-HOW WORLD WAR II ALMOST DIDN’T HAPPEN-





There has always been a lot of speculation about the result of Adolf Hitler not living to start WWII.

The following is an extract from a book titled ‘Firsts, Lasts and Only’s Military by Jeremy Beadle.

The ONLY English soldier, who had a chance but didn’t kill Hitler. Pte Henry Tandey VC, Battle

of Marcoing, France, First World war, Saturday, 28 September 1918.

Tandey was born in Leamington, Warwickshire, on 30 August 1891, the son of an ex-soldier.

He joined the Green Howards in August 1910 at the age of eighteen and went to serve in South

Africa and Guernsey before the outbreak of the First World War.

He fought in the 1st Battle of Ypres in October 1914, two years later he was wounded during the

Battle of the Somme, and a year after that, in November 1917, he was wounded again at

Passchendaele.

On 26 July 1918 he was attached to the 5th Duke of Wellington Regiment, which galvanised

him to become the highest-decorated private soldier of the war; he was awarded the

Distinguished Conduct Medal on 28 August, the Military medal on 12 December and the VC for

conspicuous bravery at Marcoing on 28 September.

With his regiment pinned down by machine-gun fire, 27-year-old Tandey crawled forward, located the

forward machine-gun post and single-handedly destroyed it; then, still under fire from elsewhere, he

managed to restore a plank bridge, enabling fellow troops to advance against the Germans; and finally,

while surrounded and outnumbered, he led eight comrades in a successful bayonet charge which drove

his attackers into the hands of the remainder of his company.

During the battle a wounded German NCO limped straight towards Tandey out of the chaos. ‘I took aim

but couldn’t shoot a wounded man’, he said later, ‘so I let him go’.

The man he let go was lance Corporal Adolf Hitler, who was also highly decorated for an NCO, having won

the Iron Cross First and Second Class.

Hitler returned to Germany and eventual infamy, while Tandey returned to England a hero, and was

decorated by George V at Buckingham Palace on 17 December 1919.

Some newspaper reports of Tandey’s VC were illustrated with a painting by the Italian artist Fortunino Matania

of Tandey carrying a wounded soldier after the battle of Ypres in 1914.

Twenty years after the war, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met to sign the Munich

Agreement, he was surprised to see Hitler had a reproduction of the Matinia painting.

Hitler reputedly explained: ‘That man is the man. That man came so near killing me that I thought I would

never see Germany again,’ and asked Chamberlain to pass on his thanks to Tandey.

Chamberlain did as he was asked and so, on the eve of the Second World War, Tandey learned for the

first time the identity of the man he had chosen to let live.

After experiencing the Blitz on London and the destruction of Coventry first hand, Tandey told a journalist in

1940, ‘If only I had known what he would turn out to be. When I saw all the people, women and children he

had killed and wounded I was sorry to God I let him go.’

Tandey was declared unfit to serve in the Second World War due to wounds sustained in the First.

He died in Coventry on 20 December, 1977, at the age of 86, and he is interred at the British Cemetery

at Marcoing alongside his fallen comrades. His VC is on display at the Green Howard regimental museum.

Ah yes.

But fortunately for the world at that very same battle Ernst Hissler WAS KILLED.

And all historians agree that if HE had lived that Hissler would have been far worse than Hitler.

For after becoming German Chancellor - as Hissler would probably have done in 1928 if he had not been killed ten years beforehand - by having no policy of persecuting the Jews - combined with Hissler's own fascination in the possibilities of nuclear power, Hissler would have enabled Germany to gain the atomic bomb in 1943.

A prospect that we all were spared thanks to sharpshooter Harry Tombey who pulled the trigger when he had Hissler in his sights.

I'm not a big fan of alternative history. As enfieldspares' post points out, there are just too many imponderables.

Had Hitler and Hissler both been killed in WWI, can anyone say that there wouldn't have been another resentful WWI veteran ready to lead Germany into the second World War? The conditions that Hitler exploited in the Weimar Republic would have still been ripe for someone else to exploit.

It was the inconclusive nature of the end of WWI that convinced senior American military leaders, nearly all veterans of that war, to seek a conclusive, unconditional surrender. No foreign armies marched into Berlin and occupied it; internally the Germans were left to their own devices. That, they were convinced, was the mistake that led to WWII. In a way, they considered someone like Hitler almost an inevitability under the circumstances. WWII, they determined, would end under different circumstances.

Besides, the "great man" theory of history is hopelessly monocausal. WWII was multicausal. Had Private Tandey shot Hitler, would the Japanese and the Italians not have pursued the courses that they did? Even if Germany had pursued a different course under a different leader, which no one can say for sure wouldn't have also led to war?

Italy had invaded Ethiopia in 1935. The Mukden incident was manufactured by Japan in 1931, and Japan had been in a full-scale war in China since 1937. Germany didn't invade Poland until 1939.

Things may have played out differently if Tandey had shot Hitler. May have, but would have? And would the change have been for better or worse? Also, shooting Hitler would have changed just one variable. But there were undoubtedly an incomprehensible number of incidents between 1918 and 1939 that, had they turned out differently, could have altered history. Once you start playing the alternative history game, you have to abandon the premise that only that one variable would have changed and no others. It's intellectually dishonest to insist that one historical fact could have been altered, but to insist that following that alteration the rest of history must have played out with no changes whatsoever.

I think it's safe to say that Private Tandey wasn't personally responsible for failing to prevent WWII. I hope he realized that before he died. It's a pathetic leadership, or historian, that would advance the theory that a war erupts because some private didn't pull the trigger on a particular individual 20 years + earlier.

What CHINA FLEET says +1.

And who is to say whether Herman Goering or some other involved in the Munich Putsch would not have gone on later to be elected Chancellor and pursued a similar road?

The "great man" theory has its counterpart in the "lucky man" theory (although I think it has another name I can't remember).

In other words events and opportunities give chances to "the right man, in the right place, at the right time" who is able to exploit and benefit from them.

The best example of that?

Probably Napoleon Bonaparte.

As China Fleet says if Hitler had been killed the circumstance of the Weimar Republic would have given chance to my (fictional creation - the name partly perverted from the Nostradamus prophecy) Hissler.

Certainly Europe saw dictators emerge in Franco and Mussolini all at that same time. And (the often forgotten) Salazar in Portugal.

So Hitler was hardly unique. If he had been killed Germany would probably have had him anyway...just with a different name like my fictional Hissler.

China Fleet Sailor & endfieldspares,

That makes my head hurt. LOL.

Steve E...........