Monument of Georg Elser

On Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin sits an unassuming memorial to a man that almost changed the course of history itself. 

In 1939, Johann Georg Elser, a carpenter by trade, fashioned a homemade bomb and placed it chiselled out pillar in a Bavarian Beer hall. It was located next to a podium where  Hitler was slated to conduct one of his famously long speeches. Unfortunately, the meeting ended early that day due to bad weather conditions - Hitler was supposed to board a plane but it was cancelled due to fog. Instead, he took a train early with his Nazi entourage. The bomb exploded after he had already vacated the building, leaving 8 people dead. 

Elser was captured by the Gestapo during an attempt to flee to Switzerland, and they convicted him of  working with 'foreign agents' on the assassination plot, which was never verified. Elser was transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he was interrogated about the plot to the point that the Nazis forced him to re-create the bomb to prove that he worked alone. He was eventually transferred to Dachau Concentration Camp, where he was murdered on April 9th, 1945. 

A recent competition to create a memorial to Elser was won by Ulrich Klages, a Berlin-based artist.  The memorial, a side-profile of Elser, was erected on Wilhelmstrasse, ironically to where Adolf Hitler's offices previously stood and close to where Hitler eventually took his own life.