I’ve never been able to verify a brief story I read once. The young Hitler was in the Austrian Army. While under intense gunfire and shelling, he and the others were pinned down in trenches.
Suddenly Hitler stood up and said “I’m leaving.” The others stayed because standing up outside the trenches meant certain death. But then a shell hit the trench and killed the men where Hitler had been. Hitler was fine.
I haven’t found if this was a legend or fact.
Same with a story that Dr.Mengele while he was secretly living in South America (proven fact) was a passenger in a car accident. The others were all killed or seriously injured. Mengele emerged shaken up but totally uninjured.
Still can’t find that story again to verify its accuracy.
I’ve read some wild stories l;ike that too, especially in the unverifiable chaos of WW1. One of them was about a British Soldier who had a clear shot at Hitler, but since Hitler was just a messenger, the soldier didn’t shoot.
I’m going to look it up.
I read a large biography of Hitler by Joachim C. Fest, and there was no mention of any trench incident that I recall.
Mengele’s corpse was verified by dental records- so he did eventually die there. The family agricultural manufacturing business continued under his son. Mengele was no medical scientist— he was a psychopath, as most of the nazi “medical” researchers were- especially the story of the skeleton collecting registry in Strasbourg, France. Allied soldiers found alcohol pickling vats filled with bodies sliced longitudinally- those that could not be disposed of in time by the “researchers”.