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The 1st Assassination Attempt on Hitler

 

On the 16th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsh, Hitler made a special speech to the Old Guard Party members. Twelve minutes after his departure, a bomb went off – the first assassination attempt on Hitler had taken place (if you’ll remember, exactly one year earlier, party member Ernst von Rath died after being shot by a revenge-seeking Jew).

The next day, the Voelkischer Beobachter (Nazi newspaper) “squarely placed the blame on British secret agents, even implicating Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain himself” (Source). Whether or not even the Nazi’s believed this wasn’t as important as what they hoped to accomplish: Stirring up hatred for the British while whipping up a German frenzy for war.

At the same time, Gestapo Chief, Heinrich Himmler, sent a fake “Major Schaemmel” to meet with British intelligence agents to find out what they knew about the German anti-Nazi movement. He accomplished this by pretending to seek British aid in case the anti-Nazi movement ever chose to rise up and take action.

But, this wasn’t enough for Himmler. “He wanted the British agents themselves” (Source). So, on November 9, SS soldiers kidnapped Payne Best and R.H. Stevens in Holland. They were stuffed into a Buick and driven over the boarder into Germany.  

[Below: Newspaper headline of the event]

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Another Version of the Story:

Actually, the plan to assassinate Hitler went back to early 1938. See, carpenter Georg Elser (a communist) decided that by killing the leader of the National Socialist party, he could help prevent the impeding war and the inevitable financial downfall (Remember that Germany had faced an even more severe depression than America, thanks to their war reparations from WWI).

Elser planned his attack out well. During the summer of 1939, “Elser gained access to the venue and found that the hall was not guarded” (Source).  So, he started “constructing a detonator mechanism and obtaining explosives” (Source). The bomb contained a 144-hour timer so that it would go off at 9:20 pm, right in the middle of Hitler’s speech. Bomb complete, Elser moved to Munich and got to work preparing the Beer Hall for his attack. Sneaking into the Hall, he began hollowing “out a cavity in a stone pillar behind the speaker’s podium” (Source).

Despite planning “his bombing to perfection … luck was not on his side” (Source). In more than one way, Elser did not have time on his side. First, by this time, WWII had already started. Second, Hitler moved his speech from 9 up to 8. By 9:12, Hitler had already wrapped up his speech and left the building. Eight minutes later, the bomb went off, “leveling and pillar and sending a section of the roof crashing down on the speaker’s podium” (Source). Unfortunately, while Hitler survived, 7 others were killed and 63 injured.

Elser was later captured while attempting to cross the Swiss boarder. After facing several days of interrogations, he confessed to the crime. “While it seems certain that Elser did plant the bomb, who the instigators were—German military or British intelligence—remains unclear. All three ‘official’ conspirators spent the war in Sachsenhausen concentration camp” (Source). On April 16, 1945, Elser was dragged from his cell and executed by the SS. (Though, another source claims he was in Dachau and executed on April 9. Not sure which is true). 

 [Below: Beer cellar after bomb]

 

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The Three Kings: Czechoslovakian Resistance

 

Hitler had marched into Czechoslovakia (or Slovakia) in March of 1939. In defiance of the Munich Agreement. Shortly thereafter, “a Czech representative council had been established in London” (Source). In early 1940, they made contact with the Czechoslovakian resistance. At that time, all of the various resistance groups morphed into one large group: The Central Leadership of Resistance at Home (UVOD). However, Communist resistance groups refused to join forces with non-communist groups, mostly because of the Nazi-Soviet Pack (aka the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact).

See, like all European occupied countries (whether occupied by Hitler or Stalin, it didn’t matter) the Czechoslovakians were treated cruelly. Collaborators helped the Nazis keep everyone under control. Additionally, many thousands of Germans were deported to Germany to work as forced laborers (aka slaves). Back in Czechoslovakia, the people were forced to ration food and salaries, and weren’t given nearly what they needed of either.

Then, in September of 1941, Hitler sent Reinhard Heydrich to Prague. Within weeks, some 5,000 people were rounded up – all those that were thought to be involved with the Resistance. Unfortunately for Heydrich, this only seemed to spur on the Resistance. Acts of sabotage grew exponentially. These included bomb attacks, setting fires, as well as publishing and distributing pamphlets. One of their favorite acts was “reporting news to the government-in-exile” (Source).

The UVOD would receive intelligence (information) from their contact, Agent Paul Thümmeland, who cooperated with both postal workers and railway employees. Another good source of information was actually Czech policemen (unlike in France, clearly), who were always ready and willing to act as translators for the Germans! This, of course, supplied them with vital intel.

Of course, all of this resistance work drove Heydrich crazy.

[Below: Bombing of Prague]

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One of the major components of the Resistance was “The Three Kings” codenamed as such by, of all people, the Nazis (the Prague Gestapo, to be exact) . . . mostly because they wanted to, well, do away with them. The Three Kings, established in 1939, was compromised of only three members. That’s right. Three. Josef Mašín, Václav Morávek, and Josef Balabán.

They were best known for setting off two different bomb assassinations in Berlin. The first was “aimed at the German Ministry of Airship and Police Headquarters,” the second aimed at Heinrich Himmler (Source). The first was successful, the second . . . not so much. See, Himmler’s train arrived . . . at the wrong station!

In the first bombing, Mašín’s brother-in-law (pretending to be a German collaborator) was the one to place a suitcase of explosives in the headquarters and then another at the Ministry of Air Travel.

They were also responsible for bomb attacks in Leipzig and Munich, though these acts weren’t nearly as well known. They also successfully bombed a transport of German soldiers “by adding an explosive to coal on the locomotive’s tender” (Private).

Then, in May of 1942, another resistance movement took place: Operation Anthropoid. Operation Anthropoid was mission to assassinate Heydrich. This time around, the British sent out two trained Czech agents. On the whole, the UVOD was not exactly supportive. Not that they didn’t want to get rid of Heydrich, I’m sure they did. But, what they feared was the consequences of taking out such a high ranking Nazi officer.

Turned out, they had every reason to be fearful of the consequences. As a result of the assassination, “as the village of Lidice and Lezaky were destroyed along with their inhabitants, thousands of hostages were shot and many more sent to concentration camps” (Source). Additionally, the UVOD suffered greatly. As a result, they were forced to operate in separate units again. Furthermore, the base in London informed them that they could only act on the “defensive.” AKA: Intelligence.

Now, the Czechs were very good at intelligence, but they wanted something more efficient, specifically those loyal to Stalin, of all people. So, they decided to join up with the Red Army or the Russian resistance fighters. Eventually, the Germans did retreat. But then, the Red Army began to assert itself in Czechoslovakia, and they dominated all of the key resistance posts. I’d be willing to bet that the Czechs regretted that collaboration.

Meanwhile, the seven Czechs were forced to hide in the nearby Parachutists Church. Actually, they hid in the crypt of the church.

In the early morning hours of July 18, 1942, 700 SS members stormed the church and began shooting. They’d been tipped off by a fellow parachutist, Karel Čurda, who collaborated with the Gestapo for one million Reichsmarks. The Seven Czechs and Slavs were able to hold out for hours. But then, the Nazis flooded the basement with fire hoses.

Instead of facing capture, the seven men took their lives. “Some shot themselves, others took cyanide” (Source).

This act is still important to Czechs today because it shows that they never gave in to Nazi occupation, they fought, and were willing to give their lives, if only to see their country free again.

[Below: Parachutist Church crypt]

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Up Next:

Denmark in WWII

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The Night of Long Knives

 

June 30-July 2, 1934: Operation Hummingbird: A purge in Nazi Germany, designed to insure and strengthen Hitler’s absolute power over Germany.

 

Background:

By mid-1934, there were over 4,000 Nazi stormtroopers (SA) or “brown shirts” (Gretchen’s brother, Reinhard, in Prisoner of Night and Fog &Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke was a brown shirt).

The SA was a paramilitary branch of the NSDAP and significant to Hitler’s rise to power. “It’s primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, disrupting the meetings of opposing parties, fighting against the paramilitary units of the opposing parties, especially the Red Front Fighters League (Rotfrontkämpferbund) of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), and intimidating Slavic and Romani people, unionists, and Jews – for instance, during the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses” (Source). However, they predated Hitler’s Nazi party, having originally been used in WWI as specialized assault troops. 

While the SA helped Hitler gain power, once Hitler and his Nazis had said power, it became clear that the SA was becoming “increasingly eager for power itself” (Source). As a way to prevent too much SA power, Hitler reassigned the off-shoot branch, the SS, to Heinrich Himmler. And, as a result, the SS became more and more important to Hitler, slowly replacing the SA as his official bodyguards. He simply came to see them as being “better suited to carry out [his] policies, including those of a criminal nature” (Source).

See, the SA took more seriously the “socialist” part of National Socialism then, perhaps, Hitler wanted them to. They wanted a second revolution, even though other Nazis were completely content with the results of their first.

Meanwhile, they and their leader, Ernst Röhm, were posing a real threat to the regular Army High Command, whom Hitler had promised to restore to “former military glory and break the ‘shackles’ of the Treaty of Versailles, which limited the Army to 100,000 men and prevented modernization” (Source). 

A former street brawler himself, Röhm had been with Hitler from the very beginning, an instrumental part. As a result, Röhm had been given a seat at the National Defence Council, where over time, he became more and more demanding about his say in military matters, much to the annoyance and concern of other members, General Werner von Blomberg (Minister of Defence) and General Walther von Reichenau (Chief of the Reichswehr’s Ministerial Department).

[Below: An SA parade with leader, Ernest Röhm]

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Meanwhile, the SA party members were becoming more disliked throughout Germany because of their “arrogant, gangster-like behavior, such as extorting money from local shop owners, driving around in fancy new cars showing off, often getting drunk, beating up and even murdering innocent civilians” (Source). Many of Hitler’s lieutenants (even Hitler himself) were becoming progressively more worried by Röhm’s “growing power and restlessness” (Source). SS leaders Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, along with Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, and Rudolf Hess began plotting against Röhm. By May 1934, “lists of those to be ‘liquidated’ started to circulate amongst Göring and Himmler’s people, who engaged in a trade, adding enemies of one in exchange for sparing friends of the other” (Source).

Many world leaders tried telling Hitler the importance of taking away power from Röhm and the SA. But he didn’t immediately listen. Eventually, Blomberg had to warn Hitler that if he did not intervene himself, “that Hindenburg was close to declaring martial law and turning the government over to the Reichswehr if Hitler did not take immediate steps against Röhm and his brownshirts” (Source). This pressure gave Hitler no choice but to act. He now intended both “destroying Röhm and settling scores with old enemies” (Source).

In preparation, Himmler and Heydrich concocted evidence suggesting that “Röhm had been paid 12 million Reichsmark by France to overthrow Hitler” (Source). On June 25, the Reichswehr were placed on high alert and the promise of the army’s full cooperation was secured.

On June 30, “Hitler first ordered the arrest of the SA” (Source). That taken care of, a car took Hitler, Hess, and others to an SS-secured resort hotel, where Röhm and the present SA men were arrested and sent to Stadelheim prison (just outside Munich) to be executed.

At 10 am, Hitler called Göring in Berlin, exchanging the code word: Hummingbird. This code word unleashed “a wave of murderous violence in Berlin and twenty other cities” (Source). The SS and Göring’s own personal police took to the streets, executing anyone appearing on the prepared list. Röhm, however, was “given a pistol containing a single bullet to commit suicide” (Source). But Röhm refused, insisting Hitler had to do it. Instead, SS guards, Theodore Eicke (commander of the Totenkopf (Death’s Head) guards at Dachau), entered Röhm’s cell and “shot him point blank” (Source).

The bloody purge lasted until July 2nd, but did not end before Hitler held a tea party for his cabinet members in the garden of the Chancellory as a ploy to ensure citizens that all was going back to normal. When it was all over, deaths totaled, some say, as high as 1,000 or more. Only half of those deaths were actually SA officials.

On July 13, Hitler gave a speech announcing the 74 “justified murders”: “If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people” (Source).

By he proclaiming himself the supreme judge of Germany, he placed himself above law, making his word law. And, by aiding Hitler in the raid, the German army aligned themselves with Hitler.

[Below: Removal of Murdered SA bodies.]

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Up Next: 

 Hitler’s Violation of the Treaty of Versailles 

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