I wanted to prevent the war.
Georg Elser and the Assassination Attempt of November 8, 1939

To find a suitable location to assassinate the Nazi leadership, Elser travelled to Munich on November 8, 1938, for the anniversary of the 1923 Munich Putsch. After Hitler’s speech, he was able to inspect the unguarded Bürgerbräukeller that same evening. On November 9, Elser watched the Nazi leaders’ commemorative march through the city and then returned to Königsbronn. He was now determined to attempt an assassina­tion in the Bürgerbräukeller. Explosives seemed the best way to remove the National Socialist leadership.

In his speech in the Bürgerbräukeller, Hitler did not mention the Polish Jew Herschel Grynszpan’s assassination attempt on the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris on November 7, 1938. Not until a day later, on the evening of November 9, 1938, did Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels speak on the matter, prompting pogroms all over Germany. Several hundred synagogues were set alight, hundreds of shops were looted, and at least 91 people were murdered. Some 30,000 Jews were put into concentration camps, where hundreds of them perished or were murdered.