hitler not crazy

gaijin

Banned
Then we're not talking about Hitler but someone completely different. Within the realm of Hitler's cosmology of racial struggle, his strategic decisions actually follow a pretty solid logic. People suggesting that Hitler "act more rational" struggle to understand what Hitler readily accepted as a fact of reality: that Germany had to wage a genocidal war to totally remake the European (and, by extension, world) order in it's favor and that this was literally a matter of life-and-death to the German people. Once one accepts that basic leap of logic, everything else about his decision making becomes entirely comprehensible. His decision to wage such a genocidal war came at the point where Germany had the greatest chance of winning it.

This. The man was working from a completely demented and perverse premise, but once you accept that premise his actions are pretty rational. Only in the latter part of the war when Parkinson's, drugs, and stress caused him to become increasingly more inflexible.

Maybe strange to use the word empathy when talking about somebody like Hitler, but if one tries to understand his thinking it is pretty obvious he was being rational. Acting rational in efforts to achieve a perverted goal does not equal crazy.

It is very easy, but also very stupid to dismiss other people as crazy. This goes far beyond people like Hitler. Even in the present day we have people who work from a different premise than we do (IS, Putin, the Chinese government). Very easy to dismiss them as "evil" or "crazy" or simply ridicule them, but that would be a mistake. The wise course is to try to understand their thinking so as to better predict their actions. Important to keep in mind is that empathy does not equal approval. In the Chat section I have been repeatedly been accused of being a "Putin apologist" simply for pointing out that the Russians look at the current situation from a different perspective then say the average European or American.

Know thy enemy.
 
WW II was inevitable. The end of WW I ensured that. The only differences, besides, hopefully, the lack of industrialized genocide, would be details.

Minimum 40 million dead. Nationalities might be different than IOTL, but the number would in the same horrid ballpark.

WWII doesn't happen without Hitler. At least not remotely in the same fashion that it did. Yes, it's likely that there'll be a rise of right wing sentiment in Germany and a re-militarization of the country but without Hitler the German leadership won't be nearly so dedicated to starting a war. This is particularly the case since the French and British were willing to make some pretty extreme concessions to Germany in the interests of avoiding another conflict. Virtually any other German leader would have taken Munich as a triumph and cashed in at that point, as indeed most in the Nazi Hierarchy and the Wehrmacht leadership wanted. It's not that other German leaders of the day were peacenicks or anything, but none of them were willing to take the gambles Hitler was.

You might get a different war years later, when France, Britain, and the Soviet Union have reformed and rebuilt their militaries and Germany is on the down swing of disappointment after the early bloom of fascist glories has worn off and does something rash that the other powers now feel strong enough to punish. But by then the odds would be so strongly and obviously against Germany that either the Wehrmacht doesn't go for it or the Anglo-French, Russians, or both swiftly crush the Heer and roll into Berlin.
 
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jahenders

Banned
If you totally butterfly away his mindset, you totally change everything up to and during WWII. Germany has a lot of turmoil, but doesn't go the Nazi route or get so aggressive. They may take actions to invalidate Versailles, but they don't make territorial demands on their neighbors, don't attack, etc.

If he's somewhat himself, he might write in prison and become Fuhrer, but then take a more reasonable (or statistically likely) course. For instance, he might grab Sudatenland and maybe even Czech and Austria, but might not invade Poland.

He might even plan to attack Poland with Russia, but back out at the last minute. Then, if Russia still invades, he could "come to their defense," get some stuff, but turn some stuff over to the League of Nations for oversight.

He stops short of war with France and contents himself with consolidating a 'Greater Germany" and some colonial adventures.

What would happen if hitler does not go totally batshit but thinks more rationally? How does WW2 in europe go ?
 

Nestor

Banned
I recall reading a thread similar to this where someone said that besides starting the war, Hitler was actually more perceptive and insightful than his generals for the most part and if they were running the war instead Germany would have lost sooner.
 
Would changing some of the nazi leadership be any good ie: trescow. Would building germany into an economic superpower be enough for the nazis and hitler? German rearmament with british help? By rearming with british help i mean aircraft carriers treaties with the majority of western europe?
 
Eugenics was practiced in that time period and after, and genocide happened a lot in history and presently, neither of these things make him a sociopath or crazy. The horror of Hitler was his systematic extermination, the dehumanization of genocide, which is a weird thing to say but I believe appropriate.

Hitler might of felt guilty for his genocide, but even the average person could rationalize the guilt away by thinking they were willing to do anything for the betterment of humanity, nation, race, family, ect, ect; which how we are capable of war, moral justification of evil acts, which are sometime morally justified.

He wasn't even completely wrong, eugenics could improve humanity, that is probably part of the reason Nazism was so popular, all the truly dangerous ideas have some truth to them. The biggest problem in a purely logical, excluding all emotion, point of view with Hitler's eugenics was that they were quasi scientific, and based on hate, and racial egotism.

I hope I didn't sound like I am anyway agreeing with what Hitler did, he was a Monster, and if there is a hell, he is burning in it. And making him "crazy" is lessening his moral culpability, it is insulting to all he murdered.
 
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I recall reading a thread similar to this where someone said that besides starting the war, Hitler was actually more perceptive and insightful than his generals for the most part and if they were running the war instead Germany would have lost sooner.

I think it's more accurate to say that hitlers specific worldview happened to lead him to the right decisions early in the conflict, when it was all about acting quickly and ruthlessly against unsuspecting foes.

He wasn't even completely wrong, eugenics could improve humanity,

The only way of truely improving humanity is to improve our morals, not our genetic makeup. Any "improvement" based on some material goal is always going to be arbitrary.
 
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