DBWI: Hitler not considered as a great German leader

[Johannes Parisiensis]

Last month, when I went in Germany, and while viewing the stab in Braunau am Inn honoring Adolf Hitler, who died from an heart attack on October 1938, I wondered which kind of events could make Hitler considered as a great criminal, apart maybe making the blame for the 1940s economic crisis fell on him.

OOC: I choose the heart attack because I wanted to find a cause for Hitler dying; if it is ASB, fell free to replace this with another cause.

Besides, this count as my 100th post.

 

[Kaiser K]

I heard that Hitler had some nasty plans for the future if he had lived. Maybe he goes and starts a war or something?

 

[Elcheapodeca]

ASB answer: Hitler starts some war with most of the world and Germany gets it's ass kicked with half the country under Soviet occupation. Also take his anti-semitism to illogical levels where he wants to for example kill all the Jews.

Real answer: The program to rid Germany of Communist parties after the Reichstag fire fails. It is revealed that the Nazis set the fire. Comminist Civil War begins. Thousands die. Communists rebels eventually take Berlin and hang Hitler. Hitler is considered a failure that led Germany into years of Marxist rule.

 

[pattersonautobody]

Ever read Mein Kampf. The guy was an evil bastard, if he would have lived, he might have started a war with Poland, like Germany did OTL. A lot of atrocities happened there and it was because of that sick man's ideology. Is was by no means a great statesman, just an evil maniac that knew geopolitics.

 

[Johannes Parisiensis]

Rumors were circulating, among Sionists residing in the Mandatory Palestine, about a plan of an huge, Germany-wide pogrom; maybe these rumors were created with the motine to push Britain to ease Jewish immigration.

 

[Seleucus]

...Maybe if you go anywhere outside of Germany?

I know Hitler is considered great in basketcase Germany thanks to that nasty cult of personality, and having purged or chased away all the Communists, Socialists, pacifists, Jews, homosexuals, or disabled people out of the country. But that's about the extent of it.

OoC: ...By 1938, Hitler had already passed massive amounts of anti-Semitic legislation, sent tens of thousands of political opponents to be purged in concentration camps, passed considerable eugenics legislation, etc. It's not for nothing that by 1935 the rhyme was popularized "Lieber Gott, mach mich dumm, damit ich nicht nach Dachau kumm"" ("Dear God, make me dumb, so I shall not to Dachau come.") No way you're getting him 'great' anywhere outside of Germany without a seriously dystopic world. And if Germany still thinks Hitler is great, you'd need a string of bumbling fascist leaders who use his cult of personality to excuse their faults.

 

[Johannes Parisiensis]

...Maybe if you go anywhere outside of Germany?

I know Hitler is considered great in basketcase Germany thanks to that nasty cult of personality, and having purged or chased away all the Communists, Socialists, pacifists, Jews, homosexuals, or disabled people out of the country. But that's about the extent of it.

OoC: ...By 1938, Hitler had already passed massive amounts of anti-Semitic legislation, sent tens of thousands of political opponents to be purged in concentration camps, passed considerable eugenics legislation, etc. It's not for nothing that by 1935 the rhyme was popularized "Lieber Gott, mach mich dumm, damit ich nicht nach Dachau kumm"" ("Dear God, make me dumb, so I shall not to Dachau come.") No way you're getting him 'great' anywhere outside of Germany without a seriously dystopic world. And if Germany still thinks Hitler is great, you'd need a string of bumbling fascist leaders who use his cult of personality to excuse their faults.

Hitler's populatiry depend of the leanings of the guy:

• Socialists and Jews regard him as the man who oppressed them
• Conservatives view him as a man who used means rather brutal to reestablish order and power, saving Germany from the "Reds"

OOC:

1. Communists weren't really popular among the elites - it is even why German right-wingers wanted him to "fight a Communist conspiracy"
2. Jews were victims of antisemitic legislation in Eastern Europe (Hungary, Poland) - this is one of the motives of their migration in Britain, France and America
3. Eugenism was considered as a good idea in the 1930s, and gays were considered as criminals in Europe and America, excepted in countries influenced by the Napoleonic criminal law
4. In 1953, around of half of Germans thought, had Hitler died in 1938, he would have been the greatest German leader

 

[Ravenflight]

I've always got cynical views on things like this, but I believe he's only really considered a 'great man' and a 'national hero' because it's the only way to white wash the German people's own support of him.

I can't say I know a great deal about him, but he seems to be in the same mold as Mussolini and Stalin. There seemed to be a spate of 'weird politics' going on at that time.

Anyway, that's not really answering your question. So, I'll have a stab at some timeline (totally unresearched, please forgive if it sounds totally ASB).

Germany gets into even MORE nationalistic and starts a war. Remember he died after the 'recovery of the Sudetenland' and so that was his high point. After this he asks for and receives the Polish Corridor. It seems unlikely that Poland will be able to resist, and France and Britain had just seemed to be German surrender monkeys at this time.

People start getting a little more worried and mobilise for a war that they see coming. Hitler can't continue on with this and it not lead to war.

Probably a war would start once Hitler starts asking for some of France or something equally stupid.

Stalin sits on the side lines and laughs himself silly thinking "Communism will take over all of Europe".

Germany gets bogged down into a long war with France. Britain gets involved as well and (can anyone say Great War all over again?).

Eventually an exhausted Germany, Britain and France will have to deal with a totally fresh Soviet Union... probably about 1944, 1945.

Communism will cover everything from Vladivostok to Lisbon. Probably the English Channel will keep Britain safe (unless it's internally converted to Communism) and the USA will go 'oh shit, why didn't we step in'.

Yeah, the USA MIGHT step in, but their track record in the Great War was to only enter when the fighting had all but finished to apply the coup de grace. I don't see them stepping into a European war on a losing side.

So, my take:
Hitler dies = OTL
Hitler lives = Communist Europe.

 

[Johannes Parisiensis]

I've always got cynical views on things like this, but I believe he's only really considered a 'great man' and a 'national hero' because it's the only way to white wash the German people's own support of him.

I can't say I know a great deal about him, but he seems to be in the same mold as Mussolini and Stalin. There seemed to be a spate of 'weird politics' going on at that time.

Anyway, that's not really answering your question. So, I'll have a stab at some timeline (totally unresearched, please forgive if it sounds totally ASB).

Germany gets into even MORE nationalistic and starts a war. Remember he died after the 'recovery of the Sudetenland' and so that was his high point. After this he asks for and receives the Polish Corridor. It seems unlikely that Poland will be able to resist, and France and Britain had just seemed to be German surrender monkeys at this time.

People start getting a little more worried and mobilise for a war that they see coming. Hitler can't continue on with this and it not lead to war.

Probably a war would start once Hitler starts asking for some of France or something equally stupid.

Stalin sits on the side lines and laughs himself silly thinking "Communism will take over all of Europe".

Germany gets bogged down into a long war with France. Britain gets involved as well and (can anyone say Great War all over again?).

Eventually an exhausted Germany, Britain and France will have to deal with a totally fresh Soviet Union... probably about 1944, 1945.

Communism will cover everything from Vladivostok to Lisbon. Probably the English Channel will keep Britain safe (unless it's internally converted to Communism) and the USA will go 'oh shit, why didn't we step in'.

Yeah, the USA MIGHT step in, but their track record in the Great War was to only enter when the fighting had all but finished to apply the coup de grace. I don't see them stepping into a European war on a losing side.

So, my take:
Hitler dies = OTL
Hitler lives = Communist Europe.

Other, less drastic, hypothesis:

1. The military junta who take over after his death manages to assign the blame for the 1940s crisis resulting from his financial policies on him, though soime hard-core Nazis, whose party, the N.S.D.A.P., was commendered by this junta, might regard this as a treason; alternatively, this junta might try to not use Hitler's image as a positive
2. The Entente react after the Rhineland affair
3. The Czech Republican Army begin its teroristic acts in the 1940s instead of the 1970s (assassination of the mayor of Eger)

Some of the today historian are reducing Hitler's role in the annexation of Sudetenland and Austria.

OOC:
I imagined, after Hitler's death, a military junta might take over both the state and the party, turning the party as an ideological shell of itself by inserting some conservatives and nationalists non-Nazis.

 

[Meadow]

Hitler, like Pilsudski and Metaxas, has been whitewashed largely because he was 'strong' and was perceived to have taken decisive action to save his country. YMMV on whether he did that, but he also definitely did a lot of awful stuff, and whipped up a whirlwind of anti-Semitism that Germany arguably has yet to fully recover from. There's a reason wealthy Jews drive Volvos.

 

[Johannes Parisiensis]

Hitler, like Pilsudski and Metaxas, has been whitewashed largely because he was 'strong' and was perceived to have taken decisive action to save his country. YMMV on whether he did that, but he also definitely did a lot of awful stuff, and whipped up a whirlwind of anti-Semitism that Germany arguably has yet to fully recover from. There's a reason wealthy Jews drive Volvos.

Czechs and left-wing Spanishs don't like Germany too.