An alternative Hitler?

Great Debates
1

I just finished reading a fascinating book in French about Hitler called “La Part de l’Autre”. It is by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt (don’t let the name fool you, he is a Frenchman and a thoroughly fascinating French author). I sincerely hope they will translate it into English because it is really worth reading.

Without ruining the book for you, I can briefly tell you that it is a sort of semi-factual, semi-fictional novel about the way the REAL Adolph Hitler turned out, mixed in with an “alternative scenario” of how he could have turned out if influences in his life had been different.

Which opens up a whole debate about what the 20th century would have been like without Hitler, or more precisely, if he had gone on to become an artist and a decent human being instead of a monster.

The book begins on October 8, 1908, when he was rejected at the Vienna art academy for the second time. The author records how bitter he was and how convinced he was that the world was full of fools who did not recognize his greatness.

But then the next couple of pages give you another version in which he IS accepted at the academy.

From that point on in the book, every alternate few pages is about the real, evil, Adolph Hitler, or about “Adolph H.”, the alternative, “good” Hitler. Each passage about the bad Hitler is based on what did happen in history, right up to his suicide in the bunker in 1945. But the unfolding story of the good Hitler has him going to see a Viennese psychiatrist named Sigmund Freud, working out his hatred against his drunken, violent father, learning to have normal, loving sexual relations with women, etc.

Of course the “good” Hitler never goes into politics. But the author assumes that Germany is ruled by a conservative, but not fascist, government. By the late 30s, they go to war, but only to force Poland to give them back the German-populated areas of eastern Germany that were taken from them by the treaty of Versailles.

France, England and the US stay out of it, and after a few months of war, Poland gives back the territories and the whole thing is over with less than 10,000 dead.

In the good Hitler scenario, Germany never becomes heavily ant-semitic, and people like Einstein and Freud as well as scores of scientists who feld to America because of the REAL Hitler remain in Germany, which by the 1970s is the world’s most advanced and richest country.

Communism collapses in Russia by the 1960s because of its inefficiency and lack of freedom.

There is no Middle East conflict because although there is a blossoming of Hebrew culture in Palestine under the influence of Zionism, there is no Holcaust and Jews tend to move to Germany, the US, Canada and other western countries, but not enough move to the Middle East to create a state.

So what do you dopers think of this author’s ideas? I guess this is a real nurture vs. nature debate!

2

Sounds potentially interesting, but its not very clear how plausible an alternate history the author has constructed. How did Germany recover from the hyperinflationalry period? Where’s Stalin in all this? Does the Soviet Union make no attempt to expand into German territory? How does the book handle Japanese expansionism? Do the US and Soviet Union develop nuclear weapons? Sorry for the barrage of questions, but there are many things to consider if one is rewriting all of mid-twentieth century history in this way.

I’ll just mention that persons interested in alternate Hitler bios should consider locating a copy of Norman Spinrad’s novel The Iron Dream. Now out of print, it takes the fairly interesting approach that Hitler moved to the USA and became a science fiction writer; much of the book in fact consists of passages from a Hitler-penned “novel”.

3

The hyperinflation crisis contributed to the Nazi rise to power by lowering confidence in the government. But the pre-Nazi government did in fact solve the crisis - the Nazis didn’t control the government until years later.

Stalin probably never would have made a move into Eastern Europe. Ultimately, he was a coward who never took an unnecessary risk.

Without the threat of a Nazi or Soviet menace in Europe, the United States and the colonial powers would not have been distracted from addressing any Japanese attempts at expansion. If Japan had tried to conquer foreign territory, it would have been quickly stepped upon.

Nuclear weapons is an interesting issue. Developing them was a huge investment. On the one hand, absent a war, there would have been more resources available. But on the other hand, absent a war or military threat, there probably wouldn’t have been enough incentive.