Bombing Hitler Read Online Free Page B

perhaps with longing, perhaps with regret. In any case, he lacked the energy to run the last eight meters from the customs building to the border. There was at that time no barrier across the border, only a chain. Would the border patrol have fired? Most certainly—the Nazis had no qualms when it came to dealing with violations of the border with Switzerland. But Elser was drained. He had never been an athlete and didn’t have an athletic build. His strength lay in the years spent in his shop doing delicate work, hiding behind a calm and natural exterior. And with these skills, he had come far.
    What finally led to his downfall was the bodily search. The contents of his pockets suggested that Elser must be a spy, a saboteur, and a Communist. Later on, the Berlin Gestapo would include in its interrogation record Elser’s excuse that he had simply forgotten about these things. However, Reichskriminaldirektor Arthur Nebe came to the correct conclusion: that Elser had wanted use the contents of his pockets to secure asylum in Switzerland. Elser had taken the materials and information relating to munitions from the Waldenmaier Company in Heidenheim where he had worked. He wanted to prove to the Swiss that war matériel was being produced in Germany. This was of course old news since the war had already begun and would have been of little interest to Switzerland since it was engaging in arms trading with Germany. But Elser still clung to the notion of an old Swiss Confederation that no longer existed. The insignia of the Communist Rotfrontkämpferbund (Red Front) would likely have hastened his deportation, since the Swiss treatment of their own Communists was not exactly in accord with their constitution.
    There was only one item in his pockets that belonged to Elser: the wire cutters. With these, he would have gotten through the border fence in only a few minutes. Perhaps once there he would have been considered a refugee. Perhaps in the cantons of Baselstadt or Schaffhausen, which were governed by the Social Democrats, but certainly not in Thurgau. Here the sentiment was inclined toward Hitler—with a good dose of anti-Semitism and enmity toward the left. In the best-case scenario, Elser might have been shunted off to France, as was Otto Strasser the next day. Through physical evidence of his work, Elser wanted to lay creative claim to the explosion in the Bürgerbräukeller. But the Gestapo would have immediately demanded of the Swiss that he be extradited as a felon, and the police in Bern would have complied with the demand. Elser’s itinerary would have remained the same: Berlin, Sachsenhausen, Dachau.
    Viewing the border episode this way places it in a new light. If Elser had succeeded in fleeing to Switzerland, his fate would not likely have been any different than it was following his capture in Konstanz. The case of Maurice Bavaud demonstrates that the Swiss at that time had no sympathy for a Hitler assassin. The Swiss ambassador in Berlin, Hans Frõlicher, could have arranged to exchange Bavaud, who had planned to kill Hitler with a pistol in 1938, for several Gestapo spies imprisoned in Switzerland. But he didn’t want to. So Bavaud was executed by guillotine in Berlin-Plötzensee in 1941.
    While Elser was being searched, he was threatened with beatings because he tried to pass off the detonator parts as clock parts. The threats were left out of the interrogation record, as they were considered standard tools of the trade. From this point on, until he was delivered to Sachsenhausen—more than a year later—Elser received frequent beatings; most were severe and sometimes life threatening.
    When they were done, the customs officials called Gestapo head-quarters, located at Mainaustrasse 29 in the former Villa Rokka, and Gestapo officer Otto Grethe was sent to pick up Elser and bring him there for further questioning. Grethe’s impression of Elser was that he was “an