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Now, not then. What if we couldn't depend on references to Hitler to justify anything and everything?
Would the USA collapse? Its military at least? Internet message boards anyway?
This article offers food for thought..
Quote:
For 68 years, wars on poor countries have been justified by the pretended discovery of Hitler’s reincarnation. Each time it has turned out to be a false alarm. Every post-WWII war looks disastrous or at least dubious in retrospect to most people. And yet, the justification of the next war is always ready to hand, because the real, original Hitler remains alive in our memories, and he just might come back — who’s to say?
When World War II happened, there were no nukes, no satellites, no drones. There was no (or little) television, no internet, no WikiLeaks. There was no understanding of the tools of nonviolence. History contained no nonviolent overthrows of dictatorships, few examples of creative nonviolent resistance to tyranny, no teams of human shields, no Arab Spring, no Civil Rights movement, no overcoming of Apartheid, no bloodless revolutions in Eastern Europe, no peace studies programs, no expertise in conflict resolution, and no viable alternatives to war — much less the thousands of tools since devised, tested, and refined.
Hitler didn't invent the Nazi party.... If Adolph didn't take the job for whatever reason there would have been another charismatic nut-job doing the same things.
Nor were the Nazis the only power-hungry madmen trying to knock out the dying Weimar government and take control. They just happened to be the winners.
In other words... history would have played out mostly the same, only with different names.
Hitler didn't invent the Nazi party.... If Adolph didn't take the job for whatever reason there would have been another charismatic nut-job doing the same things.
Nor were the Nazis the only power-hungry madmen trying to knock out the dying Weimar government and take control. They just happened to be the winners.
In other words... history would have played out mostly the same, only with different names.
This ^ The whole German/Aryan ubermensch philosophy and its related anti-antisemitism predates even Goethe and Wagner.
Hitler didn't invent the Nazi party.... If Adolph didn't take the job for whatever reason there would have been another charismatic nut-job doing the same things.
Nor were the Nazis the only power-hungry madmen trying to knock out the dying Weimar government and take control. They just happened to be the winners.
In other words... history would have played out mostly the same, only with different names.
While Hitler did not invent the Nazi Party, he took it from just being another very small party in the political sea of post-WWI Germany to being the only fish in that pond.
It was only after Hitler joined the party and began drawing larger and larger crowds, and more and more members, that it began to gain any prominence whatsoever. Absent Hitler, the German Workers Party (or, DAP) founded by Anton Drexler (Remember him? I didn't think so.) would be but a minor footnote in history that only the occasional researcher would run across in dusty old records somewhere.
As you indicate, there were plenty of vehicles for other would-be dictators. However, Hitler possessed an exceptional skillset of assuming power, consolidating it, and then using it to take a country into a profoundly self-destructive war. That anyone else would come to power as hell-bent on war, with the audacity to attack through the Ardennes in 1940 when German generals were skeptical, to audaciously launch a full-scale attack on the USSR in 1941, to declare war on the United States and invade elsewhere, from Scandinavia to the Balkans to North Africa, is highly doubtful at best.
Hitler was not an interchangeable cog but a driver of events.
Absent Adolf Hitler, world history diverges radically from our own timeline in 1940.
While Hitler did not invent the Nazi Party, he took it from just being another very small party in the political sea of post-WWI Germany to being the only fish in that pond.
It was only after Hitler joined the party and began drawing larger and larger crowds, and more and more members, that it began to gain any prominence whatsoever. Absent Hitler, the German Workers Party (or, DAP) founded by Anton Drexler (Remember him? I didn't think so.) would be but a minor footnote in history that only the occasional researcher would run across in dusty old records somewhere.
As you indicate, there were plenty of vehicles for other would-be dictators. However, Hitler possessed an exceptional skillset of assuming power, consolidating it, and then using it to take a country into a profoundly self-destructive war. That anyone else would come to power as hell-bent on war, with the audacity to attack through the Ardennes in 1940 when German generals were skeptical, to audaciously launch a full-scale attack on the USSR in 1941, to declare war on the United States and invade elsewhere, from Scandinavia to the Balkans to North Africa, is highly doubtful at best.
Hitler was not an interchangeable cog but a driver of events.
Absent Adolf Hitler, world history diverges radically from our own timeline in 1940.
Of course there is no way to know how it would have turned out with a different Fuhrer but you give Hitler way too much credit. He may have been the "face" of Nazism but it wasn't a 1 man show. If any of them deserve it the title "evil genius" it would be Goebbels; he may be remembered as Hitler's little b!#ch today but it was Goebbels who was a master of manipulation and actually got the German people on the Nazi's side.
Hitler was in fact, a giant screwup. He had some early successes as Fuhrer but his entire personal life and many, many tactical decisions were otherwised marked by failure after failure after failure.
Who knows... perhaps if one of the truly talented Nazis was sitting in the big chair making the important decisions at the time we'd be speaking German today. Hitler might have actually been "good" for the world in that respect.
believe me there are millions of hitlers out there just waiting for the chance,back then even now,if adolf hitler had not been born another hitler would come by in about 5 minutes.
There still was Mussolini and Stalin in WWII, and the other Nazis mentioned above, plus later, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Saddam and a host of other villains to use as exemplars for cruelty, insane abuse of power, etc.
While Hitler did not invent the Nazi Party, he took it from just being another very small party in the political sea of post-WWI Germany to being the only fish in that pond.
It was only after Hitler joined the party and began drawing larger and larger crowds, and more and more members, that it began to gain any prominence whatsoever. Absent Hitler, the German Workers Party (or, DAP) founded by Anton Drexler (Remember him? I didn't think so.) would be but a minor footnote in history that only the occasional researcher would run across in dusty old records somewhere.
As you indicate, there were plenty of vehicles for other would-be dictators. However, Hitler possessed an exceptional skillset of assuming power, consolidating it, and then using it to take a country into a profoundly self-destructive war. That anyone else would come to power as hell-bent on war, with the audacity to attack through the Ardennes in 1940 when German generals were skeptical, to audaciously launch a full-scale attack on the USSR in 1941, to declare war on the United States and invade elsewhere, from Scandinavia to the Balkans to North Africa, is highly doubtful at best.
Hitler was not an interchangeable cog but a driver of events.
Absent Adolf Hitler, world history diverges radically from our own timeline in 1940.
Don't be silly. One man taking party up to the power? By what means? Poor failed painter? Do you realize, how much MONEY it costs to pull such a stunt? And that's in a country, where NSDAP was a backwoods organization having no significance? And then, in matter of several weeks, it became well dressed, organized, dipping from basically unlimited financial source, and on every page? Hitler did all this? Or, someone chose his little socialist gig and promoted it? And if you want to know who, look into man, who coached him through his entire rise, formed his views, whispered in his ear this and that, and happened to be very close then American president and British Intelligence agent? Man who pumped his party with so much needed funds, supplied by Wall Street and London money bags?
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What if there were no Hitler?
