Hitler's Alternate Universe

[iiandyiiii]

@Gack

To the best of my knowledge.

Created. I await your answers.

[Dissonance]

@Gack

I also came up with a series of videos by David Irving, who spent 10 years researching his book on Hitler, and interviewed many people who knew him personally. Many of Hitler’s staff we alive when Irving did he research, and as he had already written his first book on the bombing of Dresden they were willing to talk to him, he gives his account here …

You mean David Irving, known holocaust denier and liar?

Note: the Irving vid was made when he still believed the holocaust narrative.

Why gee, I guess you do. The “holocaust narrative?”:rolleyes:

@Gack

The Nazis in no way ‘started’ WW II. They started a regional conflict with Poland to regain territory that they had lost in WW I. The Brits and French had set up a trip wire, and treaty with Poland, that enabled them to start the world war by declaring war on Germany.

Now where have I heard this absurd tripe that poor innocent Hitler didn’t start WW2, Churchill and the British did? Oh yeah, Pat Buchanan. Seriously, just go back to Stormfront.

[Little_Nemo]

@Gack

I don’t think you have a proper appreciation for the extent to which the British Empire ruled the world in 1900. Knuth says they controlled 25% of the world’s land mass, as well as most of the seas. Another good book is Engdahl’s Century of War which lays out in more detail the geopolitics, particularly relating to oil, that made Britain’s suppression of Germany inevitable.

Was there a world war in 1900? I must have missed that.

If, as you claim, it’s England that starts world wars, then you would think there would have been a war in 1900 when England was stronger than Germany. But for some reason no world wars happened until England was weaker and Germany was stronger. It’s almost as if Germany was the aggressor.

[Kobal2]

@Human_Action

Unless the bigger picture is that Germany didn’t invade Poland, it’s got nothing to do with whether Germany started the war, because that’s what started the war.

Well, I’m biased in this (being French myself), but IMO it’s the invasion of France that really did it.
Sure, we (and England) declared war on Germany over the conquest of Poland, as per treaty obligations… but they don’t call it the Phoney War for nothing. Despite most of Germany’s military forces being tied up in the east, we didn’t move, didn’t bomb the Ruhr, didn’t pour through Belgium either. The truth is, we didn’t really give much of a hoot for Poland, not as such. Or at least, not enough that we dared risk WW2.

Then the Germans figured, what the hell, let’s get this show on the road.

[Human_Action]

@Kobal2

Well, I’m biased in this (being French myself), but IMO it’s the invasion of France that really did it.
Sure, we (and England) declared war on Germany over the conquest of Poland, as per treaty obligations… but they don’t call it the Phoney War for nothing. Despite most of Germany’s military forces being tied up in the east, we didn’t move, didn’t bomb the Ruhr, didn’t pour through Belgium either. The truth is, we didn’t really give much of a hoot for Poland, not as such. Or at least, not enough that we dared risk WW2.

Then the Germans figured, what the hell, let’s get this show on the road.

I can understand that reasoning, but Germany wouldn’t have invaded France if they hadn’t declared war on Germany, which was the result of the invasion of Poland. So, yes, the world war existed only on paper between October of 1939 and April of 1940 (though Denmark and Norway were also invaded during this period), but it was nonetheless a world war.

[Martin_Hyde]

Some would argue the Japanese started WWII with their invasion of China–I wouldn’t because I view that war as separate and it did not lead to a global conflict even though it predated said global conflict and eventually became a part of said global conflict.

It’s unfortunate this topic is locked in with the inanity of holocaust denial and Nazi apologism, because there is an interesting underlying topic.

I do think the nature of Versailles contributed heavily to WWII and what lead the Germans to want to follow Hitler. Hitler’s broad appeal, as far as I can tell, was his strong nationalist rhetoric. The stuff about Jews and various other ideologies of his (some of which skirted with socialism in the 20s and early 30s) appealed to some people as well for sure, but I think a lot of people bought into Nazism in Germany because they viewed Weimar Germany as a failure and felt someone like a Hitler could put Germany back to where it had been–the pre-eminent economic and military power of continental Europe.

Bismarck recognized you could “take too much” in war, such that your takings might result in an alliance being arrayed against you due to your upsetting the balance of power or you might take something from a vanquished foe that they will never accept losing.

Bismarck stepped into that mistake himself when he took Alsace-Lorraine. I’ve read some historians who believe German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in fact set all the wheels in motion that lead to the powder keg situation of 1914 which was then able to explode into WWI over almost any minor conflict.

I think seizing German industrial output, the occupation of the Ruhr, and taking lands in East Prussia that had been connected in some form to either Germany or at least a Kingdom seen as part of Greater Germany (Prussia) since the 17th century created a situation politically within Germany that made strong nationalist politicians like Hitler very appealing. I’m not necessarily saying Germany should not have lost territory after WWI, but I am saying that I think Bismarck had a point. You have to recognize taking too much can have consequences.

If the Allies wanted to take as much as they did from Germany, they probably should have established some form of long term, formal occupation (not just of the Ruhr in response to failure to pay reparations.) Because to get Germany and Germans to accept the losses of WWI–when their homeland was never actually successfully invaded (thus giving rise to the mythological “knife in the back” concept) I think you would have had to have imposed a post-WWII style military occupation of Germany. Taking that stuff and then basically leaving Germany to rebuild its industry and military (which is what the Allies basically did) was just guaranteeing future wars with Germany, much as Bismarck annexing Alsace-Lorraine guaranteed a future war with France.

[Great_Antibob]

@Martin_Hyde

It’s unfortunate this topic is locked in with the inanity of holocaust denial and Nazi apologism, because there is an interesting underlying topic.

If there was an interesting underlying topic, the OP did a poor job of posing it. The idea that Hitler was a political, economic, and military genius (in the first post, no less) isn’t going to lead to any substantial discussion of German politics in the 1920s and 1930s, by mere fact that it’s ridiculous almost on its face.

[Martin_Hyde]

@Great_Antibob

If there was an interesting underlying topic, the OP did a poor job of posing it. The idea that Hitler was a political, economic, and military genius (in the first post, no less) isn’t going to lead to any substantial discussion of German politics in the 1920s and 1930s, by mere fact that it’s ridiculous almost on its face.

Economic and military we can dismiss out of hand. But political, well I won’t get hung up on genius, but in the context of how Weimar politics worked and where Hitler started from and where he ended up it is very hard to say he was not an extremely effective political operator. That much I think would be hard to argue with. I won’t say that makes him a “political genius”, but he had the right mix of stuff to attract the people he needed to do things that were necessary for success in Weimar Germany.

As history shows, a group like the SA or “political muscle” was necessary. Many of the more moderate factions had no such muscle and that eventually became important in pivotal elections. The Communists in Weimar Germany had some muscle, but they ended up being outnumbered and outgunned since the Nazis started to get money from wealthy industrialists who were still at the time associated with more old line German conservative parties but viewed the Nazis as effective “rabble” to use against the Communists.

Additionally Hitler (Shirer’s book goes into this in decent detail) correctly realized after the Beer Hall Putsch one of the keys he’d need for taking power was to construct almost a shadow Nazi party organization mimicking the various organs of the State, so that when he took over he could overlay and commingle the party leadership with the State leadership.

Hitler didn’t seize power through a military coup or junta where a general makes the right move at the right time and gets lucky. He did it through a long process of deception, fear mongering and old school machine style politics and political skullduggery. It was not done without any skill at all or it wouldn’t have gotten done.

[Bridget_Burke]

@silenus

The absolute crushing of the Nazi regime and the isolation of their ideas to the very fringe of human thought makes it all worth it.

Alas, there are still some scavengers who find that fringe tempting. Most sane people find them disgusting…

[jsutter]

@Martin_Hyde

Economic and military we can dismiss out of hand. But political, well I won’t get hung up on genius, but …

Hitler didn’t seize power through a military coup or junta where a general makes the right move at the right time and gets lucky. He did it through a long process of deception, fear mongering and old school machine style politics and political skullduggery. It was not done without any skill at all or it wouldn’t have gotten done.

Thank you, Martin.

Aloha

[casdave]

If Hitler was not intent on starting war, then why did he publish his desire for Germany to gain ‘Lebensraum’ in the East long before he actually got into power?

Can you imagine any way this objective could have been achieved except through military means?

You see, the alliance with Poland by France and Britain, specifically against Germany was heavily driven by Hitler’s previously stated intention to invade lands to the east of Germany.

Whilst we examine the murder of Jews, we also must include the 10s of millions of murders of Polish, Ukrainians, Russians, Byelorussia etc. These murders were organised in much the same way as those of Jews, except the scale was even greater - over 10% of their populations were murdered.

Not one of those murders would have occurred had Hitler never invaded those nations. These murders were not accidental, or by-products of the military campaign, these murders were a structural part of Hitler’s previously stated manifesto which had been published long before the start of war.

The war Hitler began was exactly in order to meet those manifesto commitments - he wanted to murder those people - to eliminate them entirely, this is what he was about.

No other nation has stated such a proposition before and no other nation has so completely committed itself to such atrocities on such a scale, though I will cede that others have made their own attempts.

[mlees]

@casdave

If Hitler was not intent on starting war, then why did he publish his desire for Germany to gain ‘Lebensraum’ in the East long before he actually got into power?

Can you imagine any way this objective could have been achieved except through military means?

I cannot.

Fortunately for “the good guys”, Hitler was not entirely successful enough in convincing Great Britain and France that he would be a useful ally against Communism.

Hitler had been antaganistic towards France, the UK, and the US about the Treaty of Versailles, the role Germany had in the outbreak of WW1, and the economic depressions of 1923 and 1930.

Hitler’s beliefs about race and nationalism, I presume, prevented him from seriously seeking to build an international alliance against the USSR. Also, form his point of view, democracy’s are inherently weak and fickle, anyway.

[jsutter]

@Great_Antibob

If there was an interesting underlying topic, the OP did a poor job of posing it.

Previously stipulated.

The idea that Hitler was a political, economic, and military genius (in the first post, no less) isn’t going to lead to any substantial discussion of German politics in the 1920s and 1930s, by mere fact that it’s ridiculous almost on its face.

Ditto

Aloha

[BrainGlutton]

@Gack

Hitler never wanted war with the west, he was forced into it.

Hitler certainly wanted war with the East, now, and the West, later. A good source here is Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties, by Paul Johnson. Chapter 10, “The End of Old Europe”:

[The] ruling caste hated the West with a passionate loathing, both for its liberal ideas and for the gross materialism and lack of spirituality which (in their view) those ideas embodied. They wanted to keep Germany “pure” of the West, and this was one motive for their plans to resume the medieval conquest and settlement of the East, carving out a continental empire for Germany which would make her independent of the Anglo-Saxon world system. These Easterners drew a fundamental distinction between “civilization,” which they defined as rootless, cosmopolitan, immoral, un-German, Western, materialistic and racially defiled; and “culture,” which was pure, national, German, spiritual and authentic. Civilization pulled Germany to the West, culture to the East. The real Germany was not part of an international civilization but a national race-culture of its own. When Germany responded to the pull of the West, it met disaster; when it pursued its destiny in the East, it fulfilled itself.

<snip>

Hitler’s aims can be reconstructed not merely from Mein Kampf itself, with its stress on the ‘East Policy,’ but from his early speeches and so-called ‘Second’ or Secret Book of 1928. This material makes it clear that the ‘cleansing’ process – the elimination of the Jews – was essential to the whole long-term strategy. Being a race-socialist as opposed to a class-socialist, Hitler believed the dynamic of history was race. The dynamic was interrupted when race-poisoning took place. The poison came, above all, from the Jews. He admired the Jews as ‘negative supermen’. In his Table-Talk he said that if 5,000 Jews emigrated to Sweden, in no time at all they would occupy all the key positions: this was because ‘blood purity’, as he put it in Mein Kampf, ‘is a thing the Jew preserves better than any other people on earth’. The Germans, on the other hand, were poisoned. That was why they lost the First World War. Even he was poisoned: that was why he sometimes made mistakes – ‘all of us suffer from the sickness of mixed, corrupt blood’. Race-poisoning was a comparatively common obsession in the time of Hitler’s youth, rather as ecological poisoning became an obsession of many in the 1970s and 1980s. The notion of ubiquitous poisoning appealed strongly to the same type of person who accepted conspiracy theories as the machinery of public events. As with the later ecologists, they thought the race-poison was spreading fast, that total disaster was iminent, and that it would take a long time to reverse even if the right policies were adopted promptly. Hitler calculated it would take a hundred years for his regime to eliminate racial poisoning in Germany: on the other hand, if Germany became the first nation-race to do so successfully, it would inevitably become ‘lord of the Earth’. (Mein Kampf.)

What distinguished Hitlerian race-theory was, first, this rooted belief that ‘cleansing’ could make Germany the first true superpower, and ultimately the first paramount power in the world; and, secondly, his absolute conviction that the ‘Jewish race-poison’ and Bolshevism were one and the same phenomenon. In 1928, when he wrote his Second Book, he did not appreciate that old-style ‘Jewish’ Bolshevism had ceased to exist and that Stalin’s Russia was in essentials as anti-Semitic as Tsardom had been. On the contrary, he believed the Soviet Union was a Jewish cultural phenomenon. Hence the object of his policy was to combat ‘an inundation of diseased bacilli which at the moment have their breeding-ground in Russia’. Thus the ‘cleansing’ fit in perfectly with the resumption of traditional German East policy, but on a far more ambitious scale.

Hitler’s full programme, therefore, was as follows. First, gain control of Germany itself, and begin the cleansing process at home. Second, destroy the Versailles settlement and establish Germany as the dominant power in Central Europe. All this could be accomplished without war. Third, on this power basis, destroy the Soviet Union (by war) to rid the ‘breeding-ground’ of the ‘bacillus’ and, by colonization, create a solid economic and strategic power base from which to establish a continental empire, in which France and Italy would be mere satellites. In the fourth stage Germany would acquire a large colonial empire in Africa, plus a big ocean navy, to make her one of the four superpowers, in addition to Britain, Japan and the United States. Finally, in the generation after his death, Hitler envisaged a decisive struggle between Germany and the United States for world domination.

No one since Napoleon had thought in such audacious terms. In its gigantic scope the concept was Alexandrine. Yet until he was engulfed by the war he made, Hitler was always pragmatic. Like Lenin he was a superb opportunist, always ready to seize openings and modify his theory accordingly. This has led some historians to conclude he had no master-programme. In fact, while always adjusting the tactics to suit the moment, he pursued his long-term strategy with a brutal determination that has seldom been equalled in the history of human ambition. Unlike most tyrants, he was never tempted to relax by a surfeit of autocratic power. Quite the contrary. He was always raising the stakes on the table and seeking to hasten the pace of history. He feared his revolution would lose its dynamism. He thought himself indispensable, and at least four of his phases must be accomplished while he was not only still alive but at the height of his powers. It was this impatience which made him so dangerous in the short term and so ineffectual in the long term (the very reverse of the Soviet strategists). In a secret speech to German newspaper editors in November 1938, after his great Munich triumph, he deplored the fact that his need to talk about peace had led the German nation to relax too much. He argued that for Germany to accept peace, and thus stability, as a permanent fact of international life was to accept the very spirit of defeatism. Violence was a necessity, and the public must be prepared for it.

Chapter 11, “The Watershed Years”:
[/QUOTE]

Hitler’s ultimate aim was to create a German Volk of 250 million. He said that he proposed settling 100 million Germans on the great plains to the west of the Urals. In 1941 he envisaged that over the next decade the first 20 million would move east. Though he saw the colonization process clearly, he was vague on where the settlers were to come from. Those eligible and willing to settle, the Volksdeutsche from south-east Europe, numbered only 5 million, perhaps 8 milllion at most. His colleage Alfred Rosenberg considered the idea of ‘drafting’ Scandinavian, Dutch, and English settlers, being racially approximate to Germans, when the war was won. Some aspects of this great population transfer, to be the most formidable and decisive in history, were determined in meticulous detail. There was to be polygamy and a free choice of women for servicemen with decorations. The Crimea, after being ‘cleansed’ of Slavs and Jews, was to be turned into a gigantic German spa under its old Greek name of Tauria, populated by a mass transfer of peasants from the South Tyrol. Over vast areas of the Ukraine and south European Russia, a new Volk civilization was planned. As Hitler described it:

The area must lose the character of the Asiatic steppe. It must be Europeanized! . . . The ‘Reich peasant’ is to live in outstandingly beautiful settlements. The German agencies and authorities are to have wonderful buildings, the governors palaces. Around each city, a ring of lovely villages will be placed to within 30 or 40 kilometers . . . . That is why we are now building the large traffic arteries on the southern tip of the Crimea, out to the Caucasus mountains. Around these traffic strands, the German cities will be placed, like pearls on a string, and around the cities the German settlements will lie. For we will not open up Lebensraum for ourselves by entering the old, godforsaken Russian holes! The German settlements must be on an altogether higher level!

As Hitler’s vision expanded, in the heady days of 1941, it came to embrace all Europe. Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the whole of France north of the Somme were to be incorporated in a Greater Germany, the names of the cities being changed – Nancy would become Nanzig, Besancon Bisanz. Trondheim would become a major German city and naval base of 250,000 inhabitants. The Alps would be the boundary between ‘the German Empire of the North,’ with a new ‘Germania’ as its capital, and ‘the Roman Empire of the South’. The Pope would be hanged in full pontificals in St. Peter’s Square. Strasbourg Cathedral would be turned into a giant ‘Monument to the Unknown Soldier’. New crops, such a perennial rye, would be invented. He would forbid smoking, make vegetarianism compulsory, ‘revive the Cimbrian art of knitting’, appoint a ‘Special Commissioner for the Care of Dogs’ and an ‘Assistant Secretary for Defence Against Gnats and Insects’.’

[jsutter]

@brainglutton

hitler certainly wanted war with the east, now, and the west, later. A good source here is modern times: The world from the twenties to the nineties, by paul johnson. Chapter 10, “the end of old europe”:

Chapter 11, “the watershed years”:

Stipulated.

Aloha

[BrainGlutton]

See here regarding the Greater Germanic Reich that Hitler hoped to create.

[jsutter]

@BrainGlutton

See here regarding the Greater Germanic Reich that Hitler hoped to create.

Excellent.

Aloha

[cytherian]

IMHO, the real might of Germany during WWII was the people under Hitler’s control. The scientists and problem solvers in their society were absolutely genius.

Hitler was a megalomaniac and I believe partially insane. He was super clever and knew how to manipulate people. With the luck of having some truly brilliant people among the German citizenry, he was able to inspire the creation of a war machine that conquered most of Europe. On his own, Hitler was no genius. In fact, he made NUMEROUS MISTAKES.

What’s really most remarkable, is that if Hitler had been half the tyrannical maniac he was, Germany would have not fallen. As much as I hate to say it, Hitler’s impatience is what did the whole Nazi regime in. Had Hitler kept his alliance with Stalin and not kept military missions going against England, Germany would have annexed France. And last BUT NOT LEAST, if Hitler had made half-way humane work camps instead of extermination camps, the Nazi regime wouldn’t have had war crimes on its hands. There would be nothing for them to hide. And what probably would have happened is that they would have sterilized all of the women so they couldn’t procreate, and ultimately have committed extinction instead of extermination. Just as bad, but much less obvious while being done. And man oh man, it’s scary to think of how successful they might have been at it.

The USA did not want to enter WWII. It was Germany’s perpetual attacks against England that helped fuel the cause for the USA, softening it for the trigger that was Pearl Harbor. So, if Germany didn’t cross the channel to bother England, the English probably would have left Germany alone with the French acquisition. Germany would have also had more time to finish developing its technologies.

Germany had developed the jet aircraft which made it into service too late in the war to be effective enough. Also, the German scientists who had been working on the atomic bomb wouldn’t have left for the USA. Germany would have developed the atomic bomb and… the hairs on the back of my neck go up thinking about it, but Germany would very likely have dominated a significant portion of the world, eventually forcing the USA into a financial corner it would not be able to escape.

[Gack]

@BrainGlutton

Hitler certainly wanted war with the East, now, and the West, later. A good source here is Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties, by Paul Johnson. Chapter 10, “The End of Old Europe”:

Chapter 11, “The Watershed Years”:

Don’t believe it. It is certainly at odds with MK. Instead, read this report on the deal Hess flew to England to present …
Nazis ‘offered to leave western Europe in exchange for free hand to attack USSR’

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/10336126/Nazis-offered-to-leave-western-Europe-in-exchange-for-free-hand-to-attack-USSR.html

But Peter Padfield, an historian, has uncovered evidence he says shows that, Hess, the deputy Fuhrer, brought with him from Hitler, a detailed peace treaty, under which the Nazis would withdraw from western Europe, in exchange for British neutrality over the imminent attack on Russia.

[iiandyiiii]

@Gack

Don’t believe it. It is certainly at odds with MK. Instead, read this report on the deal Hess flew to England to present …
Nazis ‘offered to leave western Europe in exchange for free hand to attack USSR’

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/10336126/Nazis-offered-to-leave-western-Europe-in-exchange-for-free-hand-to-attack-USSR.html

But Peter Padfield, an historian, has uncovered evidence he says shows that, Hess, the deputy Fuhrer, brought with him from Hitler, a detailed peace treaty, under which the Nazis would withdraw from western Europe, in exchange for British neutrality over the imminent attack on Russia.

And why would the West trust that Hitler wouldn’t attack later? He’d already shown the desire to conquer territory for lebensraum. It’s a good thing they didn’t trust him… and also a wise strategic move, considering that the Nazis were showing clear signs of starting to lose the war.