What if Hitler wasn’t a Nazi or a “evil” person, what would the world be like, would it be better, would be worst, or would it be the same, I for one think that the world would be the same, it might change ww2 but the world would still have these current events like the war in Iraq
well lets face it, hitler was a pretty big loser before his nazism, the only reason he was really able to gain any political momentum was to scapegoat and blame minorities, stirring up hate in a broken nation so ww2 might have happened, but on a much smaller level (US and Great Britain VS Italy and Japan?). However the nucleus for another war in germany would still remain whole so who knows, we might have been fighting there right now
I think he just fit the bill at the time. Versailles was a pretty bad treaty, coupled with the fact that Germany thought it hadnt been defeated, high unemplyement, hyper inflation and a rapid chance in social circumstances [remember Germany was an Empire and had never had elected democratic govenrments].
Combine all this with a vastly fluid political and government situation where leaders and governments can and did change in a short space of time and I think if not Hitler, then some other.
I know I may be oversimplifying it, but if not Hitler, maybe it would have been another maniac that actually listened to his Generals etc… I’m sure that may have been even worse.
I think I’ve read that Hitler had other, perhaps more competent but less maniacal rivals that would have filled the role of despot…
At the risk of getting everybody off side, the original question is about as capable of sensible analysis as, say:
Would WWII have occurred if Germany and France had swapped geographic places?
Or if Oswald Mosley had gained control of Britain?
These sorts of questions aren’t alternative history, they’re just impossibly remote from anything that could have happened or did happen.
i thought he murded other polititons and got hes men 2 murder people who
didt agree with him…ist that how he got some power 2 start him off?
Hi RifleMan, I like “What if” stuff a lot but I think something one needs to bear in mind with the sort of What If question you have posed, is that whilst on an actual historical event one can ask a question and give relatively little background info, in asking the question. On the other hand in a “What If” question of the sort you have posed, one needs to give quite a lot of background information like did Hitler ever get involved with politics? did he act like a Nazi to get power and then get respectable and moderate when he got in to office? Did he get involved in politics but fail because the only way he could appeal to people was through hate and fear? Did he get involved in politics and succeed in being Chancellor even though he had a moderate stance because he was such a good speaker, organizer of rallies, etc? And if Hitler wasn’t a Nazi and ran a fair and democratic campaign to get office or just pretended to be a Nazi to get power and dumped the Nazi thing once he got in to power, like what sort of ideology and political goals would he have had?
Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer
I think that if Hitler was a “nice” gent, then there would have been no world war. The world today would have more mono cultures, technology would be 30 years behind, and Japan would not be the major technological/industrial player that she has been. The U.S would still have been “the” industrial giant, but Russia may well have become an aggressor nation by having wars with bordering countries.
The oil from the middle-east would have been owned by international companies from mainly the U.S, Britain and Holland.
But what state would the world be in when you take into account the tens of millions of extra people that would still be alive, themselves reproducing, ( perhaps a new great scientist who cures cancer, or a Hitler type who is even more ruthless) and putting an even greater strain on the worlds resources.
Paul
Even if Hitler wasn’t around, there was still a mixed feeling in Germany concerning an awfull hate to the Russian which was a resault of its hate to the Jewish bolshevism . In fact the soviet government before WW2 were moslty Jewish. In its propogandic posters, Germany often represented the russian people who was forced to die under of Jewish command.
As we know the bolshevic atrosities right after 1917 were widely used by Nazi’s in its anti-semitic propoganda in the Western Europe.Actually NOBODY in Europe wished to repeate the fate of Russia in the 1917.
In fact before WW2 many people in the West prefered to see the Hitler as “brilliant guy” who could “protect” the Europe from the bolshevism.
The battle between Germany and USSR had a ideological reason - they were real mortal enemies.
I agree that, even without Hitler, something eventually had to happen. Stalin, for one thing, wasn’t some nice guy that wasn’t set on spreading communism and strengthen his own power. Eventually, I really believe that Russia would have been the one to draw first blood if the Germans wouldn’t have done so. Put all of the ideological differences together with a discontent, economically suffering nation and you have basic ingredients for war. I suppose that the question is whether a Germany under other leaders would have re-militarized to the same extent. Obviously, under the Weimar Republic it probably wouldn’t have happened. A “nicer” Hitler may not have done it, either.
As a side note to the obvious differences in ideologies between Germany and Russia, it is interesting that Stalin attempted to erase, or at least mitigate, the appearance of Bolshevism and Judaism being connected in spite of the fact that so many of the country’s leaders had been Jewish. In fact, Stalin prohibited the study of the Khazar people because that civilization’s leaders had adopted Judaism and he didn’t want Russia to be perceived as a nation with Jewish roots. That prohibition continued until sometime after Gorbachev.
They are interesting points you make there herman, but such issues must also be set in the context that the Jewish community in Germany was one of the most intergrated Jewish communities in the World and that one of the successes that Hitler had achieved as a lasting legacy is to erase the fact that the members of the Jewish community could be and were German hyper-nationalists and that had the Nazi party not had anti-semitism as a central policy objective, it would have attracted support and membership from numerous German Jews. As for Jews being communists that is entirely correct in that many Jews were Communists in this era and whilst no doubt some of them were communists for entirely amoral reasons, to many others communism would have seemed an entirely honourable and sensible political ideology. As for war, given the nature of the various political systems and ideologies around at the time, there would have been some sort of major War, maybe around 1944 [ e.g. 1944 Russian resistance democratic nationalist guerillas attack NKVD truck convoys inside Russia, Soviet aircraft try to bomb the Russian resistance training camps inside Poland but are mauled by Polish Airforce Spitfires, Stalin is furious and launches a full scale invasion of Poland, Poland is over-run since though she has a large Army, her military has not had any new equipment since 1939 apart from radar and some Spitfires for the airforce. Weimar Germany has sent an expeditionary force to help Poland but this is forced to flee back to Germany leaving all their heavy equipment behind and as Weimar has only a small but very well equipped military, they are in big trouble as their army is so small and they have lost most of their equipment in Poland. British Primeminister Winston Churchill orders the fleet to mobilize and the RAF to deploy Westland Whirlwind fighters to Berlin to assist the Luftwaffe… ] but without Hitler it is unlikely to be anything as widespread or as costly as World War II was.
Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer
Unfortunately in the history always are very much "if’s " but it’s as it is we can’t change but only learn from it .The formation of the hitler’s human nature as arrogant , disrepectfull , hatefull and many other "qualities " is a long process which only specialist can find why he had formed such a character . But for me the WW1 was the turning point as for him many other was , and later he become more and more filled with hate and want for revenge . The truth is that Allies were guilty for the humiliate treaty of Versails which was just as invitation for Hitler and such as him to take the wind of hate and dissatisfaction amongst the germans and to "return the pride of the nation " . But i think if hitler wasn’t such he won’t be ruling germany in that period , imagine Himler on his place … what a WW2 we would have then i couldn’t imagine and don’t want to do so .
So maybe we should say thank god that it was Hitler instead of Himler , Goebels or many other dark characters .But let’s imagine that Hitler wanted to stop to deploy hate futher more after the treaty of Munich , i think Germany would be very prosperity state and major power ( not that these days it don’t have it’s place in the major powers ) and people would more clearly see the stalinist regime as the greatest evil which it was for me .
Very well phrased. I like what you stated!
ww2 was a direct result of the punishment meted out to Germany for a Great War they did not feel responsible for…
A German victory of any kind in that Great War would have left Adolphus Hitler a contented Austrian veteran, farting in an armchair on a pension and turning out the occasional watercolor to supplement his war pension.
The evil of world war two was the result of this failure to reintroduce the German people “back into the fold”, and as such, Allied Peacemakers bear a fair share of the blame. We now know that Europe was following a pattern of conflict stretching directly back to France and it’s disasterous performance in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The entire alliance structure was a product, among other things, of this humiliating defeat.
Europe between the wars struggled to cope with the fallout from Versailles. None of the signitaries agreed on any of the terms of that treaty, and Woodrow Wilson was sidelined as a tool of reconciliation by vengeful Frenchmen. The Treaty of Versailles was supposed to be the modern equivilent of the Congress of Vienna in 1815, but the terms imposed on countries like Germany (who were not even allowed to participate) guaranteed a resumption of hostilities.
Blaming it all on Adolphus Hitler is a terribly insecure way of looking at the causes of WW2, and the resulting blood that was spilled thereof…
As for Germany and the USSR, well, they were more alike than they were different, and Stalin’s degradations in the pursuit of power, internal enemies and world revolution meant the clash was always going to be of a brutal nature…
Remember, Germany and the USSR CO-OPERATED in the between the wars period, military co-operation by the two largest totalitarian regimes…
I cannot help thinking that the German Chancellor, rabid anti-communist that he was, was played off against Stalin in a Western Allied, Churchill inspired strategy to rid Europe of dictatorship in the best way known…by getting them, somehow, to fight eachother…
The speed with which the Cold War began post May 1945 is more than a little suspicious, indicating that the Soviets were not really trusted at any stage of the game, whether they were fighting for or against the west at the time.
Thankyou Winston…
Absolutely, the Soviets weren’t trusted!!! The Allies were well aware of what Stalin had done during the decade and a half prior to Barabarossa and the type of ruler that he was. I assume that, at the time, the Allies decided that he was the better option between him and Hitler. Personally, I’ve never been certain that it was the right decision, but they were already knee deep since Britain had promised help to Poland, something that Poland, in reality never got! In the end, Poland got shafted, especially with the Soviets breathing down their necks for years to come after the war.
AND, I must object, historically speaking, that Adolphus was “a pretty big loser before nazism…”
Four years of running through artillery barrages, holder of 4 decorations, one for pulling an officer to safety outside of Wychaete (terrible spelling!) in the early advance through Belgium, and up until WW2 he had many admirers on both sides of the Atlantic for the job his organisation was doing in reconstructing the pieces of German Nationalism…
In fact, had we joined forces against the enemy we were actually most scared of (Socialism), then we may well have seen an entirely differing outcome of that period in European affairs.
Furthermore, Adolphus had a lot of help…
You can’t put into practice a national policy of any kind without a significant amount of support. If the Heer Generals that blamed their own mistakes on him had one wit of commitment to their “sacred oath” then why was the same oath to the Weimar Republic thrown to the dogs so effortlessly? Gerhard Weinburg accuses the General Officer Corps (Guderian, for instance) of accepting massive monetary remuneration (bribes) and other perks that more than guaranteed the loyalty of Hitler’s Generals, and certainly makes them look utterly childish for blaming a dead man for their operational and professional failures…
Well, personally, I don’t think there can be any doubt AT ALL about what would have happened if Hitler had been a nice guy. First of, the Nazi party would still come into being, but under the leadership of Ernst Röhm instead of Adolph. Röhm would recruit Adoph to the party one day, after seeing him trying to sell his painting on a sidewalk. Under Röhm’s tutelage, Adolph would take up the art of flower arraigning. Röhm would also insist Adolph walk about in a bed-sheet toga, which would gradually lead to Adolph becoming the world’s first hippie.
Under Röhm, the Nazi party becomes just that – a party, attracting all sorts of boys who like to put rogue on their cheeks and smile bashfully. When Röhm recruits the son of a prominent minister of the German government into the party, all hell breaks loose, and Röhm is thrown in jail on trumped-up charges of trying to pull a putz - er, putsch. In jail, his cell mate turns out to be Henrich Himmler, and the two become close buddies, thriving on long, party-oriented conversations, lasting well past “lights out.”
Adolph leads peaceful demonstrations outside the prison, demanding the release of Röhm and other party members. A detail of prison guards is deployed to contain the small crowd; Adolph makes world-wide news as he photographed by major news media putting flowers in the barrels of their guns. As a result of the publicity, he meets Rebekka Lipsitz, a domineering woman of mixed Jewish and Gypsy blood, and falls in love. Lipsitz is actually an undercover agent working for Moscow. With Moscow’s blessings, she preaches to the toga-clad Hitler, helping him see that HE should become party leader, but emphasize the “socialism” in the party’s name. Under her guidance, Hitler and Lipsitz begin a series of covert trips to Moscow, where he receives political indoctrination and financial support.
On the return leg of their final trip to Moscow, Lipsitz, who is wearing a fairly short skirt, accidently drops her lipstick, and bends over to pick it up. An alert guard notices the panties she is wearing are a of type made only in Russia. Hitler and Lipsitz are thrown in separate jails, and Hitler winds up in the cell opposite Röhm’s. At first, Röhm is nervous about Hitler’s reaction to his close friendship with Himmler, but this quickly turns to raging jealousy when all Hitler does all day is moan about being separated from Lipsitz. Röhm lectures Hilter about being a man, and slides across the prison aisle a pistol that had been smuggled in by one of Himmler’s friends. He tells Adolph to either shut up about Lipsitz, or to shoot himself. Hitler refuses, and slides the gun back to Röhm, saying he can’t believe Röhm would say such a thing, and that if he means it, Röhm would just have to shoot him himself. In desperation, Röhm obliges him, putting a bullet smack between his eyes.
With the covert support of Moscow, Hitler now becomes a great leftist martyr, with communist cells feeding rumors that his death was a contrived assassination by the government, followed by a sloppy cover up and attempt to shift the blame to Röhm. The German people, too exhausted by the Great Depression and the travails forced upon them by the Treaty of Versailles, don’t even notice. So the Soviet government uses the newly improved German rail system to smuggle in thousands of loyal party members to stage riots. Chaos ensues, and the German government starts to wobble.
In desperation, the government releases Röhm, and asks him to take the reigns of the Republic in his hands. Röhm throws a wild inauguration party to celebrate, complete with torches; things get out of hand, and several government building burn to the ground. Röhm, in a shrewd move, shifts the blame for the fires to the communists. He dissolves the Republic, and declares himself Emperor. He commissions an architect, Albert Speer, to design buildings to replace those lost in the fire. Under the new imperium, Germany flourishes, and promotes peace in every possible way – Röhm can’t bear the thought of sending all of Germany’s boys off to war. The Austrians, seeing the enormous economic powerhouse that Germany has become, astounds the world by asking to be annexed by Germany. Without stopping to think it through – the Austrian ambassador was very charming – Röhm agrees, unaware of the dangerous precedent he was setting. Soon, Germanic populations across Europe are agitating to succeed from the various nations they belong to, seeking to form a “United States Of Germany.” Civil war breaks out in the Sudetenland of neighboring Czechoslovakia. Britain and France support the Czech government, as a means to counter the growing strength of Germany. The insurgency is brutally put down, but tensions remained high just under the surface, and violent protests break out in German populations everywhere. Then, in an eery replay of earlier events, a resentful young Serb successfully assassinates Emperor Röhm I. Röhm, of course, never married or produced an heir; and the German Empire tears itself apart in the ensuing power struggle. Finally, in a desperate attempt to restore order, the other great powers – the UK, France, USSR, and the USA, send in troops to restore order. Germany is occupied, with each great power being responsible for administrating part of the country. Stalin, who was lingering in the background, decides to make his occupation of territory permanent. About this time, the normal time line would more-or-less return , with a merger of the UK, France and Britain occurring to counter the Soviet Union, and a great cold war ensues.
As any one could see, the logic of my analysis of events if Hitler was a good boy is impeccable: I challenge anyone to prove I am wrong!
The question is : How they did decide which is better ? How reasonably you will decide between USSR and Nazi Germany ? ( 20 milions deaths from Stalin against 6 or whatever milions from Hitler ) . Still a mystery how the Allies choosen USSR .For me there is no logic at all .And i have one though on my mind simply to get rid from the treat of aggression from Nazi Germany and given the whole eastern europe into the hands of the “hungry” Stalin . With one word we save our ass and don’t care about the others . So as consequence countries as mine ware 45 i repeat 45 years under full occupation and exploatation while the west was in Cold war not firing even a shot against the soviets who had concentration camps too as Hitler and put many many people in them .But the West closed it’s eyes for that because it didn’t want any more wars which is no excuse and there is no logic to fight war for liberation against one evil and to leave the other to be .
Ivaylo…
I cannot, for a moment, understand exactly what the unfortunate people of Eastern Europe went through, but I sympathise entirely.
Many modern Russians seem to see the Soviets with appropriately tinted blinkers on. We in the West should be justly shamed for our conduct, delivering as we did, whole nations into the hands of despots, and all to preserve their idea/our idea of Imperialism/Empire.
I apologize, for what it is worth, for those actions, and can only say that something such as that must NEVER be allowed to happen again…naive as it may be, it’s really the best we can hope for.
21st century Europeans REMEMBER, I hope. A later generation may make the same mistakes, but a study of history can teach them a thing or two for the future.
I trust they will learn those lessons well…