The recent incident during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where an armed man entered the venue and opened fire while US President Donald Trump and many other White House officials were in attendance, has been the hot topic of the week.
Now, while some reports claim it was unclear whether the shooter was trying to target Donald Trump or not, recent reports claim that the suspect has been charged with attempting to assassinate the US President.
This incident, though, has raised the interesting comparison of other famous leaders who have encountered multiple assassination attempts, among whom the chief name to come up has been Hitler.
Adolf Hitler, the Nazi dictator who brought Europe to ruin between 1933 and 1945, survived what historians have documented as at least 42 separate attempts to end his life.
Donald Trump, the 45th and 47th President of the United States, has survived three confirmed assassination attempts and at least three additional serious security incidents since 2024, a frequency of targeted violence that no American president in the modern era has come close to matching.
So, in lieu of that, let us take a look at 6 times that people tried to assassinate both Donald Trump and Hitler: what happened, who did it, how it nearly worked, and why it didn’t.
PART ONE: Adolf Hitler
1. Maurice Bavaud
November 9, 1938: Munich, Germany
Who: Maurice Bavaud, a 22-year-old Swiss theology student and devout Catholic who had become convinced that Hitler posed an existential danger not just to Europe but to Christianity itself. He acted entirely alone.
What happened: With nothing more sophisticated than a pistol purchased en route and a press pass obtained through deception, Bavaud positioned himself among the crowds lining Munich’s streets for the annual commemorative march marking the anniversary of Hitler’s failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.
Pretending to be a Swiss reporter, Bavaud purchased a seat in a grandstand along the parade route and waited for the opportunity to draw his pistol from his coat pocket.
His plan depended on a single clean moment, a gap in the crowd, a clear angle, close enough range. That moment never came. As Hitler passed below the grandstand, the thousands of supporters packed around the route thrust their arms skyward in the Nazi salute, creating a physical wall between Bavaud’s line of fire and his target. He could not raise his weapon without being immediately detected.
Why it failed: The density of the crowd and the spontaneous forest of raised arms at the critical moment made an aimed shot impossible. Bavaud spent weeks tracking Hitler across Germany trying to manufacture another opportunity, but his finances ran out before he could act again.
He eventually jumped onto a train to Paris as a stowaway, was turned over to the police by a conductor, and was interrogated by the Gestapo. After admitting his plans to kill Hitler, he was sentenced to death. In May 1941, he was beheaded via guillotine in a Berlin prison.
2. Georg Elser
November 8, 1939: Bürgerbräukeller Beer Hall, Munich
Who: Johann Georg Elser, a German carpenter born January 4, 1903
Unlike virtually every other significant conspirator in this list, Elser had no military connections, no access to the Nazi inner circle, no network of co-conspirators. He worked alone, drawing on skills he had developed over a lifetime as a craftsman.
What happened: Elser identified a single predictable moment in Hitler’s otherwise heavily guarded schedule, the annual Beer Hall Putsch commemoration speech, which the Führer delivered at Munich’s Bürgerbräukeller every November 8th without exception.
Starting in August 1939, he spent thirty-five consecutive nights inside the beer hall after closing time, carving a precisely measured cavity into a structural pillar immediately behind the speaker’s platform. He noticed a stone pillar behind the speaker’s platform that supported a large balcony overhead.
By his calculations, a large bomb placed within that pillar was capable of bringing down the entire balcony, burying not only Hitler but also a number of his ministers and supporters.
The engineering involved was remarkable. Clock movements, a car indicator “winker,” a battery, powder, explosives and detonators were incorporated into what Elser called his “infernal machine.”
His bomb was not a crude device; it was a precision instrument, set to detonate at the scheduled end of Hitler’s speech.
It worked perfectly. The bomb exploded exactly when Elser had calculated it would. The bomb exploded, killing eight people and injuring 57. But Hitler had cut short his speech and had already left.
Why it failed: Hitler had initially planned on flying back to Berlin after his speech, but local weather reports called for dense fog, making air travel hazardous. He decided to return to Berlin using a private train, which necessitated moving the start time of his speech up and shortening it to about an hour. Hitler concluded his speech at 9:07 PM and quickly departed without his usual drink with local Nazi members. Elser’s bomb exploded as planned 13 minutes later and brought down the entire building.
It was a train schedule adjustment and a weather report that saved Adolf Hitler’s life.
Georg Elser stated during interrogation: “My observations led me to the conclusion that conditions in Germany could only be improved by removing the current leadership.”
Elser was arrested at the Swiss border that same night and spent more than five years in a concentration camp. Georg Elser was murdered in Dachau concentration camp on April 9, 1945, only weeks before the end of the war.
He was one of the most technically capable and morally clear-sighted resisters the Third Reich ever produced. The postage stamp Germany issued in his honour in 2003 read simply: “I wanted to prevent the war.”
3. Operation Valkyrie
July 20, 1944: Wolf’s Lair, Rastenburg, East Prussia
Who: Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the central operational figure of the most sweeping and carefully organised conspiracy against Hitler ever assembled. A dashing colonel who had lost an eye and one of his hands during combat in North Africa, Stauffenberg was one of the very few members of the resistance with regular direct access to Hitler’s inner command circle.
What happened: The plan had two interlocking parts: kill Hitler at a military briefing using a bomb concealed inside a briefcase, then immediately trigger a nationwide coup — Operation Valkyrie — using the German Reserve Army to seize control of Berlin, neutralise the SS, and negotiate peace with the Allies.
Stauffenberg arrived at the Wolf’s Lair on the morning of July 20 with the device concealed in his briefcase. He placed it next to Hitler during the conference. The explosives were armed and placed next to Hitler, but it appears they were moved unwittingly at the last moment behind a table leg by Heinz Brandt, inadvertently saving Hitler’s life. When the bomb detonated, it killed Brandt and two others, while the rest of the room’s occupants were injured. Hitler’s trousers were singed by the blast, and he suffered a perforated eardrum and conjunctivitis, but was otherwise unharmed.
Stauffenberg, watching the explosion from a distance and seeing the devastation of the conference room, concluded that no one in that room could have survived. He flew to Berlin to set the coup in motion.
Why it failed: A single, accidental movement of a briefcase behind a solid oak table leg directed the force of the explosion away from Hitler. The plotters, unaware of their failure, attempted a coup d’état. Stauffenberg and the rest of the conspirators were all later rounded up and executed, as were hundreds of other dissidents. Hitler supposedly boasted that he was “immortal” after the July Plot’s failure, but he became increasingly reclusive in the months that followed and was rarely seen in public before his suicide on April 30, 1945.
Read More: Why Did Hitler Wipe Out Millions Of Jews? Hitler’s Ideology: Demystified
PART TWO: Donald Trump
1. The Butler, Pennsylvania Rally Shooting
July 13, 2024: Butler Farm Show, Butler County, Pennsylvania
Who: Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20 years old, from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. A loner with no documented political affiliations, no known manifesto, and no connections to any organised group. The FBI said it believes Crooks, who had bomb-making materials in the car he drove to the rally, acted alone. Investigators found no threatening comments on social media accounts or ideological positions that could help explain what led him to target Trump before the Secret Service rushed him off the stage.
What happened: Crooks positioned himself on the sloped roof of a commercial building just outside the security perimeter of the rally venue — a location that, in hindsight, provided a clear elevated sightline directly to the stage where Trump was speaking. He used what the FBI later described as an AR-style 556 rifle. While Trump spoke to the crowd, at least five gunshots were heard around 6:15pm. He dropped down, while multiple US Secret Service agents rushed onto the stage to shield him.
The bullet grazed Trump’s right ear. One attendee, Corey Comperatore, was killed. Two others were critically wounded. Crooks was neutralised by a Secret Service counter-sniper seconds after firing.
Outcome: Trump survived. Several minutes later, he was helped to his feet by the agents and escorted offstage to his motorcade, with blood visible on his right ear and smeared across his face. Before being taken away, he appeared to pump his fists and yell “Fight!” towards the crowd.
The image of Trump raising a bloodied fist toward thousands of supporters became one of the most widely reproduced political photographs in recent memory.
An internal investigation into the Secret Service’s handling of the event led to six Secret Service employees being suspended without pay
2. The Golf Course Ambush
September 15, 2024: Trump International Golf Club, West Palm Beach, Florida
Who: Ryan Wesley Routh, 58 years old at the time of the attempt, a former roofer from North Carolina with a documented history of erratic behaviour and a self-styled interest in the Ukraine conflict. A travel nurse who had met Routh in Ukraine described him as “a threat to others” and “a ticking time bomb,” and had notified a Homeland Security agent upon her return. She reported Routh to the FBI in 2023.
What happened: Routh did not act impulsively. His preparation stretched back at least six months before the attempt itself. Between August 18 and September 15, 2024, Routh’s phone accessed cell towers located near Trump International Golf Club and the President’s residence at Mar-a-Lago on multiple occasions.
He had been scouting the terrain for weeks.
On the morning of September 15, Routh arrived at the golf course fence line in the early hours and settled in to wait. At 1:59 AM EDT, just outside the fence of Trump’s Florida golf course, Routh hid in shrubbery holding an SKS-style rifle. At 1:31 PM, Routh pointed his weapon through the fence line, approximately 400 yards from Trump.
He never got his shot off. A Secret Service agent patrolling one hole ahead of Trump’s group spotted the rifle barrel and opened fire. Routh fled, abandoning his weapon and equipment, and was arrested on Interstate 95 within hours.
Law enforcement officers recovered a Norinco SKS rifle equipped with a scope, a loaded magazine containing 19 rounds of ammunition and one round in the chamber, steel armor plates, and a camera affixed to the fence pointing at the sixth green where President Trump was about to play golf.
What Routh left behind also included a pre-written confession. Inside a box he had previously dropped at a witness’s house was a handwritten letter that stated: “Dear World, this was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I am so sorry I failed you. I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It is up to you now to finish the job; and I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job. Everyone across the globe from the youngest to the oldest know that Trump is unfit to be anything, much less a U.S. president.”
Outcome: Routh was convicted on all five federal counts. U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones stated at sentencing: “An attempted assassination of a presidential candidate is an attack on our democratic process and the rule of law itself. This assassination attempt was stopped by the courage and professionalism of U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Robert Fercano, whose decisive actions protected lives and prevented a national tragedy.”
Routh was sentenced to life plus 84 months in federal prison in February 2026.
3. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner Attack
April 25, 2026: Washington Hilton, Washington D.C.
Who: Cole Tomas Allen, 31, a mechanical engineer, computer science postgraduate and secondary school tutor from Torrance, California. Allen earned a degree in mechanical engineering at Caltech, the California Institute of Technology, in 2017, before going on to receive a master’s in computer science at California State University, Dominguez Hills, in 2025.
He received a “Teacher of the Month” award from his tutoring employer in December 2024.
What happened: This was the first White House Correspondents’ Dinner Trump had attended as a sitting president, surrounded by Cabinet members, senior officials, journalists, and approximately 2,600 guests. Allen had planned the attack weeks in advance. On April 6, 2026, Allen made a reservation at the Washington Hilton for three nights from April 24 to April 26. He traveled by train from the Los Angeles area to Chicago before boarding a further train to Washington, D.C., arriving on April 24 and checking into the hotel later that day.
The hotel was the same building hosting the dinner. Allen was a guest inside the secured perimeter before it was fully sealed. The suspect was seen leaving his 10th-floor room, dressed in black and carrying a shotgun, a handgun and several knives in a black bag. He used an interior stairwell to bypass heavily monitored areas of the hotel.
Ten minutes before approaching the checkpoint, Allen sent a final message to his family: “I wish I could have said anything earlier, but doing so would have made none of this possible. My sincerest apologies for all the trouble I’ve caused. —Cole.” He signed it “Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen.”
At approximately 8:40 p.m., Allen approached a security checkpoint on the Terrace Level leading to the hotel’s ballroom. He ran through the magnetometer holding a long gun. A U.S. Secret Service officer wearing a ballistic vest was shot once in the chest. The Secret Service officer drew his service weapon and fired multiple times at Allen, who fell to the ground and suffered minor injuries but was not shot.
Trump, Melania Trump, Vice President Vance, and Cabinet members were evacuated immediately. When asked about the moment the shots rang out, Trump told reporters: “I heard a noise and sort of thought it was a tray. I thought it was a tray going down.”
The security failure that allowed Allen to bring a disassembled long gun into a hotel hosting the president drew immediate scrutiny. A hotel guest in an adjacent room told investigators he had observed no luggage checks at all on the day of arrival. Daily Beast editor Hugh Dougherty stated: “How on earth could someone with a disassembled long gun check into a room at a hotel where the president was going to speak? I can answer that: Nobody even looked at my luggage on Friday afternoon.”
FBI Director Kash Patel stated: “The evidence is abundantly clear: Cole Tomas Allen travelled to Washington D.C. for the purpose of assassinating President Trump and targeting members of the Trump administration. Thanks to the heroic actions of our brave law enforcement partners who acted quickly and professionally, Allen did not succeed — and now, he will be held fully accountable.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, still in black-tie attire from the evening, said at a press conference: “Cole Allen now faces the full weight of federal justice. This alleged assassin was stopped because of the courage and professionalism of law enforcement officers who responded without hesitation by doing their jobs. Because of them, the President of the United States, administration officials and all attendees at the dinner were safe.”
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Al Jazeera, BBC, History.com
Find the blogger: @chirali_08
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