Killing Hitler [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION 'I might be killed by a criminal, or by an idiot, at any time' Adolf Hitler Assassination, it was once said, 'has never changed the history of the world." This benign sentiment, often repeated in times of crisis, is, however, wishful nonsense. In response, one might point most obviously to the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, which unleashed the First World War, or to the murder of Sergei Kirov in 1934, which sparked the murderous purges in Stalin's Soviet Union. Assassination clearly has the capacity to affect world events. More recently, the question of the utility of assassination as a political weapon has been subjected to closer examination. An analysis of eighteen famous assassinations through the ages concluded that not one of them achieved their wider political aims.^ Indeed, in many cases, the results were the exact opposite of those intended. The murder of President Lincoln in 1865, for example, by a southern sympathiser, proved disastrous for the American South; while the assassination of Lord Frederick Cavendish by Irish nationalists in 1882 set the cause of Irish independence back by a generation. Assassinations, therefore, have certainly changed history; they have just never changed it in the way foreseen by the assassin. Yet, the possibility that Hitler could have been assassinated is one that has tantalised historians and fiction writers alike. It is tempting to speculate not only on the number of lives that could have been saved, the conflict that might have been avoided and the suffering spared, but also on how differently European, and especially German history, might have played out in the twentieth century, had Hitler been successfully felled by an assassin's bullet. Surely here, if nowhere else, is a case where an assassination might actually have brought about the benefits intended by the assassin? The majority of modern readers would probably agree, intuitively at least, with that statement. But it is interesting to note that unanimity on this issue was much harder to find during Hitler's lifetime. Then, discussions raged over the propriety of 'playing God', the setting of dangerous precedents,