Less negative perception of the Nazis?

[Solomaxwell6]

Adn of course anti semitims was totally absent in the US Britain and France?!

That's not what he was saying. No need to go so defensive. All these nations had antisemitism. The difference is that Germany actually had someone manipulate the antisemitic feeling to a genocidal degree.

 

[The Uchronian]

BTW, now that this guy has been banned, perhaps one of the mods can close this thread?

 

[T3h_shammy]

I'd imagine this would be the case. The reason people don't like Hitler are 1) his militarism and 2) his race policies. Get rid of the latter and he's no different from any other militant leaders who achieved mild success. The Allies are still going to come down very hard on Hitler, of course, but Neo-Nazis won't be seen as evil today. After all, what would being a Neo-Nazi really entail if we completely remove race from the equation? At the most extreme, they'll be xenophobic of groups like the Turks and northern Africans, which isn't really that far out of the mainstream European right.

Except Hitler didn't achieve mild success. He achieved more success then any conqueror in the latter half of the 1000's. On top of facing the largest resistance ever.

 

[Urban fox]

Interesting. If Hitler is a normal European Supremacist then the war with the Soviets might become winnable because (as MUC pointed out above) Soviet citizens side with the Germans. Solzhenitsyn once remarked something to the effect (I don't recall the exact quote) that in WWII the Soviet people 'faced with two monsters, chose the one that spoke its language'.

Make Germany less monstrous and the dynamic here changes...

Ah, the fable lives on...

Solzhenitsyn is of dubious credibility to say the least as he had the political outlook of a Black Hundreder to a large degree. The throught the Soviet were ''too Jewish'' if you catch my drift.

The Nazis had about zero-point-zero chance of gaining meaningful support in the U.S.S.R..

 

[Solomaxwell6]

BTW, now that this guy has been banned, perhaps one of the mods can close this thread?

Why? It's a decent enough discussion, the status of the opening poster shouldn't matter.

Except Hitler didn't achieve mild success. He achieved more success then any conqueror in the latter half of the 1000's. On top of facing the largest resistance ever.

I wouldn't really consider committing suicide in a bunker while your capitol city is being sieged, shortly before your nation is split in two for half a century to be particularly "successful."

There have been a great many "successful" militant leaders, especially if we don't mind the ultimate destruction of what they were aiming for.

Napoleon
Genghis Khan
Kublai Khan
Cortes
Bismarck (although these last two weren't strictly leaders)
Tamerlane
Wilhelm II

Those are the ones that spring to immediate mind (Napoleon is by far the closest analogue). There are tons more, especially if we open up the definition. People like kings/queens of colonial empires (which I think is reasonable, although it's smaller gains over time instead of giant short gains). And a lot of those actually WON their wars, or at least managed to last for seven years (counting with the Anschluss as the start date). The things that make Hitler particularly infamous are the holocaust and because the war was relatively recent (last major European war). The latter will fade over time.

 

[Nothing Exists!]

Ah, the fable lives on...

Solzhenitsyn is of dubious credibility to say the least as he had the political outlook of a Black Hundreder to a large degree. The throught the Soviet were ''too Jewish'' if you catch my drift.

The Nazis had about zero-point-zero chance of gaining meaningful support in the U.S.S.R..

Wikipedia has the following:

"The enormous territorial gains of 1941 presented Germany with vast areas to pacify and administer. For the majority of people of the Soviet Union, the Nazi invasion was viewed as a brutal act of unprovoked aggression. While it is important to note that not all parts of Soviet society viewed German advance in this way, the majority of Soviet population indeed viewed German forces as occupiers – not liberators. The policies of Nazi Germany itself was the catalyst for such response from the people of the Soviet Union. In areas such as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (which had been conquered by the Soviet Union in 1940) the Wehrmacht was welcomed by most of the native population as well as some Soviet citizens. This was particularly true of the recently Soviet occupied territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, which greeted the Germans as liberators from Soviet rule. However, Soviet society as a whole was hostile to the invading Nazis. The nascent national liberation movements among Ukrainians and Cossacks, and others were viewed by Hitler with suspicion; some, (especially those from the Baltic States) were co-opted into the Axis armies and others brutally suppressed. None of the conquered territories gained any measure of self-rule. Instead, the racist Nazi ideologues saw the future of the East as one of settlement by German colonists, with the natives killed, expelled, or reduced to slave labour. The cruel and brutally inhumane treatment of Soviet civilians, women, children and elderly, the daily bombings of civilian cities and towns, Nazi pillaging of Soviet villages and hamlets, and unprecedented harsh punishment and treatment of civilians in general were some of the primary reasons for Soviet resistance to Nazi Germany's invasion. Indeed, the Soviets viewed Germany's invasion as an act of aggression and attempt to conquer and enslave local population."

Yes, I understand that Solzhenitsyn would likely not have voted for the current President. However, there were many in Russia who wouldn't either. Do recall that Uncle Joe Stalin himself would later prepare an anti-semitic outrage with the so-called "Doctors' Plot". He does this only because of the resonance he knew it would have in Soviet society.

In an AH invasion scenario where Hitler is either more nearly sane, or (better still) the party suppressed, the Baltics, the Ukrainians and perhaps even Belarus might have joined the Germans in their attempt to destroy the USSR. And if they join, that puts other populations in play too.

Of course, that could absolutely never have happened so long as the invading German forces enacted the insane Nazi policies. Which, of course, they did until their well deserved end.

But one always to keep in mind that Soviet reality was not exactly equal to the Soviet propaganda films of the forties. - You know, everyone holding hands, singing songs, and dancing.