A British soldier shows mercy to a future German Chancellor

It has become something of a cliché that anyone with the power to travel back in time has some sort of bounden duty to attempt to kill Adolf Hitler before 3 September 1939 and thus avert World War II. Leaving aside the difficulties of changing the course of history once it has already occurred, it’s curious that such a fatwa is rarely declared on Joseph Stalin (killer of at least 20 million and possibly as many as 60 million of his fellow humans), Mao Tse Tung (at least 45 million) or Jim Davidson.

What is perhaps even more remarkable is that it seems almost certain that one man did indeed have the opportunity to kill Hitler before World War II began and yet did not take it. Of course, since the occasion arose during World War I and the German infantryman lined up in the man’s rifle sights was to him just another anonymous Gefreiter (the German equivalent of a lance corporal), it is difficult to be too harsh on him. The action took place on 28 September 1918, as the Germans were retreating, having lost the battle for the French village of Marcoing. The 29-year-old Hitler unwittingly stumbled into the British soldier’s line of fire. On the point of pulling the trigger, the serviceman realised that the enemy NCO in front of him was wounded and was not making any attempt to fire upon him. Unwilling to kill the man in cold blood, the British soldier lowered his weapon. The future author of Mein Kampf nodded his head at him in recognition of his act of clemency and slipped away.

We only know about this story at all because Hitler himself related it to Neville Chamberlain when the two men met in Germany in 1938 during the prime minister’s fruitless trip in search of peace. The year before, the Führer had come across a well-known painting by the Italian artist Fortunino Matania showing Private Henry Tandey – famed as the most decorated British soldier of the Great War – carrying a wounded man over his shoulder at the Menin Crossroads in 1914. As soon as he saw it, Hitler believed he recognised Tandey as the man who had spared his life nearly two decades beforehand. He even went as far as requesting a large photograph of the painting from Colonel Earle of the Green Howards, the regiment with which Tandey served. We know that his wish was granted because Captain Weidmann, Hitler’s adjutant, wrote a letter of thanks to Earle:

I beg to acknowledge your friendly gift which has been sent to Berlin through the good offices of Dr Schwend. The Führer is naturally very interested in things connected with his own war experiences, and he was obviously moved when I showed him the picture and explained the thought which you had in causing it to be sent to him. He has directed me to send you his best thanks for your friendly gift which is so rich in memories.

Chamberlain is said to have noticed the photograph of the painting during his visit. Rather taken aback that the German chancellor should be displaying it, he asked him about it. Hitler apparently confided to him: ‘That man [Tandey] came so near to killing me that I thought I should never see Germany again. Providence saved me from such devilishly accurate fire as those English boys were aiming at us.’

The German chancellor asked his counterpart to get in touch with Tandey and thank him on his behalf. On returning to Britain, replete with his scrap of paper promising ‘peace in our time’, the story goes that the prime minister rang Tandey’s home to pass on Hitler’s gratitude. If this did happen (and it’s rather questionable that it did – evidence suggests that Tandey is more likely to have had the news passed on to him at a reunion of the Green Howards) – it must have come as something of a shock. Reflecting on the episode at Marcoing, Tandey recounted, ‘I took aim but couldn’t shoot a wounded man so I let him go.’ This was typical of the man – he performed this gallant act several times during the war.

It’s an astonishing story – how the most decorated British soldier of World War I came within a split second of ending the life of the man who would be instrumental in bringing about its even deadlier sequel. A further bizarre twist is that in one corner of the Matania painting, there are three wounded German prisoners, one of whom does rather resemble Adolf Hitler.

When World War II broke out the year after Chamberlain’s visit to Germany, Tandey was filled with regret that he had not killed Hitler when he had had the chance. The incident also rather unfairly tainted his reputation in Britain – he became ‘the man who could have shot Hitler’. At the grand old age of 49 he attempted to return to his regiment, the Green Howards. However, he failed his medical on account of the injuries he had received during the war in which he had made his name. Having witnessed the bombing of Coventry and London’s Blitz at first hand, he told a reporter at the Sunday Graphic newspaper, ‘When I saw all the people, women and children he had killed and wounded I was sorry to God I let him go.’

There’s just one rather big problem with this story. Although Hitler remembered having his life spared at Marcoing and Tandey remembered sparing a German soldier’s life at Marcoing, it is highly unlikely that the two men were recalling the same incident. Tandey’s biographer, David Johnson, has pointed out that in 1997, Lt Col Mackintosh of the Green Howards contacted the Bavarian State archives with regard to Hitler’s war record in September 1917. They responded that he had been on leave from 25–27 September and that rather than arriving in Marcoing the following morning for his date with destiny, he had already been posted, as Johnson remarks, to ‘another part of the line… 50 miles away’ on 17 September. So, unless some further evidence emerges that suddenly puts Adolf Hitler in Marcoing on 28 September 1918 after all, the chances are that we’ll never know just who it was that came within a hair’s breadth of shooting the future demagogue but stayed his trigger finger.

This new information came way too late for Henry Tandey, who died in 1977 at the age of 86. He had spent nearly 40 years of his life regretting that he had not shot Hitler when, in fact, the individual he chose not to kill that day in Marcoing was doubtless just an ordinary soldier doing his best to survive the war so that he could go home to his family.

Of course, had our unknown British soldier pulled his trigger when facing Gefreiter Hitler rather than showing mercy, there’s still no way of saying with any certainty that World War II would have been averted. The Treaty of Versailles would have happened anyway and it was that settlement’s strictures and demands that so infuriated the German people. It’s possible that some other charismatic leader might have taken advantage of the nation’s resentment and swept to power with a message similar to Hitler’s. It hardly bears thinking about, but in this scenario, the result might conceivably have been even worse: a fascist, anti-Semitic, Aryan-obsessed leader with a more astute military mind than Hitler’s might have become German chancellor and started a world war that he had gone on to win.