How and Why God Chose to Protect Hitler

I’ve been asked before, if I had the chance, if I would go back in time and assassinate Adolf Hitler. He was one of the most evil men to live in the last century, and destroyed the lives of many good people. Although he was a terrible tyrant, I do not think that it would be right to travel back in time to try to kill him; the decades that have transpired since his rise to power would have been different without his influence. In fact, people inside Nazi Germany did try to kill Adolf Hitler several times; it seems as if God was supernaturally protecting him. It must have been God’s will for him to live until the day that he committed suicide. While it may be difficult to understand why God allows evil to continue, He uses people like this to fulfill His grand plan. Those of us who are not evil mass murderers can take comfort in the fact that nothing can happen to us without God’s permission either.

Failed Assassination Plots

During World War II, several attempts were made to assassinate Adolf Hitler. On March 13, 1943, an attempt was made to blow up a plane that Hitler was flying on. A special bomb was acquired that made no sounds prior to detonation. Although the conspirators were able to get the bomb on the plane, Hitler’s life was miraculously spared when the bomb proved to be a dud. Later that year, another conspirator planned a suicide mission by blowing up a bomb in his overcoat as he gave a presentation to Hitler about weapons. Hitler decided to leave the presentation early, and both he and the would-be suicide bomber lived to see another day.

The most well-known plot against Hitler occurred on July 20, 1944, in what would be known at the Valkyrie plot. During this failed assassination attempt, the bomb actually went off. A German named Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg had a bomb hidden in his briefcase during a meeting with the Fuhrer. The bomb went off only a few feet away from Hitler, but by chance, the design of the table that the briefcase was sitting under allowed most of the blast to be deflected away from him, and Hitler survived yet again. Unfortunately, because this bomb did go off, the conspiracy against the leader was now out in the open.

Why Did God Spare Hitler’s Life?

It seems as if God had angels looking after Hitler, sparing his life time and time again. I have written in the past about how God miraculously spared the lives of George Washington and other good people; it is not hard to see why they were protected. You have to wonder why a monster like Hitler would be spared. The answer to that is probably too complicated for any mortal to understand. In the time from Hitler’s first assassination attempt to the time that he killed himself on April 30, 1945, millions of people’s lives were changed. People died, historic buildings and churches were destroyed, and people were employed in munitions factories in America, earning money for their families. If that initial bomb that originally attempted to kill Hitler had blown up, the world would be a completely different place today. It would probably have been a world that was not in line with God’s master plan.

While I do not know why God spared Hitler’s life three times, it seems obvious that He does use evil people to further His grand plan. In ancient times, He used Pharaoh’s hard heart to show His power to the people of Egypt before he let the Israelites go. He used the Roman government to crucify Jesus, and then used Roman roads and the relative peace of the time to spread the Gospel throughout Europe and the Middle East. Perhaps if Hitler had been killed in early 1943, the state of Israel, whose existence seems to facilitate the events in the prophetical book of Revelation, wouldn’t have been created, at least not at that time. I’m sure that there are other factors that we may never fully understand. At any rate, whether we are kind, loving to our neighbors, greedy, lazy, or even downright evil, we will not meet our end unless God desires that it happens.

Sources:

Metaxas, Eric. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Thomas Nelson, 2010, pp. 426-431, 478-481.

Wikipedia. Death of Adolph Hitler.


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