Episode 04: Hitler Blows Up
From the beginning of his leadership, Hitler was the target of several inept assassination attempts. In early 1932, Hitler and several members of his staff fell ill after dining at the Kaiserhof hotel in Berlin. A few weeks later a poisoned letter was sent to him from a member of the Bavarian State Parliament, but it was intercepted.
Several military and civilian plots in 1934 and 1935 were stopped in the planning stages by the Gestapo. On October 5, 1939, members of the Polish army hid 500kg of TNT in a ditch along the route of Hitler’s victory parade through Poland. However, the parade route was diverted at the last minute and the sappers never got their chance.
For would-be killers, pistols or knives were not good options for the assassination attempt. All visiting officers were required to remove their belts and weapons. It was widely believed that Hitler not only wore a bulletproof vest but sported a service cap reinforced with steel. Poisoning too was out of the question, as all of Hitler’s food was specially prepared by his own cooks and was tasted for him by his personal physician, Dr. Morrell. The weapon of choice, therefore, was usually, the time bomb.
In November of 1939, a German carpenter placed a timed bomb at the Burgerbraukeller in Munich where Hitler would commemorate his Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler left the hall early, the bomb detonated on time, missing him, but killing eight and wounding sixty-two.
Moorhouse in “Killing Hitler” picks up the assassination attempt: “Despite the extreme tension of the moment, most eyewitnesses recalled that Stauffenberg did not betray a trace of nerves. He had, however, committed a grievous error. In his haste, Stauffenberg did not set a fuse in the second slab of explosive. What is more, he had neglected to place the unfused explosive in the briefcase. His bomb, therefore, was only half the bomb it should have been.
At around 12:42 pm, Wolfschanze was shaken by the cacophony of an explosion. In a flash, the map room became a scene of stampede and destruction. There was nothing but wounded men groaning, the acrid smell of burning, and charred fragments of maps and papers fluttering in the wind.”
