"Our Struggle": What If Hitler Had Been a Communist?
- Thread starter The Red
- Start date
Will there still be a Holocaust against the Jews? Some of Adolf Hitler's antisemitic rhetoric would've sounded oddly Communist if "the Jews" had been replaced by "the bourgeoisie", after all. If in the eyes of the far right they were greedy Jews, in the eyes of the far left they'll be greedy Jews.
Fantastic,
One of the most radical changes imaginable that is still consistent with Hitler's psychological profile.
We need to know a few things:
When did he become a communist? Remember he discovered his oratory talent as a re-education agent in the army speaking against communism
Viewpoint of Judaism? Goes back to Vienna.
NSDAP or the existing communist party? He could think the communists are not revolutionary enough....
One of the most radical changes imaginable that is still consistent with Hitler's psychological profile.
We need to know a few things:
When did he become a communist? Remember he discovered his oratory talent as a re-education agent in the army speaking against communism
Viewpoint of Judaism? Goes back to Vienna.
NSDAP or the existing communist party? He could think the communists are not revolutionary enough....
I don't think it'll be as obvious as OTL (he'll just coincidentally put more Jews in jail than Christians for being "reactionaries"), but I do think there will be some sort of discrimination against Jews.
Chapter I
"Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness."
~ Carl Jung
His father was as much of a moron as his offspring would turn out to be, peddling his family around the Austrian countryside before finally settling in Linz in the hope that the familiar surroundings of his relatives may have been able to give him some sort of assistance, probably monetary. Though his father had found a state career, in Austria these jobs were not the type of gold plated excuses for idleness that we see in modern Britain. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire a public sector wage was what it should be, enough to feed a family without a drinking habit at the same time, but the failed dictator's father seemed to end up continuously drunk regardless.
Much is often made of the fact that the young dictator was beaten as a child, the bleeding hearts would of course love a narrative that parents who correctly discipline their children are somehow at fault and some have even been accused of raising miniature dictators. Like most liberal warnings, this is garbage, Hitler did not lack slapping, he lacked a strong male role model in his drunken failure of a father and in this role comes the real contradiction of the left-wing do-gooders. His doting mother is the one truly to blame.
Yes, when the priggish moralists are using the example of the world’s most infamous murderer to pursue their remarkably similar agenda they should really do their research for whilst Hitler’s father drank himself into irrelevance, his mother gave him the upbringing most boneheaded bureaucrats insist upon these days. Permissive and weak, she raised a spoiled brat filled with delusions of grandeur and unable to understand the concept of “No.” This textbook case of liberal parenting left us with a continent enslaved and millions dead.
So whenever someone scolds you for spanking your misbehaving child, just remember, you just might be preventing the next Hitler.'
~ Article by Peter Hitchens, Action
“You really are a worthless little shit”
The classical school, that was it, he had wanted to go to classical school. He had thought of that school a lot despite the fact that his father had forced him to go to the technical school to follow in his footsteps, the school where Adolf was bullied every day because he wasn’t from Linz like the other students. Would his peers in the classical school have beaten him? He didn’t think so.
Adolf wanted to escape to that happy land, he had sabotaged himself in his lessons in the hope that his prayers were to be answered and his father would acquiesce and send him to pursue his dreams, the old mans reaction had been quite different.
“…deliberately trying to humiliate me again!”
It hadn’t been long before he’d handed him his report card before he felt himself being carried into the air by his father’s fist. He had felt the urge to be sick as he had landed on the floor, now with his father kicking him in the stomach time and time again it felt like it would be inevitable. Adolf croaked with the air disappearing from his lungs, he tried to cry only to manage a bare gasp. The ringing in his ears grew louder all the time, he could feel the sick coming up from his stomach.
---
“Come on, get up! I want you all out of here in ten minutes!”
The chime of the bell continued to ring as Adolf and his fellow roommates sleepily gathered their belongings and trudged out of the door. He couldn’t remember what he’d been dreaming about when the ringing had interrupted him, only about where he would go now that the paltry six hours of sleep offered by the place he had spent the night in were used up.
His lodgings reminded him of a homeless shelter and given the smell of the place he wouldn’t have been surprised if some of the men were transients, it was hard to tell, like almost every other man he had slept in his coat to fight off the bitter cold in the draughty room. Adolf wondered what he might look like to the more respectable denizens of Vienna in his unshaven, unkempt garb. It was hard to continue to call himself a bohemian as he lugged his chalks, easels and papers around the city, looking for something gimmicky that he could sell to wealthy tourists. It was all rubbish really, but even in hard times he was at least doing what he loved. That’s what he continued to tell himself as he tightened his belt to stave off the stirring in his stomach.
It was a bright day in Vienna, and he couldn’t think about food. People would be out in the sun and he had paintings that needed to be sold. There was little question as to where to sell them on a day like this, the Stadtpark was something of a long walk for a hungry man but it was where both the locals and tourists of Vienna would flock to on what was already promising to be a beautiful autumn day. There was something about the greenery of the park and the sculptures within it that always seemed to make those people on walks or picnics more receptive to his work, perhaps there was an element of bohemian influence in the utopian scene, or perhaps it was just because the sun brought out a flippancy in people.
Despite the cold of the previous night Adolf hoped they were headed for an old women’s summer, if he couldn’t sell anything today he faced the prospect of sleeping outside. This was something he had occasionally been forced to do albeit sparingly, such was the bohemian lifestyle he liked to believe that he lived rather than the reality of struggling for his daily bread.
His journey from the boarding house in Mariahilf to the busy park took him through the Naschmarkt where the freshly baked cakes and rolls were on display and the sausages glistened with grease as they fried in public. The smells and the sights were torture for even in the busy streets of men and women beginning their jobs it seemed that amongst the cues Adolf was the only one who couldn’t afford some breakfast. That wasn’t true, of course, as he continued to walk he saw the ranks of people who couldn’t even afford a draughty boarding house. Germans, removed from their pride by their hunger and exposure to the cold, forced to beg alongside the multitude of Slavic immigrants who continued to move into the city despite the unemployment. He noticed that many of the workers were foreigners as well, and wondered not for the first time how many destitute Germans could be given jobs if all the immigrants were forced to return to their own countries.
As the city slowly brought itself to life Adolf wondered about those who didn’t have to get up so early, and why they were happy with immigration into the city. Depressed wages were naturally the answer, he’d heard that the immigrants would work for basically nothing and in turn forced the German worker to debase himself into lower and lower pay. Though Adolf regularly found himself looking for gainful employment there seemed to be little for aspiring artists beyond the odd day of manual labour. The only place for his sort was the place that unfortunately provided a shortcut to the park, the place that elicited a feeling even more painful than the smell of food on an empty stomach. The Academy of Fine Arts was enormous and in the same way Adolf couldn’t get it out of his mind he also couldn’t get it out his mind.
“Unfitness for painting” was what the examiners had decried Adolf as suffering from the second time they’d rejected him. Oh the buildings he had painted were supposedly fine but the people apparently lacked effort, as if this hadn’t been his dream since his father had kicked the shit out of him as a child.
Yes, that was the real truth. The wealthy in this city, gentile and Jew were just like his father, they were strong and whenever they saw something different to them they would crush it. In the same way his father hadn’t let him train as an artist the elites had prevented him from having a career once he’d managed to amass a portfolio regardless of his father’s wishes.
Adolf had decided he would continue to paint anyway, even after his mother had died and her financial support with it. His flatmate August had offered to support him, they had known each other from Linz and although Adolf knew he meant well he couldn’t help but feel that taking charity would be an admission of failure in comparison to his friend’s greater success as a musician.
Adolf was not particularly jealous of August’s success, or at least that was what he told himself, he simply struggled to be around someone who clearly felt he was an object of sympathy rather than would make his own way in life. In a way those in charge couldn’t hold him back and though he was hungry by the time he reached the greenery of the park Adolf was genuinely happy that he had his independence. Though his stomach growled, his devotion would win him favour with those who saw that he was pursuing his dream in the face of those who wanted to grind him down.
Adolf Hitler was an artist, and the people would provide for him.
---
The painting is a self-portrait by Adolf Hitler.
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This TL is looking more and more dystopic from the attitude of the writer in the first half of the chapter...
Chapter II
‘You have objections?—Enough! Enough! We know them… We’ve understood!… Our fine deceitful intelligence tells us that we are the revival and extension of our ancestors—Perhaps!… If only it were so!—But who cares? We don’t want to understand!… Woe to anyone who says those infamous words to us again!'
Lift up your heads!’
~ F. T. Marinetti, The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism
'The young Adolf Hitler suffered first hand from the corruption and incompetence of the old imperialist system that ruled tyrannically over much of central Europe. A regime which glorified aristocracy and crushed the freedom of thought that Comrade Hitler seeks to inspire!Lift up your heads!’
~ F. T. Marinetti, The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism
As a young man he had excelled at the arts and upon encouragement from his family, journeyed to Vienna, the Hapsburg capital, to become an artist. As one might imagine, his art was considered far too radical for the conservative establishment and he instead made a living painting for tourists before finding his own way into the smaller, people's, galleries where he would often host shows for his fellow workers.’
~ Traudl Junge, The Emergence of our Hope
---
Franz had a cheery outlook, though unlike many peddlers and strivers amongst the Vienna populace his circumstances provided him with a justification to have one. His career in the School of Fine Arts allowed him to pursue his imaginative concepts for a living whilst discussing the latest trends with some of the world’s greatest artists. Best of all however, it had allowed him to teach, his classes were free to the children of Vienna and the notion of nurturing prospective talent thrilled Franz, the joy the children put into their work was not only rewarding but the notion that one day several revolutionary artists might point to him as their teacher made him feel as if he were leaving an investment to the future.
For someone like Franz, it was a job where Monday was almost as good as Saturday, yet he enjoyed his free time just as much and on a beautiful day like this it would be inexcusable not to have a walk in the park. It was hard not to be near the Stadtpark if you lived in central Vienna and though he would often walk through on his way home from the academy he enjoyed it for leisure as well, the great space hosted many different attractions, cafes, concerts, dances, plays, bars and even just idle conversation with strangers. It was a link between communities, and on a nice day you could find almost all of Vienna’s differing social and ethnic groups when walking through it; Austrians, Germans, Poles, Jews, Rich, Poor, Catholic, Protestant, military men, aristocrats, bourgeois, workers on half-day and, of course, the starving artists.
Franz could not take his eyes off the rather dreadful looking figure glaring at the concession stand nearby, he couldn’t tell whether the vagrant was annoyed that he’d been told to move himself and the rather ramshackle “all my own work” display he’d assembled or whether he was simply hungry. The man was too old for Franz’s art class but he was certainly young, possibly aged by what appeared to be hard times, he might have been in his early twenties or perhaps just a destitute tramp gifted with a young face, regardless there was something hypnotic about him and Franz decided to have a look at his little garden exhibition even if it were just to humour a fellow artist who had fallen upon hard times.
At a closer inspection the vagrant’s initial look of deep thought appeared to be more of a bored sulk than any underlying brilliance waiting to be tapped. Nonetheless the work he had on display was at least better than much of the dross you got on the streets. Several “all my own work” style vendors would try and make some easy money by selling off sketches of buildings as postcards, offering to paint tourists who wanted a memory of Vienna or doing a rough sketch of someone’s house on the general pretence that the home inspired some sort of brilliance so as to attempt to solicit a sale out of vanity. Some of Franz's louder colleagues labelled it a form of prostitution yet this man clearly fell somewhere in between and as he gave Franz a disinterested look it was clear that amongst the usual postcard-type work there was some genuine talent. There were also indicators as to why he was sitting in a park rather than a classroom or a gallery if indeed he’d ever had such aspirations. Some people just had a knack for copying things they’d read or seen but there were always ways that this could be investigated, and Franz aimed to do so.
“I see that you’re a classicist”, Franz spoke neutrally, guessing that the man was the type of person who would sneer at praise but scowl at the most benign criticism. There were many like that in the art world and they were easy to spot, the man turned his head slightly, as if surprised that Franz was more than a gawking tourist. The vagrant did his best attempt at a smile in the miserable situation.
“Yes, well I believe that neo-classicism is the correct term”
Even as the young man appeared to think out loud Franz smiled, pedantry could be a pleasure when two individuals had a mutual interest.
”I’m not sure we’ll ever find a superior form of art, Austrian or German at the very least. The Italian renaissance has some interesting work mind you but nowhere near as good as a Carstens or a Fussli.” Fussli was Swiss, though Franz didn’t make anything effort to correct the young man despite his own neo-classical one-upmanship.
The conversation between Franz and the young man whose name turned out to be Adolf was more intellectual than Franz might have hoped for, though regrettably the young man seemed surprisingly sharp with someone who just wanted a conversation. Franz figured he must be impatient given that he was wasting the young man's time with discourse whilst potential customers might have been drifting by, yet when Franz bought a painting of Nurnberg town hall and went to leave the seemingly reluctant conversationalist went out of his way to shake his hand and thank him for the chat.
Franz was surprised at the sudden change in mood yet presumed he had simply mistook the man’s sharpness for impatience when in fact it was earnest intrigue. He decided he'd like to talk to his odd individual again.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to go just now but would you like to have lunch tomorrow?” Franz could have asked this Adolf character if he wanted to continue the conversation immediately but he had already completed his business after the inference that the seller had lost interest in his conversation and it would seem odd to hang around after motioning to leave. The young artist’s eyes lit up at the notion of a free lunch and before shaking hands again the two arranged to meet again in the park to have lunch in the Kursalon the next day.
As Franz left the park the sky began to darken and on his way home he found himself buying a paper bag to cover his painting in case the clouds did not cooperate on his way home. Though the rain held off until he was secreted within his small private studio, a closer inspection of the painting he’d bought made it seem as if the colours had run regardless.
It was a strange effect, for the town centre's buildings remained in the pristine and detailed form that had motivated him to buy the painting, but the centre itself was devoid of life. Yet again, Franz remembered why his new friend probably wouldn’t have been welcome in the academy, for Adolf’s people were ghosts of what should have been portrayed in the scene.
The figures hung on the canvass like silhouettes. They had form, though at first glance they didn’t seem to be there at all. They weren’t smudged, it was just that their bodies seemed to be as much part of the concrete and brickwork as the buildings around them. As if they were incorporated into the very fabric of the scene.
“Neo-classicist?!” Franz snorted to himself.
He had seen these shadow people before.
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The painting is Before The Parachute Opens by Tullio Crali
The original futurist manifesto is rather tiresome and indulgent but it's nonethless important.
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Futurism! \o/
My second favorite modernist art movement makes it's scene. I love it!
If Hitler becomes an avant-garde painter instead of sticking to the boring neo-classical ways like OTL, we might see Red Germany's equivalent of socialist realism (if that ever happens) to be much more refined and with modernist influences than it's counterpart in the USSR.
My second favorite modernist art movement makes it's scene. I love it!
If Hitler becomes an avant-garde painter instead of sticking to the boring neo-classical ways like OTL, we might see Red Germany's equivalent of socialist realism (if that ever happens) to be much more refined and with modernist influences than it's counterpart in the USSR.
Me too!
The politics of futurism, at least in the Italian sense, are unpalatable but it has produced some enjoyable pieces nonetheless.
Hitchens' views will be more "influential" in ITTL's modern day UK but the question of dystopia may be a bit more subjective than you would expect.
A world with Peter Hitchins writing for Action sounds fairly dystopic to me.