Furtive Hitler movements kept a secret after assassination attempt (1939)

Hitler had left earlier than expected and the bomb detonated, killing eight and injuring 62 others.

“For example, the Fuehrer's flag was flying over the Chancellery in Berlin . . .when he was really in Munich,” noted the News Letter.

As a consequence of the assassination attempt it was “now compulsory for all Germans over 15 years of age to carry identification cards and all foreigners have to carry their passports”.

It was understood that the police were sifting statements from thousands of informers and it was reported that special inquiries are being made in Monarchist circles. It was pointed out that an intensive round-up and examination of Monarchists in Bavaria had taken place several months previously.

The News Letter noted: “In many of the big cities the Gestapo have arrested Jews, Monarchists, Catholics and so-called reactionaries. Communists are not mentioned so far.”

The newspaper Boersen Zeitung declared: “ Murder has for a long time been an instrument of British policy

“The British are destroying for the future the possibility of peaceful collaboration between the nations.”

It concluded: “They may be assured that one day we shall present them our bill without mercy.”

Meanwhile it was noted by the News Letter: “The German Press, which is still managing to write columns about Herr Hitler's miraculous escape, is now only accusing Britain at second-hand. The actual perpetrators of the deed, it is suggested, were people in Germany working under the instigation of the British Secret Service.”

Disquiet and arrests among the Gestapo as a result of the Munich explosion were being reported by the Free German Radio Station.

The speaker declared that a member of the Gestapo in Cologne had said: “Everyone accuses everyone else of complicity in the outrage. Hardly an hour passes without some of our men being arrested. The atmosphere is exactly that which prevailed on the eve of the bloodbath of June 30, 1934 ['The Night of the Long Knives'].”