Hitler's Republic

[SIZE=+1]
[SIZE=+3]Hitler's Republic[/SIZE]

This TL is, I think, the most scarily successful Hitler we could realistically have. Mind you, that means a pretty different Hitler than ours, and so the POD is early, when he was a teenager.

This timeline meets all standards for humane primary character treatment, as its POD's an improvement in Hitler's life. Although, it certainly isn't so much of an improvement for the rest of the world, bwahaha!

Teaser: October 1934:

President Hitler thought Director Einstein reminded him, somehow, annoyingly and nigglingly, of his father, maybe because they'd both been patent clerks. He hadn't liked his father.

"Greetings, Director Doctor Einstein. Please be welcome!" He shook Einstein's hand with a strong, much-practiced grip.

"You have done Germany much honor through your fascinating, amazing, and vital research, especially as Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. I am happy to return a bit of that honor through this Honor of the German Republic pin, which I hope you will find pride and encouragement in." He pinned the medal, and many photographers' flashes went on, including one from the American Associated Press, that got wide usage in the US.

On the way out, Hitler went to a bathroom, and washed his hands thoroughly, thinking, if King Cyrus can do it, so can you.

In OTL, Einstein had fled the Nazi anti-Jew laws and was living in the smallish college town of Princeton, NJ, working at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study there he would make famous. I will leave you to consider the sevreral differences here.

WARNING: I'm a pretty slow and short writer. I have a few posts built up to get this going, but after that it'll be slow. I'd probably starve if I were a writer, especially if paid by the word.
[/SIZE]

Interesting idea. So, is the POD Hitler not going crazy?

demonkangaroo wrote:
Interesting idea. So, is the POD Hitler not going crazy?

Click to expand...

It's more like a subtly different goalset and more constructive attitude to life.

Oh Hell's bells, it'a a "Hitler Gets the Bomb" scenario. We're fucked.

Props though for a very original POD. A Hitler pretending to be philo-Semitic in order to milk physics for all it's worth. I mean, who'd ever think of that?

I'll be checking in on this one.

Making Alois Schicklgruber a patent office clerk gets you a POD way before the birth of both Hitler and Einstein.

Particularly Hitler would be a very different person, i.e. not Hitler at all.

Alois Schicklgruber was a customs post official. To be a patent office clerk you would need Alois to have a higher education.

A Hitler who can control his madness for political gains will be a much more cautious Hitler. Thus you possibly butterfly away the Blut und Boden ideology, and possibly the entire two front war. There still may be conquest plans for Russia, but not with OTL amount of madness.

Quite off thread, but a few years ago my father said he wondered what would have happened if Einstein were the leader of a fascist* party controlling Germany from the 1930s onwards.

* Fascist in this context assuming no anti-semitic dogma, as I believe was the case of the Italian Fascisti until Musso got mixed up with Hitler.

ah-sue said:

Quite off thread, but a few years ago my father said he wondered what would have happened if Einstein were the leader of a fascist* party controlling Germany from the 1930s onwards.

* Fascist in this context assuming no anti-semitic dogma, as I believe was the case of the Italian Fascisti until Musso got mixed up with Hitler.

Click to expand...

Einstein had no political aspirations beyond university politics. He was happy with ruling his roost at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. You would need a completely different Einstein here, or completely different experiences in his youth.

Now, a non-antisemitic or an assimilationist-antisemitic Nazi party (as opposed to eliminatory antisemitism of OTL) co-opting Einstein's services and using him as a demonstration object of successful assimilation... would be interesting to say the least.

Halcyon Days pointed out:
Making Alois Schicklgruber a patent office clerk gets you a POD way before the birth of both Hitler and Einstein.

Click to expand...

Whoopsie! That was a memoryo. Yes, you're right - both Rise and Fall and the net agree he was a customs official - a creature with a pretty different 'tude than a patent clerk. Thanks for the catch! I'll have to rewrite a couple of things. Fortunately, it's not key to this TL. My wife told me I've made the same mistake before. So, my memory seems to think Germany and Austria both had just one governmental department - the patent office ;-).

try 2 on ep1

[SIZE=+1]
[SIZE=+3]Hitler's Republic[/SIZE]

This TL is, I think, the most scarily successful Hitler we could realistically have. Mind you, that means a pretty different Hitler than ours, and so the POD is early, when he was a teenager.

This timeline meets all standards for humane primary character treatment, as its POD's an improvement in Hitler's life. Although, it certainly isn't so much of an improvement for the rest of the world, bwahaha!

Teaser: October 1934:

President Hitler didn't trust Director Einstein - he was a Jew, after all.

"Greetings, Director Doctor Einstein. Please be welcome!" He shook Einstein's hand with a strong, much-practiced grip.

"You have done Germany much honor through your fascinating, amazing, and vital research, especially as Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. I am happy to return a bit of that honor through this Honor of the German Republic pin, which I hope you will find pride and encouragement in." He pinned the medal, and many photographers' flashes went on, including one from the American Associated Press, that got wide usage in the US.

On the way out, Hitler went to a bathroom, and washed his hands thoroughly, thinking, if King Cyrus can do it, so can you.

In OTL, Einstein had fled the Nazi anti-Jew laws and was living in the smallish college town of Princeton, NJ, working at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study there he would make famous. I will leave you to consider the sevreral differences here.

WARNING: I'm a pretty slow and short writer. I have a few posts built up to get this going, but after that it'll be slow. I'd probably starve if I were a writer, especially if paid by the word.
[/SIZE]

Bob

[SIZE=+1]

Leaving his database job wasn't the least bit easy for Bob. First he had to get his Nazi boss' attention to let him know he was leaving, and hand his timecard in to the secretary to be sniffily taken and punched. Then he had to wait in a long non-German line for security.

No, as a non-German, he was not the least bit trusted in the Nazi government job. But they were low on Germans good on non-war-related technical jobs, so they were low on choice.

After a long Tube trip home and dinner, Bob went to his computer, in his flat in London . First he replied to some email from a old French friend, in Nazi Paris. Then he went to an anonymous proxy server, going from there to an alternate history bookmark, and caught up on an unfolding WW2 thread he rather enjoyed. It was one where Hitler formed a dictatorship instead, and got arrogant after conquering France. He then went to war with half the world, and, of course, was losing. As the war went more more against him, Hitler was becoming more and more a hopeless bag of rage, making more and more mistakes.

[/SIZE]

Uh... you don't have to keep saying "Nazi government job" and "Nazi Paris", "Nazi boss" etc.

It should be clear from context.

[SIZE=+1]
From a Goering conversation easily overhearable in the Presidential Palace:

"NO! They didn't give me the Air Ministry! That fucking swine von Papen told Hilter a man with more EXPERIENCE would be better and that he thought I'd have trouble getting votes - he though I'd be better at politics. Like von Papen's ever been in the air! What does he know?

<muffled sympathy, question>

"I proposed Bruno Loerzer for the job, and I expect he'll get it."

"Are you jobless in our fine Nazi Administration, then??"

"Hitler asked me to be his chief of staff, saying that he agreed with von Papen I'd be better at politics."
[/SIZE]

Here is is: the POD...

[SIZE=+1]
[SIZE=+2]Point Of Departure - A Happier Hitler Leads to a More Miserable World:[/SIZE]

November 1901:

The point of departure is some particularly good stew and noodles that IOTL were just mediocre.

Adolph was the lanky kind of teen, looking underfed - and, being a teen, sullen. He was also feeling cold and, especially, hungry, having just chopped wood to feed the fire outside. After grace was said, he hungrily and awkwardly attacked the stew and noodles his younger sister had put on his plate. Once his hunger was blunted, he realized that that he was enjoying the stew and noodles, even more than usual. The stew made him feel comfortable and warm where he had been hungry and cold. Stew was no unusual dish at the Hitler household, but this one exceeded itself.

He looked at his father, on the other side of his hated brother, Alois, at the end of the table he was on the side of. His father was enjoying himself, too, also taking comfort from the noodles. His mind was troubled by the dualism of what his teenage mind thought of as the tyrannical, authoritarian Alois Hitler and this father whom enjoyed himself. He thought of their fights on what Adolf should do with his life;

Alois wanted Adolph to be a bureaucrat, like the customs official he was, while Adolph wanted to be an artist - or, at any rate, anything but a bureaucrat. In that era in Austria, the father's rule was assumed to be right, of course, which no doubt added to Adolph's troubles.

Toward the end of the meal, an answer occurred to him - though his father also wants me to be a good copy of him, another reason is that his father cared about him enough to want him to live a good life. Being a teen, he despaired of doing anything with that observation, but did, without consciously realizing, start thinking about it.

[/SIZE]

Einstein wasn't apolitical. He supported the young Weimar Republic and was decidedly pacifist. He only suggested FDR to research the bomb because he was afraid Hitler

I really can't imagine Einstein helping Hitler to get the bomb. Maybe if Hitler managed to get Otto Hahn doing it...

And besides, if Hitler can't blame the Jews for everything, whom will he blame instead?

Max Sinister said:

Einstein wasn't apolitical. He supported the young Weimar Republic and was decidedly pacifist. He only suggested FDR to research the bomb because he was afraid Hitler

I really can't imagine Einstein helping Hitler to get the bomb. Maybe if Hitler managed to get Otto Hahn doing it...

And besides, if Hitler can't blame the Jews for everything, whom will he blame instead?

Click to expand...

Communists. Slavs. Democrats/defaetists/pacifists. The evil Brits/Russians/whatever working on destruction of the German nation from time immemorial. It's propaganda, it does not have to be grounded in any truth.
He wouldn't need to entirely get rid of his antisemitism - just refocus and tone it down slightly, for examply by publically demanding the Jews to "demonstrate" their loyalty to Germany - thus gaining some "honorary German" status (never mind that many of them were culturally as German as dark bread already). He can endorse Fritz Haber as a shining example to which the Jews have to aspire, and back it up with a low-level campaign against "unreliable" or "cosmopolitan" Jews.
With other words, Hitler took many clues from Stalin OTL - why not this one?

The Hitlerplatz

[SIZE=+1]
Ed, Tom, and Doreen, American tourists visiting Berlin, had just reached the Hitlerplatz. For a long time, their eyes had trouble understanding what they were seeing, because it was so tacky. Eventually, they grew close enough that their eyes couldn't stay in denial any longer. At that point, they started to understand what they were seeing. They saw it was a huge sculture of Hitler being welcomed by half-naked, big-breasted, white stone women with white gowns pulled to their waists. The whole sculture was supported off the ground by big, dark bars.

Hitler's statue's face and arms were pointed up, his face pointed toward one of the white stone women.

Tom and Doreen looked at the plaque while Ed walked around the statue, in awe. The plaque read,

[SIZE=+1]
Hitler's Assumption To Valhalla, sculpted by Theodor Georgii, commemorates Adolph Hitler's assumption to Valhalla. Adolph Hitler vanished on <birdshit-covered date>, surely assumed directly to Valhalla, and welcomed by Valkyries, as shown.
[/SIZE]

Click to expand...

--
Hitler's assumption into Valhalla will be explained later.
[/SIZE]

Notice the timeline's name. ITTL, Einstein's sticking around for the same reasons he stuck around Weimar - it's mostly a democracy, with plenty of freedoms, especially for elites like him, even non-'Aryan' ones. There are things he doesn't like about his government, but it isn't enough to make him leave.

The Cyrus reference was to the man whom first successfully conquered a noticeable chunk of turf, King Cyrus II of Persia. Cyrus was in part successful because he understood he had to work with his nation's conquered peoples to do well rather than just dominate them. He freed elite Jews that Nebuchadnezzar had kept in his capital, declared that Yahweh was on the good side of gods, rebuilt the Judaean Temple, and encouraged exiles to return.

One reason for his success was that, by treating his conquered peoples so well, he could trust conquered peoples to make up most of his troops and fleets. In the Greco-Persian wars, some Greek cities close to Persia fought for Persia without having been conquered, no doubt in part because they felt confident of at least half-decent treatment. TTL's Hitler is still doesn't like or trust Jews, but understands Germany will prosper better if it continues to treat Jews and other non-Germans well.

Thanks for for the helpful constructive criticism here. I'm pretty happy with its quality.

"You were BETRAYED!!"

[SIZE=+1]
[SIZE=+1]"You were BETRAYED!!"[/SIZE]

"Yes, innocent German soldiers and taxpayers and citizens were betrayed, I tell you. Betrayed by King Wilhelm and the whole monarchy. This must never happen again. The King made you go to war for a clearly unwise war. He spent vast sums on a fleet that couln't possibly outpace Britain's. And that, friends, is what Kings do. Most make unwise choices.

"The Weimar Republic is a much better system, but it is troubled in several ways. It will not accomplish German destiny properly. Why accept less than history's best? The Roman Republic, with slower technology, conquered half Europe. Why should we Germans accept less?

"The Roman Republic were the world's greatest conquerors. It was they who built Rome into an Empire. After the Caesars betrayed the Republic into monarchy, the rule of the Empire grew troubled. The Emperors, another monarchy, slowly took their Empire into less and less health.

"The Roman Republic took the Prussian dream of conquest much farther and faster than those slugabed Hohenzollerns ever achieved even at their heights. Prussia's existed four centuries and hasn't even conquered all of Germany yet. Four centuries after the Roman Republic's start saw them conquer, not just Italy, but Spain, and the Britain of their day, Carthage."

"Histories tell us about most of the Roman system. So, why not use it?"

--
IOTL:

"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." -Hitler

Hitler certainly used the word "betrayed" alot - but, strictly in lies instead of truths. He liked to demagogue about Germany had been betrayed by the Jews, Weimar's leaders, intellectuals... whomever the enemy of the day was (probably usually Jews...). He saw demagoguery and lying as a major foundation of his power.

From the Nazi Party Platform:
19. We demand that Roman law, which serves a materialist ordering of the world, be replaced by German common law.
25. In order to carry out this program we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the State, the unconditional authority by the political central parliament of the whole State and all its organizations.
[/SIZE]

Bob II

[SIZE=+1]
While riding the tube, Bob read in his newspaper about tensions between the Chinese fragment states, the US, and rump, nonnuclear USSR. The article pointed out that, of those in the tensions, only the United States was a nuclear state.

Getting back through the long line in the morning was particularly discouraging to Bob that day. That's because he could see a long, long day coming, one which he knew his bosses were far too optimistic about - why should they listen to a mere British programmer? He saw little sleep coming that night.

"Good morning, Bob," his boss said, as Bob passed.

"As you know, Bob, today's the day we're planning to install the
upgrade in Moscow." . . .

The upgrade was of the of the German Imperial justice support databases. The upgrade had succeeded for awhile in Britain Province, and was mostly just being copied to the Russian Provincial justice systems. Except, except, except, of course. The Russian Province worked with different legal system, based on the USSR's system instead of the UK's common law. That turned out to imply several substantial changes that they hadn't forecasted.

Bob was right to fear - he didn't get home until late the next day, and they'd put off the upgrade date to fix the problems first.
[/SIZE]