Germany, Home Front

Hitler in Munich

(???)On secret instructions from Hitler himself, a bomb explodes in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich shortly after Hitler has left after a speaking engagement there. 9(8?) persons are killed and 60 injured. Nazi propaganda, orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels, accuses the British Intelligence Service of being responsible for the attack. In fact, Otto Strasser, a former Nazi who opposed Hitler and fled abroad in 1933, is named as the person who placed the bomb in the famous Munich beer-house. The charge against Strasser enables Hitler to eliminate once and for all one of the remaining sources of internal opposition in Germany, the left wing. Despite overwhelming support for the Nazi regime, strengthened by the successes in Poland, Hitler knows that he still has some powerful enemies in Germany. In addition to the uncompromising left, there is the church, both Catholic and Protestant, and a proportion of the old military hierarchy. Munich Bombing

(??? which version is true???) On the evening of November 8, 1939, a bomb exploded in Munich’s Bürgerbräukeller [Citizens’ Beer Hall] during a celebration marking the 16th anniversary of Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch. Several people were killed or injured. Hitler himself was not hurt. He had left the event a few minutes earlier than planned. The bomb had been outfitted with a timer and installed behind the speaker's lectern in a pillar that perpetrator Georg Elsner had spent weeks hollowing out. Elsner had been linked to a few Communist organizations in the 1920s, but was acting alone in this instance. By assassinating Hitler, he hoped not only to kill one man but to destroy the entire Nazi regime, a dictatorship he had strongly opposed for years on political and moral grounds. Elsner was arrested that very same evening and put into "protective custody." He was shot to death in Dachau on April 9, 1945. By then, Hitler had survived a series of assassination attempts, mainly by individuals acting independently. Nazi propaganda exploited these attempts by presenting them as evidence of Hitler's enjoyment of divine protection. Munich Bombing

Germany, Intelligence

2 officers of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Maj Richard H. Stevens and Capt S. Payne Best, are kidnapped at Venlo on the German-Dutch border. They have been lured there by a German agent who has promised that they will meet a disaffected German general. Unfortunately, one is carrying a list of British agents with him. From this and other indiscretions during their interrogation, the Germans are able to arrest many British agents in Czechoslovakia and other occupied territory. The Venlo Incident is a serious setback for British intelligence.

Poland

Hans Frank takes office as Governor General of Poland by the Germans. He quickly encourages the persecution of the Jews. A plan is consolidated to transport 600,000 Jews and 400,000 Poles from the incorporated territories (see Nov 1) to Frank's General Government by the spring of 1940.