Current Events > Would ww2 have still happened without Hitler?

(+) Yeah! (+)

say he succeeded in his art career, and he never got into politics. Would WW2 have still eventually happened? Is the entire war hanging on Adolf Hitler to start it, or was it always going to happen?

Probably would have happened anyway

Hitler didn't create the stabbed in the back myth or the concept of blaming minorities for government failures

More than likely. There was enough unanimous bitterness over the Weimar Republic, and considering how rapidly they became that militant in a short amount of time, it was probably bound to happen regardless.

There would have definitely been a war, but it is doubtful that the holocaust would have happened at the scale that it did and the whole affair would have been somewhat more subdued (and probably happened later). Hitler largely had a large amount of lucky breaks early on in his political carrier that let him get in power, and it is unlikely that any of the things that got him there would have not happened if another person would have been in his shoes. What did matter, however, was how quickly he managed to unify the Nazi party under his banner, which is something that not anyone would have necessarily been able to do. Similarly, while it is unreasonable to assume that he was literally the only person that could ever be so heinous, the speed at which he moved to sparking racial tensions was significant when talking about the precipitation of the holocaust. Prior to him having control of the Nazi party racism was a major factor, but it definitely became pretty all-encompassing after he took the reins.

Joseph Goebbels probably would've taken over and it would happen anyway

Hayame_Zero posted...

More than likely. There was enough unanimous bitterness over the Weimar Republic

Not really. Even when German memories of defeat and Versailles were fresher and more bitter, it wasn't the right-wing parties that dominated German politics -- instead, throughout the 1920s (despite the early struggles to pay reparations, hyperinflation, and the occupation of the Rhineland and the Ruhr), it was the centre-left SPD that remained the most popular party in Germany. The Nazi share of the vote in federal elections actually fell from 6.5% in May 1924 to 3% in December that year, and then crashed to a feeble 2.6% in May 1928.

Cutting against the grain of the argument that anger over the Treaty of Versailles swung the German public heavily behind the ultra-right parties and provided the main focus of electoral support for the Nazis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_referendum,_1929.

It was a referendum on whether Germany should pass a law formally renouncing the Treaty of Versailles and banning the collection of reparations. Fewer than 15% of voters even bothered to turn out. Again, despite the conventional wisdom in today's school classrooms that Versailles stoked the German public so badly they rushed to vote Nazi out of spite, it seems to demonstrate instead a remarkable apathy about the Treaty as a specific issue.

IIRC, Germany wasn't the only country gunning for Biggest Tyrannical Shitbag of the Decade.

I'd also point out that even if Hitler had gotten into art college and made a decent living as a painter, it doesn't mean he would never have become involved in far-right politics. Plenty of colleges and universities in Germany and Austria had their own ultranationalist student circles, Viennese politics and cafe culture were steeped in populist anti-semitism, and the radicalizing trauma of the First World War (and defeat) was only a few years away.

I would say with near certainty it would have. A better question would be would the holocaust have happened or been as terrible without Hitler.

Hard to imagine a second conflict wasnt going to happen at all with how the First World War came to an end despite the actions of any one man.

Solid_Snake07 posted...

Hard to imagine a second conflict wasnt going to happen at all with how the First World War came to an end

I dunno, if the Weimar Republic had remained a democracy, much would have depended on how just how invested the German public genuinely was in avenging territorial losses like Schleswig, Memel or Pomerelia at the cost of another major European conflict.

Many of the sore points had eased by 1932. Reparations debts were, to all practical intents and purposes, written off after the Lausanne Conference (after Germany had paid only about half the cost of the damage it had wrought on France during the war). The Allied occupation of the Rhineland ended in 1930; of the Ruhr, in 1925. Germany had been allowed to try its own war criminals, and after a token gesture (12 defendants) the trials in Leipzig in 1921 ended after only two months. Many of the financial and economic clauses of the Treaty of Versailles (such as certain imports into Germany being exempt from customs duty) had a built-in time limit that expired by 1925. Germany had itself a permanent seat on the Council of the League of Nations by 1926.

Other than the territorial losses, the only real sore points by the early 1930s might have been the demilitarization of the Rhineland and limitations on the size of Germany's armed forces -- which no doubt had revanchist hawks in the German military frothing at the mouth, but it's hard to say whether most ordinary Germans felt it was genuinely worth all-out war over them. Gustav Stresemann had shown what could be achieved by having a rational man as Chancellor or Foreign Minister who was willing to negotiate to get what he wanted for his country rather than plunge it into war.

But I guess in the end, it all came down to whether or not the German electorate would have been capable of a little more self-criticism and a little less self-pity, and not allowed itself to be quite so easily manipulated into believing all of Germany's woes could be laid at the door of "greedy, spiteful" foreigners and "treacherous" German Jews and that the only solution was an aggressive foreign policy that led directly into the quicksand of another war.

If you keep your boot on the neck of a defeated enemy resentment is gonna fester and grow. Its just how that has repeatedly gone down throughout history.

Solid_Snake07 posted...

If you keep your boot on the neck of a defeated enemy resentment is gonna fester and grow.

The only "boot" Germany still had on its neck the year before Hitler became Chancellor was that the Rhineland was a demilitarized zone and that there were restrictions on the size of Germany's armed forces. Yes, it had lost territory in ethnically mixed border regions.

Considering the scale of the devastation that German invasion, occupation, and spiteful scorched-earth retreat had wrought on France (right-wing German propagandists conveniently ignored the fact that France suffered a much higher material and economic cost -- roughly twice as much -- than Germany eventually paid in compensation under Versailles), it was no wonder that a guarantee of security in the Rhine border region was a French priority. Limiting the Germans' ability to build their war machine back up, especially when hawks in its military were proclaiming that Germany had been cheated out of victory and demanding an early rematch, must have seemed like crystal-clear wisdom at the time.

Maybe the Germans should have been a little more understanding of the lessons of history, too. Don't act the martyr if the country you forced to pay a massive war indemnity in 1871 insists that "you broke it, you pay to fix it" after another conflict 40-odd years later.

100% would have still happened.

What if Russia had started WWII?

I think it would have been a civil war, not a world war. Communists and Fascists were already fighting in the streets before Hitler's party took over, and Germany was completely financially ruined with no actual means of recovery. Germans were already tearing each other apart, and without Hitler to focus that anguish and rage on someone else, it likely would have still ended up with East and West Germany, but after a bloody civil war.

The big variable here is Russia. Italy probably wouldn't have acted with Hitler's military backing, but Russia was all in on the idea of splitting eastern europe between them and Germany and only switched sides after Hitler betrayed them. So it's possible the WW2 we get starts with Russia invading eastern europe and they become the main antagonist.

Foppe posted...

What if Russia had started WWII?

That was the premise of Command & Conquer Red Alert.

Foppe posted...

What if Russia had started WWII?

The USSR attacked Finland and invaded and occupied eastern Poland in 1939. I suppose it's possible that without Hitler's territorial ambitions worrying the pants off France and Britain, if the Red Army had kept moving west then a non-Nazi Germany might have ended up fighting on the 'right' side in the ensuing war.

The Holocaust happened because of Hitler's extreme bigotry. World War II would have happened regardless of whether or not he was ever born.

Germany's surrender during the first World War was always the equivalent of saying, "Hold on, let me reload my guns."

Probably. The Germans were breaking the conditions of Versailles practically from the start, and there was militancy widespread along with the false stabbed in the back conspiracy theory.

If anything, a Germany without Hitler would've likely been stronger if a meaningfully competent regime had taken power.

I used to believe yes. But I've studied enough of the subject to know now that it's probably not the case.
When you understand the amount of parliamentary fuckery that was used for the Nazis to even gain power you stand to understand that the majority of the populace wasn't behind them.

Yes there was bitterness over Versailles and the stab and the back mythos but most of Germany beyond the Nazis and the hardest old guard conservatives were mostly interested in getting on with their lives.

I'd recommend The Death of Democracy by Benjamen Carter Hett and William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich for a deep dive into the conditions and fuckery that let Hitler and his party rise to power.

Would German militancy have made a return? Sure. But I don't think something on the scale of WW2 would have been the result. You have to remember that a ton of Hitler's "successes" came over the objection of smarter and more competent military minds.