WI: Hitler Captured by the Red Army?

I'm curious as to what sort've political gains could be had by Stalin if Hitler were captured alive during the Battle of Berlin.
Is it safe to say a quick show trial and a bullet to his head is in the cards or would a more drawn out humaliation (a life's labor in the worst Siberian gulag for instance) be more likely?

Is there any chance Hitler is turned over to Nuremburg?

Regardless of his fate, does his capture add anything of value to the Soviet Regime?
 

Geon

Donor
I'm curious as to what sort've political gains could be had by Stalin if Hitler were captured alive during the Battle of Berlin.
Is it safe to say a quick show trial and a bullet to his head is in the cards or would a more drawn out humaliation (a life's labor in the worst Siberian gulag for instance) be more likely?

Is there any chance Hitler is turned over to Nuremburg?

Regardless of his fate, does his capture add anything of value to the Soviet Regime?

First to address your last question, If Hitler is captured alive by the Red Army Stalin can use this as a great propaganda coup. It is very unlikely that Hitler ever is sent to Nuremburg. Stalin will want to savor every minute of this victory. He will want a show trial, a very public show trial. He may, and I say may, allow western observers to sit in on said trial. But this will be an all-Soviet affair. After the trial and its inevitable verdict Hitler will simply disappear, with his fate being debated for years to come. Likely Hitler is executed in a very unpleasant manner on Stalin's personal orders with Stalin watching every minute of Hitler's agony.
 

iVC

Donor
I don't think Joseph Stalin will object to the original plan of Nuremberg Trials.

Quoting the wiki:
On 1 November 1943, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States published their "Declaration on German Atrocities in Occupied Europe", which gave a "full warning" that, when the Nazis were defeated, the Allies would "pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earth ... in order that justice may be done. ... The above declaration is without prejudice to the case of the major war criminals whose offences have no particular geographical location and who will be punished by a joint decision of the Government of the Allies." This intention by the Allies to dispense justice was reiterated at the Yalta Conference and at Potsdam in 1945.

British War Cabinet documents, released on 2 January 2006, showed that as early as December 1944 the Cabinet had discussed their policy for the punishment of the leading Nazis if captured. The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, had then advocated a policy of summary execution in some circumstances, with the use of an Act of Attainder to circumvent legal obstacles, being dissuaded from this only by talks with US and Soviet leaders later in the war.

The demise of the Morgenthau Plan created the need for an alternative method of dealing with the Nazi leadership. The plan for the "Trial of European War Criminals" was drafted by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and the War Department. Following Roosevelt's death in April 1945, the new president, Harry S. Truman, gave strong approval for a judicial process. After a series of negotiations between Britain, the US, Soviet Union and France, details of the trial were worked out.

One thing is beyond any doubt: Dolfie will be severely beaten and bruised by the catchers unit.
 
The novel The Berkut featured a brutal, yet not undeserved, alternate fate for Hitler:

"The Russians ultimately catch Hitler and bring him back to Stalin in Moscow. Hitler is secretly imprisoned in a hanging cage in a sub-basement of the Kremlin which is too small for Hitler to either stand or lie fully. He is fed scraps through the metal bars of the cage and is not allowed toilet facilities. Over the years, Hitler changes to a filthy, senile beast who has his right leg amputated above the knee and his left leg amputated above the ankle as gangrene sets in. He is finally executed by Petrov when Stalin dies in 1953, after which the sub-basement in which Hitler was kept is walled off forever."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Berkut
 
There is the old myth/ joke about Stalin wanting to put Hitler on public display at the Moscow Zoo. Ya know let school children on class field trips toss peanuts at the Austrian corporal.
 
Honestly, doubt the Soviets would do anything besides hang or shoot him in the aftermath of some show trial. Unlike the Nazis, when the USSR did brutal atrocities, they liked to keep it very very secret. All kinds of people really loathed Beria, but all they did was shoot him.

It's hard to understand how people reacted to the Cold War without understanding that 1) many people genuinely believed that the Soviet Union, even under Stalin, was a more moral government than the West and 2) the Soviet Union intentionally encouraged this belief.

Part of the ideological struggle of the Cold War was that the Soviet Union operated on the same universalistic moral language as the West, both equally opposed to the remarkably particularistic language of Nazi Germany.
 
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Got a question how will this unclucky soviet officer keep his men from killing etc to hitler straight away? Hell he could get shot by his own men, the eastern front was a extermination the bog standard soldiers knew this and alot of the soviet soldiers did horrific stuff to civilians how will the squad commander/guy in command get hitler to the higher ups or nkvd without him or hitler being killed?
 
He would be traded to the Nuremberg trial for something, like west Berlin. The trials wont get around to Hitler until 1946 anyways. Enough time in the temporary collection of the Moscow zoo.
 
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