16
Berchtesgaden, the Berghof
Bavarian Alps
“NO. NO! THIS IS unacceptable!” The Führer, still hiding out at his publisher’s cottage on Lake Tegernsee, dressed comfortably in his lederhosen, threw snippets of newspaper headlines he’d cut out into the air.
QUESTIONS STILL REMAIN IN DEATH OF HITLER’S NIECE
SUICIDE OR MURDER? HITLER’S INVOLVEMENT REMAINS UNKNOWN
DID HITLER MURDER GELI RAUBAL?
“How can they do this?” he demanded, his face glowing red. “How can they continue to spread this poison?” He pointed at Rudolf Hess, at Joseph Goebbels, each of whom stood patiently at attention. “You said this would stop! You said you would make this stop!”
“We are making it stop, mein Führer,” said Hess, hands clasped behind his back. “Most of the major newspapers have stopped—”
“Not all of them! Not all of them, Rudolf! I want satisfaction!” Hitler grabbed Hess by the arm. “Get Himmler. This will stop now!”
The plaza was quiet at night. The Viktualienmarkt was empty, the vendors long having closed down their tents and packed up their wares. Two men, wearing trench coats and fedoras, stood silently at the foot of Peter’s Hill by the market’s shuttered butcher hall.
The imposing Gothic clock above Danatbank bellowed its echoing midnight chime.
The two men started walking through the empty market, then turned right on the Tal, passing the raucous Sterneckerbrau beer hall, and stopped two doors down next to a large picture window that bore the words FREIE PRESSE MüNCHEN.
They looked around. Saw nothing that concerned them. Then one of them pulled out a flashlight and clicked it on and off twice before the men continued walking.
From down the street, the tires of two vehicles squealed into action.
Two bright red Opel pickup trucks raced toward them and screeched to a halt at the curb.
Men dressed all in black emerged from the back beds of the trucks, carrying weapons.
Hatchets smashed the picture window, glass raining down onto the street. The men stepped inside.
They rifled through every desk in the newsroom, pulling out papers and throwing them into a heap in the middle of the room.
They found the printing presses in a rear room and used their hatchets, hacking off the beds and platens and rollers and levers until the machines were in twenty pieces.
Then they doused the entire newsroom with gasoline, including the heap of paper in the middle of the room.
On their way out, the last person lit a stick of dynamite and tossed it inside before rushing to the truck.
A ball of fiery orange and black smoke burst through the window as the trucks sped away.
Three miles to the north, in the Schwabing District, live jazz played in the Taverne der Künstler on Kaulbachstra?e, a favorite of the bohemian crowd.
In the dimly lit room with velvet booths and drapes, people drank and smoked and swayed on the black-and-white-tiled dance floor until someone standing by a window called out, “Look! Come look! What is that?”
Patrons gathered at the window, looking at a large metal contraption lying in pieces on the sidewalk. Moments later, a number of men dressed in all black ran out of the building, having come from the floor above the tavern, the home of the T?glicher Zuschauer—the Daily Spectator.
And then a boom rocked the entire building.
Licks of flame rained down on the street.
The patrons sprinted for the exit, logjamming as pieces of plaster began to crumble upon them.
It took nearly ten minutes, by most accounts, for the tavern’s ceiling to cave in, by which time everyone inside was standing outside on the street, watching black smoke plume from the home of one of Munich’s left-leaning newspapers.
By sunrise, four newspapers serving Munich, each of them critical of the NSDAP generally and Adolf Hitler specifically, were nothing but charred remnants.