{"id":174020,"date":"2025-09-28T00:58:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T00:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/174020\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T00:58:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T00:58:07","slug":"today-in-history-september-28-the-english-soldier-who-had-the-chance-to-kill-hitler-but-didnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/174020\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in History – September 28: The English soldier who had the chance to kill Hitler, but didn’t"},"content":{"rendered":"

An English soldier’s Victoria Cross-earning gallantry on September 28, 1918, would become notorious years later for the soldier he purportedly didn’t shoot.<\/p>\n

Private Henry Tandey took out a machine gun nest before leading a bayonet charge against “an overwhelming number of Germans”.<\/p>\n

Despite being wounded twice, he refused to be evacuated “until the fight was won”.<\/p>\n

\"PrivatePrivate Henry Tandey earned a Victoria Cross for his exploits. (Public Domain)<\/p>\n

During that day, a wounded German walked into his line of fire.<\/p>\n

But Tandey did not take the shot, lowering his rifle and allowing the soldier to go free.<\/p>\n

This act of generosity would be remembered as part of Tandey’s courageous story. <\/p>\n

Italian artist Fortunino Matania would later immortalise Tandey’s courage that day with an oil painting.<\/p>\n

\"FortuninoFortunino Matania painted this artwork of Henry Tandey’s exploits that day. (Public Domain)<\/p>\n

Then, in 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain visited Adolf Hitler’s holiday home for negotiations.<\/p>\n

Chamberlain was struck by the fact a copy of a painting of British soldiers was hanging on Hitler’s wall.<\/p>\n

Hitler pointed out Tandey in the painting and said: “That man came so near to killing me that I thought I should never see Germany again; Providence saved me from such devilishly accurate fire as those English boys were aiming at us.”<\/p>\n

\"AdolfAdolf Hitler claimed dubiously that Henry Tandey spared his life. (Public Domain)<\/p>\n

According to Hitler’s version of events, he was the soldier Tandey declined to shoot.<\/p>\n

When the Second World War broke out, Tandey was asked how he felt about sparing Hitler’s life.<\/p>\n

“If only I had known what he would turn out to be,” he lamented.<\/p>\n

“When I saw all the people and women and children he had killed and wounded I was sorry to God I let him go.”<\/p>\n

But there’s very good reason to disbelieve Hitler’s claims.<\/p>\n

Records show that Hitler, then a lance corporal, was on leave on September 28, 1918, and would not return to the front until the following day.<\/p>\n

He would be wounded two weeks later, but by mustard gas that temporarily blinded him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An English soldier’s Victoria Cross-earning gallantry on September 28, 1918, would become notorious years later for the soldier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-174020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}