Did Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler ever meet? The answer is – almost.

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In 1932, Winston Churchill was writing a biography of his ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough, so was touring some old battlefields of Europe. When he arrived in Munich, an intermediary organised a meeting between him and the rising force in German politics, one Adolf Hitler.

But when Churchill sent a pre-emptive list of questions to challenge Hitler’s racial bias towards the Jewish people – including “How can any man help how he is born?” – Hitler cancelled. Months later, Churchill correctly predicted Jewish persecutions and pogroms, though no-one foresaw the scale of the barbaric genocide to come.

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This content was first published in the April 2016 issue of BBC History Revealed

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