg Elser's nephew, the terrorist is my uncle.” Well, it was a terrible day.
But then nobody came up to me, and nobody asked me either.
WORLD:
Were you able to talk to anyone about your fears back then?
Hirth:
No, I was so ashamed, it was terrible.
It wasn't until about four weeks later that my paternal grandfather picked me up from the children's home and I stayed with him for the next time.
WORLD:
Did you talk to him about Georg Elser?
Hirth:
No, he didn't know much himself.
Except that my uncle was the assassin.
My grandfather and grandmother had also been interrogated, but not as intensely as the Elser family.
WORLD:
How long did you stay with your grandparents?
Hirth:
That lasted until the beginning of March 1940. My parents had been brought to Berlin, but they were taken there separately.
They had not seen each other since November 13, 1939.
Detained separately in solitary confinement.
Until the end of February, then they could go back to Stuttgart together.
My mother didn't say much about that time, she just said: "There was always an SS man in front of my room."
Hitler's putsch in Munich
In the Bürgerbräukeller, the demagogue Adolf Hitler proclaims a new government and calls for a march to Berlin.
Several thousand followers join.
The police stop the coup plotters.
Source: STUDIO_HH
WORLD:
What had changed for your family?
Hirth:
Well, my father had to report to the police station every month until 1945.
The name Elser was like a thorn.
WORLD:
What do you mean?
Hirth:
It's not that I was angry with my uncle, but I was ashamed of him at the time, I have to say that.
Very ashamed.
And also the family atmosphere - yes, that was really bad.
My friends stood by me.
But what happened then in 1946 was bad.
WORLD:
What exactly do you mean?
Hirth:
The Nazis had claimed that my uncle carried out the attack on behalf of the British secret service.
One did not want to believe that a single so-called “national comrade” was capable of carrying out such an attack.
My uncle was executed in Dachau during the last days of the war.
And after the war, Pastor Martin Niemöller, who later became President of the Church, claimed: "I know Georg Elser well, he was in the same building as I ..."
WORLD:
Niemöller meant the "cell construction" for so-called special prisoners in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps ...
Hirth:
Yes.
So Niemöller said: "Elser was an SS man who committed the assassination attempt on behalf of the SS."
WORLD:
How did you feel then?
Hirth:
That statement was so shocking, especially that it was true for decades.
My grandmother turned to Niemöller and asked him not to say anything like that.
The name Elser had a bad sound in the post-war years.
I couldn't pronounce the name for years.
WORLD:
Not even to your parents?
Hirth:
No, there was dead silence.
Was he a tool of the SS?
Was he a tool of the English secret service?
We didn't know that.
The Hitler assassination attempt and Georg Elser - that was a taboo subject for us for 50 years.
That was a drain.
WORLD:
When did you learn the truth about your uncle?
Hirth:
1989, when Klaus-Maria Brandauer's film about him came into the cinemas.
That was when we first heard of the uncle's interrogation records, which a historian had discovered by chance in 1968.
I then read it.
WORLD:
Who is Georg Elser for you today?
Hirth:
A real resistance fighter.
A person I would not have trusted to prepare and carry out such an assassination attempt.
WORLD:
Mr. Hirth, thank you for this interview.
Hirth:
Thank you.
I am now at the end of my strength.
But I was happy to do it because it's the last interview I'll give.
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