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WI: Bürgerbräukeller Bomb exploded 30 minutes earlier?

SinghSong

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The high-ranking Nazis who accompanied Adolf Hitler to commemorate the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch on 8 November 1939 were Joseph Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Rudolf Hess, Robert Ley, Alfred Rosenberg, Julius Streicher, August Frank, Hermann Esser and Heinrich Himmler. Hitler was welcomed to the platform by Christian Weber, a veteran from the Beer Hall Putsch and the Munich city councillor, oblivious to the fact that a powerful time bomb was ticking in the pillar directly behind the speaker's podium by Johann Georg Elser; a carpenter and cabinet maker, member of the left-leaning Federation of Woodworkers Union and of the Red Front Fighters' Association, who'd painstakingly planned and prepared for the attack for the past year, installed the bomb in the early hours of the morning over the course of three months, and late the previous night, had opened the bomb chamber to confirm that the clock mechanism was correctly set, before departing Munich by train that morning.

Whilst Hitler had initially cancelled his speech at the Bürgerbräukeller to devote his attention to planning the imminent war with France, he'd subsequently changed his mind and attended after all. Unknown to Elser though, since fog was forecast, possibly preventing him from flying back to Berlin the next morning, Hitler decided to return to Berlin the same night, by his private train. And with the Fuhrer's scheduled departure from Munich's main station set for 9:30 p.m., the start time of the reunion was brought forward by half an hour from 7:30 to 8 PM to accommodate him, with Hitler cutting his speech from the planned two hours to a one-hour duration. As a result, Hitler ended his address to the 3000-strong audience of the party faithful at 9:07 PM, with Elser's bomb exploding 13 minutes later at 9:20 PM- by which time, Hitler and his entourage had left the Bürgerbräukeller, along with all but about 120 members of the audience, lingering at the far end of the Bürgerbräukeller.

The bomb brought down part of the ceiling and roof, and caused the gallery and an external wall to collapse, killing 7 people immediately, fatally injuring another, and injuring another 63, 16 of them seriously. So then, here's a WI scenario- what if, when setting the timer for the bomb on the night of 7 Nov 1939, Elser had set it to explode half an hour earlier instead, rather than timing it to go off only 10 minutes before the end of Hitler's scheduled speech? As such, in this timeline, Elser's "infernal machine" detonates at 8:50 PM, while Adolf Hitler's still up on the speaker's podium, interrupting the climax of his speech by blowing him to smithereens, as well as either immediately killing or dealing fatal injuries to all of the high-ranking Nazis in his entourage who'd accompanied him to the event, along with 300-400 members of the audience in attendance.

With not only Hitler, but all of these other high-ranking members of the Nazi establishment wiped off the face of the earth as well, who would've taken charge- would it be guaranteed to have been Goering, or are there any other potential candidates who'd have had an outside chance? How would you imagine that the surviving remnants of the pre-established Nazi heirarchy, and the people of Nazi Germany in general, would have reacted to the Bürgerbräukeller Bombing ITTL? And how would the rest of the world have reacted to Hitler, and so many other high-ranking Nazi figures, meeting their demise in such a fashion, at this early juncture- less than two months after the start of WW2, one month to the day after the Fourth Partition of defeated Poland between the Nazis and Soviets, and 3 weeks before the (outbreak of OTL's) Winter War? How differently might WW2 pan out ITTL than it did IOTL?
 
I'd guess the first thing that happens is Chamberlain contacts whoever's thought to be in charge of Germany and says "do you still want to keep this war going, really?" in the hopes they'll say "no". (And depending on who it is, they might!) One of the others is that the nascent Polish resistance and the Czechoslovakian resistance launch some sort of attacks to capitalise on the bombing.
 
There's the dreadful thought that if, in the event of a long war that still ends in Allied victory due to long-term logistical and industrial superiority and so forth, Nazism won't remotely be as taboo.

After all, Hitler had the glorious run of triumphs, but it was the old, weak, conservative generals who didn't have his will to power.
 
There's the dreadful thought that if, in the event of a long war that still ends in Allied victory due to long-term logistical and industrial superiority and so forth, Nazism won't remotely be as taboo.

After all, Hitler had the glorious run of triumphs, but it was the old, weak, conservative generals who didn't have his will to power.

I can see a second coming of the backstab legend happening because Elser was close to Communists; like TTL Neo-Nazis would treat Hitler like Napoleon cut down after austerlitz.
 
If Germany does still go to war, as I understand it German plans to attack France are also going to be more conservative without Hitler hearing of the Manstein Plan - so that does make them more likely to lose and "THOSE GENERALS EH?" happens. Alternatively, does this make the Nazis seem less like an existential threat if they're not ripping through a superpower and leads to some form of negotiations that allows for Germany to get out of that & focus on a Soviet Union that now won't have British and American allies?
 
I'd guess the first thing that happens is Chamberlain contacts whoever's thought to be in charge of Germany and says "do you still want to keep this war going, really?" in the hopes they'll say "no". (And depending on who it is, they might!) One of the others is that the nascent Polish resistance and the Czechoslovakian resistance launch some sort of attacks to capitalise on the bombing.
How would that level of rapprochement go down with the French and the British public, though- would Chamberlain be able to get away with effectively surrendering to the Germans yet again, having allowed them to divide and conquer Poland together with the Soviets, without having fired a single shot or lifted a finger to help (especially after having brought the remnants of the Polish armed forces under British Command, and stolen the entirety of the Polish national gold supply, c.75 tonnes, for themselves, in exchange for nothing more than a paltry loan of £8M, and the promise of 111 British airplanes which were never delivered)?

Or could Chamberlain potentially be ousted from power, and/or lose the alliance with France for attempting this, especially if French PM Édouard Daladier refuses to follow suit in allowing Nazi Germany to keep all of its ill-gotten territorial gains, and get away with it Scott-free yet again? As for depending on who it is- would Goering say "no", do you reckon? If it wasn't Goering in charge, who else would be? And if whoever was in charge did say "no", where might the war go from there- could you potentially see the entirety of Western Europe, including Nazi Germany, either intervening or supporting Finland in the Winter War, with WW2 shifting from a fight against the Nazis and Fascism to a fight against the Soviets and Communism, after Stalin commences his invasion of Finland (with Daladier having resigned as PM in March 1940 IOTL on account of his failure to aid Finland)?
 
I can see a second coming of the backstab legend happening because Elser was close to Communists; like TTL Neo-Nazis would treat Hitler like Napoleon cut down after austerlitz.
Technically, he wasn't just close to communists; he'd been a member of the banned Communist paramilitary Red Front Fighters' Association (RFD), and had voted for the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) until it was banned after 1933. As Adolf Hitler's designated successor as Führer of all Germany, "If anything should befall me", in a public speech to the Reichstag on the 1st September 1939 (with Rudolf Hess having been designated as Hitler's second alternative, but having been killed in the Bürgerbräukeller Bombing along with Hitler ITTL), who would Hermann Göring have preferred to blame and go after in response to the bombing? And with Göring's widespread personal popularity among the German public (having presented himself as a champion of national interests over allegedly corrupt big business and the old German elite, as the Nazi leader most responsible for economic matters), with the Nazi press on his side, and with Göring having been viewed by many in Britain and the United States as more acceptable than the other Nazis, and as a possible mediator between the western democracies and Hitler, you have to wonder- if he blamed it on Stalin and the Soviets, playing the backstab legend for all it was worth, might there potentially have been a subsequent build-up towards a Soviet vs Anti-Communist WW2, akin to that of the Red Alert Universe, but with Göring's Nazi Germany as a member of the 'Allies' ITTL?
 
How would that level of rapprochement go down with the French and the British public, though- would Chamberlain be able to get away with effectively surrendering to the Germans yet again, having allowed them to divide and conquer Poland together with the Soviets, without having fired a single shot or lifted a finger to help

I doubt he would - especially as the public would think Germany's ripe for a good kicking, whether Britain can deliver one or not - but he might hope Germany could be bluffed into withdrawing now Hitler and his top guys are dead. That probably won't work, but could be handy for Britain to say "well we gave Germany a chance, they wanted it to the death, even without Hitler it's still riddled with bally Nazis." (And that may strangle all the Ah Without Hitler The Honourable Wermacht takes in the crib since Hitler's splattered across the walls with half his creatures and Rommel & Chums still went "invading places? cool")
 
*Hitler stumbles from the wreckage of the Bürgerbräukeller*

"ONLY ONE MAN CAN KILL ME!"
He falls into the road, where Magda Goebbels inadvertently crushes him beneath the wheels of her Kdf-wagen.
"Oops."

There are some who claim this was the inspiration for an Oxford don, who disposed of a wrong'un in his fantasy series through the intervention of a (rather more heroic) female.
 
I'd guess the first thing that happens is Chamberlain contacts whoever's thought to be in charge of Germany and says "do you still want to keep this war going, really?" in the hopes they'll say "no". (And depending on who it is, they might!) One of the others is that the nascent Polish resistance and the Czechoslovakian resistance launch some sort of attacks to capitalise on the bombing.
There would still be the little problem of the post-WWII peace terms. You got to remember that even Weimar German politicians such as Gustav Stresemann considered the separation of Danzig and the Polish Corridor from Germany to be intolerable and unacceptable as a long-run solution.
 
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