Less negative perception of the Nazis?

[Historian2011]

Assuming Hitler was a "normal" European supremacist - not declaring other white people as subhumans.

WW2 takes place but there are no massacres on Jews, Gypsies and other people.

There are no extermination camps and only very few concentration camps.

Due to the more "humane" nature of the war instead of some 40 million people "only" half as many are killed in Europe.

Would the Nazis still be seen as the absolute evil and would there still be prohibitian act (in Germany) and laws against reconfirmation?

Or would Hitler and Germany be more compared to Napoleon/France?
Just another would like conqueror?

[Solomaxwell6]

Originally Posted by Historian2011

Or would Hitler and Germany be more compared to Napoleon/France?
Just another would like conqueror?

I'd imagine this would be the case. The reason people don't like Hitler are 1) his militarism and 2) his race policies. Get rid of the latter and he's no different from any other militant leaders who achieved mild success. The Allies are still going to come down very hard on Hitler, of course, but Neo-Nazis won't be seen as evil today. After all, what would being a Neo-Nazi really entail if we completely remove race from the equation? At the most extreme, they'll be xenophobic of groups like the Turks and northern Africans, which isn't really that far out of the mainstream European right.

[MUC]

I agree. Without nazi race policies and attrocities, the Nazis would have a far better image. One possible side effects:

People start viewing other political leaders, for example Stalin, in a more negative way. The Soviets performed attrocities in a higher scale than Hitler and simply got away with it in public opinion. Without nazi racial policies, you can also expect more Soviet citizens in Nazi occupied parts of the USSR to side with the Nazis during WW2 (for example Ukrainians). All these people are going to feel the wrath of Stalin, when Soviet troops retake these areas.

[CaliBoy1990]

Originally Posted by Historian2011

Assuming Hitler was a "normal" European supremacist - not declaring other white people as subhumans.

WW2 takes place but there are no massacres on Jews, Gypsies and other people.

There are no extermination camps and only very few concentration camps.

Due to the more "humane" nature of the war instead of some 40 million people "only" half as many are killed in Europe.

Would the Nazis still be seen as the absolute evil and would there still be prohibitian act (in Germany) and laws against reconfirmation?

Or would Hitler and Germany be more compared to Napoleon/France?
Just another would like conqueror?

You'd be really hard pressed to make his reputation any better than it was in OTL.........

[Nothing Exists!]

Interesting. If Hitler is a normal European Supremacist then the war with the Soviets might become winnable because (as MUC pointed out above) Soviet citizens side with the Germans. Solzhenitsyn once remarked something to the effect (I don't recall the exact quote) that in WWII the Soviet people 'faced with two monsters, chose the one that spoke its language'.
Make Germany less monstrous and the dynamic here changes...

[Nosferatu]

One thing to consider, seeing how the German alliance with Japan was influenced to an extent by racial theory, is there any chance of this not happening? That they would ally with the Chinese instead, as happens in some TL would be possible.

[imperialaquila]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu

One thing to consider, seeing how the German alliance with Japan was influenced to an extent by racial theory, is there any chance of this not happening? That they would ally with the Chinese instead, as happens in some TL would be possible.

I don't think so; Hitler supported Japan because they could do far more damage to the British and French than China could. Race may have been part of the justification, but Nazi race policies were regularly twisted for political gain.

[altamiro]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu

One thing to consider, seeing how the German alliance with Japan was influenced to an extent by racial theory, is there any chance of this not happening? That they would ally with the Chinese instead, as happens in some TL would be possible.

Hitler actually wanted to continue to collaborate with China, it was rather the Japanese success that made Germany switch sides in the far east. When it came to alliances, Nazi racial preferences often (unfortunately not always) played second fiddle to political expediency...

[Revolutionary Todyo]

Originally Posted by imperialaquila

I don't think so; Hitler supported Japan because they could do far more damage to the British and French than China could. Race may have been part of the justification, but Nazi race policies were regularly twisted for political gain.

Or just cause Hitler felt like changing them a little....

[Derek Jackson]

Had the Nazis been beaten in the first two years basically by Britain and France (with Polish and if starting in 1938 Czech allies) they would jsut be an oddity.

I even wonder whether folk might think that it was a mistake to allow such a strong Poland (with a 1920 Eastern border form otl and a 1945 Western one

[Revolutionary Todyo]

Originally Posted by Derek Jackson

Had the Nazis been beaten in the first two years basically by Britain and France (with Polish and if starting in 1938 Czech allies) they would jsut be an oddity.

I even wonder whether folk might think that it was a mistake to allow such a strong Poland (with a 1920 Eastern border form otl and a 1945 Western one

Polands western border was basically a compromise for the Russians keeping what they'd "liberated" in 1939. Maximum changes to the western border would be Prussia and/or Upper Silesia.

[Geon]

One of the reasons that Hitler was able to rise to power was his ability to create "scapegoats". He used the Jews as scapegoats as he used so many others to convince the German people to follow him and to blame their defeats and reverses on others. I don't see Hitler being as successful had he not had this racial policy behind him. The author of the controversial book, Hitler's Willing Executioners concluded that Hitler simply watered the fertile ground of anti-semitism that already existed in Germany.
\
Geon

[Derek Jackson]

Originally Posted by Geon

One of the reasons that Hitler was able to rise to power was his ability to create "scapegoats". He used the Jews as scapegoats as he used so many others to convince the German people to follow him and to blame their defeats and reverses on others. I don't see Hitler being as successful had he not had this racial policy behind him. The author of the controversial book, Hitler's Willing Executioners concluded that Hitler simply watered the fertile ground of anti-semitism that already existed in Germany.
\
Geon

Adn of course anti semitims was totally absent in the US Britain and France?!

[CalBear]

So Hitler becomes an entirly different person with ALL of his deeply held beliefs gone?

In that case there IS no Nazi Party and Hitler's name is only known to history on a long list of Medal winners in WW I.

This is ALWAYS the problem with Nazi WI. You have to take away EVERYTHING that the Nazi Party is based on to make them palatable. The Party was based on hatred of "The Other". You can not get rid of that without getting rid of the thing that drew Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and the rest of the evil crew that made up the Party together in the first place.

You can't make a kinder gentler Nazi Party any more than you can make the popular vision of Satan and Hell equate to Disneyland without changing what it was into something so different that it is unrecognizable.

[Dilvish]

Originally Posted by Historian2011

Assuming Hitler was a "normal" European supremacist - not declaring other white people as subhumans.

WW2 takes place but there are no massacres on Jews, Gypsies and other people.

There are no extermination camps and only very few concentration camps.

Due to the more "humane" nature of the war instead of some 40 million people "only" half as many are killed in Europe.

Would the Nazis still be seen as the absolute evil and would there still be prohibitian act (in Germany) and laws against reconfirmation?

Or would Hitler and Germany be more compared to Napoleon/France?
Just another would like conqueror?

If this was the case for Hitler and Nazi Germany, wouldn't there be less love and admiration for the Third Reich?

[CaliBoy1990]

Originally Posted by CalBear

So Hitler becomes an entirly different person with ALL of his deeply held beliefs gone?

In that case there IS no Nazi Party and Hitler's name is only known to history on a long list of Medal winners in WW I.

This is ALWAYS the problem with Nazi WI. You have to take away EVERYTHING that the Nazi Party is based on to make them palatable. The Party was based on hatred of "The Other". You can not get rid of that without getting rid of the thing that drew Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and the rest of the evil crew that made up the Party together in the first place.

You can't make a kinder gentler Nazi Party any more than you can make the popular vision of Satan and Hell equate to Disneyland without changing what it was into something so different that it is unrecognizable.

I absolutely agree with your position on this issue............

[Revolutionary Todyo]

Originally Posted by CalBear

So Hitler becomes an entirly different person with ALL of his deeply held beliefs gone?

In that case there IS no Nazi Party and Hitler's name is only known to history on a long list of Medal winners in WW I.

This is ALWAYS the problem with Nazi WI. You have to take away EVERYTHING that the Nazi Party is based on to make them palatable. The Party was based on hatred of "The Other". You can not get rid of that without getting rid of the thing that drew Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and the rest of the evil crew that made up the Party together in the first place.

You can't make a kinder gentler Nazi Party any more than you can make the popular vision of Satan and Hell equate to Disneyland without changing what it was into something so different that it is unrecognizable.

Reminds me of one of my friends trying to justify Sealion

Jamie- If Hitler hadn't attacked Russia, they'd have enough troops for attacking England!
Me- But attacking Russia was his plan all along. Invading France, the Blitz, helping Mussolini, they were just distractions after he invaded Poland. If he's not going to create the Greater Reich and achieve Lebensraum then why the hell did he do everything else?
Jamie- Yeah....but it's logical that he could have diverted troops from the Eastern Front if he was going to invade England.
Me- No, besides he wasn't going to invade anyway. Read a fucking book on it.

People think the Nazi's were capable of logic. It always makes me laugh

[Kelenas]

It might be possible to get a non-racist Nazi party with Hitler, Göring, etc still on board, if they pick a scapegoat based on ideology, rather than ethnicity or religion. Basically laying the blame for Germany's defeat in WW1 squarely at the feet of the communists and socialists (which might get them quite a few raised eyebrows, considering their name, but that's what propaganda's for).

- Kelenas

[Shimbo]

Originally Posted by Todyo1798

(snip)

People think the Nazi's were capable of logic. It always makes me laugh

Nazis were entirely capable of logic, but they were proceeding from invalid axioms.

"Everything bad is caused by the Jews" was one of their main axioms, once they accepted that axiom the rest followed quite logically.

The thing is, the axiom isn't correct.

[Geon]

Originally Posted by Derek Jackson

Adn of course anti semitims was totally absent in the US Britain and France?!

No. It was there as well, and here in the U.S. as well. However, Hitler was able to use anti-semitism as a tool to bring himself to power. His impressive use of rhetoric combined with his understanding of what the crowd wanted and what he perceived all too correctly as underlying hatreds in society led to his election and contributed eventually to the Holocaust.

Geon