What if: a better Hitler?

ghappy1000

What if Hitler was a very good person?
Say, for example, he became a kind, honest and devoutly religious priest who founded a charity for the poor?
 

Sharunaku

ghappy1000 said:
What if Hitler was a very good person?
Say, for example, he became a kind, honest and devoutly religious priest who founded a charity for the poor?
Click to expand...

I think you need a clearer description and a PoD, else you are just pointing at some random Austrian man born around his time. Or do you mean what if (effectively) no Hitler?
 

August Akuma

ghappy1000 said:
What if Hitler was a very good person?
Say, for example, he became a kind, honest and devoutly religious priest who founded a charity for the poor?
Click to expand...

You need a reason why. Hitler had no inclination to become a priest in OTL. He would need a completely different upbringing, and at that point, it isn't Adolf Hitler. It is somebody who looks like Hitler.
 

Danth

If you mean after he comes to power?
Well bye bye Nazi's iff it doesnt go to war it cant become popular
 

Mark E.

It's not that far fetched. Suppose Hitler rises to power in 1933. Then he dies, leaving the Nazis in power before he can install the SS. Keep in mind that anti-Semitism was not confined to Germany. Henry Ford was extremely anti-Semitic but he did not order anyone killed, so we prefer to remember him for his prowess to market cars.

So, the Germans build a military-industrial complex but what aggression happens will not be the war we remember. If a fiction author, circa 1933, wrote a story about that described the Holocaust as it happened, the book would be banned and the author's sanity would be questioned. They didn't treat insane people very well in those years.

Hitler is dead long before any war unfolds and he is remembered as the hero who rescued the German economy.
 

ghappy1000

August Akuma said:
You need a reason why. Hitler had no inclination to become a priest in OTL. He would need a completely different upbringing, and at that point, it isn't Adolf Hitler. It is somebody who looks like Hitler.
Click to expand...
Yes, for this to be possible, his life would have to be changed before sometime around 1905, definitely before 1918, history would have to be changed.
 

Opunium

Hitler turns blind after the mustard gas attack that only wounded him OTL? He could become the leader of some German WW1 veterans organisation, write a book (Mein Kampf, but literally as the title says 'his battle') that becomes an instant bestseller and live, even tough he is blind, a happy retirement.
 
Sanderford

Sanderford

ghappy1000 said:
What if Hitler was a very good person?
Say, for example, he became a kind, honest and devoutly religious priest who founded a charity for the poor?
Click to expand...

Germany still fights and loses the First World War, but maybe the Communists end up in power? Father Hitler is shot for counterrevolutionary activities, and is remembered fondly by historians as a symbol of defiance against injustices and Red oppression.

Wow. That felt odd just to type.
 

MerryPrankster

ghappy1000 said:
What if Hitler was a very good person?
Say, for example, he became a kind, honest and devoutly religious priest who founded a charity for the poor?
Click to expand...

He probably wouldn't become Chancellor or get political power unless under very strange circumstances.

(I wrote a timeline where his WWI experience prompts him to return to his childhood Catholicism and he enters the priesthood, leaving it only to run as the candidate of the Catholic Center Party against Strasserite Nazis.)
 

Willmatron

Have someone else replace Stalin. Maybe more unstable and have Hitler demand that the USSR return to it's Christian roots. This prompts a war and Hitler is seen as a defender of Christianity.
 

Mark E.

Willmatron said:
Have someone else replace Stalin. Maybe more unstable and have Hitler demand that the USSR return to it's Christian roots. This prompts a war and Hitler is seen as a defender of Christianity.
Click to expand...

Hitler's ultimate goal was to conquer Russia and execute Jews, not exactly sensible military strategy. He could not be a "Christian liberator" because he wanted to crush Russia completely. In such a case, we might imagine an even more extensive Holocaust.

Once Hitler became chancellor, the best hope for Germany was for him to die soon, real soon. The remaining leadership can build a strong economy that makes Germany a technological power, without World War II as we know it. Hitler could be remembered as the hero who put Germany on track. Of course, Mein Kampf would have been abridged to tone down the anti-Semitism, as it was in foreign translations in the thirties.
 
LHB

LHB

Mark E. said:
Of course, Mein Kampf would have been abridged to tone down the anti-Semitism, as it was in foreign translations in the thirties.
Click to expand...

Why would it be? Anti-Semitism didn't really become the wholly unacceptable in polite or questionable company thing that it is today until the Holocaust and the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. OTL the day the Allies liberated Auschwitz it was page 3 news in the New York Times; without Hitler and his death camps you might not get the collective gasp of horror that came at the end of the war and the subsequent backlash against ethnic and race-based bigotry in all its forms that helped feed the Civil Rights movement.
 

Mark E.

LHB said:
Why would it be? Anti-Semitism didn't really become the wholly unacceptable in polite or questionable company thing that it is today until the Holocaust and the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. OTL the day the Allies liberated Auschwitz it was page 3 news in the New York Times; without Hitler and his death camps you might not get the collective gasp of horror that came at the end of the war and the subsequent backlash against ethnic and race-based bigotry in all its forms that helped feed the Civil Rights movement.
Click to expand...

The first English language translation of Mein Kampf actually was abridged for the more diverse Anglophile market. The horrors of the Holocaust created sympathy for the Jews that helped create Israel, but Jim Crow segregation was entrenched in the Deep South to the extent that few would dare challenge it.

The civil rights movement happened in the when it did because suburban growth denied people participation in American life, on account of race, to an unprecedented extent. Television served as a daily reminder, as sponsors filled stage sets with the newest and greatest appliances and furniture.

In an ATL with no second world war, when growth in consumer technology dominates the early forties, racial inequality would likely become more intolerable even sooner.
 
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