On this day, 8 November 1939, factory worker and folk musician Georg Elser attempted to assassinate German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. He bombed the pub where Hitler stayed every year on the anniversary of the Nazi putsch of 1923.
Elser began work in an arms factory in 1936, and decided to try to kill Hitler. Under police interrogation he explained he made the decision because he believed Hitler was preparing to bring Germany into another war, among other reasons like how wages had been driven so low by the Nazi regime.
In 1938 Elser began stealing small amounts of explosives from the factory where he worked, and knew that Hitler travelled to the Buergerbraukeller pub on in Munich each year to celebrate the putsch. So he moved to Munich and attempted to get a job in the pub. In this effort he was unsuccessful, so he got a job in a quarry where he could steal more explosives, and began eating in the pub every day. Just before closing, he hid in a cupboard, and after everyone had left he began hollowing out a pillar to house a timebomb.
He set it to go off at 9:20 PM on November 8, by which time Hitler had previously arrived. But on this occasion, unbeknownst to Elser, Hitler cancelled his stay and left just 13 minutes earlier. Instead the bomb killed six senior Nazis as well as a waitress.
Despite torture, Elser refused to implicate anyone else in the attack, and he was sent to the Dachau concentration camp where he was murdered a few days before liberation.
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