Would the world actually be worse off with Hitler dead?

[Perfidious Albion]

As for the idea that the Holocaust was anything remotely new in terms of genocide… let me raise the matter of the kingdom of Dacia. The Roman Empire wanted the Dacians' land so it conquered them, killed them and settled their land. What is what was once Dacia called now? Romania.

Genocide isn't anything new. The Holocaust was different from many previous genocides in its efficiency, its precise tools (swords vs muskets vs gas chambers) and its vast scale. It wasn't a different fundamental idea. Hitler was only new in applying it to white people from Western and Central Europe; the British and the Americans had done plenty of it before him, to Native Americans and Aborigines, and Imperial Germany had done so to the Herero. And the Soviet Union, regarding the Ukrainians as "genetically capitalist" and therefore deciding to take food away from starving people (it wasn't just a natural lack of food, the state was quite deliberately taking away the food), also falls under the definition of racially motivated genocide, I would say.

 

[machine3589]

Thing is, another war was bound to happen.

It really wasn't. People have been predicting wars that didn't happen for millenia, really.

 

[machine3589]

As for the idea that the Holocaust was anything remotely new in terms of genocide… let me raise the matter of the kingdom of Dacia. The Roman Empire wanted the Dacians' land so it conquered them, killed them and settled their land. What is what was once Dacia called now? Romania.

Genocide isn't anything new. The Holocaust was different from many previous genocides in its efficiency, its precise tools (swords vs muskets vs gas chambers) and its vast scale. It wasn't a different fundamental idea. Hitler was only new in applying it to white people from Western and Central Europe; the British and the Americans had done plenty of it before him, to Native Americans and Aborigines, and Imperial Germany had done so to the Herero. And the Soviet Union, regarding the Ukrainians as "genetically capitalist" and therefore deciding to take food away from starving people (it wasn't just a natural lack of food, the state was quite deliberately taking away the food), also falls under the definition of racially motivated genocide, I would say.

Not to mention that the horrors of the Holocaust haven't prevented genocides from ever happening again...

 

[Jurgen Wullenwever]

Thing is, another war was bound to happen.

I might be too optimistic, but I do not think a major war between the great powers was certain in the 1930s. Minor cases, such as the Spanish Civil War or various colonial violence such as the Italians in Ethiopia or the British in Palestine did happen.

Consider that Germany OTL rearmed without being able to afford it in the long run, and that there was just that small window in time when its enemies would not be too strong. If Germany instead had rearmed as much as it could afford, then there would never have been that window open for aggression, and starting a war in such circumstances might have been seen as too risky and too costly.

And if the leader is reasonable, for what possible reason would the war be fought? What is there to gain?

There could of course be a completely different alignment of powers if Germany is not aggressive, leading to other wars at other times.

 

[The Kiat]

Or you can go bribe a certain art school into letting the guy with the funny mustache in.

It would be more useful to drag him to the architecture school. He might excel there.

 

[elkarlo]

It really wasn't. People have been predicting wars that didn't happen for millenia, really.

True, nothing must happen, but I feel that until nuclear was made general wars mostly unthinkable, another large scale war would have occurred. If not, decolonization would have been really mean imho. As the Euros would have had the money and energy to brutally suppress the rebellions. As genociding people wasn't a no-no yet.

 

[elkarlo]

I might be too optimistic, but I do not think a major war between the great powers was certain in the 1930s. Minor cases, such as the Spanish Civil War or various colonial violence such as the Italians in Ethiopia or the British in Palestine did happen.

Consider that Germany OTL rearmed without being able to afford it in the long run, and that there was just that small window in time when its enemies would not be too strong. If Germany instead had rearmed as much as it could afford, then there would never have been that window open for aggression, and starting a war in such circumstances might have been seen as too risky and too costly.

And if the leader is reasonable, for what possible reason would the war be fought? What is there to gain?

There could of course be a completely different alignment of powers if Germany is not aggressive, leading to other wars at other times.

A good point. It was getting to the point where it was incredibly expensive to field a first rate military. On top of that navies are also backbreakingly expensive. Maybe Germany wouldn't start a war with the west, but I feel it was bound to happen. Germany was just too strong to be denied a place at the table.
I am amazed at how many planes/tanks and artillery pieces wach first rate power had. A thousand planes, even piston, is friggin a lot.

For leaders, a lot of irresponsible leaders have led their countries into wars. I dunno, no one really benefits from wars, save a few. Yet we again and again go to war.

 

[elkarlo]

It would be more useful to drag him to the architecture school. He might excel there.

I think Hitler's luck started with him surviving WWI. Guy was in almost the entire war, yet came out pretty much unscathed. While if he stayed in AH, he'd be dead 3-4 times over. As the AH from 1914 must have had a 100% causality rate by 1917. Would like to know loss rates/survival rates

 

[Deleted member 1487]

I think Hitler's luck started with him surviving WWI. Guy was in almost the entire war, yet came out pretty much unscathed. While if he stayed in AH, he'd be dead 3-4 times over. As the AH from 1914 must have had a 100% causality rate by 1917. Would like to know loss rates/survival rates

It should be noted he was a regimental runner, which was actually extremely safe; not one man in that position in his regiment died during normal duty, some did, but after being transferred. Basically he was highly safe and his biggest problem was a viral infection that ended up giving him Parkinson's later on. As to his A-H duty, he, IIRC, was listed as the A-H equivalent of 4F, which means unfit for duty; in wartime he would have been conscripted eventually during WW1, but probably put into a lower stress position, as the German army clearly did not think him worth much as a soldier.

 

[MrNumbahOne]

Wasn't Hitler actually spared by a British soldier, who didn't want to shoot an unarmed man?

 

[birdboy2000]

The big risk I see in going back in time to kill Hitler is how narrowly we avoided nuclear war OTL.

I don't want to do anything with the potential to butterfly that away - humanity was damn lucky to have no major European wars after the dawn of the nuclear era, and I'm glad to see fascism and expansionism thoroughly discredited by the time anyone in Europe grabbed nukes or the capacity to build them.

The logic of mutually assured destruction might constrain an exchange, but if the wrong country grabbed them first, or if their potential for destruction was underestimated, or if an accident occurred in a period of diplomatic tension, we could be living in a far worse world.

 

[elkarlo]

It should be noted he was a regimental runner, which was actually extremely safe; not one man in that position in his regiment died during normal duty, some did, but after being transferred. Basically he was highly safe and his biggest problem was a viral infection that ended up giving him Parkinson's later on. As to his A-H duty, he, IIRC, was listed as the A-H equivalent of 4F, which means unfit for duty; in wartime he would have been conscripted eventually during WW1, but probably put into a lower stress position, as the German army clearly did not think him worth much as a soldier.

I thought runner positions were somewhat dangerous?

4F? Wow. Still AH basically drafted anyone who wasn't a factory worker/didn't have connections.
Thanks for the stats btw

 

[Rich Rostrom]

So my question is, if Hitler were to have died at birth, how actually bad would history be without that genocidal maniac?

Almost certainly better in most respects. He did an enormous amount of damage, both directly and as a collateral result of the war he started.

He's not there, and the crimes he directed don't happen, and that war doesn't happen.

It's very hard to imagine any replacement for him who would commit crimes anywhere near as great or initiate a comparable war.

However, Hitler did the world one inadvertent service: he scared the major democratic powers (the U.S. and UK) into making the enormously costly effort to acquire nuclear weapons before anyone else did.

Absent Hitler and the genuine bogeyman of Nazi Germany, it's highly unlikely this happens. That means the first nations to acquire nuclear weapons will be the militaristic dictatorships of the era - the USSR, Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy. (It may be argued that some or all of these didn't have the necessary resources to replace the Manhattan Project. But the MP was a try-everything-right-now-regardless-of-cost operation. A slower, more focused approach could have developed the Bomb at much lower cost, say by 1950.)

Stalin with a monopoly on the Bomb seems very likely to have very bad consequences - possibly including a global Communist dictatorship. (The Communists said many times that it was their goal to bring Communism to all the world.)

Imperial Japan with the Bomb will have bad consequences - the only question is how bad and what will be the cost of disarming this mad-dog state. (It wasn't cheap OTL when they didn't have the Bomb.)

A substantial nuclear war is almost certain, IMHO, and an all-out war with destruction of civilization is very possible.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

I thought runner positions were somewhat dangerous?

4F? Wow. Still AH basically drafted anyone who wasn't a factory worker/didn't have connections.
Thanks for the stats btw

Prewar the standards for the A-H were extremely high due to limited funding, so they usually only took the best physical specimens for the army; even despite that men would still die during maneuvers from exhaustion due to how grueling the training was. There was a reason the A-Hs did so well in the initial engagements of the war, despite being outnumbered, badly outgunned, and had to march well over 100 miles to the first battlefields.

As to the runner position, yes for Battalion and lower levels it was, but for regimental runners it was a very cushy job.

 

[Legend-in-Exile]

Prewar the standards for the A-H were extremely high due to limited funding, so they usually only took the best physical specimens for the army; even despite that men would still die during maneuvers from exhaustion due to how grueling the training was. There was a reason the A-Hs did so well in the initial engagements of the war, despite being outnumbered, badly outgunned, and had to march well over 100 miles to the first battlefields.

As to the runner position, yes for Battalion and lower levels it was, but for regimental runners it was a very cushy job.

During the Battle of the Somme in October 1916, he was wounded in the left thigh when a shell exploded in the dispatch runners' dugout.[10] Hitler spent almost two months in hospital at Beelitz. After being discharged from the hospital, Hitler was sent to Munich. He wrote to his commanding officer, Hauptmann Fritz Wiedemann, asking that he be reinstated in his regiment because he could not tolerate Munich when he knew his comrades were at the Front.[11] Wiedemann allowed him to return to his regiment on 5 March 1917.[12]...
On 15 October 1918, he was temporarily blinded and, according to Friedelind Wagner,[13] also lost his voice by a mustard gas attack and was hospitalised in Pasewalk.[14]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_career_of_Adolf_Hitler

His war record - for someone who could have stayed safely in München doesn't seem like something you can overly criticise him for. Remove the name and think about the actions.

No doubt he went on to do terrible things, but his ww1 record doesn't seem bad to me.

If he had died in ww1 and people read his record I'm sure he would be perceived differently.

As to the OPs question, could you not attempt to alter his development to prevent the obvious deficiencies in his character? Were his actions inevitable from birth? Remove the more sinister aspects somehow and there would be the benefits of no nazism/holicaust etc but without the need to kill.

Maybe that's too reliant on nurture vs nature and naïve but it seems that if the situation actually became possible then even if the attempt were unsuccesful you could always go back and try other methods. Unless we end up in a whole causality loop thing.

 

[Cahaya Purnama]

If you really want to kill him then learn fluent German, go back to 1914 and enlist in his regiment under an assumed name then shoot him in the back of the head in the heat of combat on the western front.

no dont learn german but 1900 German...since seriously We think our Parents as ancient in languages
just think of great grandfather...

 

[Johnrankins]

I doubt it would be worse; Germany might still start a war or fall apart in some way, but there is very unlikely to be a dictator in Germany that would get nearly as far as Hitler did, because much of it was pretty much ASB; if you read about it was an ATL you wouldn't buy it for a second.

Yeah, if the Nazi-like party was put into a book in a universe without WWII it would seen as a ridiculous caricature.

 

[Wongo93]

Stephen Fry wrote a book on this subject, called Skriva Historia in Swedish* (Making History in English, IIRC): Hitler didn't happen, so, as specified by the Divine Pratchett, a worse dictator came along instead. It didn't end well, and everybody died, horribly.



* Borrowed from an IKÉA store in UK.

 

[Berkeley2017]

So if we try to rewrite and replay history and make sure Hitler is gone before he is even remotely significant, whose to say an insignificant person who died OTL, during WWI most likely, survives due to random luck and becomes the next Hitler? It only takes one person.

 

[Rich Rostrom]

So if we try to rewrite and replay history and make sure Hitler is gone before he is even remotely significant, whose to say an insignificant person who died OTL, during WWI most likely, survives due to random luck and becomes the next Hitler? It only takes one person.

True. But Hitler was extraordinary. His intellect (he was definitely smart), intense willpower, personal charisma, and oratorical genius were a very rare combination - and his drive to crimes against humanity was almost as rare.

Historical irony aside, I think it most improbable that anyone worse than him could have appeared in his place. It would be like a poker player discarding four kings and drawing four aces.