Hitler, The Successful Artist

[Tom A. King]

What if Hitler was accepted into The Academy of Arts in Viena and continued his passion as an artist? Debate.

[SpazzReflex]

What if Hitler was accepted into The Academy of Arts in Viena and continued his passion as an artist? Debate.

I suppose If Vienna is letting him in, they'll let Me, My friends, and My dog in as well.

I have seen some of his paintings. He was a fairly good painter. Don't take it the wrong way, but I would buy some of his paintings.

If they let him in, then some other charismatic figure would rise to Power in the Nazi Regime. Perhaps they do worse than Hitler, and The Nazi party becomes a half-ass backwood kind of Party.

Without a WWII, there would be no change in attitude that led to the rights of blacks and Gays in America, and a reform in Agriculture in Russia.

I Bet Hitler would become something of a Dali: A Bit self-centered, with art inspired by distressing sexual fantasies.

[BlackWave]

Reportedly, he was considered average at best at first, but given time he could've developed his potential. Most likely he ends up hiring himself out to make pictures for postcards, selling his stuff to art shops on street corners, that sort of thing. I don't imagine that he'd try anything too 'unsafe' or avant-garde.

[Polish Eagle]

Better POD: He pursues architecture as a career and, well, basically becomes a German version of Robert Moses. That fits in better with what we know of his artwork (face it. His fascination with buildings shows what he really loved to look at), and some parts of his social vision for Germany (a Volkswagen for all and roads to drive them on).

Either way, he is mercifully removed from mainstream history. Perhaps Goering or Himmler or Rohm rises to power in his place. Goering strikes me as someone who would be more competent, but his own Luftwaffe-wanking would lead to an even weaker Kriegsmarine than IOTL (Goering never liked them anyway), though perhaps the air support for the land operations would be better. Himmler would be just as crazy, or worse. Rohm would emphasize the "socialist" in "National Socialist," and possibly be less expansionist overall.

[Admiral Matt]

He didn't want to be a painter, he was applying to be an architect. Most of his paintings had the major flaw that he was paying more attention to the landscape and buildings than to the people and animals around them.

As a painter he wouldn't have gotten much of anywhere, but his real talent was in design. He's actually directly responsible for design of the original Volkswagon Beetle, for example, and had detailed plans for a ludicrously imposing New Berlin (to be called "Germania," as Berlin was originally a Slavic word). That could have taken off for him. Sure.

[Gustavus Adolphus]

We'll one good thing about no Hitler is that the Holocaust does not happen.:):)
woohoo we just saved over 10 mill lives. Also with no Hitler Germany doesn't start another major World war:) this Pod would save millions.



Now then what would make this perfect is if Pol pot, Ho chi minn, Kim sung, Mai Zedong, Stalin, and the militarists of Japan meet some end, then we have succeded in saving over a hundred million lives and a not screwed up Asian economy and a democratic Asia:eek: man if only the world was a utopia;)

[SirAshfordFanrico]

Well while he's off being a painter or architect, that still leaves some new asshole to rise up and take his place on down the road. Whether it be someone else in the Nazi Party, Mussolini (*snickers*) or perhaps Stalin.

While it would save millions, it'd still mean that most of the world would be stuck in the middle of a devastating Depression. The US would probably still be recovering for at least another decade without the War. FDR's new deal wasn't exactly reversing things in the most hasty of manner. Who knows what that'd mean for other countries suffering from their own economic depressions.

I'm curious what such a world would mean for Imperial Japan's goals, or Stalin and the USSR.

[Noravea]

What if Hitler becomes and artist AND a dictator? He goes to Art School, becomes successful, World War I starts, he joins the German Army, then things go as in our time but with a more artistic Hitler.

[yourworstnightmare]

What if Hitler was accepted into The Academy of Arts in Viena and continued his passion as an artist? Debate.
He was never a good artist, so he wouldn't become a big name or anything.

[Color-Copycat]

He should land a boring administrative post in the Academy and handle incoming applicants. Then he can chew them out in his angry voice on how their paintings suck and how they don't deserve to enter such a prestigious academy of fine arts. I want to see him all red faced and in one of his angry ranting fits over some poor art student trying to get in.

[Axeman]

"YOUR PAINTING IS A DISGRACE TO THE FATHERLAND, IF I HAD MY WAY I WOULD SHIP YOU OFF TO BOSNIA!"

[Shimbo]

(snip)

As a painter he wouldn't have gotten much of anywhere, but his real talent was in design. He's actually directly responsible for design of the original Volkswagon Beetle, for example, (snip)

I don't know where you get that idea from. Erwin Komenda, Porsche's chief designer, was responsible for the detailed design of the Beetle, Ferdinand Porsche had overall responsibility, and the car is virtually a copy of the Tatra T97 anyway.

Hitler's role was limited to ordering Porsche to design a car like the Tatra.

[Malta Shah]

I don't know, did all Hitler do was tap into a undercurrent of frustration and become the figure head with power (the racia hatred still there)? Someone else likely would rise into the Nazi Party but would they still keep their operatus for ethnic cleansing? I wonder if its possible that instead the Nazi Party splits with the more Himmler and Goering on one end and those like Rohm and Goebbels (more socialist) on the other?

[Cymraeg]

The problem with Hitler as an architect was that he liked everything to be huge and colossal, sometimes beyond the point of absurdity. Didn't Speer say that the great hall of the people that Hitler wanted for Berlin would have been so vast that if it had been filled with people it could rained in the main dome?

[Helicon One]

He should land a boring administrative post in the Academy and handle incoming applicants. Then he can chew them out in his angry voice on how their paintings suck and how they don't deserve to enter such a prestigious academy of fine arts. I want to see him all red faced and in one of his angry ranting fits over some poor art student trying to get in.

This is just begging for one of those parody Youtube clips of Downfall re-subtitled.

[The Kiat]

I agree with the architect's school PoD. He was said to be a more technical painter than inspirational.

[The Kiat]

The problem with Hitler as an architect was that he liked everything to be huge and colossal, sometimes beyond the point of absurdity. Didn't Speer say that the great hall of the people that Hitler wanted for Berlin would have been so vast that if it had been filled with people it could rained in the main dome?

Is it not better to have big buildings instead of big wars? And yes, that dome you're speaking of would have held so many people that their exhaling would have formed clouds.

[brokenman]

Major possible butterfly is that someone rises as a Nazi Leader more creative, more charming, and, dare I say it, "more common-sensed" than Hitler. That would possibly kick off a much more successful Reich in the coming years.

[yourworstnightmare]

Major possible butterfly is that someone rises as a Nazi Leader more creative, more charming, and, dare I say it, "more common-sensed" than Hitler. That would possibly kick off a much more successful Reich in the coming years.
Or no Nazis, instead some other Right Wing radicals take power, or just the old Prussian Junkers.

[RPW@Cy]

Major possible butterfly is that someone rises as a Nazi Leader more creative, more charming, and, dare I say it, "more common-sensed" than Hitler. That would possibly kick off a much more successful Reich in the coming years.

That's basically the plot of "Making History" by Stephen Fry. Time traveller goes back to the past and prevents Hitler from being born, only to find on returning to the future that the Nazis, under a more competent, sane and charismatic, but just as monstrous and evil, leader won the war and implemented their policies across the whole of Europe.

[The Kiat]

That's basically the plot of "Making History" by Stephen Fry. Time traveller goes back to the past and prevents Hitler from being born, only to find on returning to the future that the Nazis, under a more competent, sane and charismatic, but just as monstrous and evil, leader won the war and implemented their policies across the whole of Europe.

Which is scarier: a maniac with absolute power, or a rational mind with absolute power?

[Polish Eagle]

Is it not better to have big buildings instead of big wars? And yes, that dome you're speaking of would have held so many people that their exhaling would have formed clouds.

There's also the problem that the soil of Berlin could never have supported something that big and heavy. It would soon become the "Leaning Hall of Berlin," the "Crooked Arch," etc.

[Admiral Matt]

I don't know where you get that idea from. Erwin Komenda, Porsche's chief designer, was responsible for the detailed design of the Beetle, Ferdinand Porsche had overall responsibility, and the car is virtually a copy of the Tatra T97 anyway.

Hitler's role was limited to ordering Porsche to design a car like the Tatra.

Hrm.... I'll check my sources, but IIRC it was a case of him seeing the design and saying, "no it should look like this." As I read it he actually sketched it on a napkin.

[Dr. Nodelescu]

Futile premise, really. Hitler's talent in art was so okay it's average.

But for the sake of a willing suspension of disbelief... there is no one to lift an obscure NSDAP into prominence without Hitler. Weimar still collapses, but the alternate right-wing regime would rather be akin to Francoist Spain than even Fascist Italy. And it wouldn't risk any adventures in Poland, even if the anti-Versailles rhetoric told you otherwise.

[imperialaquila]

He should land a boring administrative post in the Academy and handle incoming applicants. Then he can chew them out in his angry voice on how their paintings suck and how they don't deserve to enter such a prestigious academy of fine arts. I want to see him all red faced and in one of his angry ranting fits over some poor art student trying to get in.

I see what you did there....

Anyway, if Hitler becomes an architect, is it possible that he would help found TTL's equivalent of Brutalism? Giant, imposing blocks of concrete seem his style.

[Alien and Sedition Bat]

I agree that if he goes to art school he still ends up in the trenches in World War One (or, if he's studied architecture, in the German equivalent of the Army Corps of Engineers) and thus could end up heading the Nazis after the war anyway. To detoxify him (i.e., put him where he can do only minimal harm), you have to have a scenario in which he emigrates to the United States several years before WW I begins, goes to architecture school there, and settles into American life to the extent that he doesn't get a fit of patriotism and rush back to Germany in 1914. Or if he can't get into a university architecture school, maybe he gets work in New York illustrating the covers for pulp magazines. Or maybe he starts writing for the early science fiction pulps in the 1920s, producing stories about evil geniuses who plot to rule the world with the help of superweapons. And his paranoia about the Jews then expresses itself mostly in muttering about "them" at the dinner table to his wife and children, or over drinks at his Long Island country club.

[The Space Viking]

Or no Nazis, instead some other Right Wing radicals take power, or just the old Prussian Junkers.

Maybe Germany would turn out better than OTL with them in-charge. A little authoritarian, but better, no?

[LeoXiao]

Hitler's art was actually good from what I've seen, although his people seemed a little too statuesque. He probably couldn't become anyone famous, but his work would be sufficient to get him a job in painting. Maybe he could draw propaganda posters for whoever it is who takes his would-be place as Fuehrer?

[Hendryk]

For a good exploration of Hitler-free 1930s Germany, I recommand Faeelin's TL "Looking out for a Hero: Gustav Stresemann survives (http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=89874)". No Nazi takeover, no hard dictatorship, but a Weimar Republic that grows some muscle and throws its weight around.

[Zajir]

Why can't Hitler be both a succesfull artist and the leader of an alt-Nazi party, is there a rule which says that only unsuccesfull people can become dictators?

[Swan Station]

...he emigrates to the United States several years before WW I begins, goes to architecture school there, and settles into American life to the extent that he doesn't get a fit of patriotism and rush back to Germany in 1914. Or if he can't get into a university architecture school, maybe he gets work in New York illustrating the covers for pulp magazines.

I just had this picture of Hitler getting an apprenticeship with Frank Lloyd Wright, and then getting thrown out about half a year later after the two get into a shouting match about cantilevers vs. buttresses.

[Alien and Sedition Bat]

I've seen Hitler's water colors (or were they sketches?) of trench life in WWI; if he'd moved to the U.S., this level of talent might have gotten him work as an illustrator of books or for the Saturday Evening Post, where he'd have made more money than from pulp magazine covers.


Why can't Hitler be both a succesfull artist and the leader of an alt-Nazi party, is there a rule which says that only unsuccesfull people can become dictators?


I don't know of any artists who've done such a thing, but there's a certain precedent with poets: the proto-fascist d'Annunzio (who aspired to mass leadership); the ardent fascist Ezra Pound; the early Nazi inner-circle member Dietrich Eckart, a dramatist and poet who was a major influence on Hitler; Joseph Stalin, who as a young man wrote poetry in Georgian (it was published--I don't know how good it was); and Mao Tse-tung, also a poet in his spare time. I seem to recall that North Vietnam's Uncle Ho was a poet too. And then there's the current wacko running North Korea--not a poet, but likes to produce movies.

If you look at the militant nationalist movements of the past 200 years, apart from the two big ideologies, you see that poets, dramatists, and novelists are woven into their political activities and leadership--in Ireland, the Tsarist Ukraine, pre-Israel, Puerto Rico, colonial Cuba, colonial French West Africa and many other places. Often these artistic figures participated in armed uprisings or guerrilla warfare. So Hitler being both an artist of some kind and a militant far-right political figure is not implausible. For instance, if he had moved to America, he might have ended up forming something like the Silver Shirts in the 1930s but would have had little chance of gaining major influence and virtually no chance of becoming dictator of America--J. Edgar Hoover would dog his steps and have him totally surrounded. And if he still got too big for his britches, well J. Edgar would get him sent to prison for tax fraud.

[Polish Eagle]

Why can't Hitler be both a succesfull artist and the leader of an alt-Nazi party, is there a rule which says that only unsuccesfull people can become dictators?

Actually, no. In fact, many heads-of-state and military leaders were successful artists on the side (see: Edward Rzdz-Smigly, leader of Poland in 1939, successor to Pilsudski, and water-color painter)

The thing about Hitler is that it's commonly believed that he blamed his failure to get into art school on The Jews. If he got into art school and did not blame The Jews, the idea is that he would have less drive to become a dictator and kill The Jews.

Emphasis placed on The Jews because I feel like it.

[tallwingedgoat]

How did conscription work in the AH Empire? Would Hitler have been drafted to the Russian front, would new art school grads get jobs at the propaganda department or some such non-combat program?

[TheGingerninja41]

What if Hitler becomes and artist AND a dictator? He goes to Art School, becomes successful, World War I starts, he joins the German Army, then things go as in our time but with a more artistic Hitler.

he would have stayed in vienna and joined the Austro Hungarian army

[yourworstnightmare]

he would have stayed in vienna and joined the Austro Hungarian army
Could he become Austrian dictator then?

[The Wandering Poet]

Hmm...sounds like a win win situation fo all...Hitler gets to be the artist/architect he always wanted to be, and no Holocaust so everyone is happier...

[Admiral Matt]

For the record, while I don't know the provenance of the museum itself, The Adolf Hitler Museum (http://www.hitler.org/artifacts/volkswagen/) seems to back up my recollection.

[Shimbo]

For the record, while I don't know the provenance of the museum itself, The Adolf Hitler Museum (http://www.hitler.org/artifacts/volkswagen/) seems to back up my recollection.

And also has some of Hitlers art.

http://www.hitler.org/art/

Having just looked at that site, I have to say it's pretty mediocre stuff. Some of it is OK, but it's mostly pretty amateurish.

I suppose though, if he had got into the academy of arts , he might have got better. I can't see him being anything more than moderately successful, the kind of artist who works as an art teacher and sells a few watercolours at art fairs each weekend. Maybe he marries Geli Raubal and lives a normal life?

[Valdemar II]

http://www.hitler.org/art/buildings/building3.jpg

As I see it his greatest problem are the realism of the building and the the lack of realism in the people. Through this one are one of the better of his I have seen, mostly because the building are slightly out of focus and as such fitting better with the humans.

[Nik]

Gets a house-painting commission while he's staying with his relatives in Liverpool to avoid the wrath of the German police, marries a nice Irish girl and puts down roots...

Roll forwards a while, you have a fleet of little Austin vans bannered 'Hitler & Fils, PriceBlitz DIY'...

[Alien and Sedition Bat]

Actually, no. In fact, many heads-of-state and military leaders were successful artists on the side (see: Edward Rzdz-Smigly, leader of Poland in 1939, successor to Pilsudski, and water-color painter)

The thing about Hitler is that it's commonly believed that he blamed his failure to get into art school on The Jews. If he got into art school and did not blame The Jews, the idea is that he would have less drive to become a dictator and kill The Jews.

Emphasis placed on The Jews because I feel like it.

Yes, if you include non-fascist and non-communist political and military leaders you will find some who were artists or architects on the side. Churchill was a pretty talented water colorist. And Thomas Jefferson was one of America's greatest architects. I'm sure there were more. But the question is, did any important fascist or communist leader other than Hitler ever demonstrate a talent for, or aspirations in, the visual arts?