Okla-homey
9/28/2007, 05:30 AM
September 28, 1918 : British soldier allegedly spares the life of an injured Adolf Hitler
http://aycu09.webshots.com/image/27728/2003556328553764722_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2003556328553764722)
Might all this have been avoided with one well-placed bullet in 1918?
89 years ago today, in an incident that would go down in the lore of World War I history—although the details of the event are still unclear—Private Henry Tandey, a British soldier serving near the French village of Marcoing, reportedly encounters a wounded German soldier and declines to shoot him, sparing the life of 29-year-old Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler.
http://aycu14.webshots.com/image/28013/2003514605006312596_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2003514605006312596)
Henry Tandey
Tandey, a native of Warwickshire, took part in the First Battle of Ypres in October 1914 and the Battle of the Somme in 1916, where he was wounded in the leg. After being discharged from the hospital, he returned to the front and was wounded again during the Third Battle of Ypres at Passchendaele in the summer of 1917.
From July to October 1918, Tandey served with the 5th Duke of Wellington Regiment; it was during this time that he took part in the successful British capture of Marcoing, for which he earned a Victoria Cross (the British Empire's highest military medal) for "conspicuous bravery."
As Tandey later told sources, during the final moments of that battle, as the German troops were in retreat, a wounded German soldier entered Tandey’s line of fire. "I took aim but couldn’t shoot a wounded man," Tandey remembered, "so I let him go." The German soldier nodded in thanks, and disappeared.
Though sources do not exist to prove the exact whereabouts of Adolf Hitler on that day in 1918, an intriguing link emerged to suggest that he was in fact the soldier Tandey spared.
A photograph that appeared in London newspapers of Tandey carrying a wounded soldier at Ypres in 1914 was later portrayed on canvas in a painting by the Italian artist Fortunino Matania glorifying the Allied war effort.
http://aycu15.webshots.com/image/26694/2003566741447309485_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2003566741447309485)
The Matania painting. In the foreground, Tandey is depicted carrying a wounded man
As the story goes, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain traveled to Germany in 1938 to engage Hitler in a last-ditch effort to avoid another war in Europe by making British concessions to the lan-hungry dictator, he was taken by the führer to his new country retreat in Bavaria.
There, Hitler showed Chamberlain his copy of the Matania painting, commenting, "That’s the man who nearly shot me."
The authenticity of the Tandey-Hitler encounter remains in dispute, though evidence does suggest that Hitler had a reproduction of the Matania painting as early as 1937—a strange acquisition for a man who had been furious and devastated by the German defeat at Allied hands in the Great War.
Twice decorated as a soldier, Hitler was temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack in Belgium in October 1918 and was in a military hospital in Pacewalk, Germany, when he received news of the German surrender.
http://aycu32.webshots.com/image/30391/2003559573310737227_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2003559573310737227)
Adolf Hitler attends a rally in the Munich Odeonsplatz to celebrate the declaration of war in 1914. (August 2, 1914)
The experiences of battle—first glory and ultimately disillusion and despondence—would color the rest of Hitler’s life and career, as he admitted in 1941, after leading his country into another devastating conflict: "When I returned from the War, I brought back home with me my experiences at the front; out of them I built my National Socialist community."
http://aycu15.webshots.com/image/26694/2003557786464988101_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2003557786464988101)
Hitler among his WWI comrades. Seated left.
And to think, if all this is true, one .303 round into the head of the demented Austrian, fired on this day in 1918 by a British soldier who was more than capable of doing so when he had him in his sights -- might have avoided WWII in Europe.
On returning to England, Chamberlain contacted Tandey and recounted his conversation with Hitler. At the time Tandey was nonchalant about his wartime restraint. However, as the Second World War sparked into life across the globe his feeling changed. He twice narrowly escaped death during German bombing raids in Coventry and London, and would later tell a journalist:
‘If only I had known what he would turn out to be. When I saw all the people and woman and children he had killed and wounded I was sorry to God I let him go.’
It appears that our hero was haunted for the remainder of his life by his failure to kill Hitler. At the age of 49 he unsuccessfully tried to rejoin this old regiment, telling everyone that Hitler wouldn’t escape a second time.
Tandey outlived Hitler. Tandey died in 1977 and his ashes were spread among in a British military cemetery in France among his fallen comrades.
http://aycu09.webshots.com/image/27728/2003556328553764722_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2003556328553764722)
Might all this have been avoided with one well-placed bullet in 1918?
89 years ago today, in an incident that would go down in the lore of World War I history—although the details of the event are still unclear—Private Henry Tandey, a British soldier serving near the French village of Marcoing, reportedly encounters a wounded German soldier and declines to shoot him, sparing the life of 29-year-old Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler.
http://aycu14.webshots.com/image/28013/2003514605006312596_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2003514605006312596)
Henry Tandey
Tandey, a native of Warwickshire, took part in the First Battle of Ypres in October 1914 and the Battle of the Somme in 1916, where he was wounded in the leg. After being discharged from the hospital, he returned to the front and was wounded again during the Third Battle of Ypres at Passchendaele in the summer of 1917.
From July to October 1918, Tandey served with the 5th Duke of Wellington Regiment; it was during this time that he took part in the successful British capture of Marcoing, for which he earned a Victoria Cross (the British Empire's highest military medal) for "conspicuous bravery."
As Tandey later told sources, during the final moments of that battle, as the German troops were in retreat, a wounded German soldier entered Tandey’s line of fire. "I took aim but couldn’t shoot a wounded man," Tandey remembered, "so I let him go." The German soldier nodded in thanks, and disappeared.
Though sources do not exist to prove the exact whereabouts of Adolf Hitler on that day in 1918, an intriguing link emerged to suggest that he was in fact the soldier Tandey spared.
A photograph that appeared in London newspapers of Tandey carrying a wounded soldier at Ypres in 1914 was later portrayed on canvas in a painting by the Italian artist Fortunino Matania glorifying the Allied war effort.
http://aycu15.webshots.com/image/26694/2003566741447309485_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2003566741447309485)
The Matania painting. In the foreground, Tandey is depicted carrying a wounded man
As the story goes, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain traveled to Germany in 1938 to engage Hitler in a last-ditch effort to avoid another war in Europe by making British concessions to the lan-hungry dictator, he was taken by the führer to his new country retreat in Bavaria.
There, Hitler showed Chamberlain his copy of the Matania painting, commenting, "That’s the man who nearly shot me."
The authenticity of the Tandey-Hitler encounter remains in dispute, though evidence does suggest that Hitler had a reproduction of the Matania painting as early as 1937—a strange acquisition for a man who had been furious and devastated by the German defeat at Allied hands in the Great War.
Twice decorated as a soldier, Hitler was temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack in Belgium in October 1918 and was in a military hospital in Pacewalk, Germany, when he received news of the German surrender.
http://aycu32.webshots.com/image/30391/2003559573310737227_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2003559573310737227)
Adolf Hitler attends a rally in the Munich Odeonsplatz to celebrate the declaration of war in 1914. (August 2, 1914)
The experiences of battle—first glory and ultimately disillusion and despondence—would color the rest of Hitler’s life and career, as he admitted in 1941, after leading his country into another devastating conflict: "When I returned from the War, I brought back home with me my experiences at the front; out of them I built my National Socialist community."
http://aycu15.webshots.com/image/26694/2003557786464988101_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2003557786464988101)
Hitler among his WWI comrades. Seated left.
And to think, if all this is true, one .303 round into the head of the demented Austrian, fired on this day in 1918 by a British soldier who was more than capable of doing so when he had him in his sights -- might have avoided WWII in Europe.
On returning to England, Chamberlain contacted Tandey and recounted his conversation with Hitler. At the time Tandey was nonchalant about his wartime restraint. However, as the Second World War sparked into life across the globe his feeling changed. He twice narrowly escaped death during German bombing raids in Coventry and London, and would later tell a journalist:
‘If only I had known what he would turn out to be. When I saw all the people and woman and children he had killed and wounded I was sorry to God I let him go.’
It appears that our hero was haunted for the remainder of his life by his failure to kill Hitler. At the age of 49 he unsuccessfully tried to rejoin this old regiment, telling everyone that Hitler wouldn’t escape a second time.
Tandey outlived Hitler. Tandey died in 1977 and his ashes were spread among in a British military cemetery in France among his fallen comrades.