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In your opinion, if Adolf Hitler had not been shot by Maurice Bavaud in November 9, 1938, would have the Second Great War still occurred ?

Would have the sorry event chain that led to the Euro-Soviet general war been averted (succession struggle and army coup in Germany, the early 1940s European recession, Communist uprisings in Eastern Europe, the European powers' poor preparation for a general conflict, their failure to check the gradual rise of Soviet expansionism in Northern Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East, the final escalation in Poland and Romania) ?

And if the SGW had proved inevitable, do you think that the war would have taken a different course with Hitler at the helm of Germany ?

Would have the initial Soviet strategic offensive been such a huge success in Eastern Europe and the Middle East ? Would the European coalition have managed to stop the Soviets at the Stettin-Gorizia line, or the Red Army would have overrun Western Europe ? Would the USA and Japan have acted differently ?

And what kind of peace settlement would have we gotten ?

In conventional German history, it is often assumed that he would have never allowed the Soviets to become so bold and aggressive as to stumble in a general war with the European powers, and anyway he would have never allowed Europe to be so ill-prepared against the initial Soviet onslaught.

On the other hand, revisionist historians argue that he would have been a very poor war leader, and he would have dragged an ill-prepared Germany into a disastrous solo fight with the USSR, with Britain, France, and Italy unwilling and unready to help, allowing the Soviets to conquer the continent piecemeal.

As it concerns the radical revisionists' thesis that he might even cause a wholly different kind of SGW, some kind of "FGW rematch" intra-European conflict between Germany and Britain-France with Italy a wild card, IMO such ideas are far too outlandish and fanciful to be taken seriously as a plausible scenario. Certainly, such a suicidal course would have allowed the Soviets to conquer Eurasia virtually unopposed.
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