6 ms·

List of Assassination Attempts on Adolf Hitler

55 points by bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago

retrocryptid 7y ago
Pish! These are all amateurs compared to King Zog of Albania with 55 confirmed assassination attempts. My favourite being an attempt on his life while visiting Vienna. Having escaped injury in the attack, King Zog pulled his personal sidearm and shot at the attackers as they retreated. By all accounts he was a bit of a jerk, but he dressed well and wasn't afraid to fire back, so you have to give him some credit. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zog_I_of_Albania#Assassination_attempts https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zog_I_of_Albania#Assassinati...
ebg13 7y ago
And if you enjoyed that, there's also the International Association of Time Travelers: Members’ Forum https://www.abyssapexzine.com/wikihistory/ https://www.abyssapexzine.com/wikihistory/
lawlessone 7y ago
Wow.. that's quite long.
ceejayoz 7y ago
Remarkable number of close calls in here. A bomb that iced up, Hitler rushing faster than expected through a museum exhibit, a canceled uniform modelling appointment...
- eaenki 7y ago
  Makes you wonder. 10~ very close calls is as rare as say 50cent surviving 10 shots. What are the odds?
- watwut 7y ago
  Maybe the conclusion is that such plans were inherently unreliable, because people change speed by which they move through museums and cancel appointments.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Reminds me of one bit of game mechanics in the Total War series that seems to be actually accurate in two infamous cases. The game series features assassination of prominent "people" in roles - generals, kings, and even clergy, merchants, spies, and other assassins. There is a chance of success based upon relevant stats and traits and one of the outcomes is that failed assassination attempts often result in them becoming harder to assassinate as they take more precautions and occasionally show mental side effects. Now look at Fidel Castro and the clownish job of the CIA's loony toons assassination attempts. It sounds absurdly gamey at first but assassination resistance may be effectively trainable like immune systems or antibiotic resistance. There is nothing magical about it - the target simply builds up infastructure of countermeasures, deliberately not following schedules, and less physically accessible to anyone unvetted. If in the dirty business of sending assassins in the first place quantity does not have a quality in its own but makes defenses stronger - strategically what is needed is one to do it right.
  - celticninja 7y ago
    As Tito said to Stalin: "Stop sending people to kill me! We’ve already captured five of them, one with a bomb and another with a rifle… If you don’t stop sending killers, I’ll send one to Moscow, and I won’t have to send another"
- thrower123 7y ago
  It makes me think about how very close the assassination attempt on Archduke Ferdinand came to being botched. The initial attempt, tossing a bomb at the motorcade, failed, then as the Archduke was leaving, his driver took a wrong turn, coming to a stop right in front of the shop that Gavrilo Princep had gone into to get a sandwich after learning about the failure of the initial attempt.
  - agoodthrowaway 7y ago
    Imagine how different the world would be had he gone home instead. Kind of blows my mind to think about.
    - Razengan 7y ago
      Imagine what little events are happening right now that we will look back at in 100 years and feel the same way about them. :)
    - baud147258 7y ago
      I think WW1 would have still happened even without the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Either another attempt would have been successful or another casus belli would have happened.
pascalmahe 7y ago
22 recorded attempts in 12 years. But is that a lot or not? Do we have comparable lists for Stalin, Mao or FDR? Otherwise it's just a single data point. Though I'll concede that having the list for him and not others does point to more attempts...
- maze-le 7y ago
  Fidel Castro is probably the man who survived / foiled the most assassination attempts (with a lot of help of the KGB). /quote estimated the number of assassination schemes or actual attempts by the Central Intelligence Agency to be 638 (according to the Church Committee) /unquote But most of these cases are still shrouded in the veil of secrecy by the intelligence agencies, so there is still a lot of guesswork and substantial amount of secret records involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fide...
- watwut 7y ago
  Nazi regime was relatively short and ended abruptly by the end of war. There is much more evidence available including witnesses.
  - scrumper 7y ago
    And most importantly the regime ended without having had the chance to destroy much of its document stash. The Nazis were diligent record-keepers and an absolutely enormous trove of secret files turned up after the war. The best trawl through this marterial is the gargantuan (but highly readable) "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William Shirer, an American journalist living in Europe during Hitler's rise to power and the second world war.
    - watwut 7y ago
      William Shirer did not went through all that material. He was journalist and not historian. If you are interested in result of going through all that material, read Richard Evens trilogy.
nabla9 7y ago
Se also Assassination attempts on Fidel Castro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fide... Charles de Gaulle survived 31 attempts. https://www.amazon.com/Target-Gaulle-attempts-French-president/dp/0803785143 https://www.amazon.com/Target-Gaulle-attempts-French-preside...
dreen 7y ago
How many of those are time travellers?
- viggity 7y ago
  want an uncomfortable thought experiment? what if time travel does exist, and allowing Hitler to live was the least bad option for the world? i.e. if Hitler was killed early in the war, he wouldn't have been able to override his generals with so many stupendously stupid ideas.
  - Razengan 7y ago
    If there were (will be?) truly "good" time travelers, why not prevent the nuking of Japan? Or any of the other countless massacres and genocides throughout history and still going on to this very day? Or you know, help everyone to resolve all conflicts without violence? Prevent the mass production of weapons in the first place? In the end this is just a variant of the "If there's a God why does it let bad shit happen" question. It's more likely that there are eldritch Lovecraftian entities feeding upon sentient misery.
  - notduncansmith 7y ago
    Unfortunately, to know which future is the least bad, you have to solve the Halting Problem.
    - Razengan 7y ago
      Or you can keep going back in time whenever a catastrophe happens, to prevent it. This probably creates multiple timelines and we just happen to be in the one where most large scale conflicts didn't get prevented (yet.)
      - stallmanite 7y ago
        Not to jinx it but the absence of large-scale nuclear conflict 1950-present seems pretty improbable and definitely very nice to have as far as counterfactual timelines go.
dadarepublic 7y ago
So interesting. Any number of these could make a fascinating segue to an alt-history fiction that could really move in any direction.
josefresco 7y ago
"attempts"? Some of them look to be mere ...plans.
zentiggr 7y ago
Just skipping the conversation and invoking Godwin's Law right off... bold strategy...
habitue 7y ago
Anthropic Hitler Theory: Our current world existing is sensitively dependent on Hitler not being assassinated. Universes where Hitler is killed early result in nuclear annihilation for some reason, and the only Everett branches that have humans in them have an improbable history of a single man dodging dozens of assassination attempts
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
hackeraccount 7y ago
There was some web comic - my google-fu is failing me - that had a time traveler going back to kill Hitler. Hitler's guards intervene and stop the assassination. The last couple of panels have them saying something like " It's an OK job but what's the deal with all these time travelers coming to kill the guy we're guarding - this is the third one this week!"

55 points by bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago

Pish! These are all amateurs compared to King Zog of Albania with 55 confirmed assassination attempts. My favourite being an attempt on his life while visiting Vienna. Having escaped injury in the attack, King Zog pulled his personal sidearm and shot at the attackers as they retreated. By all accounts he was a bit of a jerk, but he dressed well and wasn't afraid to fire back, so you have to give him some credit. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zog_I_of_Albania#Assassination_attempts https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zog_I_of_Albania#Assassinati...

ebg13 7y ago

And if you enjoyed that, there's also the International Association of Time Travelers: Members’ Forum https://www.abyssapexzine.com/wikihistory/ https://www.abyssapexzine.com/wikihistory/

lawlessone 7y ago

Wow.. that's quite long.

ceejayoz 7y ago

Remarkable number of close calls in here. A bomb that iced up, Hitler rushing faster than expected through a museum exhibit, a canceled uniform modelling appointment...

eaenki 7y ago
Makes you wonder. 10~ very close calls is as rare as say 50cent surviving 10 shots. What are the odds?
watwut 7y ago
Maybe the conclusion is that such plans were inherently unreliable, because people change speed by which they move through museums and cancel appointments.
Nasrudith 7y ago
Reminds me of one bit of game mechanics in the Total War series that seems to be actually accurate in two infamous cases. The game series features assassination of prominent "people" in roles - generals, kings, and even clergy, merchants, spies, and other assassins. There is a chance of success based upon relevant stats and traits and one of the outcomes is that failed assassination attempts often result in them becoming harder to assassinate as they take more precautions and occasionally show mental side effects. Now look at Fidel Castro and the clownish job of the CIA's loony toons assassination attempts. It sounds absurdly gamey at first but assassination resistance may be effectively trainable like immune systems or antibiotic resistance. There is nothing magical about it - the target simply builds up infastructure of countermeasures, deliberately not following schedules, and less physically accessible to anyone unvetted. If in the dirty business of sending assassins in the first place quantity does not have a quality in its own but makes defenses stronger - strategically what is needed is one to do it right.
- celticninja 7y ago
  As Tito said to Stalin: "Stop sending people to kill me! We’ve already captured five of them, one with a bomb and another with a rifle… If you don’t stop sending killers, I’ll send one to Moscow, and I won’t have to send another"
thrower123 7y ago
It makes me think about how very close the assassination attempt on Archduke Ferdinand came to being botched. The initial attempt, tossing a bomb at the motorcade, failed, then as the Archduke was leaving, his driver took a wrong turn, coming to a stop right in front of the shop that Gavrilo Princep had gone into to get a sandwich after learning about the failure of the initial attempt.
- agoodthrowaway 7y ago
  Imagine how different the world would be had he gone home instead. Kind of blows my mind to think about.
  - Razengan 7y ago
    Imagine what little events are happening right now that we will look back at in 100 years and feel the same way about them. :)
  - baud147258 7y ago
    I think WW1 would have still happened even without the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Either another attempt would have been successful or another casus belli would have happened.

pascalmahe 7y ago

22 recorded attempts in 12 years. But is that a lot or not? Do we have comparable lists for Stalin, Mao or FDR? Otherwise it's just a single data point. Though I'll concede that having the list for him and not others does point to more attempts...

maze-le 7y ago
Fidel Castro is probably the man who survived / foiled the most assassination attempts (with a lot of help of the KGB). /quote estimated the number of assassination schemes or actual attempts by the Central Intelligence Agency to be 638 (according to the Church Committee) /unquote But most of these cases are still shrouded in the veil of secrecy by the intelligence agencies, so there is still a lot of guesswork and substantial amount of secret records involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fide...
watwut 7y ago
Nazi regime was relatively short and ended abruptly by the end of war. There is much more evidence available including witnesses.
- scrumper 7y ago
  And most importantly the regime ended without having had the chance to destroy much of its document stash. The Nazis were diligent record-keepers and an absolutely enormous trove of secret files turned up after the war. The best trawl through this marterial is the gargantuan (but highly readable) "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William Shirer, an American journalist living in Europe during Hitler's rise to power and the second world war.
  - watwut 7y ago
    William Shirer did not went through all that material. He was journalist and not historian. If you are interested in result of going through all that material, read Richard Evens trilogy.

nabla9 7y ago

Se also Assassination attempts on Fidel Castro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fide... Charles de Gaulle survived 31 attempts. https://www.amazon.com/Target-Gaulle-attempts-French-president/dp/0803785143 https://www.amazon.com/Target-Gaulle-attempts-French-preside...

dreen 7y ago

How many of those are time travellers?

viggity 7y ago
want an uncomfortable thought experiment? what if time travel does exist, and allowing Hitler to live was the least bad option for the world? i.e. if Hitler was killed early in the war, he wouldn't have been able to override his generals with so many stupendously stupid ideas.
- Razengan 7y ago
  If there were (will be?) truly "good" time travelers, why not prevent the nuking of Japan? Or any of the other countless massacres and genocides throughout history and still going on to this very day? Or you know, help everyone to resolve all conflicts without violence? Prevent the mass production of weapons in the first place? In the end this is just a variant of the "If there's a God why does it let bad shit happen" question. It's more likely that there are eldritch Lovecraftian entities feeding upon sentient misery.
- notduncansmith 7y ago
  Unfortunately, to know which future is the least bad, you have to solve the Halting Problem.
  - Razengan 7y ago
    Or you can keep going back in time whenever a catastrophe happens, to prevent it. This probably creates multiple timelines and we just happen to be in the one where most large scale conflicts didn't get prevented (yet.)
    - stallmanite 7y ago
      Not to jinx it but the absence of large-scale nuclear conflict 1950-present seems pretty improbable and definitely very nice to have as far as counterfactual timelines go.

dadarepublic 7y ago

So interesting. Any number of these could make a fascinating segue to an alt-history fiction that could really move in any direction.

josefresco 7y ago

"attempts"? Some of them look to be mere ...plans.

zentiggr 7y ago

Just skipping the conversation and invoking Godwin's Law right off... bold strategy...

habitue 7y ago

Anthropic Hitler Theory: Our current world existing is sensitively dependent on Hitler not being assassinated. Universes where Hitler is killed early result in nuclear annihilation for some reason, and the only Everett branches that have humans in them have an improbable history of a single man dodging dozens of assassination attempts

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

hackeraccount 7y ago

There was some web comic - my google-fu is failing me - that had a time traveler going back to kill Hitler. Hitler's guards intervene and stop the assassination. The last couple of panels have them saying something like " It's an OK job but what's the deal with all these time travelers coming to kill the guy we're guarding - this is the third one this week!"