# WI A Different Fuehrer **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 8, 2011, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626 "2011-04-08T03:51:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2011, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/41 "2011-04-09T06:43:41Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Ie Finland. So Germany should have formed a government in 1933 to guard against a threat that didn’t exist until 1939? And only existed because Germany created it? Why do you think the Soviet Union invaded Finland in November 1939 (or eastern Poland and the Baltic States in September)? It was because the Germans came to them in August and offered to split Eastern Europe between them. Left on his own, Stalin was no more of an international threat than Mussolini was. They only started invading other countries after Hitler pointed out how much fun it was. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2011, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/42 "2011-04-09T07:29:12Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Actually in World War I, the Germans did plan to carve out Poland, Ukraine, White Russia, etc. \*\*as puppet states \*\*to weaken Russia. The same principle would apply here. Relevant part bolded. How successful was Germany in recruiting anti-czarist forces to do this in WWI? Puppet statehood is hardly much of a motivator. > [@](#): > > Plust the Commisarr order was opposed by most of the German officers in the East such as von Manstein. Complete and utter bullshit. Manstein was a brilliant general, but his memoirs are incredibly self-serving. From the prior link: > [@](#): > > Field Marshal Erich von Manstein in his memoirs, while acknowledging that he gave his written assent to the order, states that he, along with some other field commanders, instructed the units under his command not to follow it. Giving written assent to the order and then claiming he instructed his subordinates not to follow the order while leaving no paper trail of this opposition aside from his word in his memoirs doesn’t smell very good. Manstein also claimed he was on the verge of winning at Kursk in his memoirs. Manstein aside, its utter bullshit to claim the Commissar Order was opposed. The fact that it was carried out on such a mass scale belies this claim. One may as well claim that the Wehrmacht was unaware of or opposed to the activities of the Einsatzgruppen - considering that after Jews communists were second in line for liquidation by them. ---
**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:** [April 9, 2011, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/43 "2011-04-09T15:53:00Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Relevant part bolded. How successful was Germany in recruiting anti-czarist forces to do this in WWI? Puppet statehood is hardly much of a motivator. Because its sure better than starving to death. > [@](#): > > Complete and utter bullshit. Manstein was a brilliant general, but his memoirs are incredibly self-serving. From the prior link:Giving written assent to the order and then claiming he instructed his subordinates not to follow the order while leaving no paper trail of this opposition aside from his word in his memoirs doesn’t smell very good. Manstein also claimed he was on the verge of winning at Kursk in his memoirs. > > Manstein aside, its utter bullshit to claim the Commissar Order was opposed. The fact that it was carried out on such a mass scale belies this claim. One may as well claim that the Wehrmacht was unaware of or opposed to the activities of the Einsatzgruppen - considering that after Jews communists were second in line for liquidation by them. Point taken there. However a neo-Imperial Germany would have (tried) to follow the laws of war. ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2011, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/44 "2011-04-09T16:31:01Z")
Let’s give young Curtis the benefit of the doubt and assume that Hitler was removed from power in 1936 by, let’s say, Ludwig Beck backed by a cabal of centrists and conservatives. So they’ve essentially repudiated the Versailles Treaty by now, and their rearmament was underway, but they haven’t been led down the path of disaster yet. How would this go? We’re still in an age when the imperialist mindset hasn’t been bled out of Europe. Germany will still have a lot of canny military thinkers who are devising credible means of attacking the enemy and are much more confident and willing to wage war than France or Britain. The German people still have grievances with France and Poland. The Soviets are still modernizing and increasingly a menace. Bigotry and antisemitism exist, though probably to a lesser degree without a Hitler spurring on pogroms. I’d say the biggest unknown is whether a Hitler-free Germany could have pulled off all the German diplomatic and foreign policy achievements of 1936-1939 (the Anschluss, annexation of Sudetenland, Molotov-Ribbentropp). If they had left Austria and Czechoslovakia alone but still invaded Poland, would France and Britain have stood idly by? ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2011, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/45 "2011-04-09T18:45:47Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > What if instead of Hitler and the Nazi Party, a nationalist and anticommunist but not a anti-Semite had become the leader of Germany, forming some sort of a new German Empire? Could the world have been a better place? Well, he wouldn’t have become leader of Germany, and if by some miracle he had, he wouldn’t have lasted. Germany wanted Hitler’s antisemitism. It was one of his biggest selling points. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2011, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/46 "2011-04-09T18:53:36Z")
Let’s go the other way, and imagine a USSR without Stalin, shall we? (Like if Khrushchev had been in charge from the beginning instead?) 😉 One thing you have to remember, Curtis, is that Russia had never had democracy in the first place – except for a few months in 1917, they went right from a Tsarist Empire to a Bolshevik dictatorship. The Bolshies may have been worse, but the Tsars weren’t exactly the Carebears either. So it’s not like there was much of a difference there. Not that that makes it okay, but you seem to think that all the oppression in Russia was a new thing. It wasn’t. I also get the impression that you think there’s a possibility that this new, Hitler-less German state could have tried invading the USSR, no? If so, it would have been a disaster as well. I can’t think of anyone who’s done it sucessfully in the long run. ---
**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:** [April 9, 2011, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/47 "2011-04-09T19:04:27Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Let’s go the other way, and imagine a USSR without Stalin, shall we? (Like if Khrushchev had been in charge from the beginning instead?) 😉 > > One thing you have to remember, Curtis, is that Russia had never had democracy in the first place – except for a few months in 1917, they went right from a Tsarist Empire to a Bolshevik dictatorship. The Bolshies may have been worse, but the Tsars weren’t exactly the Carebears either. So it’s not like there was much of a difference there. Not that that makes it okay, but you seem to think that all the oppression in Russia was a new thing. It wasn’t. The Tsarists had gotten in something of a limited parliamentary system in place and I’m not saying there would be a real democracy-more like Chiang’s Formosa actually. > [@](#): > > I also get the impression that you think there’s a possibility that this new, Hitler-less German state could have tried invading the USSR, no? If so, it would have been a disaster as well. I can’t think of anyone who’s done it sucessfully in the long run. [/QUOTE] Not if, as I’ve said, encourage local dissidents to rise against Stalin as partially happened in history. > [@villa](#): > > Well, he wouldn’t have become leader of Germany, and if by some miracle he had, he wouldn’t have lasted. Germany wanted Hitler’s antisemitism. It was one of his biggest selling points. That is nonsense. Germany had far less of a history of anti-Semitism than say France. Certainly the Nazis captured the anti-Semite vote, but it wasn’t much really. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2011, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/48 "2011-04-09T19:07:17Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > That is nonsense. Germany had far less of a history of anti-Semitism than say France. Certainly the Nazis captured the anti-Semite vote, but it wasn’t much really. So you think that had France lost the Great War, you couldn’t have had an eliminationist antisemitic regime in power in France? And that France and Germany don’t differ in their antisemitism as a result of their geographic positioning? ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2011, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/49 "2011-04-09T19:35:36Z")
Continuing with what Guin said: German “_Drang nach Osten_” was geopolitically doomed to start threatening the Russian “Near Abroad,” and while Hitler thought he could take them, he was wrong. Let’s look at models and predecessors, shall we? Napoleon was a freaking genius, & a symbol of a sea-change in European governance. **He** got overextended in Russia. The English/Yanks did conquer North America & displace the previous inhabitants, but even with technological advantages over the previously somewhat isolated North Americans,\*\* it took centuries.\*\* A plague across North America c. 1600 is cited as a reason the indigenous nations were conquered, but in fact the death rate among British colonists was absurdly high for generations; new infectious disease cuts both ways. The Golden Horde conquered Russia. In the Middle Ages, with horse archers. (Though of course they just ruled, they didn’t replace the Slavs, Balts, etc.) The British East India Company conquered India, sort of, but in almost exactly the opposite way that Hitler wanted to conquer Eastern Europe. They went native, married native women, & let the subcontinental kingdoms go along as vassal states, just giving the Indians British technology. (This is also what the Mongols, Mughals, Turks did almost everywhere they went.) With the supremacy of German engineering in the early 20th Century, Hitler thought he had a chance at technological dominance to medieval Mongols. But his race theory may have worked against him here. The German academy c. 1900 succeeded in part because, like the medieval Mongols, it was cosmopolitan; not because of the nationalist backlash of which Hitler was the zenith & climax. Long-term, Hitler’s nationalism & Race Theory allowed the French & English (who had had their own dippy nationalists) to appear to be enlightened cosmopolitans, & paint the Germans as self-important nationalist buffoons. OK, so say you’re not Hitler, & you’re not pinning all your hopes on exterminating Balts, Slavs, & Jews and repopulating the East with your own people in your own lifetime (which Hitler knew was hard as hell & took extreme willpower; he was trying to get it done while he was alive to make sure it even happened). Do you have a chance to wipe out the Commies? Ha! No. Because like Napoleon before them, the Marxists represented a new governmental order. They were the hot new thing, the Fascists were a conservative-backed alternative pinned on dubious racial theory & created to oppose the revolutionary movement with the actual mass appeal. The _Internationale_ gave people a new, apparently transcendent, civic religion, for the whole world. Fascism & _Nazionalsozialismus_ lost strength with every border they crossed. And international capitalism wasn’t going to rally the people; Marxism had been invented in response to capitalism’s manifold flaws, which had spurred revolutions generations earlier, in the 1840’s! Capitalism didn’t know how to answer Marx yet. Although the social democracy in post-Bismarck Germany was the start of an answer, the right still backed Fascists & Nazis to keep the Reds down. These days, we can mix and match neoliberalism & social democracy & laugh at old-fashioned Marxists and protectionists. But in 1935, the USSR was still apparently viable–and the Iron Curtain wasn’t really up yet. Fighting communism meant fighting your own people who thought it looked like a good thing. So, yes, a moderate national leader could have done all right domestically. Obviously. That said, and here I am guessing: A crusader against communism, if he moved east militarily, probably would have failed to make much dent in the Russian sphere of influence, & could have wrecked his own country economically by pushing too hard. He could have avoided the crushing ruin Hitler brought _Deutschland_ by being less of a fanatic. I’m not sure that a committed anti-Communist that embraced cosmopolitanism & scientific progress would have been more politically successful than Hitler; I don’t think he could have conquered Russia in any case. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2011, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/50 "2011-04-09T20:03:43Z")
OK, so I had to reread your OP. I think I was misreading it. If you’re talking about containment, well, yeah, we did that. The superpower that took much of the load was the USA with its coasts on two oceans. The containment WAS the Cold War. How could containment be an aversion of the Cold War? And the long-term propaganda effort in the USA to convince Americans that fighting Marxism in other countries was our sacred duty really did a number on our domestic politics. Before the Cold War, it was not a conservative contention that maintaining [del]the world’s[/del] history’s most expensive War Department was more important than the public welfare. ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2011, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/51 "2011-04-10T01:46:38Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > My general point is that Hitler and Nazis were bigoted, totalitarian fanatics and a soberer and saner German regimes wouldn’t get particularly worked up over gypsies either. If that is your general point, why did you not say that? “Anti-semite” does not cover all bigoted, totalitarian fanatics. Futhermore, your position ignores the commonly held assumption (I admit I have no cite) that inflaming base hatred and prejudices of the populace was the basis of Hitler’s and the Nazi’s power. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2011, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/52 "2011-04-10T02:03:15Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > Fascist governments in Europe, as I understand it, tended to be along the lines of “this is what is right for Italy/Spain/Germany/etc.” In other words it was tied in with nationalist movements. Communism was supposed to be a global philosophy. It wasn’t just about Russia. It was a sincere belief that all of Mankind needed to become communist to fulfill a utopian dream. I think this kind of belief system is more dangerous than fascism because it seems to be inherently based on world domination in a way that fascism was not. Communism left its mark all over Africa and Latin America in addition to infecting Eastern Europe…fascism never did any such thing. That **might** be a distinction without a difference. See [this review](http://www.johnreilly.info/fah.htm) by John J. Reilly of [url=]_Fascism: A History,_ by Roger Eatwell: > [@](#): > > A sentiment that seems to find increasing currency is what might be called “Euro-fascism.” While fascist parties between the wars built their followings on nationalistic platforms, still from the very beginning fascism has always had a universalizing streak. Nietzsche pronounced himself a “good European.” In these days when political theorists speak in terms of the clash of civilizations, New Right theory seems to be moving in the direction, not of renewed hypernationalism, but of an integrating theory for the European Union. Eatwell notes that the EU as it stands is a disedifying entity, run by bland bureaucrats who are most concerned with setting standards for bottled jam. Current plans for future integration will go no further toward turning Europe into a true political community (that word again). Eatwell asks whether anyone is ever going to be willing to die for the Bundesbank. Maybe what Europe needs is a Sorelian myth to hold it together. Work is in progress. > > So, are we really just back where we started at the beginning of the 20th century, waiting for some crisis that will delegitimize the existing establishments and start the ball rolling again? One way to look at the 20th century is as one long recoil from the process of globalization. It was only in the 1990s, for instance, that international capital flows again reached the levels relative to the economies of the major countries that they had reached before the First World War. Similarly, it is only recently that international trade in general became as important as it was around 1900. What happened thereafter was that the governments of the leading nations sought to gain unprecedented control of their countries’ destinies. Partly this was accomplished by war, partly it was accomplished through the creation of command economies. Stalinism was simply Lloyd George’s “War Socialism” made permanent, something that happened in greater or lesser degree throughout the West. In every case, the goal was to replace the power of capital with the power of the will, whether the will was that of an electorate or of a would-be Nietzschean superman. When, starting in the 1980s, the military and economic systems of command began to be relaxed, the world economic system began to look again something like the way it had looked before these measures were implemented. The process of globalization began again. So did the attempts to stop it. > > It would be wrong to say that all attempts to stop globalization of economics and communications and culture are fascist. Most resistance to universalism comes from a positive desire to preserve local identities and traditions. Such things may or may not be worth preserving. The balance between the local and the universal is not something that can be dictated categorically. Fascist nationalism, in contrast, was perhaps just an improvisation, made necessary by the fact that nation states were the largest units that fascist elites could hope to control. At a deeper level of fascism is the ideal of the universal empire, of the whole world subject to a single will. The goal is repeatedly deferred only because it is obviously so much harder to achieve. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2011, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/53 "2011-04-10T02:53:30Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Nazism’s brutality was not part of the German cultural continuity. Are you really that historically ignorant?! ---
**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:** [April 10, 2011, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/54 "2011-04-10T03:43:00Z")
> [@j66](#): > > If that is your general point, why did you not say that? “Anti-semite” does not cover all bigoted, totalitarian fanatics. I said “anti-Semite” because that was the main focus of Nazi racism. > [@](#): > > Futhermore, your position ignores the commonly held assumption (I admit I have no cite) that inflaming base hatred and prejudices of the populace was the basis of Hitler’s and the Nazi’s power. Yes, the Nazis did so but the hatred was directed not just toward the Jews but toward foreign powers who had forced Versailles on the,. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Are you really that historically ignorant?! Kaiser’s Germany was not particularly brutal for an European nation at the time. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2011, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/55 "2011-04-10T08:14:29Z")
> [@j66](#): > > If that is your general point, why did you not say that? “Anti-semite” does not cover all bigoted, totalitarian fanatics. > > Futhermore, your position ignores the commonly held assumption (I admit I have no cite) that inflaming base hatred and prejudices of the populace was the basis of Hitler’s and the Nazi’s power. I think **Qin Shih Huangdi’s** argument is that there were other RW authoritarian political forces and currents in post-WWI Germany – forces that were elitist, not populist even in theory – and it’s conceivable some faction of highborn military officers or something might have come to power instead of the Nazis; and they might have been out to avenge Germany’s WWI defeat in their own way and fight Bolshevism in their own way, but their overall vision would have been far less hateful and far less audacious than Hitler’s, and would include no special brief for eliminating the Jews or anyone else (save, perhaps, all the Communists and Social Democrats and labor leaders). Now, most likely that would be an improvement over our timeline, which includes not only the war but the Holocaust. Still, there’s no way an all-out German-Soviet war in the 1930s or '40s don’t cause megadeaths. And, even in this hypothetical timeline: What legitimate reason does Germany or anyone else have to go to war with the USSR? ---
**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:** [April 10, 2011, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/56 "2011-04-10T15:12:21Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I think **Qin Shih Huangdi’s** argument is that there were other RW authoritarian political forces and currents in post-WWI Germany – forces that were elitist, not populist even in theory – and it’s conceivable some faction of highborn military officers or something might have come to power instead of the Nazis; and they might have been out to avenge Germany’s WWI defeat in their own way and fight Bolshevism in their own way, but their overall vision would have been far less hateful and far less audacious than Hitler’s, and would include no special brief for eliminating the Jews or anyone else (save, perhaps, all the Communists and Social Democrats and labor leaders). Now, most likely that would be an improvement over our timeline, which includes not only the war but the Holocaust. Still, there’s no way an all-out German-Soviet war in the 1930s or '40s don’t cause megadeaths. And, even in this hypothetical timeline: What legitimate reason does Germany or anyone else have to go to war with the USSR? I’m sure the Germans will be clever enough to think one up. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2011, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/57 "2011-04-10T23:51:09Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I think **Qin Shih Huangdi’s** argument is that there were other RW authoritarian political forces and currents in post-WWI Germany – Okay. Thanks. [I would politely suggest that the use of the title uniquely associated with Hilter is distracting.] ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2011, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/58 "2011-04-11T14:29:37Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > I’m sure the Germans will be clever enough to think one up. 😉 :rolleyes: No doubt. Look, wouldn’t it be better all around if the Weimar Republic had simply survived, and never mounted any wars of aggression? Then the USSR never gets the chance to expand west; Cold War averted. Communist victory in China also, perhaps, averted – that’s a more complicated question. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2011, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/59 "2011-04-11T22:06:11Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Communist victory in China also, perhaps, averted – that’s a more complicated question. I.e.: If European war is averted in the 1930s and '40s, there might still be a Pacific war between Japan and the U.S./Britain. In our timeline, Japan’s reasons for making war at that time were quite independent of Hitler’s, though his example and alliance must have strongly encouraged them. In a nutshell, the Japanese leaders really **believed** they had a _Lebensraum_ problem – or, it might be better to say, _Landwirtschaftsraum:_ The Home Islands did not produce enough food for the population; an empire of colonies was deemed essential for Japan’s basic material security. (A problem Japan deals with, nowadays, by exporting high-end manufactures and importing food.) But, in a timeline with no European war, both the U.S. and Britain would have more resources to devote to fighting Japan. This, I suppose, either deters the Japanese from starting a war, or it brings the Allied victory faster than in OTL. Either path has some imponderable effect on the [Chinese Civil War.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_civil_war) In OTL, that war started in 1927; the Long March was 1934-35; the Communists and KMT put aside their differences and fought the Japanese, 1937-45; then resumed fighting, and the Communists won in 1949. It could change that course of events if the Japanese invade China later, or earlier, or with more force, or with less force, and if they are defeated sooner. Or if they never invade China at all. ---
**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:** [April 12, 2011, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626/60 "2011-04-12T03:30:50Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > :rolleyes: No doubt. Look, wouldn’t it be better all around if the Weimar Republic had simply survived, and never mounted any wars of aggression? Then the USSR never gets the chance to expand west; Cold War averted. Communist victory in China also, perhaps, averted – that’s a more complicated question. But the USSR itself would be under horrible dictatorship. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wi-a-different-fuehrer/577626.md?page=4)