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Destiny
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Private Henry Tandey became the most decorated British soldier in World War I when he was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions in taking out a German machine-gun emplacement during fighting in the French village of Marcoing in the closing days of the war. But it was what he didn’t do in Marcoing on this date in 1918 that earned him a footnote in the history leading up to the next war. Tandey briefly had a German corporal in his sights and didn’t fire because the man was wounded and unarmed. Seeing that his life had been spared, the German nodded in acknowledgment and quickly got himself out of harm’s way.
This small incident might have passed unnoticed by the larger world, except that the German corporal later saw a newspaper article with Tandey’s picture when he was awarded the Victoria Cross, enabling him to put a name to a face. Twenty years later, the corporal, now Germany’s führer, mentioned the incident to Britain’s prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, at their meeting in Munich. Tandey later confirmed that he might have had Adolf Hitler in his sights without, of course, realizing at the time that he had spared the life of Germany’s future leader. He thought so little about it that he barely remembered his small act of mercy. Hitler understandably attached the highest importance to it. He told Chamberlain, “Providence saved me from such devilishly accurate fire as those English boys were aiming at us.”
Hitler had long regarded himself as a man of destiny, and Tandey’s sparing his life only seemed to confirm it. The German chancellor thought of history in apocalyptic terms. Although not remotely Christian, Hitler thought of himself as a Christ-like figure who was destined to be Germany’s savior and to inaugurate a thousand-year reign. He disdained any overt comparisons to the historical Jesus, because he was a Jew. But Hitler set about to create an Ersatzreligion (substitute religion), with himself installed as the Ersatzmessias, or substitute messiah.
Careful historical research has cast doubt on the claim that Private Tandey was the British soldier who spared Hitler’s life that day in Marcoing. Hitler saw Tandey’s picture in the paper and persuaded himself that his life has been saved by a Victoria Cross recipient. Tandey recalled only that he had refused to shoot defenseless enemy soldiers. Hard documentary evidence indicates they could not possibly have crossed paths that day in Marcoing.
This would have come as a relief to Private Tandey, who expressed remorse for any role he might have had in sparing Hitler’s life. "If only I had known what he would turn out to be,” Tandey said. “When I saw all the people, women and children, he had killed and wounded, I was sorry to God I let him go." For his part, Hitler concluded his life had been spared for a reason. But he did not repay Tandey’s act of mercy by showing the least bit of mercy to his millions of victims. He may indeed have been a man of destiny — but not in the way he imagined. His thousand-year Reich lasted only 12 years, and World War II turned out to be his Armageddon. In the end, Hitler was not Germany’s savior; he was its anti-Christ.
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