A little while ago one of my favourite blogs toyed with a recurring theme – what if Hitler had been killed earlier in his life, or indeed if someone were to travel back in time to do the deed and therefore change history. Insofar as one can find a bit of humour in the subject here is some courtesy of the website xkcd.com
I was therefore very interested in a recent story run in the Birmingham Mail – here’s the link A Warwickshire-born soldier literally had Hitler in his sights towards the end of the First World War. Obviously he didn’t know the German soldier’s identity at the time. The fact that he was injured and defenceless made Henry Tandey hesitate and lower his weapon. The soldier escaped.
It was 20 years later, in 1938, that Hitler met with the UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. By this time Tandey had been made the subject of a painting by Fortunio Mantania which captured the skirmish which had involved Hitler. Only when Chamberlain spoke to Tandey was the soldier made aware of whose life he had spared. He was soon to regret his own merciful deed.
And there is one small instance in which the awful tide of history might have turned.
Back On The Rock 
Those moments where history could be changed. Roy, have you ever read Appointment in Samarra as retold by Somerset Maugham (sorry for the long para): “The speaker is Death. “There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture. Now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.””
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That’s very good Deb – you can’t change Fate.
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What an incredible story, Roy. Thanks for sharing. The guilt Tandey must have lived with…
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Yes Jill, better that he never knew. He must have gone through life wishing he’d had his time again.
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He who hesitates….
….or he who has a grain of humanity…
Poor Mr Tandey – I wonder how much his good deed affected the rest of his life.
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Indeed Jenny. And if the roles had been reversed then it’s unlikely he’d have lived. It’s an extraordinary story.
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Hitler worked in tandem with a team of twisted, manipulative, clever and evil people. I often wonder how much each of them drew out the worst in each other to downgrade humanity.And so was Hitler the puppeteer or was it Himler,, Goebbels or Goering. Or maybe, indeed, someone else?
So, my question is, if one of these men did not exist, would Hitler have been so bad?
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Yes the Third Reich was not one man acting in isolation but Hitler was happy to be the figurehead so he can accept the disapprobation, wherever he is.
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Fascinating post, Roy. If only…
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Thanks Naomi. Random action or inaction can have huge and lasting consequences.
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Interesting story. Tandey could have never known what would result, but if he had killed that injured and defenceless solider, what would that have made him? It was Nietzcshe who said “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.” And whose to say if Hitler had been killed that someone equally evil wouldn’t have arisen to take his place?
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How true Janna – I guess there are many soldiers who carry (or carried) huge guilt after having killed in the course of duty. Nobody is born wishing to kill. And yes, as Red Hen ^ pointed out Hitler had plenty of willing accomplices.
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Thanks for the kind words about my blog! Alternate histories are fascinating. If I remember correctly, there’s a book that looks at alternate theories of what a world without Hitler would’ve been like (Gavriel D. Rosenfeld’s The World Hitler Never Made, which I haven’t read). I’ve heard that many of the alternate visions of a world without Hitler’s rise are still bleak. My guess is that these bleak alternatives might be based on the views that Hitler, while the central decision-maker, didn’t act alone, and that the conditions in which he rose could have spawned a similar type of monster.
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Thank you AMB. Just possibly the world needed some sort of cataclysm such as the Third Reich’s genocide to force the world into some sort of alliance. A beefed-up United Nations was a product of WW2 and, with the European Community, there’s been relative stability in the western world since then. It’s hard to imagine, right wing fanatics notwithstanding, the same unfettered and evil ambition being allowed to take hold ever again. Isn’t it…?
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I wondered about this when I read Stephen King’s novel 11/22/63. I wondered why he had his time traveler go back in time and kill Hitler instead of going after Lee Harvey Oswald. Hitler would have been my target.
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Hello Juliann. I’ve not read the King book. It’s an interesting concept though. Maybe I’ll play around in my present WIP with having a historic public figure have a narrow escape – maybe no one thought of that yet 🙂
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Roald Dahl gave this idea a nice twist in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_and_Catastrophe:_A_True_Story
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