5 Moments When Hitler Could Have Died. Assassination Attempts and Accidents
Unfortunately, for some reason, time is kind to the most cruel tyrants in the history of mankind. Adolf Hitler is no exception. In addition to Operation Valkyrie, there are several other cases when the future Führer could have died. At these moments, the course of history could be turned upside down by completely ordinary people…
1. In 1894, in the southern German town of Passau, a little boy fell through the ice on the Inn River. Fortunately (or unfortunately) another boy named Johan Küberger was passing by the river at this time and immediately rescued the drowning child. The incident was reported by the local newspaper Donauzeitung. Later, historians established that the rescued man was called… Adolf Hitler. And Johan Küberger grew up and became a priest.
Hitler as a child
2. Corporal Hitler could have died twice on the fronts of the First World War. At the height of the war, he was wounded by a chemical shell with mustard gas. More than 10,000 soldiers were killed in that attack, and our favorite of fate was once again lucky – Hitler escaped with temporary blindness, which, however, made itself felt in later years, when the Fuehrer was especially angry; He is blind again until he calms down.
At another time, it was an ordinary British soldier named Henry Tendy who could turn back the wheel of history. On September 28, 1918, in the no-man’s land near the French village, Marquin Tendy met a German soldier – wounded and completely exhausted. At the last moment, the Briton decided to save the enemy’s life and did not shoot. But back then, the young Hitler was just a budding artist. No one could have imagined what Tendy’s mercy would mean for his native Great Britain, and for the whole of Europe…
Corporal Hitler
3. And the next assassination attempt was supposed to prevent the Munich Agreement. Abwehr Central Department Colonel Hans Oster, along with other conspirators, had a sober view of Germany’s potential and believed that the war Hitler wanted would finally ruin the country. In addition, Oster advocated the overthrow of the NSDAP in principle. On September 14, 1938, Hoepner’s Panzer Division was to capture key targets in Berlin. But the plans were thwarted by British Prime Minister Chamberlain, who flew to Germany several times for negotiations. Thus, the Wehrmacht troops invaded Czechoslovakia. But the military did not give up their attempts.
4. One of the most famous assassination attempts on Hitler in 1938 was made by Georg Elser. A committed communist, he was horrified by the international community’s reaction to the Anschluss of Austria and the Munich Agreement, and believed that only the physical destruction of the dictator and his henchmen would save his country. In the creation of the bomb, the skills of a watchmaker and gunpowder from the army equipment factory where Elser worked came in handy. In November 1939, in the Bürgerbräukeller beer hall in Munich, a man, after a long preparation, finally planted a bomb in the column next to which Hitler was to speak. On November 8, the Fuehrer’s speech took place, but it ended 13 minutes earlier than Elser had expected. At 9:20 p.m., just as the bomb exploded, the German leader was on his way to Berlin. Eight people were killed in the blast, but theoretically the story of German National Socialism on that rainy autumn day could have ended where it began.
But alas, before all the villainous plans were accomplished, fate took Hitler away from death at the very last moment. And everywhere the Führer was saved by chance, which at the same time doomed millions of people throughout Europe to death. After the decision of Henry Tendy, the assassination attempt of Elser, the very boy who followed the path of the priest, how can you not believe in the “butterfly effect”?