Hitler captured alive well before end of ww2

Jan Olbracht

Is there a way to create (propably ASBish and extremaly unlikely but still in the realm of possibility) scenario, where Hitler is captured alive by Soviets or WAllies? Excluding scenarios with Hitler captured during last days of the War (in captured Berlin for example), when Third Reich was practically destroyed already.
I was thinking about Hitler's plane being shot by Soviets but führer somehow survives cathastrophe, perhaps Hitler decides to visit besieged 6th Army in Stalingrad to lift soldiers' spirits? That obviously seems very unlikely, but is chance of something like this to happen at least a little bit more than zero? What other chances to capture leader of Third Reich do you find possible?
 
BiteNibbleChomp

BiteNibbleChomp

Perhaps he just happens to be near one of the paradrop sites for Market Garden and gets captured by the Airbourne forces? Unlike Stalingrad, at least that is far enough from the front line to not seem totally stupid or out of character. AFAIK Hitler didn't visit the line much, if at all.

- BNC
 
Simon

Simon

One of his generals decides that he'd make an excellent bargaining chip when negotiating his own surrender, so he seizes him and holds him captive.
 

starman

Simon said:
One of his generals decides that he'd make an excellent bargaining chip when negotiating his own surrender, so he seizes him and holds him captive.
Click to expand...


In March 1943, while Adolf was visiting an army headquarters on the eastern front, a cavalry commander was more than willing to lead his men to kill him, but couldn't get an order to do so from his Field Marshall. What if he did get it, but after Adolf was seriously wounded they decided to give him medical attention and hand him over to the Russians as part of a negotiated peace?
 

James Ricker

Hitler tries to escape Berlin by air and due to the crap the Germans were using for lubricant in 1945 his plane crashes in the middle of a bunch of African American infantry commanded by a Jewish officer.
Der Furer ain't happy
 
Mad Bad Rabbit

Mad Bad Rabbit

If the Soviets capture him, he won't remain alive and well for long. If we capture him, he either hangs a few weeks after trial, or dies twenty years later in Spandau Prison.
 

starman

Mad Bad Rabbit said:
If the Soviets capture him, he won't remain alive and well for long. If we capture him, he either hangs a few weeks after trial, or dies twenty years later in Spandau Prison.
Click to expand...


Adolf would've been the first to hang in October 1946, after the Nuremberg trials. There's no way he would've gotten less than the death penalty. Even Speer barely avoided it.
 

Arcavia

Perhaps Hitler makes his HQ closer to the front in 1944 and is encircled during Bagration?

Otherwise a Wehrmacht coup capturing him makes the most sense.
 
Mad Bad Rabbit

Mad Bad Rabbit

starman said:
Adolf would've been the first to hang in October 1946, after the Nuremberg trials. There's no way he would've gotten less than the death penalty. Even Speer barely avoided it.
Click to expand...

Most likely outcome: that Vietnam War photo, but it's Joseph Stalin shooting a kneeling Hitler.
 

David T

I started a thread on this in soc.history.what-if some years ago:

***
"In another incident, Hitler was almost caught by a surprise Soviet attack on the ground. In February 1943, he paid an urgent visit to the field headquarters of Field Marshal von Manstein at Zaporozhye in the Ukraine, where Army Group South was taking a battering. While Hitler proceeded to a conference with von Manstein, his pilot, Baur, waited at the airfield to the east of the city, where they soon received the alarming news that a column of two dozen Soviet tanks had breached the German defenses and was approaching at speed. As Baur noted, 'There was nothing between them and the airfield.' With Hitler still in conference with von Manstein, a defense force was hastily assembled, despite lacking artillery and anti-tank weaponry. When the column of twenty-two Soviet T-34s appeared at the airfeild perimeter, Baur hurried to find Hitler and request a tactical withdrawal, but Hitler refused, replying that such measures would not be necessary. Soon after, the Fuhrer duly returned, boarded his aircraft, and departed. As Baur later learned, the Soviet vanguard was running low on fuel and, expecting stiff resistance at the airfield, had decided not to press their attack. When informed of the seriousness of the situation, Hitler would describe their escape simply as 'a bit of luck." Roger Moorhouse, *Killing Hitler: The Plots, the Assassins, and the Dictator Who Cheated Death* (2006), p. 175.

Most of the what-ifs in this newsgroup about Hitler being killed in World War II (after the Elser attempt) have dealt with the resistance in the German Army doing the job. What if instead the Soviets had succeeded in killing him in February 1943? (Another possibility: Granted that Hitler is determined not to be taken alive, what if he is nevertheless captured? Do the Soviets kill him at once? Bring him to Moscow? If so, do they stage a public trial? That seems too risky--of course Beria could always
get innocent people to confess to conspiring to destroy the USSR and murder huge numbers of Soviet citizens, but trying the man who actually did conspire to do this risked that Hitler would turn the trial into a denunciation of "Jewish Bolshevism"...)

***
See https://soc.history.what-if.narkive.com/clrEvLhB/hitler-killed-or-captured-by-red-army-february-1943 for the replies...
 
Maeglin

Maeglin

David T said:
trying the man who actually did conspire to do this risked that Hitler would turn the trial into a denunciation of "Jewish Bolshevism"...)
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That wouldn't be the problem - a hysterical ranting madman would serve excellently as Exhibit A for Western Capitalist Decadence. More problematic is Hitler potentially using Molotov-Ribbentrop to embarrass Stalin in public.

(I think the safest way of conducting the trial is to claim that Hitler needs to be kept confined for his own safety, and have his edited statements read out by the court. If Hitler needs to be displayed in public, drug him into a stupor).
 

Arcavia

David T said:
That seems too risky--of course Beria could always
get innocent people to confess to conspiring to destroy the USSR and murder huge numbers of Soviet citizens, but trying the man who actually did conspire to do this risked that Hitler would turn the trial into a denunciation of "Jewish Bolshevism"...
Click to expand...

More generally, the Fuhrer in the Dock scenario often ends up giving a new lease on life to Nazism if he becomes more of a martyr to the far right.
 
Deadtroopers

Deadtroopers

Banned
Mad Bad Rabbit said:
If the Soviets capture him, he won't remain alive and well for long. If we capture him, he either hangs a few weeks after trial, or dies twenty years later in Spandau Prison.
Click to expand...
I remember a novel from thirty-odd years ago where Hitler is captured and Stalin keeps him naked in a small cage.
 

Phantasm

Perhaps Hitler takes up the offer to flee Berlin by plane from Hanna Reitsch in April, 1945 but leaves it too late and they end up being shot down by the Soviet 3rd Shock Army on the outskirts of the city?
Hitler survives and is taken prisoner and hauled back to Moscow for the mother of all show trials. Its hard to say how Hitler would react to torture but any 'confession' would be a mix of his genuine actions against the Soviet Union and a subtle hint ( or maybe not so subtle) at collusion with other foreign powers (the Capitalists) for the selected international media to digest. Hitler would not be allowed to say anything beyond the 'script' drilled into him and the sentence would certainly be death.
The other scenario is more straight forward. If the Wallies capture Hitler then he is first up at the Nuremberg trials. However, he has more of chance to employ his oratory skill and will likely try and defend his actions during and prior to the war. The sentence will inevitably be death though.
 
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