The prior is the main reason Hans had made the situation look like a terrorist plot rather than a straight robbery. In addition to the first six locks, the vault was protected by one last lock which was electromagnetically sealed, and could only be opened by a complete loss of power to the building, which Hans had also planned for.
#Hans and franz gif code
Although protected by several code based lock mechanisms, Hans and his team were after the $640 million in negotiable Bearer Bonds that were being held in a high-security vault.
He led his gang of 13 thieves to Los Angeles, California on Christmas Eve where a party of employees was being held to take control of the Nakatomi Plaza. Now only concerned with personal gain, he concocted an elaborate robbery scheme using a terrorist pretense as a cover to manipulate the authorities with his plan. Hans Gruber and his henchmen exiting the truck and entering Nakatomi Plaza.Īs mentioned before, Hans was originally a member of the German terrorist organization the Volksfrei movement, until he was expelled. Gruber was likely a sell-out to his own views, trading some of his extremist beliefs in order to retire in style from the ill-gotten gains of the bearer bonds. government denying any complicity in the Nakatomi Plaza attack since Hans had been kicked out of the organization years ago did it start to become clear that another motive may be at work. Only when the Volksfrei leaders issued a statement to the U.S. Besides his reputation, he used his terrorist background to command his underlings to anticipate and repel the forthcoming counterattacks. Two years after his expulsion, Gruber used his past affiliation with the Volksfrei as a means to further fuel his ruse of terrorist activities. Yet another possibility behind his banishment is that he was defalcating terrorist funds. Another possibility that could have led to the group cutting their ties with Gruber is that he may have been engaging in robberies not to finance the group, but for personal gain. At some point in his adult life, he fell in with the Volksfrei, a radical West German terrorist organization, but was later expelled from the movement, presumably for his overly-violent and extreme methods of getting things done. He also claimed to have received a classical education that claim being bolstered by an intellectual remark about Alexander the Great. Not much is known about Hans Gruber's early life except that he enjoyed making models in his youth. Gruber during his time with the West German Volksfrei movement.