"Our Struggle": What If Hitler Had Been a Communist?
- Thread starter The Red
- Start date
Deleted member 92121
But i don't see it happening any time soon. We don't know when he gets out of prision, after all, as stated, this isn't like his stay at Landsberg. And then he would have to develop a following and gain public support..... it could be a while.
Yes. And the more time it passes. The more will that desire continue to fester. Like the pus on an infection that goes untreated...
They say Revenge in a Dish Best Served Cold... Thus, be very afraid of this man. Of this walking tragedy...
Deleted member 92121
Well put. Never underestimate the will of a man who has seen the face of tragedy, for this is a man who no longer needs to fear it. And after that, inflicting it upon others becomes a much easier affair.
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Just finished reading this TL. Great work. I hope Hitler gets thrown out of a helicopter.
Deleted member 94680
Wonder if this is going to be twisted to mean a certain demographic?
If it gets twisted, it would be now, when he is at his lowest. And for now it doesn't seems like it.
Deleted member 94680
Agreed, but we don't know how long he's going to be in that Bavarian cell and what form his ideology finally takes when he gets out. Who knows, maybe the result of the incarceration is a decision to become a Leader in the movement and he adjusts his rhetoric until it meets the largest mass approval?
You'd need a spark to make antisemitism something he'll consider. We haven't seen any yet, and I doubt it would come to him in prison.
As for twisting to meet approval, it's unlikely to work when trying to spread a leftist ideology. People who'd answer well to an antisemitic rhetoric are also people who would never follow communism.
He doesn't need mass approval though. He has already seen one bottom up revolution fail, and has an example of a small cadre of revolutionaries succeeding in Lenin. It's likely he'll go this way too.
Chapter XXIII
'I do not know how to avoid the conclusion that a man who is capable of taking the illusions of religion so literally and is so sure of a special personal intimacy with the Almighty is unfitted for relations with ordinary children of men.'
~ Sigmund Freud, Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study
~ Sigmund Freud, Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study
‘Whilst the arguments as to whom or which nation it was more damaging towards, the First World War is perhaps unique in human history in it that virtually everyone, veterans and pacifists, those who lived through it and those born decades afterwards, share a collective agreement in the senseless tragedy of the conflict.
Nonetheless, the conflict had its victors.
The Entente Alliance, perhaps more popularly known simply as “The Allies” had suffered great losses, a generation of young men were sacrificed alongside the economic stability and long-term global positions of the old European imperial powers. The United States of America, late to the war and arguably the only nation to emerge stronger out of it inherited a world indebted to what had previously been the world’s largest debtor nation. The United States had a unique position to assume world leadership, yet the American congress was ambivalent to their role in international affairs and soon retreated into isolation. In doing so they began to ignore the rising trends of extremism that would develop across either side of the two oceans that most Americans felt protected them.
These radical ideas were arguably the true victors of the war, for though they were disconnected to the wars aims they nonetheless manifested themselves in the wreckage of the German and Russian empires and amongst the populaces who had suffered and endured the struggles of the bloodshed. Many developed a great loathing for the aristocrats and capitalists above them seemed to get by with little difficulty.
For whilst many talk of the horrors of shell-shock in regards to the trenches those same people generally tend to ignore the similar trend passing through the lines of both sides. People to who saw greater enemies back home. In doing so they put their class over their nation. Most important amongst these men would turn out to be Adolf Hitler, a man with the rare ability to not only suffer from disaffection but bend it to his own ends.
This was the ultimate price of total war to the old European orders. Total war demanded blood, to an extent that the mind set did not leave the populace even in defeat. As such “the war to end all wars” would inevitably beget another, greater, global conflict that would see the Marxist forces unleashed by the First World War threaten to consume the entire planet during the Second.
Many economists had warned in 1914 that the war would cause an economic and political upheaval which would be severe enough to eclipse the revolutions of 1848. The war that the European empires had made inevitable would lead to their mutual destruction, there were many who sought advantage in this contemporary hysteria. Vladimir Lenin predicted that the First World War would be the downfall of capitalism, but although this would turn out to be true in many parts of the world, it remains debated as to whether he believed that his adherents would throw themselves into an even more apocalyptic struggle in the ironic quest to end class conflict.’
~ Amy Wright, Europe’s Unravelling
---
In the packed and stuffy room, Robert liked to think back to the fresh sea breeze of the Atlantic as his delegation had come into France. He had been on board the George Washington alongside President Wilson as he had waved at the cheering crowds. The French people were so full of adulation that Robert wouldn’t have been surprised if they expected the President to walk over the water and onto the shore to greet them. Even the Germans seemed to pin their hopes on him, despite America having ensured their defeat.
In this room full of politicians and diplomats at the palace of Versailles there was a very different reception. There remained plenty of smiles and kind words amongst those from the victorious powers but plenty of mistrust and deceit at the same time. Not all of this was kept behind closed doors either, the Italian delegation had already walked out in disgust at what they saw as a raw deal for their country’s sacrifice.
Robert wasn’t there to deal with the Italians, otherwise he would have been out of a job. The French were his responsibility, he was responsible for gauging their priorities and trying to convince them they matched American aspirations. He was by no means a seasoned diplomat but Wilson thought that would work to America’s advantage by expressing themselves as the new, young, nation that had come to rescue the old world from Teutonic aggression. Robert also spoke French as his first language, something that not many American diplomats could claim. It was apparently this ability, the assumption that a French internal monologue would make him better at gauging the French psyche, that had seen the Tidewater folks all turn out to wave him off as he journeyed first to Washington, then to New York, and finally to Versailles.
It had been hoped that he would be able to prevent potential mistranslation but the French demands had been clear enough, they had remained consistent through the best part of fifty years. Revanchisme.
He had been assured by other, more experienced, diplomats on the journey that the French passion for revenge against the Germans was far less potent than it might be presumed and that it would likely be used as a card for extracting more concessions from the Germans on the basis of writing past wrongs. Robert was aware that the situation was far complex than it might have initially seemed but the anger of the French delegation seemed to be far more than bluster. Robert had initially been appalled by the stories of the German atrocities on French soil and the overwhelming damage the country had taken in defending itself had made him sympathetic to the French plight. He had previously never visited the nation of his ancestry but he had developed a kinship all the same, France had almost been broken by the war and it seemed their experience had ensured that any subtlety around their hunger for revenge was misplaced.
It had been Robert’s aim to try and find a common ground between the American delegation’s aim of a lasting peace based on international cooperation and self-determination and the French desire for revenge but the latter had proven itself to be beyond all basic objectivity. Instead, the conference had been spent trying to push for a watered down version of his President’s vision and curtail the French aim of hobbling Germany beyond all recognition. Not for the first time in the past weeks he wondered if all diplomacy was grand visions and cheering crowds quickly turning into sweating in dark rooms whilst losing count of the number of times you had repeated “No, Lithuania can’t be given Memel if the Germans haven’t even left Lithuania yet!”
Demoralised, he excused himself and walked out into the brightness. The Hall of Mirrors in Versailles was incomparable to anything he had seen before, the old French monarchy had built a moment to their excesses and Robert couldn’t help but resist its grandeur, especially not in a beautiful Summer’s day where the sunlight seemed to make the entire building glow and shimmer as if it were made entirely out of treasure. This was where the Germans had humiliated the French in 1871 by proclaiming German unification in the wake of their victory. Now, in the corners hidden away from the sunlight, the members of dozens of different delegations pondered whether they would grasp this historic opportunity for a lasting peace, or whether they were simply there to deliver a greater humiliation against Germany.
By that context the entire hall filled with experienced diplomats and delusional optimists had become claustrophobic and Robert found his way to the outside balcony in an attempt to find some fresh air. It was not to be.
Ferdinand Foch, Marshal of France, had already got a good acrid stench flowing from his pipe by the time that Robert joined him outside. Foch clearly didn’t know who he was, his drooping eyes glancing up at the American diplomat before dismissively returning to his pipe, it was a situation Robert sought to rectify.
“Marshal Foch!” Robert almost shouted as he marched over to shake the officer’s hand, “I am sorry to interrupt but I cannot tell you what a privilege it is to meet why back in Virginia I-“
“You speak excellent French.” The Marshal shook his hand with all the enthusiasm of a deceased doorknob.
“Thankyou Marshal, I was brought up with the language on m-“
“It’s too bad your President can’t seem to understand anything about us.”
“Well Marshal I can assure that we’re aiming for the be-“
“Speak some sense, boy! You’re aiming for compromise and half measures when the Germans have no choice to do anything we wish. Do you think we’ll ever get this opportunity again?!”
Robert paused on that for a moment, if only so the Marshal might actually let him speak.
“Marshal I am afraid that we can’t re-shape the world to our pleasing just because we won the war, the Germans thought like that when they attacked France in 1914 and look what has happened to them. We must create a world that is secure for all nations.”
The Marshal smiled cheekily and winked as he took a long draw on his pipe.
“Secure for all nations, against Germany, yes. Don’t you worry, you and your President will leave us to pick up the mess but we’ll find a way. Somehow.”
Robert was happy to think he’d got on the Marshal’s good side, but there was something about the look he’d given him and the wink, that would sit with for a long while after. In the sad, droopy eyes for a moment there had been a spark of a far younger man. It was a moment of clarity that many people would often receive in the midst of a Foch conversation, but in the face of Foch’s cynicism it made Robert slightly uneasy about the Marshal’s satisfaction with the future.
The Marshal left shortly after and Robert was on his own in the glorious afternoon. Staring down upon the beautiful scenery, he found himself whistling “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny”.
---
The picture is of onlookers trying to grab a sneak peak of the Treaty of Versailles being signed.
I hope everyone has a nice weekend.
IOTL there was relatively little bloodletting within the NSDAP - even The Night of the Long Knives was a small scale affair compared to what happened in the Soviet Union. Hitler the Red seems far more intolerant, and ready to use violence, against "comrades". He will not espouse the doctrine of "No enemies on the left".
It's an internal monologue so at this point it doesn't have any subtext, although these sorts of statements can get twisted as time goes on.
Lost Freeway
Banned
And Mussolini was a socialist in his youth. Didn't stop him from persecuting socialists once he gained power.
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Deleted member 94680
Whilst he's in that cell he's derided the 1919 coup as amateurish and corrupted. When (if?) he comes into power, there's a chance those to blame for the failure "on the inside" as it were will be in for a bad time.
Pretty sure Hitler would be a bit more lenient towards Jews. I mean, Stalin himself was pretty anti-semitic (though more for their loyalty towards Israel than him), but that didn't really stop him from keeping Jewish cronies in his ranks when they could do their job. I imagined the same for Hitler ITTL, which can only be a vast improvement from OTL.
He is partly based on someone in real life but they weren't around at the Paris Peace Confefence.
That wasn't really directed at anyone because they were Jews though, I was actually going to include a favourable comparison to Trotsky to clear this up but I'm not sure whether Hitler would be particularly keen on praising him by the time Our Struggle would have actually come out.