Bombing Hitler

November 26, 2012
Originally published in Germany in 2001, Haasis's English-language debut is a brief, well-told history of Georg Elser, the woodworker who singlehandedly orchestrated the failed assassination of Hitler in 1939. It begins with the November 8 explosion at the Bürgerbräukeller beer hall in Munich, which killed eight, but just missed Hitlerâthe führer had left the premises a mere 13 minutes before the blast. Elser, however, was not so lucky: shortly before the bomb went off, the would-be assassin was arrested by suspicious border guards as he tried to cross into Switzerland. Haasis uses transcripts of the Gestapo's interrogations of Elser and his friends and family to describe his upbringing and work history, his political views and motivation, the planning of the attack, and his subsequent torture, imprisonment, and murder by Nazis at the Dachau concentration camp just weeks before it was liberated. Ideologically resolute, prescient in his wariness of Hitler, and committed to preventing the bloodshed of war, Elser emerges as a thwarted hero of the early resistance, and Haasis's engaging history is a testament to the individual's potential to change the course of history. Photos. Tanja Howarth Literary Agency.

December 1, 2012
The story of Georg Elser, the man who tried to kill Hitler. In the fall of 1938, Elser made the decision to assassinate the dictator around the time of the celebration of the anniversary of the 1923 Munich Beer Hall Putsch. Elser later told one of his interrogators, "I wanted to prevent even greater bloodshed through my act." Haasis recounts how Elser placed an explosive device in a pillar supporting the roofing above the speaker's platform of the beer hall. His device worked exactly as planned, killing eight people, but Hitler had left for Berlin shortly before. Haasis provides a clear portrait of the different components of the Nazi police state and details Himmler's personal involvement in brutal beatings of Elser. He was executed at Dachau in 1945. The author has put the story together from recollections of family, co-workers and others, as well as historical records. His effort has been as much to celebrate Elser's indomitable courage as to rescue his reputation. In the decades since his execution, Elser has been accused of being an SS agent and provocateur who was given special treatment within the concentration-camp system. Haasis details just what that special treatment involved for Elser, his family, his work mates and the communities where they lived and worked. Provides a focus for further insight into the workings of Hitler's Reich and its repressive apparatus.

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2013
The 1944 effort to assassinate Hitler, centered on Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, was the last but not the only attempt on Hitler's life. In 1939, a young woodworker, Georg Elser, planted a bomb in a Munich beer hall where Hitler was to give a speech to old Nazi comrades. Like the Stauffenberg effort, the attempt failed due to an unlucky fluke, since Hitler had to cut his speech short and left before the bomb detonated. Elser, who was captured trying to cross the Swiss border, endured a prolonged and brutal interrogation during which he consistently maintained he was the sole perpetrator, despite Gestapo efforts to prove a wider conspiracy. Haasis uses the extensive Gestapo record of the interrogation to reveal Elser as a stubborn, highly motivated, and dignified individual who could not be broken despite savage beatings, including one conducted by Heinrich Himmler. Unlike the Stauffenberg conspirators, who were mostly conservative and upper class, Elser was an ordinary man who displayed extraordinary courage as well as the foresight to realize the hellhole Germany was approaching.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)