96
Bürgerbr?ukeller Hall
Munich
WORLD WAR II HAD begun.
For Thomas Bauer, Hitler’s maneuvers had a more personal cost as well.
His wife, children, and in-laws had been living in Vienna, but when Hitler annexed Austria, they knew better than to wait around to see what the Nazis would do.
They emigrated again, this time to the United States, settling near Chicago.
How many times since they’d first left in 1933 had Bauer stared at a passing train and thought, All I have to do is jump on a train, and I can be with Amalie and the kids?
But now, his family was much more than a train ride away. They were on the other side of the world.
His family was front of mind as Bauer greeted Georg Elser inside the Bürgerbr?ukeller Hall. A large room holding three thousand people, the hall tonight featured rows of long tables and patrons raucously and heartily downing their ale.
Georg Elser was a handsome man with a head of thick, dark hair, a carpenter and cabinetmaker by trade who had worked in an armament factory as well. He stood in a corner, quietly nursing a stein of beer. He was perspiring, though it wasn’t hot inside, and fidgety with his free hand.
“Relax,” Bauer whispered to him. “You’re making me nervous just watching you.”
They slowly made their way toward the stage, where people often gave speeches, though not this night.
A door led behind the stage and into a series of rooms. It was in these rooms on November 8, 1923, that Adolf Hitler and his comrades had held Bavarian officials at gunpoint before announcing their would-be overthrow of the government.
Now, Bauer and Elsner waited inside the smallest of these rooms, a broom closet, and turned off the light. They waited there for well over an hour, until the hall closed and the establishment finally shut down for the night.
Once they were alone inside the massive hall, Bauer flipped on a flashlight but dimmed it, covering the light with a blue handkerchief.
They approached the stage from the rear, squatting low. Behind the speaker’s rostrum was a series of brick pillars covered in plaster. They approached the one closest to the rostrum. Using a screwdriver, Elsner pried open a small chamber he had carved earlier that week, also with Bauer’s help.
Inside the chamber was a bomb, with over a hundred blasting cartridges and detonators. Attached to it was a twin-clock mechanism that would trigger the detonators.
It was set for tomorrow night, November 8, at 9:20 p.m. Square in the middle of the time that Adolf Hitler would be standing at the rostrum, delivering his annual address to the party faithful on the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch.
“Looks good,” Elsner whispered. He closed up the false door and banged it in place with the butt of his hand. “Perfect.”
They snuck back off the stage and returned to the back rooms. They had little to do now but wait, and perhaps sleep, until the establishment reopened in the morning. Then they would sneak out a rear door.
Bauer leaned against the wall in one of the more spacious back rooms. “You’re sure it’s enough blasting capacity?” he asked.
“We’ve already discussed this.” Elsner looked at him. “It’s enough to kill anyone within fifteen or twenty meters—meaning everyone onstage. At worst, it will take out the pillar entirely and destabilize the roof above them. It will literally bring the house down.”
Bauer nodded. “Hitler, Goring, Goebbels, Bormann, Hess, Himmler—they will all be on that stage tomorrow night,” he said.
“If this works, then November 8 will not be remembered for the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. It will be remembered as the day in 1939 that the entire Nazi leadership was decapitated.”