Before the reply, I just have to say that my understanding of Weimar politics is, at best, limited. I have a general overview, but there are posters on these boards a great deal more knowledgeable than I.
Therefore, please take everything written below with a grain of salt. I'm somewhat outside my comfort zone here.
Apologies for posting what's probably an old concept (the search function is timing out for me) but has anyone ever discussed a TL where Weimar Germany falls to communism in the 1930s. Was playing devil's advocate (literally) for Hitler yesterday and the only decent thing I could think of was "saving Germany from communism". Is this realistic?
Not really, by the time Hitler rose to power communism in Germany was pretty much dead. Past the initial, chaotic, years following Versailles, there wasn't really a danger of Germany ever going communist.
Could it have ended up communist? Yes, but if it did, it would've happened long before Hitler became anyone of importance. By the time Hitler and the NSDAP came to prominence, the communists' chance had come and gone.
If you want to say something positive, say Hitler was against public smoking and banned medical experiments on animals (which he considered too cruel).
Even if not, obviously this would have changed the balance of WW2, e.g. the Anschluss would either be replaced by an invasion or would never happen. There'd be no willing and loyal Germans in Czechoslovakia and the Spanish Civil War would obviously have been different. Mussolini (and fascism) would be perceived in a whole different way for certain.
Anschluss as such wouldn't happen, no. You can say many things about the Austrian fascists, but friendly to communism they weren't. Same thing for Italy, France, Britain, Poland and just about anyone else. A communist Germany would have no shortage of enemies and precious few friends.
If you get a World War 2, then it's possible you end up with a German-Soviet alliance, as two communist states (even if pursuing different branches of ideology). There's simply no way for a communist state to work with anyone except another communist state at the period (Sino-Soviet cooperation excluded) ... too many nations were hostile to the ideology. Besides, Germany and the Soviets got pretty chummy OTL, with an ideology more in line with proper communist thought, I don't see why an alliance would be out of the question (and, possibly, a restoration of pre-WWI borders between the two states).
Was thinking it might be a nice starting place for a go at fiction.
That it would be. Then again, I'm not one to speak, I don't have a single time-line to my name.
