‘Downfall’s Oliver Hirschbiegel Plots Story Of Failed Hitler Assassin ‘Georg Elser’

Downfall director Oliver Hirschbiegel is returning to familiar territory with Nazi-era drama Georg Elser. Billed as an emotional portrait of the resistance fighter who tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler in the Munich Bürgerbräukeller on November 8 1939, the film kicked off shooting yesterday in Wackershofen/Southern Germany. Not to be confused with the July 20, 1944 assassination plot against Hitler, which was the subject of Bryan Singer’s 2008 Valkyrie, Elser’s attempt came five years earlier during what was expected to be a lengthy speech given by the Nazi leader for the anniversary of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. A bomb Elser had placed behind the lectern detonated, but was 13 minutes after Hitler had left the platform, and ended up killing eight others. A carpenter from Königsbronn, Elser is thought to have opposed Nazism from the beginning of the regime and later told interrogators that the idea of “eliminating the leadership,” including Hitler, Hermann Goering and Joseph Goebbels, came to him in the fall of 1938. “I reasoned the situation in Germany could only be modified by a removal of the current leadership,” he said. Elser was arrested the day of the failed attempt, interrogated, tortured and sent to Dachau. In 1945, days before the end of the war, he was executed on Hitler’s orders. The ... Read More »

Click here to view full content