Let's Kill Hitler

Let's Kill Hitler is an alternate timeline in which Adolf Hitler and many other high-ranking Nazi Party officials were assassinated. After Hitler and his staff are killed, Nazi Germany fractures into several factions fighting for power. Germany collapses into civil war, and this alternate history explores the possibilities that could have resulted from Hitler's assassination.

Point of Divergence - November 8, 1939
Adolf Hitler is due to give his annual address at the Beer Hall Putsch memorial service in the Bürgerbräukeller. He initially cancels his speech in order to give himself more time to plan for the imminent war with France. However, Hitler changes his mind and decides to attend.

Fog is forecasted, but Hitler decides to travel to and from Munich by plane, instead of by train in OTL. Because he decided to travel by his personal plane, he has no need to reschedule the service to a half-hour before or to cut his speech short as in OTL. The reason he did so in OTL is because his train was scheduled to leave at 9.30pm that evening.

Johann Georg Elser, a communist Württemberger carpenter, travels to Munich ahead of Hitler's entourage and plots to assassinate Hitler. He builds a time-bomb set to explode at 9.20pm. He successfully plants it into the column behind Hitler's podium in bits and pieces in the nights leading up to the service.

At the time set by Elser, the explosive detonates on 8 November, killing Hitler in the middle of his speech, as well as high Nazi officials such as Joseph Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Rudolf Hess, Robert Ley and Heinrich Himmler. The roof collapses, killing four more and injuring more than a thousand out of the 3,000-strong audience. Elser successfully escapes to neutral Switzerland before fleeing to the United Kingdom before he could be caught by German authorities. Elser is welcomed to the UK and is decorated with the Victoria Cross for his bravery.

Introduction

 * Timeline