Let’s imagine that Hitler rose to power, maybe took everything he took until Poland, but then for whatever reason he didn’t want to attack Poland, France or USSR.
Maybe he though that he should wait a little and in the meanwhile decides it’s not worth it, maybe he was happy with what he has, maybe he meets a more dominant liberal chick and she’s not happy with his behaviour, whatever it is, he just doesn’t attack anyone anymore.
As for the concentration camps, they either don’t happen or they don’t happen at that big of a scale, other countries probably know about them, but don’t really care, just like with the Soviet gulags.
What happens next and how does world look in this alternate history’s 2017?
That’s not Hitler, and not Nazi Germany. Those actions are so far from the actual goals and philosophy of Hitler and his party that I’m not sure if any answer would be more than a wild guess.
He’d d probably be remembered as “Adolf the Great” or something in Germany. A peaceful Nazi Germany wouldn’t end up destroyed. Not to say that it would be a nice place…maybe something like North Korea is now.
Actually, yes. After the camps had done their work, Hitler could have said something along the lines of, “The internal Jewish threat is no more; Germany, I have freed you. Now show the world what you can do!”
The Nazis went on a big building spree. Autobahns and all that. This can help jumpstart an economy, but if too much debt is run up (which they were well on their way to doing), it ends badly.
Germany also had trade issues. They needed food and several natural resources to maintain growth. Oil is an infamous resource they were lacking.
So they made nice with Stalin for a while to secure such things from the USSR in return for German tech and industrial help. Stalin wasn’t going to keep up the swap once the USSR could replicate this internally.
So Hitler would have to perpetually making nice with other countries to strike similar deals. Not exactly his forte.
And throw in the brain drain from fleeing educated people, wary overseas investors, etc. Think in terms of ending up more like East Germany than West Germany.
With few exceptions since Hitler, nobody that the US went to war with had ever attacked anyone. So that does not seen to be a factor. I guess maybe Iraq, which attacked Kuwait, would be one.
One significant difference would be much less lebensraum.
Nazi Germany’s expansion was driven by ultimatums, always supported by the credible threat of force. Even the Anschluss. Certainly Sudetenland (and the rest of Czechoslovakia). Memel.
Apparently, only the Saar peacefully united with the Reich, as it had been part of the German Empire during WWI and had been separated from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles (administered by the League of Nations, but being coal-mined by France).
Agree with iiiandyiii, it would require Hitler not to be Hitler. The entire reason he got into politics in the first place was, in his own words; Providence granted that I might fulfill my life’s task-to raise my German people out of the depths of defeat and to liberate it from the bonds of the most outrageous dictate of all times.
One of the provisos of said outrageous dictate was the creation of the Polish Corridor and Free City of Danzig, described again in his own words as;
*For months we have been suffering under the torture of a problem which the Versailles Diktat created - a problem which has deteriorated until it becomes intolerable for us. Danzig was and is a German city. The Corridor was and is German. *
Imagining a Hitler who, having gone through a Munich but balks at the question of the Polish Corridor is in the realm of alien space bats.
Yes Hitler would have to not be Hitler for this to work, but we are talking hypothetically, he was a crazy man, he might have as well decided to be a pacifist one day for whatever reason, point is that Poland 1939 doesn’t happen and Hitler never attacks anyone else, doesn’t matter how, it just happens like that, so…what about the greater picture?
What would Germany end up looking like today (judging on their economy in the 30’s) or if not today, what about at least somewhere in the 1950’s-1960’s, a few years after Hitler dies of old age or sickness for example?
Since there’s no invasion of USSR, USSR doesn’t take Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary,etc. and communism doesn’t come to those countries, at least right away, so what would happen with these countries, would they be something like Portugal today (by economy and political strength)?
What about EU and NATO, if they wouldn’t exist, what would be some possible organizations that would emerge in this world? Remember, Soviet union doesn’t take eastern Europe, there’s no Warsaw pact, so perhaps NATO doesn’t exist either?
First of all, the reason people seek public office in all countries is in order to acquire the power to bring about what they see as meritorious goals.
Second, it is unlikely anyone sought public office in Germany in order to perpetuate the “diktat” of the post-WWI treaties, which were certainly not to the advantage of Germany or the German people.
…and your point is? Hitler’s entire raison d’etre was the ‘meritous’ goal of ein volk, ein reich, ein fuhrer. Without it he would never have assumed the leadership of the NSDAP let alone chancellorship.
Second, what the hell are you even talking about? You might want to Google this thing called ‘Weimar Germany’.
My fundamental issue with the hypothetical (as I expressed indirectly earlier) is that all of Hitler’s goals required substantial changes in the European status quo – borders, economic relations, population distributions. None of which were advantageous to any of the other intended participants. In other words, Germany needed things that could only be accomplished by (A) a rainbow-unicorn universe in which the entire rest of Europe would roll over when politely asked or (B) violence or the threat thereof. In other words, “Hitler attacking anyone” was absolutely inevitable.
All of that said, let’s pretend somehow we get a Bizarro-universe NSDAP that somehow is as pacifist as Gandhi and only takes whatever its neighbors will give voluntarily, or whose boundaries are no different then its Weimar Republic predecessor.
This alternate history theory isn’t universally accepted among historians, but there is limited evidence that Stalin and Soviet military leadership were thinking about it. Germany’s aggressiveness allowed the Soviets to wait for them to take the lead and, per the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, partition Eastern Europe while sharing the load and remaining besties for all time afterwards (each looking for the opportunity to plant a dagger in the other’s back).
It’s the alt-history conceit of the Command and Conquer: Red Alert game series. That’s not much to recommend it, of course, but it gives you a rough idea. (Other than the idea of Albert Einstein, time-traveling assassin.)
You shouldn’t cite Vladimir Rezun as a source. He was a defector who told his audience whatever stories they wanted to hear. He’s been widely discredited.
North Korea invaded South Korea, North Vietnam invaded the South, the Soviet union invaded Afghanistan, Iraq invaded Kuwait, Afghanistan attacked the US. Yes, the US attacked Iraq but your claim seems dubious. I’m not sure where you’re going with this.
The Pacific War is more my thing, but I suspect that the only way a modified OP would work would be if Hitler died prior to invading Poland. What would the German government look like? What would it do?
North and South Korea were not separate sovereign nations, North and South Vietnam were not separate sovereign nations (both were internal civil conflicts), the USA did not go to war over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, I already acknowledged the exceptional Iraq/Kuwait invasion, Afghanistan did not attack the US.
Where I’m going with this is that the US made formal military invasions on sovereign countries that never invaded anybody. Which is relevant to the discussion about whether an attack on Germany might have occurred, absent any invasion by Hitler on any country, the question raised by the OP.
Sadly, I think war with the USSR was inevitable and in this case, Germany sand Hitler might come out looking the hero. It’s also possible the nazism would have spread to other countries. In fact most other countries including the US had budding nazi parties.