Adolf Hitler’s crimes were self-evident by 1945, and the British leader, for one, was not inclined to show him mercy. Winston Churchill, a few politically conciliatory statements to the contrary, made plain his antipathy for Hitler and Nazism years before World War II began. His hatred for Hitler by mid-war was such that the prime minister already had a vivid and ruthless plan in mind for how to dispose of him. “If Hitler falls into our hands we shall certainly put him to death,” he declared in one cabinet meeting in 1942 (via The Guardian), and he recommended that the electric chair was the appropriate method for a man he declared a “gangster.”

Churchill was still in favor of summary execution by 1945, dismissing any potential trial of Hitler or any other Nazi leader as a “farce.” In this, he was opposed by his fellow Allied leaders. As one diplomatic exchange put it (via the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Historian), “There must be no executions without trial otherwise the world would say we were afraid to try them.” The Moscow Declaration of 1943 and the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences affirmed the Allied intent to demilitarize Germany and put any Nazi responsible for war crimes on trial.

The cream of Nazi leadership faced justice before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, and contrary to Churchill’s fantasies, it is likely Hitler would have been tried there had he been captured. Given the sentences handed down to many top brass at Nuremberg, it’s almost certain Hitler would have been executed in the end — by hanging, not the chair.