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Standing in his wrecked home, Henry Tandey watched his city burn and heard the screams of hundreds of men, women and children after an attack by 515 German bombers in wave after sickening wave.

The brave air raid warden had spent the previous 10 hours fighting his way into blazing houses, rescuing victims and pulling out bodies as the Luftwaffe tried to destroy the Coventry factories powering Britain’s war effort.

But nothing Henry did that night could ease his sickening sense of guilt.

He could have stopped this. Saved the 560-plus lives lost that night, all the horror wreaked by the Nazis and the 60million lives lost in the Second World War.

He could have changed the course of history. If only...

Two years earlier Henry Tandey, 49, had discovered that HE was the man who let Adolf Hitler live.

In the dying moments of the First World War 22 years earlier, he had pointed his rifle at a wounded German soldier trying to flee a French battlefield. Their eyes met and Henry lowered his gun. The German nodded in thanks then disappeared.

In that moment of compassion for a fellow human being, Henry, then 27, let 29-year-old Corporal Adolf Hitler walk free.

Free to become the most reviled dictator and mass murderer of all time.

“I didn’t like to shoot at a wounded man,” he said in 1940. “But if I’d only known who he would turn out to be... I’d give 10 years now to have five minutes of clairvoyance then.”

It was the biggest “what if?” in history and, until his death in 1977 at the age of 86, Henry had to live with the stigma of being “The Man Who Didn’t Shoot Hitler”.

In fact, he was a hero – the most highly decorated British private soldier of the First World War, holder of the Victoria Cross, Distinguished Conduct Medal, Military Medal, five mentions in dis­patches and three wound stripes.

Now a new book by author and historian David Johnson has set out to make sure Henry is remembered for his astonishing gallantry.

David, who lives in Warwickshire close to Henry’s old home, spent years of research to get to the truth.

He said: “Britain’s most decorated private soldier sparing the life of Adolf Hitler makes a great story. It’s accepted by some but disputed by many others.

"The truth may never be absolutely known. But for Henry Tandey to be known more for his alleged compassion towards Hitler than for his undoubted bravery seemed to me to do him a disservice.”

The book has won praise from the former head of the Army, General Lord Dannatt, who served in the same regiment as Henry, the Green Howards.

He said: “Henry Tandey will always be remembered as the most decorated private soldier of the First World War who, with one squeeze of the trigger, might have prevented the Second World War. Dr Johnson has managed to winnow fact from fiction and produce the definitive life history of this remarkable British soldier – an ordinary man who did extraordinary things.”

For 20 years Henry had no idea he had missed the chance to kill Hitler. But in 1938 he received a shocking phone call from Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who had just returned from a fruitless meeting with Hitler to try to talk him out of war.

Chamberlain had been invited to Hitler’s hilltop retreat in Bavaria and shown a reproduction of a famous painting called The Menin Crossroads.

An Italian war artist had captured soldiers of the Green Howards evacuating the wounded at the Battle of Ypres in 1914 – with Henry Tandey in the foreground carrying a comrade on his back.

Incredibly, Hitler recognised him as the man who spared him four years later on September 28, 1918.

He told Chamberlain: “That man came so near to killing me I thought I should never see Germany again. Providence saved me from such devilishly accurate fire as those English boys were aiming at us”.

Hitler asked Chamberlain to convey his best wishes and gratitude to Henry, whose response to the phone call isn’t known.

But as David points out in the book: “He would surely have reflected on how that act of compassion had been repaid.”

Henry gave only a few interviews after the story broke.

He admitted he never shot wounded, unarmed or retreating Germans, but did everything he could to kill them in battle.

In 1939 he told the Coventry Herald: “Did I see Hitler? I had the sights of my rifle on most of their gun crews, but whether I hit any of them I shall never know. I’ve wondered since how near I came to knocking down the future dictator.”

David’s research found remarkable similarities between Hitler and Henry. Both served on the Western Front, both were wounded several times and both were decorated for bravery.

Henry was born in Leamington Spa in 1891, the son of an ex-soldier. He was a hotel boiler engineer before enlisting in the Green Howards in 1910. When war broke out he joined the British Expeditionary Force in France. Henry arrived in Ypres on October 14, 1914, taking part in the first bloody battle there and helping to evacuate the wounded at the Menin Crossroads – immortalised in that painting.

He was wounded at the Battle of the Somme in October 1916, as was Hitler. In August 1918 at the Battle of Cabrai, Henry won the DCM for storming an enemy post with two comrades, killing several Germans and capturing 20 more.

A fortnight later he earned the Military Medal rescuing wounded men under fire and leading a bombing party into German trenches. And he won the VC on September 28, 1918 at the Battle of Marcoing. When his platoon was halted by heavy machine-gun fire Henry crawled forward to locate the gun post and led comrades to destroy it. He then rebuilt a plank bridge crossing the canal, again under a hail of bullets.

Later that evening he and eight comrades were surrounded by Germans and apparently doomed. But Henry, though badly wounded, led a bayonet charge so fierce that 37 of the enemy were driven into the hands of his company. It was the day he spared Hitler.

(Image: Green Howards Museum)

The story is still doubted by some. But in 1997 Major Roger Chapman of the Green Howards said: “We have no doubts he did meet Hitler and allowed him to live, an act of compassion he regretted 22 years later.”

Back home in Blighty, Henry re-enlisted in the Army a day after his discharge in 1919. Refusing promotion he served in Egypt, Gibraltar and Turkey before finally leaving in 1926.

He moved to Coventry, married twice but never had children and was a security guard at the Triumph Motor Company. When he died his ashes were buried in the British Cemetery at Marcoing in France, alongside fallen comrades and close to the spot where he spared Hitler.

As the bombs rained down on Coventry in 1940 Henry showed the same bravery that had won him a chestful of medals. He became an ARP Warden because his old wounds stopped him enlisting again – but by God, he certainly tried.

“He still saw himself as a soldier and wanted to do his bit,” said David.

“And maybe he also felt that if he’d spared Hitler’s life he had a responsibility to try and put things right.”