Himmler's War

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To humanity’s dismay and grief, Adolf Hitler lived a charmed life. He could have died of wounds suffered in the First World War, yet lived on to establish the ghastly Third Reich, create the Holocaust, and initiate World War II, which then resulted in the Cold War and so much tragedy for the world. There were more than forty attempts on his life, some absurd and some very near misses, and yet he survived them all.

The most famous attempt was the conspiracy involving Claus von Stauffenberg on July 20, 1944, and this attempt arguably came closest to succeeding. However, a badly injured Hitler lived on, dragging out the war in an orgy of killing until committing suicide in a dank bunker in Berlin in April, 1945.

But what if Hitler had been killed not by an assassin but in an act of war? And what if that act was largely unexpected and accidental? It would have resulted in enormous unanticipated consequences. With Hitler gone, what would have happened to the Allies’ policy of unconditional surrender? Without Hitler’s nearly insane interference, would the German generals have fought a more intelligent war; thus causing massive and potentially unendurable Allied casualties?

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