I’m thinking he never came within miles of any actual allied soldiers.
I can’t come up with a valid Google search term for this.
He might well have met with some high-level POW I suppose. Do you mean one actually still fighting?
he was on the front lines and got gassed… but that was WWI
(IIRC he came up with his signature hair-lip when he had to shave the sides of a traditional moustache to fit inside a gas mask.)
I would bet he met some military attaches at embassy parties or various state events before the war.
I meant as dictator in World War 2.
Wow, I never knew this, although I do remember that picture where the one that he had was about a yard wide.
Thanks.
Even the first possibility is fascinating in its own way, and would merit documentation (or has merited it).
I think Louis Zamperini, 1936 U.S. Medalist, who was a soldier a few years later, did meet Hitler, but he was not a soldier at the time.
He wound up a POW. At one point in time, there was a US POW in WW2 who could have said, “I met Hitler.” But he was in the Pac theatre.
I doubt that Hitler met POWs. What possible mileage could there be in that for him?
In the last days of the war, in Berlin, Soviet troops may have come within a mile of Hitler’s bunker, maybe even a few hundred yards and within sight of it while he was still alive.
Would allied airmen count? My dad was a bombardier in a B-17 who might have gone on a mission to Berlin. Just a guess, but I’m thinking he was 4 to 6 miles above ground level.
Not knowing that, but unable to assault it, surely?
You couldn’t technically be “within sight” of the bunker until you were in it; it was underground.
But it was under the Reich chancellery, which you certainly could see. And, yes, the Russians believed that Hitler was in Berlin, and they believed that he was probably in fortified quarters in the Reich chancellery.
And, yes, they could assault the Reich chancellery, and they did. The place was mostly a shell by the time the got to occupy it. By then Hitler had been dead for about 36 hours (and the Russians already knew that).
There was nothing in Berlin that the Red Army would have been unable to assault. The bunker was located in the vicinity of the Chancellory, which must have been at the top of the list of assault priorities no matter where Hitler was.
Google it. There was significant structure above ground. And I think the walls were several feet thick and had withstood everything shot at it.
This was mentioned in a very recent Episode of QI, as Fry mentioned it, there are some doubts about it, but that was claimed by a soldier that fought alongside Hitler.
And from the same QI episode (Military Matters):
Jimmy Carr :“Here is a good point about Hitler: He is judged very harshly by history. But, he did kill Hitler!!”
There was a stoutly-built above-ground entrance in the Chancellery garden. It gave on to a staircase which descended several flights to the bunker proper. It was an emergency exit, not much used except when people wanted some air. (The bodies of Hitler and Braun were carried out through this entrance, but that was mainly so that as few people as possible would see them, and because they were to be burned in the garden. Josef and Magda Goebbels also came out via this entrance to shoot one another, or be shot, in the garden.)
The principal entrances were via the Reich Chancellery itself, via the underground carpark behind the Chancellery, and via the Foreign Ministry.
And the Chancellery garden was an internal courtyard, surrounded on all sided by buildings or high walls. So you couldn’t see this entrance until you were inside the garden.
So, I don’t think the Soviet forces could see any part of the Fuhrerbunker complex until after they had taken the Reich Chancellery in the early hours of 2 May. They certainly couldn’t see it on 30 April, when Hitler shot himself. They were still 500m away.
Plus, if I recall rightly, they didn’t know the Fuhrerbunker existed. They understood Hitler to be in the Reich Chancellery, and assumed he would be in a fortified place, and a bunker was a reasonable supposition. But they didn’t know anything about the actual bunker. From memory, the Soviets took the Reich Chancellery about 2:00 am. Weidling, the commander of the Berlin Defence Area, surrendered at 6:00 am at Chuikov’s headquarters and told the Soviets about the bunker. At that point, Krebs and Burgdorf may still have been alive in the bunker, but by the time the Soviets found their way in, about 9:00 am, both had shot themselves. The only person remaining alive in the bunker was a mechanic, Johannes Hentschel, who had stayed to keep the generators running, because they supplied power not only to the bunker itself but to a field hospital that was still more-or-less operating in the ruins of the Chancellery above.
According to Wikipedia, there’s a car park now on the spot where the emergency exit used to stand.
Well, there’s always Michael Burn.
Michael Burn met Hitler in 1935, and Hitler invited him to witness the rallies at Nuremburg in Septemeber as his guest. Hitler even autographed his copy of Mein Kampf.
After a visit to Dachau he lost his entusiasm for the Nazi, joind the British Army, became a Commando, and was captured during the raid on St Nazaire.
He was interrogated by Hitler’s personal translator, whom he had met in Nuremburg, and ultimately taken to Colditz for the rest of the war.
So, there was a British Commando who had met Hitler and shook his hand.
But I doubt any soldier ever got close to Hitler during the fighting.
Another avenue for Hitler to meet a foreign unformed service member is if they were acting as a military attache attending some formal reception.
Recap: Michael Burn (UK) and Louis Zamperini (USA), so far, had both met Hitler a few years before the war and before they were soldiers and POWs.
So, at one time during WW2, two soldiers, while in POW camps, could have said to their fellow POWs, “I met Hitler.”
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