Hitler and the Lost 13 Minutes

This is one of those history essays that I occasionally write.

So this story starts at the Bürgerbräukeller, which is found in Munich....along Rosenheimer Strasse, over in the Haidhausen district.

It's a Gasthauskeller (large public pub), which goes back to the original opening in 1885.

Along about the fall of 1939, it was a fairly well known meeting point for political party chatter for Nazis.  For weeks, it'd been known that on the evening of 8 November 1939....the big-wigs of the party would be there, and Adolph Hitler was slated to show up. 

Also knowing about this meeting, was this German guy....Georg Elser.  What we can say about Elser was that he was mostly a failure in life, and fairly attached to the Communist chatter going on in the 1930s of Germany.  He was a wood craftsman by trade. 

At some point in July of 1939, he'd made up his mind (apparently on his own, without much assistance), that he'd kill Hitler.  Around 5 August, he shows up in Munich....rents a room, and begins to acquire access to the Burgerbraukeller.  Over a number of weeks, he fashions an area to hide the bomb near the podium.

On the nights of the 1st and 2nd of November, he installed the explosives into the pillars on the stage. 

If you look at this timeline....going from early August to the first week of November....this was a fairly well-drawn assassination attempt.

What Georg had anticipated....the normal routine for Hitler (since 1919) was deliver an almost two-hour long speech.  The timing device was intentionally set for roughly 73 minutes into this speech.  Why so late?  No one has really been able to explain that part of the story.

Hitler has other commitments, and at the one-hour point....departs.  He walks out of the building, enters a car, and is carried off to the local train station.

Thirteen minutes after that, the bomb goes off.  Eight dead, and roughly sixty people injured.  George is caught, and held until almost end of WW II....before being executed.

So, you have to wonder.....what if Hitler had remained there for thirteen additional minutes, and the bomb went off.   What happens now?

In the event of a serious injury, the odds are that he would have spent weeks in intensive care, and probably not been capable of full command from that point on.

In the event of death, the Nazi Party would have assembled and the odds are that Hermann Goring would have ended up the replacement Chancellor, and Martin Bormann would have ended up as the Party Chief. 

At this point, November 1939.....Germany had wrapped up the invasion of the Sudetenland, and Poland.  France wasn't slated to be invaded yet (plans were on the board), but the anticipated date was 10 May 1940. 

Would Goring continue with planning, or draw a conclusion to this invasion business?  This is an unknown variable. 

A lot of German military experts will point out that Germany's military wasn't exactly 'blessed' with military hardware in 1939, and they encountered in Poland and the Sudetenland....was nothing compared to what France and the UK had.  There's a strong belief among some that caution to the wind was brewing among the German generals, and the only one with an aggressive view was Hitler himself.

If the aggressive side of Germany had halted at this point, with Chancellor Goring?  One might go and suggest that the military folks would have gone to convince Goring to hold off on further invasions until more of a build-up occurred....meaning that it might have been 1944 before this discussion took place, where a more capable Germany would have then existed. 

But all of this is dependent on that lost 13 minute situation.