6. The Black Front Bomb plot
This one is being included here because it is frequently cited as an attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler, though in fact, it was not. It was instead an attempted attack on the Nazi Party headquarters in Nuremberg, and a prominent Nazi propaganda vehicle, the anti-Semitic newspaper Die Sturmer. The Black Front was an organization of anti-Nazi German exiles in Prague, which was led by Otto Strasser. Strasser recruited another German exile, Helmut Hirsch, who was to have placed explosive laden suitcases at the target sites in Nuremberg. Hirsch was in Prague because as a Jew he was proscribed from attending German universities; as a student at the German Institute of Technology in Prague, he was first approached by Black Front. After his family joined him there he agreed to participate in the bomb plot and was informed that if he found approaching the selected targets was too difficult to select others in Nuremberg on his own.
Hirsch purchased round trip train tickets to Stuttgart under the guise of traveling to visit his ailing mother and checked into a hotel to await contact by a Black Front agent, who would provide the explosives. The Gestapo, who had agents within Black Front, arrested him there. Charged with high treason, Hirsch stated during questioning, and again later during testimony, that although Hitler had not been a target of the plot, he would willingly participate in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He was convicted in March 1937. American diplomatic efforts (Hirsch’s father was a naturalized American citizen) to gain his release failed and he was executed by beheading. His testimony that he was willing to participate in an attempt to kill Hitler is all that links him to an assassination attempt during a plot which, in the end, included no explosives and no attempts to plant them.