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Preparing the Assassination Attempt

Elser made most parts of his explosive device himself, only having a few metal pieces processed in various workshops. During the night of November 2, he inserted the explosive device into the column and filled the rest of the hollowed-out space with extra explosives and powder. After a failed attempt the previous night, on November 5 he installed his complicated detonator, which could be set six days in advance.

On the morning of November 6, he set the two clockwork mechanisms for the evening of November 8 and “thereby let the matter take its course.” Following a brief visit to his sister in Stuttgart, he checked the time fuse again during the night of November 7, 1939. He then went immediately to Constance on November 8, planning to cross the border to Switzerland illegally before the explosives detonated. Having aroused the attention of a customs team, Elser was arrested there at 8:45 p.m.

Institut für Zeitgeschichte, München, ZS/A-17/5
Side view of the reconstructed explosive device with a view of the two clock mechanisms (right) and the detonator (left).
Institut für Zeitgeschichte, München, ZS/A-17/5
The clock mechanisms released a sleigh, which drove three nails onto gun shells (with the shot removed) and detonated the explosives.
Up to the end of the war, this reconstruction of the bomb was housed in the Reich Security Main Office’s teaching material collection. It was presumably destroyed in an air raid on February 3, 1945, which severely damaged the building at Berlin’s Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8.
Bundesarchiv, R 3001/23100
Excerpt from the record of Georg Elser’s Gestapo interrogation, Berlin, November 23, 1939.
Bundesarchiv, R 3001/23100
Excerpt from the record of Georg Elser’s Gestapo interrogation, Berlin, November 23, 1939.
Institut für Zeitgeschichte, München, ZS/A-17/5
The construction using two clock mechanisms enabled Elser to set the mechanical time detonator days before the detonation, with a maximum deviation of fifteen minutes. One of the cog wheels that Elser made by hand is visible at the bottom of the picture.