In this tract I do not mean directly to address the documented history of assassination attempts. Rather, I mean to examine the structural factors involved and hence to convey the fundamental difficulties when people propose this technique as a means to achieve the goal of stopping, for example, the next Hitler.
Consider the case of even a relatively ordinary city mayor or high legislator, almost regardless of country. They have few, or no bodyguards, and not enough security in housing and transport that it really matters. When people use this word “assassination” they almost by rule disregard any such killing. So, when we talk about assassination or killing any important target, we already have de-enriched/survivor bias towards targets that have significant protection.
This de-enrichment of easy targets is enhanced by the general frequency at which such attempts are made. There is a baseline level of attacks against all humans, and then another baseline level of attacks against prominent individuals and leaders, with its highest level against the Fuhrer. When leaders anger others, taking evil actions, this increases the frequency of plots and then attempts. As expected, this corresponds with the strength of the target’s security detail, frequency and intensity of purges, etc. So the leaders against whom killing and plotting is easiest, also are the least frequently targeted; but the leaders who are hardest to kill, also are the most frequently targeted, and generally rule over people who have been enslaved, with those who would attempt such plots usually already eliminated, fled, or otherwise not in effective positions for such attempts. Hence there is an inherent, highly significant, statistical weighting towards failed assassinations that is so large that it becomes impossible to de-associate in the general data set.
Furthermore, when we talk about the most evil rulers, usually there is no freedom of speech, press, history, or any sort of investigative activity of this sort. So stacked on top of our verifiable understandings, there is a large percentage of unverifiable or questionable information, which very easily could have been planted or inserted as disinformation by these evil rulers and their retainers, or by their successors. So in addition to the mass of cases being weighted towards such rulers, half of the information is incomplete, garbage, or never reported. This adds fundamental uncertainty to the historical record, in addition to a first-principles or mechanical approach to the situation. That uncertainty then would cause us to have to analyze the easier to verify cases, but those also are not representative of the data set.
So, this leads an examination of the historical record towards these perspectives as summary:
- If you are trying to draw a conclusion about what to do about individuals on the level of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or any roughly totalitarian ruler, you can’t operate primarily on the basis of history since the quality of the information is poor.
- Recognizing at the same time that there were a number of attempts on these individuals’ lives that resulted in undeniable damage, or other counter-moves that were effectively impossible to conceal, it’s quite possible that the average evil ruler who holds out for 10 or 20 years overcomes tens of assassination attempts.
- Trying to draw a conclusion from the attempts we do know about and have verified and attempting to apply it to the worst situations is not generalizable as a historical or statistical matter. Mechanics could be applied from one to the other, but those are not in the same class of decision techniques.
Recognizing the poor odds and general difficulty of killing one’s enemies in a police state/surveillance society, in addition to these preceding difficulties of estimation, then we would wish to re-enrich the data set by pulling out the populations that we actually know about and for which assassination is relatively successful. These tend to occur in freer societies and, to our understanding, generally less wicked individuals. Hence the precondition for such an analysis being applicable to action, is that you start from the proposition that you have several key social assets in your favor.
Additionally, from your mechanical analysis, you would like to increase your odds by providing arms to the general population, and by reducing the amount of the Fuhrer’s personal protection. Similar considerations apply to transport and movements.
By taking these types of actions – assuming or creating a liberal society/government as the starting point, arming the population, restricting the ruler’s power – at this point you have abandoned almost the entire human history of assassination situations, and human history generally. This strategic approach physically is sound, but in the process of creating such a favorable physical situation, is it any longer pragmatic to approach this question, since the situation doesn’t match up to the biggest threats?
Moreover, when you choose to operationalize such an approach, you require the power to implement such a plan. Most rulers, even not obviously evil ones, will not permit you to build and distribute arsenals, nor will they expose themselves to such heightened vulnerability. Such exposure may not even be feasible, as many societies are under constant threat of foreign assassination, well-resourced criminal gangs, and armed conflict generally. So some aspects of your plan to be able to eliminate notorious criminals likely conflict with your available options in the situation.
If you cannot implement the ideal plan for whatever reason, then you must fall back to your not-as-appetizing options. Political indoctrination of the security forces is a universally applicable approach in a roughly liberal society, but most of the other ones are not. Each limitation increases the number of assassination attempts required to achieve success. Historically, each attempt increases the probability of lockdowns, and then purges – so the successive probability decreases.
Here, there is one more lesson that can be learned from history: evil rulers survive. Even with the army and foreign rulers plotting against them, they manage to survive. The closer that your limited means approach the means available to the individuals who lived under those evil rulers, the more likely that your results will resemble those under the evil rulers: failure – which on a yearly basis is, in a maybe best case scenario, on the order of 1/5 chance of overthrow by any means, not just assassination.
With such poor odds being suggested by the history and such limited estimation accuracy, practically you cannot handle assassination of evil rulers via a frequentist approach, wait and see. You must establish liberal society, complete and prompt enforcement of laws, and the relative weakening of the government vs. the people over which it rules. When an individual appears to have the potential to become a Hitler, you never will have a better time to kill them and eliminate the threat than at that moment.