I have no idea where my own existence would be without Hitler; I have one grandfather who served in WWII, and one who did not, but both were married and gave birth to my folks before America entered the war. The whole thing kind of strikes me as like discussing Chaos Theory.
To me, Hitler is sort of the endpoint on the sliding scale of human morality, with saints on one end and Hitler on the other… and even that’s not real accurate, as Hitler was capable of love and kindness. Perhaps Stalin would be a better example.
…as well as the potential Big Bad Of The Human Race if Hitler hadn’t taken the top slot. Stalin was a genuinely evil guy, and if he hadn’t been overshadowed by Nazi atrocities, history certainly would tell a different story about him.
I often what would the world look like if Hitler got accepted into that fine arts school.
I also wonder if he would’ve be able to eventually channel his evil genius into his art skills. Maybe he could have been the 20th century’s most noted artist.
The Iron Dream is a novel from a parallel universe where Hitler, instead of going into politics, moved to the US and got a job painting pulp fiction covers… and eventually became a science fiction writer.
The novel has a wraparound first and last chapter explaining all this, and providing tantalizing hints about what the world looked like in a world without a Third Reich.