# How would history remember Hitler/Nazism if anti-Jewish actions/crimes never took place? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 5, 2012, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936 "2012-11-05T07:29:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![andrew\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bcef8e/32.png) [@andrew\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andrew_1)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/1 "2012-11-05T07:29:37Z")
(Note: I realized while spell-checking this thread in preview some people may misinterpret - **this thread does not in any way, shape or form have anything to do with Holocaust denial** , and please leave any comments related to that out of this thread. Thank you). Title says it all mainly, and forgive me for being a bit blunt and simplifying a few things here, but it’s an interesting thought that occurred to me today when reading a bit about WW2 and I realized that even after an hour’s thought I can’t answer the question as well as I’d like to. How would history remember Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, assuming that the rise to power and the second World War played out exactly as it really did, minus the Holocaust, concentration camps, ghettos, and so on? I know it’s a bit awkward since a lot of things that happened during that time period in that part of the world are intertwined, but if you can seperate the anti-Jewish actions, killings etc. while the war itself and Germany’s ultimate defeat stays the same, how would the world look back on Nazism and more specifically, Hitler? I can make a case we’d still have [Godwin’s Law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_rule), and with five more minutes’ thought, make a case just as strong that we wouldn’t consider Hitler and the Nazis that exceptional, “unique” evil that we do, if there were no death camps to be found. In other words, I can see in some ways that we’d still look at Hitler as the ultimate concentration of evil, and just as easily, picture history books portraying him as no worse than hundreds of others like him throughout history, instead of how we regard that period in Germany it’s influential figures today. What do you think? I can elaborate a bit more if needed, but I don’t want to make a simple question take five paragraphs to ask in the opening post. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/2 "2012-11-05T08:15:11Z")
Without any of the genocide? I guess history would record him as _Yet Another Beligerent, Expansionist Emperor_. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/3 "2012-11-05T09:02:53Z")
Without the ant Jewish actions it’s possible that he would be known for his anti Roma and Slavjc pogroms. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/4 "2012-11-05T09:33:18Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Without the ant Jewish actions it’s possible that he would be known for his anti Roma and Slavjc pogroms. I was assuming those (although not mentioned specifically by the OP) would also not have happened in the scenario we are to imagine. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/5 "2012-11-05T11:22:49Z")
Today he’d be remembered the same way Kaiser Bill is, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![orcenio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orcenio/32/1036_2.png) [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/6 "2012-11-05T11:54:25Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Today he’d be remembered the same way Kaiser Bill is, I guess. So I’d be using “Hitler rolls” for half my sandwiching needs? ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/7 "2012-11-05T12:06:32Z")
The problem with these “What If?” scenarios is, they’re ultimately unworkable. The crimes and antisemitism were key elements to National Socialism’s success, and there was no shortage of other groups with similar agendas to fill the void if this faction had failed. If Hitler had been a sharing, caring 70s kind of guy appealing to Germany’s higher angels, I really don’t think there would have been a Beer Hall Putsch or a Kristallnacht to insert him into power. ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/8 "2012-11-05T12:40:45Z")
Probably the same way people currently remember Stalin: nasty piece of work, but not the “ultimate evil” that Hitler personifies. It’s an interesting question, because you have draw a line as to where you think “normal” crimes against humanity end and where the super-evil starts. Because Stalin and Mao both rate pretty high on the evilometer, and “lesser” evils, like (for example) [Pinochet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinochet) are all too common. ---
**Author:** ![chargerrich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chargerrich/32/5399_2.png) [@chargerrich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chargerrich)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/9 "2012-11-05T14:00:57Z")
Maybe in much the same way we DO think about Stalin. An evil and ruthless tyrant. In fact I would argue that if your scenario played out that Stalin would be considered the most evil leader of modern times. The fact that he was aligned with the Allies goes a long way to placing a veneer over Stalin’s life and actions. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/10 "2012-11-05T15:14:25Z")
Probably the same way that Franco and Mussolini are viewed today (both of them being the other nationalist fascist rulers in Europe in that era). I think the current German national viewpoint would be pretty different without the Holocaust…shame over the death camps and other German governmental and non-officially-governmental actions with regards to Jews (at the least) seems to be a deep vein in the German character today. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/11 "2012-11-05T15:15:51Z")
Moved to Great Debates. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![StusBlues](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/12 "2012-11-05T15:56:23Z")
I’d say about the way folks view Napoleon today: a nationalist who took a country emerging from crisis and took over most of the continent. Admired by a few, respected by more, reviled by many. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/13 "2012-11-05T15:57:19Z")
He’d still be remembered for his aggressive, not to say psychotic, foreign policy. The reason Hitler has fared worse that Stalin in rememberance (even though Stalin is every bit as much of a monster) is that Stalin, for all his evils, was actually pretty cautious and conservative as far as evil empire-builders go. His main unprompted act of imperial aggression where he did not bother to hide behind manipulating foreign puppets and dupes was the invasion of Finland - an almost total disaster. By contrast, Hitler was recklessly aggressive. Unfortunately for everyone, Hitler’s early aggressions payed off big, leading him to take on even bigger aggressions, and much of Europe in ruins (and half of Europe owned by the Soviets). I don’t think he’ll be remembered like Franco or Mussolini. Franco in particular was as cautious as Stalin, perhaps even moreso - he refused to get involved in WW2. Mussolini was more aggressive, but he’d never have taken the risks he did except for betting on riding Hitler’s coat-tails. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/14 "2012-11-05T16:02:03Z")
The Nazis killed almost as many non-Jewish Poles as they did Polish Jews. People tend to forget – or never knew – that Nazi genocide went well beyond Jews both in type and number. > **[Nazi crimes against the Polish nation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_crimes_against_ethnic_Poles)** > > Crimes against the Polish nation committed by Nazi Germany and Axis collaborationist forces during the invasion of Poland, along with auxiliary battalions during the subsequent occupation of Poland in World War II, consisted of the murder of millions of ethnic Poles and the systematic extermination of Jewish Poles. These mass murders were enacted by the Nazis with further plans that were justified by their racial theories, which regarded Poles and other Slavs, and especially Jews, as racial By... > **[Holocaust victims](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims)** > > Holocaust victims were people targeted by the government of Nazi Germany based on their ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, and/or sexual orientation. The institutionalized practice by the Nazis of singling out and persecuting people resulted in the Holocaust, which began with legalized social discrimination against specific groups, involuntary hospitalization, euthanasia, and forced sterilization of persons considered physically or mentally unfit for society. The vast majority of the Nazi... They also killed large numbers of Gypsies, non-Europeans, the disaabled, and homosexuals. Even without the particularly Jewish Holocaust, there would still be oscene numbers of deaths and the horror of the Death Camps. History would remember the regime just the same. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/15 "2012-11-05T16:10:41Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > The Nazis killed almost as many non-Jewish Poles as they did Polish Jews. People tend to forget – or never knew – that Nazi genocide went well beyond Jews both in type and number. > [Nazi war crimes in occupied Poland during World War II - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_crimes_against_ethnic_Poles) > > [Victims of Nazi Germany - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims) > > They also killed large numbers of Gypsies, non-Europeans, the disaabled, and homosexuals. > > Even without the particularly Jewish Holocaust, there would still be oscene numbers of deaths and the horror of the Death Camps. History would remember the regime just the same. While that is of course very true, I’m making the assumption mentioned by **Mangetout** upthread: namely, that the OP really meant ‘no death camps, genocide, and that sort of thing’. Of course, that is pretty counter-factual, as part of their whole motivation for invading the East was to create a Nazi racial state of some sort (though they waffled over what it was to look like - cleared of Slavs, or estates of Slavic slave-workers?). In either case, not going to work without atrocities. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/16 "2012-11-05T16:12:14Z")
I think the personification of evil thing is more prevalent in the US than elsewhere. The Holocaust wasn’t the first or last genocide. It was on an epic scale but scale isn’t relevant to ascertaining how evil the leader was i.e. There are many leaders I’m sure that would commit the same crimes if they had the means to do so. For me, if a leader determines he wants to rid the world of Californians, and whacks, say, 100,000 of them…that’s plenty to ascertain he was serious about it, had no remorse etc. And someone like Stalin I would already put in the same box as Hitler, no question. So, to respond to the OP, yeah I think people would see him as a unimaginably evil tyrant but also as a figure you could almost admire, as we feel about the many other kill-all-humans empire-builders. I’m not sure whether that would mean more or less first-person shooters, history channel specials etc. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/17 "2012-11-05T16:13:12Z")
Even leaving the deliberate genocide out of things, the Russian campaign was pretty brutal, so I’d guess the Nazi’s and Hitler would still have a pretty bad rep. Probably on par with the more whitewashed view folks have of the Japanese (who would probably have been the real bad guys of the war if Hitler hadn’t stolen their glory). Stalin might not have gotten as much of a pass as he did either without Hitler to lower the bar. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/18 "2012-11-05T21:39:43Z")
> [@andrew\_1](#): > > How would history remember Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, assuming that the rise to power and the second World War played out exactly as it really did, minus the Holocaust, concentration camps, ghettos, and so on? The Second World War could not have played out the same if you remove the genocidal intent from the Nazi regime. The entire point of the war was to seize lebensraum in the east with the existing Slavic population to be murdered, displaced, or reduced to slavery to serve the German colonists. The second largest group of victims of the holocaust were [Soviet POWs](http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007178): > [@](#): > > The brutal treatment of Soviet POWs by the Germans violated every standard of warfare. Existing sources suggest that some 5.7 million Soviet army personnel fell into German hands during World War II. As of January 1945, the German army reported that only about 930,000 Soviet POWs remained in German custody. The German army released about one million Soviet POWs as auxiliaries of the German army and the SS. About half a million Soviet POWs had escaped German custody or had been liberated by the Soviet army as it advanced westward through eastern Europe into Germany. \*\*The remaining 3.3 million, or about 57 percent of those taken prisoner, were dead by the end of the war. Second only to the Jews, Soviet prisoners of war were the largest group of victims of Nazi racial policy. \*\* [.](http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007183) > [@](#): > > From the very beginning, German policy on the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) was determined by Nazi ideology. German political and military leaders regarded Soviet POWs not only as racially less valuable but as potential enemies, obstacles in the German conquest of “living space.” Remove this as a factor from Hitler and Nazism and there is suddenly no reason for Germany to invade the USSR or start WW2 at all for that matter. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2012, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/19 "2012-11-06T06:45:18Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Remove this as a factor from Hitler and Nazism and there is suddenly no reason for Germany to invade the USSR or start WW2 at all for that matter. There’s a strong likelihood a fascist/authoritarian Germany would start something like World War 2 to get revenge for Versailles, although a more pragmatic and smarter Germany would not break the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and instead cooperate to defeat the Democratic West. Which would result in an interesting stalemate as a continental invasion by the Allies would be well night impossible and so is an amphibious invasion of Britain. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2012, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936/20 "2012-11-06T09:05:57Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Even leaving the deliberate genocide out of things, the Russian campaign was pretty brutal, so I’d guess the Nazi’s and Hitler would still have a pretty bad rep. Probably on par with the more whitewashed view folks have of the Japanese ( **who would probably have been the real bad guys of the war if Hitler hadn’t stolen their glory** ). > > Stalin might not have gotten as much of a pass as he did either without Hitler to lower the bar. The Pacific war did not have a good versus evil slant to it, it was colonial masters against wannbe colonial masters. The Allies were as evil as the Japanese were in the view of the locals. If the Germans did not have their genocidal bent in Europe, then I suspect it would be remembered more as WWI has been, senseless slaughter…which it was of course. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-history-remember-hitler-nazism-if-anti-jewish-actions-crimes-never-took-place/639936.md?page=2)