(2 of 3)
"I ran to the hall entrance with two others, but we could not make headway against the stream of persons pouring out. Before us, filling the hall, was a yellow-grey wall of dust and smoke. . . . Several wounded faltered through the door. I broke through and . . . the way into the hall was now free. I had to adjust my eyes to the dimness. Then I saw what had happened."
Someone had apparently planted a high explosive bomb within, or in the attic above, the hall's central pillar. The explosion toppled the pillar, brought the ceiling down on the assembled Nazis' heads. Seven (including Maria Henle) were killed, 63 injured. Had the Führer stayed even for one glass of his special 1.0 beer, history might have taken a new course.
Promptly police went to work. Army sappers were rushed to clear away a ten-foot mass of debris. To forestall alarm or to help the search for dynamiters, blacked-out Munich was suddenly lit up. Someone started a wildfire rumor that lights meant peace: the Netherlands-Belgium offer had taken effect. Soon Germany's second hysterical false armistice was in full celebration. Police angrily cleared the streets and killed the hope.
Police Chief Heinrich Himmler announced a reward of $320,000 for information leading to apprehension of the culprits, and a private citizen added $40,000. All the world's question: who were the plotters?
Was the job pulled off, as official Germany bitterly charged, by the British secret service? Probably not. Britain's intelligence officers are bright enough to know that assassinating Hitler would only serve to glorify him as a martyr.
Was it a hoax, as the French charged, a fake accident staged and executed by Hitler's own henchmen to bring the Führer close to martyrdom and thus rally waning popular support for the regime? Was it another Reichstag fire? What about the mysterious and providential changes in plan? What about the fact that not a single big-shot Nazi remained in the beer hall even though the Führer's prompt departure was unforeseen? Despite these startling coincidences, this theory was hardly more credible than the German charge that Winston Churchill sank the Athenia.
Until war's end there will probably be only clues to the Bürgerbräu bombing (such as whether Heinrich Himmler's Gestapo is purged). Everyone, especially in Germany, had a guess. Two facts were glaringly clear:
1) Someone on the inside had a hand in the affair. All was far from well in self-encircled Germany last week, and in the beer-hall gathering there were old-line Nazis, bred on anti-Communist doctrine and bitter about the Russian pact; ambitious, frustrated Party chiefs; veterans still rankling over such ruthless purges as that of Ernst Roehm.
2) Germany, both official and otherwise, was frankly puzzled. Police were unwontedly vague. No concerted, planned roundup of any suspected group ensued. Arrests in Munich were numerous but unsystematic: the police, evidently not knowing whom to arrest, clapped this & that one into jail—among them two American reporters, Chicago Tribune's Ernest Pope and John Raleigh.