The general consensus that had Hitler being captured at the end of WWII, assuming that he simply wasn't just killed by the USSR in a show trial and actually handed over to be trialed at Nuremberg, that he would most likely get the death penalty and hanged like many of the top Nazi leadership OTL.
But that does raise some interesting questions, namely that it would set a precedence that the head of a nation is not a sacred cow (interestingly enough, Japanese emperor Hirohito was not put on trial in OTL (for complex reasons that can be discussed later) and Mussolini was executed by partisans with barely a sham trial), which seemed to have been the overall trend in previous massive, international wars (the emperors of the defeated central powers mostly went to exile, Napoleon was exiled even after the stunt he pulled in the Hundred Days, etc.).
Thus, the execution of Hitler (however just and deserved) would cast a huge shadow on the leaders of various countries in the Cold War (and even after), with the knowledge that there's always the chance of being executed. Of course, while no leader would think of themselves is irredeemably evil like the Nazis, the knowledge that they would be judged as such in the event of total defeat would have been in the back of their minds.
(In OTL, executing leaders of countries by international courts isn't that common (usually jail sentences of various length were handed out in the cases that actually made it to court), even the execution of Saddam was technically tried by an Iraq court rather than an international one (though admittedly it's pretty obvious that the US was heavily influencing things one way or the other))
Hence the question at hand, how would the execution of Hitler change things in the Cold War and beyond?
But that does raise some interesting questions, namely that it would set a precedence that the head of a nation is not a sacred cow (interestingly enough, Japanese emperor Hirohito was not put on trial in OTL (for complex reasons that can be discussed later) and Mussolini was executed by partisans with barely a sham trial), which seemed to have been the overall trend in previous massive, international wars (the emperors of the defeated central powers mostly went to exile, Napoleon was exiled even after the stunt he pulled in the Hundred Days, etc.).
Thus, the execution of Hitler (however just and deserved) would cast a huge shadow on the leaders of various countries in the Cold War (and even after), with the knowledge that there's always the chance of being executed. Of course, while no leader would think of themselves is irredeemably evil like the Nazis, the knowledge that they would be judged as such in the event of total defeat would have been in the back of their minds.
(In OTL, executing leaders of countries by international courts isn't that common (usually jail sentences of various length were handed out in the cases that actually made it to court), even the execution of Saddam was technically tried by an Iraq court rather than an international one (though admittedly it's pretty obvious that the US was heavily influencing things one way or the other))
Hence the question at hand, how would the execution of Hitler change things in the Cold War and beyond?
