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Let's say in the late 1920s the Nazi party suffers a bunch of irrevocable set backs, maybe Hitler gets shot by an assassin, or maybe the government suppressed them more effectively, basically, they don't take power and remain a right-wing fringe group which could get 5-10% of the votes.

let's say Weimar collapses but a military man, let's say someone younger, an officer who started lower on the command chain but rose to general's rank during the Great War (a more political savvy Lettow-Vorbeck?) takes over as a right-wing nationalist from the ailing Hindenburg. His party temporarily commands a majority in the Reichstag, after taking power, he passes enabling act analogue and cements himself as an ex-military but civilian dictator of Germany.

Let's say Lettow-Vorbeck more or less passes the same economic agenda of deficit spending as Hitler to keep up his popularity at home, and he turns his sights abroad and tries to establish a German hegemony in Europe, but he does not have any dreams of Lebascraum but merely wants a second Brest-Litvosk with Russia in the east, and the destruction of France as a great power in the west and every country west of rump Russia either under German occupation or a government firmly under the thumb of Germany.

How far does he get? Keep in mind that Hitler won a lot of gambles (Rhineland, Sudentenland etc) that a more "rational" leader would not have taken. Does a more rational German leadership successfully establish a German Europe?
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