I have to say that this whole 'but he wouldn't be X' business is pretty silly.As you say,he's a madman.Who can actually tell for real how a madman would actually think?Then he wouldn't have been Hitler.
This is one of the great truisms about Hitler. He was obsessed with the elimination of the Jews, Slavs and "Bolsheviks" (which he tended to see as one in the same) from Europe lest their continued presence contaminate the German people. The man was almost certainly insane, and was certainly willing to do whatever it took to achieve his goals.
What you are suggesting makes sense. So does harnessing the good will of the Ukrainian people who literally welcomed the Heer with flowers, seeing them as liberators. Instead Hitler had his Einsatzgruppen burn Ukrainian villages and slaughter Jews as the went.
A madman is a madman. Hitler was a madman.
I have to say that this whole 'but he wouldn't be X' business is pretty silly.As you say,he's a madman.Who can actually tell for real how a madman would actually think?
how does he feed them?How many resources could this save?Would that have a big effect in the war?
The very definition of a madman involves that person to be erratic.If you accept that he's insane,then you have to accept that you simply can't read his thought patterns with accuracy like you think you can right now.In this case, there's no shortage of information about what Hitler said and did, which does give some insight into what he thought. You'd have to change his core beliefs (maybe possible with a 1910s POD) to overcome his innate inflexibility, and then... well, he's not Hitler. Or not the one we know, anyway.
In this case, there's no shortage of information about what Hitler said and did, which does give some insight into what he thought.
I think you need to factor in the mistake of declaring war on the United States as well. This seals his fate in a long drawn out war. Say all you want about Germany still able to produce war materials using the slave labor of Jews and Slavs, at some point the constant Allied bombing from the air will take a toll they cannot and were not able to carry on with their war industry.The Germans choke after the invading the USSR because between the loss of imports, the British blockade, and their own kleptomatic policies all decimating the European economies they'd lack the food to feed everyone. The death camps served a disturbingly practical purpose as the Reich faced very real food crisis after 1942 which could have crippled it had it not settled on the solution of killing large numbers of conquered peoples. The extermination of the Polish Jewry for example was not just an ideological insanity - it also had the practical effect of freeing up large amounts of food for the German war machine, which would have otherwise been faced with famine. The brutality of the Nazi policies often hides the threadbare shoestring Germany waged WWII on. Germany was in terrible economic shape at the start of the war and carried it through only by exporting much of the hardships onto its victims. Had Germany actually tried to feed all its conquered citizens, it would have collapsed years earlier.
I don't think CalBear meant "madman" in the clinical sense of a drooling lunatic in a straight jacket suffering from psychosis but that Hitler's worldview and his ideological goal of killing all Jews, Roma and most of the Slavs were crazy/extreme.I have to say that this whole 'but he wouldn't be X' business is pretty silly.As you say,he's a madman.Who can actually tell for real how a madman would actually think?
Hitler was mad as a hatter, but he was anything but disorganized. Hitler was driver by his obsessions (actually most people are, to some degree, but Hitler was hyperfocused). If something removed that focus, that obsession, the likelihood is that Hitler never reaches power. The same things that destroyed him were the things that led him to power, that gathered his nasty herd of minions to the Nazi standard, and that gave him the push to throw the dice time after time.I have to say that this whole 'but he wouldn't be X' business is pretty silly.As you say,he's a madman.Who can actually tell for real how a madman would actually think?
I think you need to factor in the mistake of declaring war on the United States as well. This seals his fate in a long drawn out war. Say all you want about Germany still able to produce war materials using the slave labor of Jews and Slavs, at some point the constant Allied bombing from the air will take a toll they cannot and were not able to carry on with their war industry.
The US, across an ocean, was in position to expand even more so at any time their industrial might should the war effort need it. Add to that, once Germany declared war on the United States, two days after the US declared war on Japan, both FDR and Churchill agreed that Germany would come first and Japan second in their efforts to win the global war.
from Wannsee conference of 1941
And since that "annoying little Austrian" screamed about the Destruction of Jews, Reinhard Heydrich took this literal as a order to do...
I think you need to factor in the mistake of declaring war on the United States as well. This seals his fate in a long drawn out war.
What about a "standard" Fascist Germany (read: something akin to a more competent Fascist Italy in terms of nastiness)?Then he wouldn't have been Hitler.
This is one of the great truisms about Hitler. He was obsessed with the elimination of the Jews, Slavs and "Bolsheviks" (which he tended to see as one in the same) from Europe lest their continued presence contaminate the German people. The man was almost certainly insane, and was certainly willing to do whatever it took to achieve his goals.
What you are suggesting makes sense. So does harnessing the good will of the Ukrainian people who literally welcomed the Heer with flowers, seeing them as liberators. Instead Hitler had his Einsatzgruppen burn Ukrainian villages and slaughter Jews as the went.
A madman is a madman. Hitler was a madman.
I have to say that this whole 'but he wouldn't be X' business is pretty silly.As you say,he's a madman.Who can actually tell for real how a madman would actually think?