Hilter

[Flanker8]

This'll probably get kicked off as it is asking for suppositions as opposed to facts, but I'll give it a go anyway......................................What would Europe be like today had Hitler been killed in the first world war?

[LordyGeordie]

It's an interesting supposition and the answer depends on whether you believe Hitler was personally repsonsible for WW2 and the holocaust or whether greater social and political forces were at work.

Personally, I am more inclined to the latter. While I believe Hitler and the rise of the Nazi party were a catalyst for WW2 something very similar would have happened eventually.

Germany was a proud military nation which was humbled in WW1. The after-effects of the Armistice and subsequent treaty meant its economy was virtually crippled what with war costs and also the reparations it had to pay to the victorious countries.

This created a lot of ill-feeling and the Weimar republic as post-war WW1 Germany was known was characterised by several extrmeist parties vying for power and attempted coups or 'putschs'.

It happened that ultimately the Nazi party headed by a characterful Hitler managed to gain power. But it could very easily have been any other party. Had the communist party got in it may have been intersting to see what effect that would have had on relations with russia but in my opinion that was never likely. Communists were treated much more harshly than right-wing extremists and when Hitler was imprisoned following the Munich putsch he was treated much better than communist prisoners.

[LordyGeordie]

cont...

The holocaust is difficult. Although I personally believe Hitler had a part to play in the Final Solution there is no evidence to suggest he did or it was even his idea.

There was already a lot of antipathy towards the Jews who were (unfairly) blamed for losing WW1, the poor economy etc and Hitler and the Nazis weren't the first political party to openly preach anti-semitism.

I'm not sure whether we'd have seen the slaughter of 6 million people without Hitler. But what you have to remember was there were thousands of people involved in carrying out the final solution (watch BBC2 tonight) and if there was already that level of hatred then it could feasibly have happened without Hitler.

[Pootle]

It was Hitler who was obsessed with reoccupying territories lost in the Treaty of Versailles to create "living space" for the German people so you can argue that he was directly responsible for the outbreak of the war. Furthermore, Hitler was equally obsessed with the destruction of the Soviet Union for ideological reasons. Had he not ordered this invasion and kept the "peace" between the two countries, he could have consolidated his existing territories with very powerful armies.

[bernardo]

There would have been some sort of authoritarian nationalist government in Germany as a result of the perceived grievances over Versailles.  There would have been moderate expansion in the Saarland and Alsace-Lorraine, and possibly the Polish corridor.  There would have been a war,but not as big.  The holocaust would not have happened because it was based on Hitler's very personal anti-semitist obsession.  The level of anti-semitism in Germany without Hitler would have been fairly low-level and not regarded as a priority, even if it was widespread.

[El D]

Very different yet much the same . . . You're welcome ;)

[Bangkok]

Stephen Fry covers a scenario in Making History, in which WW2 still occurred, but Germany was led by a more competant military leader and defeated Britain, and the US remained neutral.  50 years on, the Reich still ruled Europe.

[jno]

I'm not sure Allen doesn't slightly undermine his own argument here, saying that anti-semitism was widespread, even among the British ruling class... and yet Germany had the Holocaust and Britain didn't. Doesn't that suggest Hitler himself did indeed have a lot to do with it? And, by extension, that Europe might indeed have been a very different place had he died young?

[bernardo]

allen - it is curious that you say "not so, Bernardo" even though you are agreeing with me.  Of course anti-semitism was widespread at that time; but it took the single-minded absessive fury of Adolf Hitler to translate it into a systematic policy of mass-extermination.  Under an alternative military or nationalistic government in Germany (without Hitler) there would have been social and economic marginalisation of Jews, but not their mass-murder as state policy.