Georg Elser (n. Hermaringen, 1903 - Dachau, 1945)
In a sequence of American TV series "Band of Brothers" a paratrooper Yankee tells another while traveling on a road occupied Germany in 1945: "I've never seen so few Nazis and since we entered Germany." I think the phrase pretty much sums up how difficult it was to find the end of the war a German who claimed to have been voluntary on the side of Hitler. In fact, historical data confirm rather the opposite, since 1933 resistance to the Nazi regime was virtually eliminated with few exceptions. So one is shocked when she discovers the story of Georg Elser, a simple carpenter who had in his hands the possibility of changing the story only guided by the desire to avoid another war.
Hermaringen Georg Elser was born in 1903, and started young to earn a living first as a turner apprentice in a metal factory and then by health problems, as an apprentice carpenter, a trade in which he was an officer in 1922. After working in various places in 1925 he was hired in a watch factory in Konstanz, where he worked until 1929. That same year he joined the Rotfrontkämpferbund , a paramilitary group of the Communist Party, although it seems that what we really liked was to play several instruments at the group meetings, and that his militancy was never too serious. Voted the Communists because he felt that they were the best defending the rights of workers, but also a man of deep religious beliefs. In 1930 he had a son with his girlfriend Mathilde Niedermann and moved to Switzerland where he worked on another watch factory until 1932. Then he returned to Germany to work in the lumber business from his father. Elser opposed Nazism from the outset, refusing to greet arm high and to participate in any act of the party. In 1936 he began work on a new factory, which became aware of rearming his country, but it seems that was the night of broken glass in 1938 and the memory of the First World War, who had lived as a teenager, what I decided to act to try to prevent a new war. On September 1, 1939 Germany invaded Poland, and his fears were realized. Determined to act, and using his knowledge of watches, Elser was 30 days remaining locked at night and no one would notice him in the famous Munich beer hall where Hitler had attempted a coup d'etat in 1923. Finally on 8 November, the anniversary of that date, Hitler and most of the leading hierarchs of Nazism met at the brewery for a memorial. At first it was thought that the act lasted until 10 pm but, unfortunately, bad weather meant that Hitler decided to return to Berlin by train instead of plane, and left the beer an hour earlier than planned, in So when at 21:20 pm exploded the bomb that had so laboriously built and placed Elser, their goal was already far. The attack left eight dead and dozens injured, and ironically the seemingly miraculous salvation brought up the Nazi leader's popularity among Germans.
Elser was arrested by the Gestapo while trying to cross the Swiss border in Konstanz. Tortured him for some time trying to find a possible connection with British intelligence services, but it seems that Elser at all times maintained that he acted alone. Then locked in the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen and Dachau with the dubious honor of being "Hitler's personal prisoner." For some years his fate was not worse than their peers in the field, which no doubt wondered who would be one particular prisoner who was allowed to have your own workbench. In April 1945, with the Russians at the gates of Berlin, Hitler ordered to kill Elser. It was so seemed that he had died from Allied bombing. He was killed 29 days before Germany surrendered.
Georg Elser's figure has remained half-hidden for many years. He has been denied the recognition given to other fighters against Nazism, as the group white rose or military conspirators July 44. Yet Elser seems the most important of them all the time and circumstances of his act. The military tried to kill Hitler in 44 had from the start by his side, and only when the war was lost came to light that strange morality that characterized them as Anthony Beevor, by which the goodness or badness of an behavior depends on gaining or losing. Members of the white rose, no less heroic than Elser, never had in their hands actually a possibility to change the things that envisioned Esler. His conduct, as opposed to most of his countrymen, should be considered statistically as madness but as what cases it seems very difficult to ascertain who is the madman. If it had not failed, Elser could have saved 50 million lives. Nevertheless, his figure has taken some time to be recognized by the Germans, except in places like Köningsbronn, village where he studied, and where a plaque reminds begins: "By my act, wanted to avoid further spillage of blood. "
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