I think IOTL Chiang Kai-shek made this remark about the Japanese and Communism.
Seconded - great film.
"Our Struggle": What If Hitler Had Been a Communist?
- Thread starter The Red
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Seconded - great film.
Bookmark1995
Banned
Could Hitler, is he is alienated by Lenin's arrogant busybodying, start his own pact of socialist states?
Well, there have already been one or two people comparing ITTL's Hitler to Mao...
Deleted member 92121
I wonder if Hitler could pull it off completely on his own. Heading to Moscow now, he's a man fighting a revolution meeting a man who won one. He's negotiating from a position of weakness. If he waited until he succeeded in taking Germany, or even just kicking off the French (they can't keep putting up with the attacks) then he would be metting his Russian comrade on equal terms. Much better conditions.
If this Hitler has anywhere near the manipulative abilities and capacity for getting people to underestimate him that OTL Hitler did I could see him pulling a fast one on Lenin to get everything he wants now while setting things up to regain and strengthen an independent position further on down the line. Both Hitlers had some sense of how to play the long game and this one built a guerilla army from scratch, isn't loaded up on meth and has a very personally loyal following. If I were Lenin, regardless of any immediate advantages Russia enjoys at the moment, I'd be very wary in dealing with this man.
Yep, the basic beats are in place with Lenin legitimising the KPD, dismissing the KAPD as irrelevent, and turning on Paul Levi. Everything seemed in order until Hitler's Red Front started getting results and Stresemann's enabling act forced the KPD to sit on their hands despite German capitalism appearing to be in terminal crisis. As you might imagine, this has caused a bit of a conundrum for the Comintern.
I also think this version of Hitler is generally smarter still.
To riff off the DND cartoon post, in the OTL game he leveled up on Charisma, especially the kind that works best on the ruling class; here he has been neglecting that but his points go into Intelligence instead. I note he's using radio--perhaps that step is the one that prompted the letter from Lenin--but I believe his appeal here will be curtailed on a class basis--fortunately for him he remains of some appeal to the biggest class! But he's going to get nowhere hobnobbing with the great and good, or only with people who admire sheer ruthless self-confidence and bravado and don't care about bourgeois manners.
I believe though he has a clearer, more truthful insight into what goes on and how things work and this may prove an asset versus OTL; also I think he is more stoic and self-controlled; to a greater degree he remains the disciplined corporal accustomed to the stress of battle and with a greater situational awareness.
All that said, I am not sure he really should go to Moscow, not at this crucial moment--of course by consensus a Marxist is not supposed to believe in the essential role of one individual; in theory the Red Front should progress as well as it could with Hitler in charge with some subordinate running it for him while he's away. There is some risk of losing momentum, some risk of capture or death by accident on the way (sure, he's traveling under cover of the German General staff backed secretly by the highest authorities in Weimar--just how much security is that worth though?) or if the Bolshevik politburo decide they don't like what they see.
I think Hitler's core nature does guarantee he would take all these risks though, and go. Whatever Marxist doctrine he accepts on an intellectual level, deep down he still believes as a matter of unquestioned faith that he himself is an essential figure, and that his personal worth is gauged by the courage to take risky chances that have the potential of giving him more power. The former intellectual knowledge will enable him to mind the sort of Ps and Qs that Bolsheviks care about--he won't say anything about the "Leadership Principle" at least not as some ideal thing; he might work in some remark about the need for bold leadership of the proletarians that will pass muster or even earn applause from Lenin's inner circle.
In general I think he will be disappointed and disgusted with shortcomings in the USSR--much of this being unconscious prejudice against Russians, Jews, and disgust at Russia's poverty and disarray that he consciously thinks he has risen above--and he will come home with a simultaneous resolve to work with the Third International and project loyalty to it impressively for now, and to break free and go his own way when the time is ripe, and he will run the Party in Germany with the hidden intent of avoiding what he feels are mistakes the Bolsheviks made--but never say anything hinting at his reservations until the day when the International is more trouble than it is worth to him comes. (Or by then, he might even see a way to try to hijack the International from Moscow's control, and perhaps succeed in splitting it).
I am not sure he'll ever be working with Stalin, leader to leader; the breakaway might come earlier than Stalin is acknowledged supreme Soviet leader. In a short visit to Moscow he might not even realize Stalin's future role--Stalin was able to hide his ambitions from Lenin after all! Although both dictators have some overlap in methods and style, they are also quite distinct. At this point in Moscow and around the USSR, Stalin is projecting the image of a steady, hardworking and loyal follower of Lenin, a team player, not a would-be supreme lord. Indeed far into his ascendency when he had already achieve an unassailable position a decade and more hence, Stalin continued to play the role of being quiet and unassuming; during the high Party purges he would let others do the aggressive attacking of the designated victim of the month--and only come in at the end to quietly observe the consensus of the Party. He posed as someone not entirely too bright who humbly wracked his brains to ask "what would Lenin have done?" He fully understood the egos of other ranking Party members, how to stoke them, how to sneak around them, how to turn them into weapons against themselves, that the Bolshevik leadership was plagued with jealousy and petty feuds, and how to stay out of their focus while he set the dynamics up like pool shots. Hitler could hardly ever play any such games; in this respect their styles were quite different. If Hitler were in fact working really closely with the Moscow Politburo I suppose Stalin would maneuver him into a position to be taken out.
I suspect over time, observing Moscow as an Internationalist from afar, it might become apparent to Hitler what Stalin is up to before it seems clear to most others, but at arm's length in Germany I don't think Stalin could set him up for a fall and might not realize the necessity of trying to do that until it is too late. Perhaps the two will still work out a face saving formula that keeps the appearance of a continued union of USSR and Hitler's Party, for the sake of fooling the global bourgeoise and other mutual benefits--much as there was no appearance of a breach between USSR and PRC while Stalin lived, even though Mao had never been Stalin's favorite and did things such as jump into the Korean War Stalin would rather he did not--the general pattern of Third World ragtag revolutionary parties wagging the Soviet dog was apparent enough after Stalin's death. Generally Stalin did not tolerate deviance even overseas and would sacrifice a viable revolutionary movement to his demands for kowtowing to the orthodoxy of the day, but with a sufficiently powerful German movement he might be forced to make exceptions!
Fundamentally then, I expect a breech and Hitler will in the end go his own way--but it is possible that this breech might not be apparent to the eyes of outsiders!
"We are surrounded by the wolves of imperialism; and to discuss all important matters in 20,000 party cells would mean to lay all one's cards before the enemy."
~ Joseph Stalin, 1923
Fantastic analysis as always.
Redshank Galloglass
Banned
I'm interested in seeing how Hitler's Red Germany handles female soldiers in combat roles.
I'm thinking they'll be "handled" with enthusiasm! The question is, will the notion of them having equal agency, dignity, and a right to choose if they are going to be handled or not arise.
Recall we've already had some women street fighters; I don't think the Party will turn them away from such roles, but as has often been the case, alas radical worker's ideology might still carry over male supremacy--as with racism, unconsciously, unjustified, even perhaps recognized as shameful in its own name...but pervasively none the less.
I don't see any reason they should be any more old-fashioned than the Soviets in this respect; alas I also don't see why they would be more principled and advanced either. Out of respect for Rosa Luxemberg maybe? I've forgotten her status in this TL unfortunately. That alone will not do it; her being alive and kicking might help. Basically what is needed for the party to be reasonably pro-feminist is lots of women involved in both grassroots and leadership positions; the former was true of OTL Bolsheviks but they tended to be filtered out as one approached the top of the leadership pyramid.
So I don't see any reason for it to be different in any way from the Soviet situation OTL.
By the late twenties, whilst the all-male Soviet politburo congratulated themselves on having smashed the partriarchy, a strong argument could be made that Weimar Germany was actually more equal than the Soviet Union. The KPD was certainly more overtly feminist than the CPSU. It's worth noting that the KPD actually had a female leader in OTL 1924, Ruth Fischer, until her clique ran afoul of Moscow. Partly this is due to Weimar being more industrially advanced and thus the cause of the urbanised female worker, but Luxemburg and Zetkin had helped the party place a greater emphasis on female activism and female militancy. I don't really think it's a spoiler for me to say that I believe that a KPD-run Germany would have taken feminism much more seriously, and indeed militantly.
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Oh, good!
But while we've seen examples of the grassroots base of Marxist egalitarianism between the sexes in the TL already, I am unsure to what degree Hitler would divert this current. At best I think he'd simply bend with it, accepting women at high ranks with no more animosity than he has for men who might challenge his position (and no less). It could be worse though.
Obviously it is your take on this that matters most!
Redshank Galloglass
Banned
Well in Johann's flash-forward it mentions female pilots in combat roles, and there will be women serving on the ground in TTL's Second World War as well. I have a PoV character planned out.
Interesting. One cannot help but wonder upon the uh, status of communism elsewhere in the world though.
Like say....in America?
Like say....in America?
I doubt that the Communist movement in the United States would be affected by Hitler's rise. The Communist party never really gain a large following in the United States. The United States, despite the presence of large inequality during the 20th century, had stronger government institutions. But most importantly, American people still respected those government institutions. The situation would have to be really bad, for Americans to even consider a coup against a democratically elected government.
There are some cultural reasons such as American individualism and idea of self-reliance as to why communism never gain a strong appeal in the United States.
But I think that it was mostly due to the actions of progressive leaders and activists in the United States such as TR and FDR and etc that a Communist/Socialist Movement never really gain a lot of strength in America compared to France and Germany. These leaders saw the growing economic inequality in the United States and were able to introduce social and economic reforms to fight it.
Examples include TR's breakup of the monopolies and FDR's New Deal as well as journalists and activists who exposed the harm of corporate greed on the poor.
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The socialist movement in the USA peaked in WWI. The Red Scare combined with an economic boom pretty effectively dismantled any anti-capitalist organizations by the time the Great Depression hit.