If Hitler had been captured by the Allies alive, would he have been executed and when?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Two points that need to be made, apparently.

1. It is a fundamental error to ascribe anything remotely resembling rational thought to Hitler by 1945. He was, by that point, completely in the grip of his own fantasies and quite clearly believed that he was in some kind of personal Götterdämmerung, in which his downfall and defeat meant the complete death of Germany and of German civilization etc. Amongst other things, this means that there was never any realistic chance of him being captured alive.

2. He wasn't a magician and if he somehow had been captured and put on trial, there is genuinely no doubt that the result would have been his speedy conviction and execution. The point about the Nuremburg trials is that everyone knew that the defendants were, for the most part, entirely guilty: the idea was to demonstrate this, for all time, to the World. There were some marginal cases as well, but they were marginal cases. Most of the verdicts were (rightly!) predetermined to such an extent that Nikitchenko said 'death to the defendants!' as a toast on at least one occasion.