What Was Hitler's Assassination

Nic Pfannenstein

World History

Period 3

What if Hitler had been Assassinated?

A German leader once said, “Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, and assassination” (BrainyQuote.com). That man was Adolf Hitler. When he was saying it, it was meant to be directed at war, but it could also be said towards him by the 72 million Germans who did not support him and the Nazi’s. Everyone knows that while Hitler and his regime were killing over 11 million people in World War II, he created many enemies. But what most people don’t know is that there were at least 35 assassination attempts on HItler by civilians and military leaders. The assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler began began as far back as 1921, immediately after

After a lot of planning, he decided that he would try to kill Hitler by using a time bomb. Elser decide that the perfect place would be Bürgerbräukeller. Every year on the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler had a rally there to celebrate how far the Nazis had come. He also chose that he would put the bomb behind the stage where there was a thick stone pillar. Elser broke into the building every night for over a month where he would carve a hole in the back of the pillar. He would carefully pick up all of the dust from the pillar to leave no trace that he had been there (Bowlby 2). After months of planning, carving the hole, and building the bomb, Elser set the bomb to explode at 9:20 p.m. on 8 November, right after Hitler’s speech was set to begin. However, the ceremony began at an hour earlier than usual because Hitler had a meeting the next day in Berlin. This caused Hitler to make his speech early, ending at 9:07 p.m., before going to the train station to leave go to Berlin. Elser missed Hitler by only 12 minutes. Elser meanwhile was running away to the Swiss border. He didn’t even know if his bomb would work, much less that Hitler wouldn’t be there for the explosion. The explosion happened on schedule, causing the deaths of eight people out of over 100 who were still at the bar. When he got to the border, Elser was questions by 2 border guards when he tried to leave for Switzerland. They searched his briefcase and found his tools and was arrested. He was found guilty of treason and tortured for over a year before being put in a concentration camp and held there until 1945 before being executed (Moorhouse