If someone killed Hitler either before WWI or in the 1920s, what would his punishment be?

The StGB (Strafgesetzbuch, the German criminal code) provides for insanity and diminished responsibility (§20 and 21, respectively). Insanity means "incapable of appreciating the unlawfulness of [one's] actions" and a successful insanity plea results in a not guilty decision. Under diminished responsibility, a sentence of life imprisonment becomes a sentence of not less than three years in prison (§49). This is, of course, the modern version where there is no death penalty. I have no idea how insanity worked in Austrian law.

The StGB of 1933-1953 specifies in section 20 that, when there is a choice between imprisonment at hard labor and imprisonment, a person may be sentenced to imprisonment without hard labor if "the act has not been directed against the good of the people and the offender has acted solely on honorable grounds."
 

CaliGuy

Banned
The StGB (Strafgesetzbuch, the German criminal code) provides for insanity and diminished responsibility (§20 and 21, respectively). Insanity means "incapable of appreciating the unlawfulness of [one's] actions" and a successful insanity plea results in a not guilty decision. Under diminished responsibility, a sentence of life imprisonment becomes a sentence of not less than three years in prison (§49). This is, of course, the modern version where there is no death penalty. I have no idea how insanity worked in Austrian law.

The StGB of 1933-1953 specifies in section 20 that, when there is a choice between imprisonment at hard labor and imprisonment, a person may be sentenced to imprisonment without hard labor if "the act has not been directed against the good of the people and the offender has acted solely on honorable grounds."
Very interesting!

Thus, it looks like--in the German Empire--someone who genuinely believed that killing Hitler was good for the Jews and for the world would have only gotten a couple of years in prison. :)
 
Very interesting!

Thus, it looks like--in the German Empire--someone who genuinely believed that killing Hitler was good for the Jews and for the world would have only gotten a couple of years in prison. :)

I found the last bit entirely by chance. The text of the StGB is available online, but only in German, and section-by-section. I'm not good enough at reading German to scan for relevant paragraphs.

I suppose I should mention the paragraph on murder (§211, 1872-1941 version): "Whoever deliberately kills a person, if he has carried out the killing with deliberation [i.e. 'malice aforethought'], will be sentenced to death." On "Totschlag" or manslaughter (section 212) deliberate killing without deliberation is punishable by five years hard labor. The problem is that planning to kill Hitler means "deliberation" occurred.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
I found the last bit entirely by chance. The text of the StGB is available online, but only in German, and section-by-section. I'm not good enough at reading German to scan for relevant paragraphs.

I suppose I should mention the paragraph on murder (§211, 1872-1941 version): "Whoever deliberately kills a person, if he has carried out the killing with deliberation [i.e. 'malice aforethought'], will be sentenced to death." On "Totschlag" or manslaughter (section 212) deliberate killing without deliberation is punishable by five years hard labor. The problem is that planning to kill Hitler means "deliberation" occurred.
OK; understood. Thus, it really does suck--after all, it looks like killing Hitler would result in one being given the death penalty in the German Empire and even in Weimar Germany! :(
 

Perkeo

Banned
Philosophically what you're doing is unjustified, because at that point he didn't do anything. One could argue that the potential for what he will do necessitates his demise but isn't the logic of eliminating future undesirables a tenant of Hitler himself?
No, one coudn't, unless we move to the ASB forum an add literal clairvoyants or time travel.
Who would consider it likely that Hitler becomes an absolute Dictator and manages to make the Germans commit an evil that the world has never seen before? I even dare say that Hitler's initial success is the resut of coincidences that will more lokely than not be prevented by merely re-rolling the dices at any time during the 1920s.

but isn't the logic of eliminating future undesirables a tenant of Hitler himself?
there still is a difference between possible future crime and all made up crimes. But unfortunately none knows the difference ITTL.
 
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Just have him mugged and the perp never caught. If there's no history between the pair and no witnesses, solving the crime back then was really hard. Odds are, they'd get the wrong person.
 
Looking at Gavril Princip it says on Wikipedia

"Princip was nineteen years old at the time and too young to receive the death penalty, being twenty-seven days short of the twenty-year minimum age limit required by Habsburg law.[27] Instead, he received the maximum sentence of twenty years in prison."

Therefore, if someone in Austria killed Hitler pre-1914, if they were 20 or over they would be sentenced to death, but if they were 19 or younger they would get 20 years - no idea whether parole would mean this would be 10 served or 15 or whole sentence or not.

The article says Habsburg law, so I assume it applies to Hungary too, but I have kept with 'Austria' since that is what is applicable to assassinating Hitler pre-WW1
 
So, does that mean that an American who is visiting Germany or Austria during this time and kills Hitler would have been forbidden to return to the U.S. and stripped of his U.S. citizenship?

Umm, no. An alien who commits a crime may be punished according to the laws of that country. After the punishment (not a life sentence or execution), that country may then deport him to his country of origin. There is no provision that I know of for removing the citizenship of a native-born person; naturalization is different, of course.

I'm not sure what happens if the country of origin refuses to admit a deportee. I am pretty sure that such an action is considered offensive.
 
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