Elser assisted his parents in their work and supplemented his income by making furniture in a home workshop until his father was forced to sell the family property in late 1935.

[4] In 1936, Elser worked with a carpenter named Grupp in Königsbronn, making desks and installing windows, but soon gave up the job, believing the pay was too low.

[3]Five years later in Dachau concentration camp, SS officer Lechner claimed Elser revealed his motive to him: I had to do it because, for his whole life, Hitler has meant the downfall of Germany ... don't think that I'm some kind of dyed-in-the-wool Communist — I'm not.

[4]In order to find out how best to implement his assassination plan, Elser travelled to Munich by train on 8 November 1938, the day of Hitler's annual speech on the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch.

Working on the gallery level and using a flashlight dimmed with a blue handkerchief, he started by installing a secret door in the timber panelling to a pillar behind the speaker's rostrum.

On 4–5 November, which were Saturday and Sunday dance nights, he had to buy a ticket and wait in the gallery until after 1 a.m. before he could install the twin-clock mechanism that would trigger the detonator.

[3] The high-ranking Nazis who accompanied Adolf Hitler to the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch on 8 November 1939 were Joseph Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Rudolf Hess, Robert Ley, Alfred Rosenberg, Julius Streicher, August Frank, Hermann Esser and Heinrich Himmler.

[4][page needed] Unknown to Elser, Hitler had initially cancelled his speech at the Bürgerbräukeller to devote his attention to planning the imminent war with France, but changed his mind and attended after all.

[4][7][8] In Munich on 9 November, the annual guard of honour for the sixteen "blood martyrs" of the NSDAP who died in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 was held at the Feldherrnhalle as usual.

Hitler returned from Berlin to stand before seven flag-draped coffins as Rudolf Hess addressed the SA guard, the onlookers, and listeners to Grossdeutsche Rundfunk ("Greater German Radio").

When taken to the border control post and asked to empty his pockets he was found to be carrying wire cutters, numerous notes and sketches pertaining to explosive devices, firing pins and a blank colour postcard of the interior of the Bürgerbräukeller.

[4] While still returning to Berlin by train, Hitler ordered Heinrich Himmler to put Arthur Nebe, head of Kripo (Criminal Police), in charge of the investigation into the Munich bombing.

[4] Nebe had early success, finding the remains of brass plates bearing patent numbers of a clock maker in Schwenningen, Baden-Würtemberg.

His parents, siblings and their spouses, together with his former girlfriend Elsa Härlen, were taken by train to Berlin to be held in Moabit prison and then in the grand Hotel Kaiserhof.

On 22 November, German newspapers were filled with the story that the assassin, Georg Elser, had been funded by the British Intelligence Service, while the organiser of the crime was Otto Strasser.

[12] SS officer Walter Schellenberg later wrote in his memoirs (The Labyrinth): He (Hitler) began to issue detailed directives on the handling of the case to Himmler, Heydrich, and me and gave releases to the press.

'[4]Three days later, Schellenberg heard from Müller that three doctors had worked on Elser for twenty-four hours, injecting him with "sizable quantities of Pervitin", but he continued to say the same thing.

Sentenced to 20 years in Welzheim concentration camp for negligence in dealing with explosive materials, Vollmer was released in 1941 after his wife petitioned Rudolf Hess through old connections.

Prior to her death she started a rumor that Karl Kuch, a Zürich music dealer who had died in a car accident in July 1939, had put Elser up to the assassination attempt.

The theory alleged that Kuch was the leader of a three-man Communist group, nicknamed "Troika" by Gestapo, who claimed the supposed trio had connections to Otto Strasser and the Soviet NKVD.

In 1940, a Gestapo man had told him: "In spite of repeated torture, Elser had stuck to his story that he had carried out the attack in order to save the working people and the entire world from war.

Maria Schmauder's father was subjected to lengthy interrogation, particularly as Elser had admitted to listening to foreign radio stations in his house—even though that practice was not banned until 1 September 1939.

[17][page needed] Martin Niemöller was also a special inmate in the Sachsenhausen "bunker" and believed the rumours that Elser was an SS man and an agent of Hitler and Himmler.

Hitler ordered the execution of special security prisoner "Eller" — the name used for Elser in Dachau — along with Wilhelm Canaris, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others who had plotted against him.

[19]On 9 April 1945, four weeks before the end of the war in Europe, Georg Elser was shot dead and his fully dressed body immediately burned in the crematorium of Dachau Concentration Camp.

After the war, Protestant pastor and theologian Martin Niemöller, also in custody in the "bunker" at Sachsenhausen, gave credence to the rumour that Elser had been a member of the SS and that the whole assassination attempt had been staged by the Nazis to portray Hitler as being protected by Providence.

Some evidence suggests that the infernal machine was exploded with the knowledge of Hitler and Himmler in order to consolidate the German sense of community, or, as in the case of the Reichstag fire, to give rise to a new wave of terror.

I heard there were photographs showing a high-ranking SS officer standing next to Hitler with a watch in hand, to take care that the leaders escaped in time.

[21][page needed]In 1969, historical research by Anton Hoch based on The Gestapo Protokoll (interrogation report) dated 19–23 November 1939, found that Elser had acted alone and there was no evidence to involve the Nazi regime or any outside group in the assassination attempt.

[22] In contrast to the conspirators of the 20 July 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler, Elser was barely acknowledged in the official commemorative culture of the Federal Republic of Germany until the 1990s.