I’ve thought about this scenario from another perspective. I’ll assume that Hitler’s death would have prevented the start of World War II (although I’m not a believer in the Great Men theory of history…I think that the forces that set WWII in motion would have caused a conflict, Hitler or not)…
I think that the world would be a much darker place if Hitler never existed! I’m not trying to be provocative…let me explain…
I believe that the Civil Rights movement in the United States wouldn’t have made as much of an impact without WWII. First off, (correct me if I’m wrong) I believe that WWII was the last war in which much of the US armed forces were segregated. The contradiction of fighting a racist regime while maintaining a discriminatory policy became an albatros around our military neck.
The biggest “Hitler” factor contributing to the rise of “equality” in the US was no doubt the Holocaust. Americans (and people worldwide) were disgusted by his attempted annihilation of selected groups of people. The racism of the Nazi Party was held up as an example of their “evil”. As a roundabout result of this perception, it became utterly unacceptable for any mainstream political group to ever overtly advocate racist values–lest they be compared to the Nazis (George Wallace notwithstanding). Also the realization of what the implications of a racist policy carried through to its logical ends so horrified us, that it caused us to re-examine our own racist values.
Now, I’m not saying the those who bravely fought for Civil Rights in this country did not also advance the cause. Without them, I doubt that we would have made much progress at all. But also, due to the horrors of WWII, society was much more receptive to the views that people like MLK advocated.
In short, by positioning ourselves as “GOOD” against the Nazi “EVIL”, we became locked into then trying to “walk the walk”. The United States has always had an attitude of “moral superiority” (justified or not), but WWII ignited it in a way that still reverberates to this day.
It’s an ill wind that blows no good? Very interesting… I’m not sure I agree entirely, but you’ve raised some questions in my mind, and started me thinking on a path I didn’t realize existed, frinkboy. This could keep me in research for months, and could be cause for a good GD thread…
This seems to me to be more of an ideology than an argument. Hitler was the only high-ranking Nazi sold on the idea of going to war with Poland despite the French and British guarantees of protection. This was in no small part because Hitler had begun to believe his own propaganda machine’s declarations that he was infallible, that he could always gamble and win as he had done in the Saar, the Rhineland, the Sudetenland, and the rest of Czechoslovakia. Or at least this is the thesis, which I find convincing, of Ian Kershaw’s The ‘Hitler Myth’ and Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris. Your preference to believe that “great forces” would have started World War II anyway needs to explain how these “great forces” would have convinced someone of different psychology from Hitler that Germany was ready to beat Poland, France, Britain, and Soviet Russia in 1939.
Let’s have a little sense of perspective here. Yes, your last sentence is correct, I think. World War II was indubitably a huge aid to America’s civil rights movement. Without it, progress toward racial equality would still have occurred, but certainly much more slowly, and arguably some of it would never have occurred at all.
But that means “the world would be a much darker place?” Yes, American segregation was an awful thing; yes, it allowed terrible injustice and oppression. But compared to the slaughter of the Holocaust and a world war that destroyed thousand-year-old cities and killed in excess of 50 million people? The war also sparked communist revolutions around the globe, some of which led to communist governments that endure to this day, under which millions live in poverty and oppression quite comparable to that caused by segregation in America. I’m sorry, but if I could only prevent another Holocaust and Second World War by re-segregating America, I’d do it; there is such a thing as the lesser of two evils.
Honestly, I don’t know enough about the individual psyches of other high ranking Nazis in order to determine who would have had enough hubris to attempt what Hitler did. All I’m saying is that I believe Germany was so crippled in the 1920s that it was very susceptible to a Fascist-Militarist movement, and if Hitler hadn’t ridden that wave, someone else would have. Don’t forget that Fascism was an appealing ideology during that time. And it wasn’t as if Hitler completely deceived his way to the top–he largely gave the people what they wanted. And Germans seemed to be pretty gung-ho over the military campaigns for “lebensraum”. Elsewhere in Europe, the Italians apparently were also hungry for a “fuehrer” of their own. For a time, it seemed as though Fascism might be a viable political option in other countries. So while it might not have played out exactly like “our” WWII, a Hitler-less world would still eventually be faced with a showdown between fascism and liberalism.
You’re right…the way I phrased my post, it does sound as if I’m minimizing the Holocaust & the massive destruction of WWII. I really didn’t mean to. Let me throw out a (overly simplistic) metaphor here to better illustrate my point: A forest fire is a chaotic, destructive event. To be in the midst of one is to be in the middle of a living hell. But after it’s over, the ash returns nutrients to the soil, fertilizing it and allowing new growth to take root.
And what WWII did was burn down cultural and political institutions all across Europe, allowing new ones to eventually take root. Changes that might have taken centuries happened in a matter of years. Racist ideology is now taboo in many parts of Europe (even forbidden by law in Germany) Take a look at the European Union’s unequivocal condemnation of the election of anti-Semite Jorg Haider in Austria. And for that matter…look at the creation of Israel. Would these things have happened in a world without WWII?
Was WWII directly responsible for the communist takeover of Eastern Europe? No argument. Was it directly responsible for “communist revolutions around the globe”? Sounds like another Great Debate to me. Too many other factors account for the “revolutions” of China, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea…I don’t know if we can place the entire blame on Hitler here…
Yes, but in the world you propose the US is still segregated, and Europe has not yet been forced to confront its racist and anti-semetic values. In this world political parties are still free to espouse hateful rhetoric, and the potential for an even more destructive holocaust (esp. with modern weapons!) would always lie beneath the surface.
This has been really cool so far, but I kind of want to encourage the more general responses lately. What I should have said in the OP, rather than try to be clever is, simply, what if WW2, for whatever reason, never happened. Where would we be now? Would our technology be so far along? Would the USSR still be around? What about the social upheavels of the 60s - say, the sexual revolution? Vietnam? Would we have gone to the moon (unlike in real life, where we faked it [I AM KIDDING.])? That’s the sort of thing I’m looking for, which is not to say it hasn’t been interesting anyway.
With or without Hitler, there would have been a European war. World War One and the Treaty of Versailles ensured that Europe would see war again. I think that the scope might have been different though. Perhaps the war would have been centered more on the Italian goals of conquest. In Germany, there would have been a facist movement, but without a truly charismatic leader like Hitler, the Nazi Party could have never consolidated power like they did.
The U.S. would have likely continued to be more wary of the Communists in the Soviet Union than the political developments in continental Europe. In the 1930’s, one of the most popular personalities was Father Charles Edward Coughlin. His weekly radio shows painted facism in an almost rosy light as compared to the communists. According to Coughlin, the communists in Russia and Spain would kill upwards of 20 million Catholics. In addition, the communists were all, according to Coughlin, Jewish. The essence of Coughlin’s radio addresses seemed to be isolationism and anti-semitism. Were it not for Hitler’s rise with the Nazi’s, the United States would have likely continued to accept the hate-filled teachings of Father Coughlin at their word.
I agree totally. The war in the Pacific was also going to happen one way or the other; but once again, it would have developed in a different manner. The U.S. involvement was not a sure thing, and it was very likely that the U.S. would have chosen the lesser of two evils in the Pacific Theater.
I agree, Germany would have been vulnerable to some form of fascism even without Hitler, and as I’ve stated earlier, I believe the Nazis would have retained their hold on power even had Hitler died in 1935. But a fascist Germany does not necessarily mean a recklessly aggressive Germany. Don’t forget the third great fascist dictator of Europe: Francisco Franco. Aside from a token division for Barbarossa, he pursued a benevolent neutrality in foreign affairs, and owing to that wise course, he died in his bed after four decades of tyranny and oppression. I believe much the same thing would have happened in a Germany under Goebbels or Himmler; Goering I’m not so sure about (it’s hard to predict the actions of a morphine addict).
If Germany had avoided a war, there would have been no Holocaust as we know it. The SS would still have murdered some German Jews, but there were fewer than 500,000 Jews in all of Germany, and with the Nuremberg laws many of the potential victims saw which way the wind was blowing and left Germany before things could get any worse.
BTW, I don’t agree with your description of the German people as gung-ho for a lebensraum war, and Hitler simply giving them the war they wanted. Most Germans were absolutely terrified of the prospect of another war; the memories of the last one were too fresh in their minds. They wanted national “redemption” from the “slave treaty” of Versailles, but if at all possible they wanted to do it without fighting. Thus Hitler’s popularity soared after an end was put to war indemnities, after the Saar rejoined the Reich, and after the remilitarization of the Rhineland; one Versailles-imposed humiliation after another was being wiped away, and all without a drop of blood spilled! But all this could be undone if Hitler blundered and Germany stumbled into and lost another war. So if you asked the average German if he wanted to fight another war just so he could go live in Cracow or Kiev, he’d have told you “No way!”
The war was popular after it began, but only because it initially appeared to be such a huge success. Any victorious war is going to be popular; this should not be confused with a pre-war sentiment in favor of military aggression. We saw a similar thing happen in 1990 and 1991 with the Gulf War. During the early phases of Desert Shield, the American public was very concerned about the prospect of a war with Iraq, and a majority opposed military action. Once Desert Storm began, and it swiftly became clear that America was savaging the Iraqi military, a huge opinion shift occurred in favor of the war.
I agree, these things would not have occurred without World War II, or at least would not have happened so quickly.
I admit I’m not positive I’m on solid ground here. Certainly there would have been independence movements against the colonial governments with or without World War II. I do believe that World War II was responsible for so many of these independence movements taking a communist form. World War II caused a huge upsurge in the popularity of communism, because the war was seen as a huge communist triumph. Nazism had portrayed itself as leader of the great anti-Bolshevik crusade, and the horrors of Nazi rule as well as the bloody destruction of the Nazi state discredited anti-communism in general in the eyes of colonial peoples.
It would be foolish to expect all independence movements to be so benign as Gandhi’s in India, but I do think they would have shown less tendency to communism had World War II not been fought.
This, plus the long-standing fear of foriegn corruption of the Japanese social order, and the proud triumph over Russia in 1905, set the Japanese attitude, especially within the military.
This set Japan on a collision course with the US, but the course wasn’t yet set in stone. In 1936, the attempted assasination of the Japanese Prime Minister by garrison troops in Tokio actually had the effect of strengthening the Army’s power in the government by discrediting the violent nationalists. In 1937, chinese soldiers in Peking (Beijing) fired on Japanese troops, causing the moderate prime minister, Prince Konoye, to unleash the army on the rest of China. In 1937, the USS Panay and the oil barges under it’s escort were sunk by Japanese aircraft. This, plus the Rape Of Nanking, changed American foriegn polocy towards Japan, and started the first serious debate in the US about war with Japan.
At this point, the President is ready to take strong action, and has had War-Plan Orange dusted-off and reviewed. War or peace was still Japan’s choice up to this point.
In 1938, FDR defeats the Ludlow amendment, and freezes Japanese assets (This before French Indo-China was siezed!), while American public sentiment begins to harden towards Japan. American attitude was very strongly against appeasment in asia. America had a bad taste in it’s mouth from what had happened in europe, and was in no mind to do the same thing. It is at this point, with Japan and the US firmly on a collision course, the Hitler finally makes his appearance on the asian scene, expressing “support” for Japan. Japan wouldn’t join the Axis powers for almost two more years. Also in the year 1938, the Japanese pass the General Mobilization Law, the “Chinese Lobby” becomes prominant in Washington, D.C., and the Chiangs are mad “Man And Wife Of The Year” by Time Magazine. This is also the year the AVG (Flying Tigers) commence establishing a mercenary combat aviation group in china the the collusion of the US Gov’t. At this point, war between the US and Japan appears inevitable, unless Japan chose to humiliate itself by backing down. The Japanese, nationalistic to a very high degree, had beat the Russians, beat the Manchurians, and were beating the Chinese. There was no way the Japanese, flush with pride and success, were going to back down, but they would temporize while making other plans.
As for the Communists in China, well, it was the war against the Japanese that permitted that to happen. Mao was essentially nothing more than a moderately sucessful bandit-lord before the war, but the disruption of the war allowed him to build a large military force, which he used in sometime concert with Chaing against the Japanese. After the Japanese were defeated, Mao turned his hand towards ruling China, and after a rough start, succeded.