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a shot at him [Hitler].” This same man, who lived on the road that Hitler had traveled to get to the Obersalzberg, told another witness that “somebody could easily lie in the woods and open fire from there when he [Hitler] passed by.” Someone else had observed this man carrying “a military weapon that could easily be disassembled.” The head administrator for the district forwarded the charges to the senior public prosecutor.
    In Moorenweis, a village near Fürstenfeldbruck, a postal worker, who was also a Party member, was overheard saying something in local dialect that the police interpreted as “it would have been no loss if Hitler had been dead.” When he was sent to the Gestapo in Munich over the issue, he claimed to have heard the remark from two farm women. When these two women were questioned, it turned out they had heard something quite different. And on it went. Finally the local police officer threw in the towel, realizing that he had been led on a wild goose chase.
    In Berlin, the SD district office itself confirmed how little of the propaganda regarding the positive mood in Berlin was accurate. They collected such statements as “during the period around November 9, great radical changes could be expected.” In Wilmersdorf, there was a rumor that on November 9 Hermann Goring would be named Führer. A sales clerk in a radio shop in Weissensee snitched on a man who made the threatening remark: “Just you wait till the eighth or ninth of November!” The date of the traditional gathering in Munich seemed to have already acquired an almost mythical quality.
    After the assassination attempt, a master painter in Berlin expressed regret: “Too bad it failed!” A metal worker doubted that the English Secret Service had carried out the attack, underscoring his political intuition with the remark: “The people were responsible for the attempt—don’t believe that the people are 100 percent behind Hitler!”
    Hitler supporters in Berlin felt some measure of Schadenfreude directed at them because of the attack. Any number of people assumed that Hitler and others would soon be shot to death. A shop owner, who according to the sign in his window served Jews only between 12:00 and 1:00 p.m., received a threatening postcard on November 11 that read, “You son of a bitch, how is it that you refuse to allow Jewish people to shop until after twelve? Have you completely forgotten that 100 percent of your business used to come from Jewish customers? Get rid of this sign fast, or the glass will fly just like it did yesterday in Munich, where the lousy Nazis got bombed.”
    Starting in November, subversive anti-Nazi literature increased dramatically. A sticker found on a front door in Berlin contained the following message: “Christians, remember the Sermon on the Mount! Declare war on war!” This was very much in line with the motivation of the assassin.
    Deutschland-Berichte (Reports from Germany), a publication of the Social Democratic Party in exile, also painted a picture of the chaotic thinking prevalent among Germans after the attempt, a picture that included civil unrest, wild rumors, mistrust toward the Nazi press, adoption of English phrases, and, above all, reports of people keeping their heads down in fear. From the German underground the Party leadership received five reports, which revealed no uniform assessment of the mood. According to the first report, the popular imagination had taken the English line and creatively modified it: The “Goring clique” had instigated the attempt, and the military had carried it out. Finally, however, people returned to the Gestapo myth of an English conspiracy: What forces are behind this attack and what forces could have succeeded in deceiving Himmler’s Gestapo or in concealing from it that this was about to happen? Somehow, Hitler had to be behind it, they reasoned.
    Another report