What if Hitler had never been born or had been assasinated

Maybe it is time to simplify this thread!

If Hitler had never been born?

1) The world of 2009 would be excatly the same (Like ripples smoothing out in the pond of history)

2) The world of 2009 would be markedly different
a) No cold war
b) No space race
c) The USSR would have continued up to 2009 and beyond
e) Electronics such as the PC would not have advanced as far as it has up to 2009
f) Another despot would have evolved out of the German despair
g) ?
h) ?

That is a possibility I mentioned, several times in my threads - in fact I mentioned it as very likely; there were more than a few contenders in Weimar Germany who could have filled Adolf's place - but NONE OF THEM WOULD HAVE BEEN ADOLF HITLER! This again boils down to the very philosophical question of whether great men make history, or whether history makes great men. Which I believe we have touched on before. No point flogging a dead horse, however the purpose of philosophy is not to produce answers, but rather to evolve ideas, hypotheses, questions. The fact that this argument is still going on nearly two months after I joined, and yet the question hasn't changed, suggests that's it's a very philosophical debate indeed!)

Adolf Hitler was a product of his age, like Napoleon, like Stalin, like many despots throughout history; however, he was also a remarkably ambitious, fanatical, and driven individual. There may have been a dozen potential 'Fuhrers' in 1930, but none of them would have combined Hitler's ideological fanaticism, ruthlessness, and absolute determination. Adolf Hitler was the personal driving force behind Germany's foreign policy in the 1930s and 40s, more than any 'external event'; another man in his place would not have made the same decisions, or the same mistakes.



Maybe, maybe. But bear in mind that war is, and always has been, a driving impetus behind technological advancement and technical innovation. The space race was a product of the Cold War, and the US's need to prove its technological superiority over the Soviet Union was what led to Man landing on the Moon in 1969. The first modern "computers" were built during WWII; modern electronics - particularly the computer industry - evolved more or less concurrently with the Space Age. Your "ripples on a pond" theory is fascinating, however these factors are worth bearing in mind.


One thing we can all agree on: the world would be VERY different today, if there had been no Hitler. Your primary hypothesis is inherently impossible. Put succinctly, no event has had more of an impact on the twentieth century as much as the Second World War. No Hitler, no Second World War - at least, not the War we got.

While a communist Germany would have bee quite possible, I don't think Italy or France would have ended up that way. Italy was an imperial nation and would have opposed communism. And France was recovering from the first world war and was well on it's way to being economically succesful again before the second world war. Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Spain and Portegul would also have probably stood against the Soviets and Easter Europe. The capitalist/imperial nations could have kept Greece and Turkey on their side as well.

I suggested that France was a possibility, but concluded that it was the least likely out of the European nations (Britain excluded) to adopt a communist system. Like Germany, however, I think Italy would have been susceptible to communism. The two countries had much in common: they were both fledgling nation-states, formed at around the same time (1871 Germany, 1862 Italy.) They were both defined by 'nationality' - i.e. German/Prussian, Italian - yet both contained large numbers of ethnic and racial 'minorities', such as Czechs, Serbs, Poles. They were both inherently unstable regimes, hence the rapid rise of radical, 'fascist' regimes after the First World War - Mussolini came to power a decade before the Great Depression, unlike Hitler who exploited Germany's economic circumstances to lever himself into power. And it is a well-known cliche that 'fascism' is the opposite of 'communism', but that is a misconception. Fascism is not a defined, monolithic idea or ideology; in fact there are different 'brands', different types of fascism: the fascism of Mussolini was very different to that of Hitler. Fascism and communism share several important features, and they have much more in common than most people realize. They are both essentially reactionary ideologies, a response to the crises of the twentieth century and the challenge of modernity over traditionalism; they both inherently seek to expand the power of the state, and do so by subjecting the people to their political ideology, demanding loyalty to the individual over loyalty to the family, Church, or other more traditional institutions; they both typically employ violence, coercion, and racial antipathy to achieve their ends. In short, Mussolini, who unlike Hitler did not entertain a strong ideological bias towards communism, could as easily have swayed towards 'the Left' as towards 'the Right'; therefore I see no reason to rule out the idea of a communist Italy.

France and Britain, of course, are another matter; but with Russia, Germany, Italy, and most probably vast swathes of Central and Eastern Europe all under the communist banner, one cannot conceive how they would respond. France, at least, being on the continent, and having been trumped twice in the past century, would have a reason to feel intimidated...

Yeah, Italy likely would have been a major factor in who's side had more strength. However, I don't think Mussolini would have sided with the soviets, and due to this, France and Britain would probably have helped him stay in power. During this time, there was still a lot of hatred between Greece and Turkey/Ottoman Empire, so whichever side one joined, the other would oppose. This means that Western Europe could have forced Eastern Europe to fight on multiple fronts.

Also, war in Europe would have broken out (if it became an actual war) much later than the war in the Pacafic Ocean. By this point, since the U.S. would have focused it's full military strenght on Japan, that war could be over. Also, the U.S., China and possible Australia would have formed some type of alliance to confront Japan. Since this was before China's communist revolution, this alliance would have been pro-capitalist. So, on Western Europe's plea, they may have attacked the soviets from Asia, and then headed to Eastern Europe from the far East. Even the threat of a possible attack from a Chinese, U.S. alliance in Asia would force the Soviets to focuse their defenses along their eastern borders. Without soviet backing and fighting on multiple fronts, the rest of Eastern Europe would likely have lost the war.

Oh and as far as China goes, they might not have become communists if Japan was defeated faster. With fewer losses to it's military, China would likely have stayed an imperial nation.

He well might have, if he had come up with a pact analagous to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, he and Stalin could have divided up the Balkans, Greece, and probably Hungary. Sure would have changed Hitler's plans.

If there had been no war in Europe (with a less militaristic Germany), then Japan would have been defeated MUCH faster because they were already at war with the Soviets (and had been decidedly beaten at Khalkin Gol by none other than Zhukov). It wasn't until December of 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and committed to a Pacific war, and when Hitler was at the gates of Moscow, that Stalin finally withdrew his armies from the front against Japan. So for what it's worth I think that the war in Europe delayed Soviet influence in east Asia by several years.

Has anyone considered the possibility (based on Alan McDougall's 'ripples on a pond' theory) that if there had been no Hitler, and therefore no Second World War, the British Empire might still be a considerable force in the world today? That, I think, is an interesting notion which has yet to be touched upon, because it would surely affect America's position and role in the world, which expanded dramatically during and after WWII.

The British Empire was already heading towards decline before the First World War broke out; the Second World War hastened it, and essentially finished the Empire off. The enormous costs of Lend-Lease to the US forced Britain to release many of its colonial properties, some of which it had held for centuries; dissidents such as Gandhi in India were able to seize advantage of the Empire's weakness and demand emancipation and self-determination. India seceded from the British Empire in 1948; a rash of secessions followed in the late 40s and early 50s. Today the British Empire no longer exists, except as the British Commonwealth, which is not an empire; many (if not most) of its former properties are now self-determining republics (albeit operating under the aegis of the US, which has become a new type of imperialist power), and I believe Canada is the only remaining 'formal' British possession; but even then it is not part of an empire.

Surely the absence of Hitler and the Second World War would have had some impact on these events; but was the Empire heading towards disaster anyway, and would its collapse have come sooner or later, without these events? Let's hear your ideas.

Hi James your comments take into consideration the main reason I started this thread some time ago. World a) with a Hitler or World b) with no Hitler would have been very different but I think the ripples caused by the stones falling into the ponds of history all smooth out after a few hundred years or so.

Take Genghis Kahn this great warrior conquered much more of the world than Hitler ever did, but all that remains of his great empire is a few remote clans in the steppes and deserts of Mongolia

Without Hitler or another despot the pond of history would have remained un- rippled with fewer advances in science, physics, leaving the world of 2009 a very different place to to what it evolved into due to the push for advanced weapons during ww2 Take just the Tank would a weapon like the frightening Abraham's . This one tank almost single-handedly wiped out the Iraq war machine .

Hitler infamous and influential had an enormous effect of world history, post WW2 In some ways this unpleasant man and his diabolic ideas pushed mankind forward on the path of self driven evolution

Niall Fergusson discusses it to some degree in his book War of the World. The British Empire was already in decline after WWI, as you mention, and while WWII definitely created an eastward shift in power, I think the British Empire was done either way.

But what would have replaced the British Empire's place as the main power in the world? The United States? Soviet Russia? Imperial Japan? I am thinking along the lines of a 30, 50 year timespan here, not 5 or 10 years; obviously little in the realm of international power politics would or COULD change in that time, barring a major catastrophe like, indeed, the Second World War. Bear in mind that WWII forced America to rethink its isolationism, and adopt a more forward role in international affairs; but for it the US would almost certainly have retained its economic strength and vitality, although it would probably have taken longer to recover from the effects of the Depression (it was on the road to recovery by 1940, but the War was a major factor in its regeneration.) However, it would NOT have become the superpower that it became after the War.

The Soviet Union, meanwhile, was growing in strength, although this wasn't too evident to outsiders, or even to many living under the regime; a series of catastrophes like the collectivization crisis, Stalin's purges, and the botched invasion of Finland did little to improve the Soviets' reputation or credibility. But Stalin's Five Year Plans, reckless as they were, were tremendously successful in transforming Russia from a 'backward', agrarian, largely superstitious and illiterate society into an industrial, modernizing, and ambitious power. During the period 1933-1938, the Soviet Union spent more on its military than any other country, bar Germany (which, in our 'alternate timeline', without the presence of Hitler and the Nazi Party, it would not have done - leaving the Soviet Union with the largest military-industrial complex.) Its manufacturing strength, relative to the other Powers, more than tripled (as a percentage of total world output, between 5% and 17%) between 1929 and 1938; whereas the USA's position fell from 48% to just under 30%, and France and Britain both witnessed a slight decline. In terms of overall productivity, measured by GDP, the USSR grew by more than 250% between 1932 and 1938 - whereas the US and UK saw only respectable growth, and France was more or less stagnant; only Germany came close to matching Stalin's Russia in terms of growth (which occurred almost entirely within the latter half of the decade, under Hitler's influence; apply the same rule as before, and this leaves only the Soviet Union leaping ahead in leaps and bounds.)* The Soviet Union had by far the largest standing army in the world, 20 million soldiers in all by the outbreak of WWII, even if it was ill-equipped, ill-trained and for the most part badly led (with only a few exceptions, such as Georgy Zhukov; the generals were the worst to suffer in the Purges). It also had the largest airforce, albeit one that was largely outdated (demonstrated by its rapid dismemberment during the first days of Operation Barbarossa.) As a land-based power, of course, it did not have a large navy, certainly not as large as Britain or the US, and was never prepared to invest much time or energy in its navy; but like the US and unlike Britain it was a largely 'self-contained' entity, and did not need to rely on its navy for support in war-time; and it was more interested in acquiring neighbouring territories such as Finland and Poland than in building up an overseas presence. Admittedly, the Soviet Union was not a very organized and 'efficient' power - whatever exactly the word means - suffering a series of social, economic and industrial crises throughout the 1930s; this was a decade of turbulence for Russia as it was for Europe, but not because of the economic effects of the Depression (from which it was largely shielded, thanks to its isolationism), but rather because of Stalin's depredations, and the chaotic, haphazard nature of his rapid industrialization. However, I don't think anyone can deny that the Soviet Union at this time was in the ascendancy. One cannot say the same of other countries. France was more or less stagnant; Britain's imperial prowess was on the wane; America was determined to avoid entangling itself in European affairs; and Germany at the height of the 1930s was struggling with high inflation, unemployment, and a succession of internal crises. It recovered largely through the efforts of Hitler and the Nazis, who were able to galvanize the country into action; without the presence of a forceful, charismatic leader (such as Hitler, although there may have been other 'contenders'), it would most likely not have rearmed, reindustrialized and reasserted itself in the face of the other Western Powers. In short: the Soviet Union was far from ready to challenge Europe (I don't think, in the 1930s or even 1940s, that that was Stalin's aim anyway; his way was rather to influence the various Communist parties through the Comintern, and to avoid conflict as long as possible - hence his willingness to adopt a neutrality pact with Berlin), but it was in the ascendancy.

That just leaves Imperial Japan, which I don't know very much about (I am a European historian, and my province as you can probably tell is the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.) Admittedly in the 1930s and 1940s it could not hope to challenge the European Powers, either through direct conflict or through more subversive means - it had to tread lightly, if it did not want to anger either Britain or the US. Yet, it was a growing imperial power, it had a population comparable to Great Britain's, it was the most advanced and 'modern' power in the Far East; it had an imperial agenda in the West Indies, and closer to home in China and Eastern Russia; it had established itself as a naval power almost great enough to rival that of Britain or the US (indeed, the maritime powers of the day had to introduce legislation to limit the size of Japan's navy, so that it could not become too great a threat.) I believe Japan's conquest of China would have happened regardless of events in Europe, as the alliance between Japan and Germany was an alliance of word only (the two nations had very different agendas and operated in spheres of interest too removed from each other to work in concert); and so it may have been successful in that goal, as it was ultimately by America's efforts that it was thwarted. Pearl Harbour was by no means inevitable, any more than a WWII without Hitler was 'inevitable'; although it is true that the reasons for war between Japan and the US went beyond the immediate. Yet a rising 'Empire of the Sun', with large swathes of China, perhaps Eastern Russia under its control, and the ambition to take a chunk out of the British Empire, could pose a formidable threat indeed, not least to an unprepared and unexpecting world; within thirty years, perhaps sooner, Japan might feel powerful enough and confident enough to challenge the long-established hegemonies of Britain and the US in the Pacific.

This is only scratching the surface. Of course this is all just speculation, but it's an interesting discussion nonetheless. I invite your views.

* Source: H.C. Hillman, The Comparative Strength of the Great Powers (London: 1939)

Britain's decline has a lot to do with Germany's potentiation as a great military power; and the USSR was so decrepit and backwards in 1939 that it would have taken a very long time for it to rise.

You ask what would have replaced Britain as the main power in the world, but that forces one to ask if a "main power" need have really existed at all. If the world had stayed demilitarized, I'm pretty sure that the United States would have emerged the major power by virtue of its economic and industrial strength. Japan was unable to do it without launching wars for access to resources. The USSR was too backwards and sluggish.

Backwards, yes, even in 1940, but sluggish no, As I've already pointed out the Soviet Union was the most rapidly industrializing, the fastest growing European power at the time (except perhaps for Nazi Germany), and much of the 'backwardness' attributed to it (the various crises throughout the 20s and 30s, its chaotic organization and structure) was due to the hectic pace of Stalin's reforms. If ANY country in the world had attempted reform on a Stalinist scale, it would have run into problems - the liberal democracies not least. Even Hitler worked hard to keep the German populace happy, well into the war years; Germany didn't adopt a full-scale war economy until at least 1942, one of the reasons why it was producing more in 1944 even under constant Allied bombardment. Traditionally Russia has always been 'backward', because of its geographical location, its sheer size, and the ethnic, cultural and religious diversity of its peoples, which hampered social integration (only about fifty percent of 'Russians' were actually Russians; the rest were a mix of races, Georgians, Serbs, Poles, and so on.) Yet Stalinist Russia, for all that it was tyrannical and totalitarian, was remarkably progressive and liberal in its thinking, with regards for example to women's rights and education - whereas women in most European countries (and even in the UK and US) were substantially in the minority in higher education, a larger percentage of women attended university in the Soviet Union from the mid 20s (Stalin's industrial reforms demanded a mobile, educated and capable workforce); university was available to most segments of the population, and not just the middle and upper classes, as was the case in western countries until well into the twentieth century; and indeed, education was encouraged in the Soviet Union, if only as a means of indoctrination and ensuring support for the ruling party (in most areas of life, in the civil sector as in the armed services, advancement could only be assured through affiliation with the Soviet Party.) The Soviet Union was, indeed, still 'backward' in the 1930s and 40s, at least according to the perceptions of its neighbours; but those perceptions were distorted, in no small part by the Union's determination to close its borders and adopt isolationist policies, and its disastrous wars with Japan and Finland - which was due more to Stalin's leadership, and the Purges, than the weakness or effectiveness of the Red Army itself. Later years, and the final collapse of the Soviet Union five decades later, did nothing to undo these perceptions - if anything they exaggerated them; we take it for granted now that the Soviet Union was bumbling, ineffectual and obsolete - but western attitudes were not always so clear-cut. Communism, and the Soviet Union, were seen as a danger during the post-war years precisely BECAUSE they posed an immediate and obvious threat, and appeared to some to be very capable, calculating and determined; and even at late as 1969 (at the height of the space race, which was itself in some ways a microcosm of the Cold War) a number of western speculators even believed that the USSR might one day overtake the US as the world's leading industrial power.

So when you make a statement about the Soviet Union being 'backward', it is certainly true, at least in the time we are looking at; but it is not as simple as that! 'Backwardness', after all, is fleeting, and there is nothing in the Russian character to suggest that it is opposed to modernity, economic advancement, or modern ideas; within twenty years, perhaps longer, under a more gentle guiding hand than Stalin's, the Soviet Union might have become a formidable economic force indeed. That is worth bearing in mind.



I think history has shown us that in every century, in every dramatic period of history, there has been a 'world power' of some sort; the twentieth century was nothing if not the most dramatic period in human history, and it would likely have been so even without the Second World. The US is and has been the 'world power' of the twentieth century, from 1945 onwards; China most certainly will be the power of the twenty-first century; in the 16th century the Spanish Armada was the most potent force the world had ever seen, in the 12th century it was the Mongols; for a good slice of antiquity the Romans ruled the world stage, and the British Empire, which was in some ways its spiritual successor, was the undisputed imperial leader of the 18th and 19th centuries, and only found its hegemony challenged at the beginning of the 20th. Nazi Germany forcefully aspired to be the 'world leader' in the 1930s and 40s; the Soviets wanted more or less the same thing, albeit subtly, through subversion rather than outright conquest; Mussolini wanted to resurrect the Italian 'Roman Empire', and Imperial Japan had ambitions of its own, albeit on a less grandiose scale. The twentieth century was FULL of scheming nations jostling for their niche of power on the world stage, and Hitler's ambitions certainly stirred the pot, but I think some power would have risen above them all, and not necessarily America. The United States, after all, was an anti-imperialist power, and determinedly isolationist; it was hit most heavily by the Depression, and although on the route to recovery by 1941 by no means fully recovered; the pace of its economic regeneration more than doubled by 1942 and 1944. If America had retained its isolationist stance, it could well have taken a lot longer to recover; and much can happen, in a dramatic period, in three, four, five years.
The fact is, America had no ambitions to become a 'world power' - at least until the Second World War forced its hand, and forced it to take a leading role on the international stage. It never wanted truck with Europe's problems, and the American people, far from bellicose for the most part, were happy enough in their vast country, with its own resources, depending on Europe for their sustenance. Even an isolationist America had the potential to be a strong industrial and economic power - which it was already - but it takes an ambitious, or at least involved country to become truly great. America only became a world power when it involved itself in the wider world, not before; until then it was just one of a number of potential successors to Britain's fading hegemony.

The USSR's military development was indeed backwards, look how they fared against Finland (not to mention in Barbarossa). It was worse than sluggish, because Stalin in the 1930s destroyed the entire administration of his army. Their infrastructure was also in abysmal shape.

A world power can mean lots of different things, and the US was already a major world power before the first world war. The most prolific industrialization and inventiveness, seafaring to rival Britain's (think of the Panama Canal), colonial / territorial holdings in Cuba and the Pacific (the Philippines, Hawaii, and Alaska), an exploding population, and natural resources of all kinds. Military influence would have certainly followed on its own. WWI and then the Depression were like a stun gun to the West, though, and isolationism became the rule.

Again, it is true that the Soviet Red Army, at the time of the invasion of Finland and Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, was poorly organized, badly equipped, for the most part ill-trained and indisciplined, but it was nonetheless a formidable force in its own right, in terms of sheer size and manpower. Of course, as I argued in a previous thread, these are not the sole determining factors in an army's success in war; leadership above all is crucial, and it has been demonstrated time and again (most sharply in the Finnish war) that a small, dedicated, and well acclimatized force can beat a larger, better equipped, overconfident and more cumbersome one any day. The contempt of Hitler and his western contemporaries for the ability of the Red Army was based on its poor performance in the wars against Finland and Japan, and in the Great War thirty years before; but in each of these cases the Russian Army's main deficit was in its leadership, and it is far from inconceivable that a better organized, better led army would have performed better. As, indeed, it did when Stalin turned over the reins of leadership to his more competent generals, such as Zhukov and Chuikov. It was extremely unfortunate that Stalin had killed off most of his good generals just before the War, and worse still that he suffered under the illusion that he had a knack for grand strategy; he was, however, a superb organizer, and once he relinquished his pride he was able to bring out the best in his generals, through force of personality alone. Hitler, initially a very successful and capable leader, grew more proud and stubborn as the War went on, much to Germany's detriment; whereas Stalin, tutored by his mistakes in the cataclysmic days of Operation Barbarossa, gained a measure of humility, although it didn't stop him from meddling from time to time.

In our 'alternate timeline', I see no reason why Stalin should choose to pursue a European war as early as 1940 (the time when Hitler decided to invade; although he did have designs on Poland, both to regain the glory of the former Tsarist Empire and to create a 'buffer state' between Russia and the West.) This leads me to wonder, if the Soviet Union had been allowed more time to consolidate, to rebuild its army and to develop its infrastructure, and if Stalin had been able to recognize earlier the innate talents of men such as Zhukov (the rising star of the Red Army, in 1941 known however only for his exploits in the war against Japan), would it have been a more efficient, more capable and competent force? Twenty million Russian soldiers was hardly something to sniff at, especially if they were led by a gifted general and equipped with the best weapons. (The AK-47, designed in 1947 and still in use in various armed forces today, is one of the best and most reliable rifles in the world - proof that Soviet engineering ability CAN get it right, when it wants to.)

Ultimately, the Soviet Union was able to defeat the invading Wehrmacht and play the biggest role in the overthrow of Germany, despite the weaknesses I have just cited, through sheer size, strength of will and raw energy. There were several times when Stalin came close to botching the Eastern Front altogether - Stalingrad comes foremost to mind, and the German armies in December 1941 came perilously close to Moscow before the Winter Offensive pushed them back - but it was always able to recover just in time, more through blind luck it seems than through genius of strategy or through careful planning. That says something about the hardiness and determination of the soldiers of the Red Army, a factor which in war can be just as crucial as discipline, training or combat efficiency.





The US was all of these things, but the Soviet Union was far from short of resources. 'Backward' does not mean 'feeble.' Quite the opposite: the Soviet Union was seen by many in the West as a "muscle-bound colossus," hampered more than helped by its sheer size and vast numbers. If anything, the liberalization of its culture and the explosion of its growth in the 1920s and 30s (as I argued in my previous post) made it the most 'forward' nation in Europe, although it was not yet as advanced as Britain, France or Germany. The Soviet Union was the largest continental empire in the world, and although vast tracts of Russia were tundra or desert, sparsely populated or hardly populated at all, that empire nonetheless incorporated the vast and invaluable oil-fields of Georgia, the 'breadbasket' region of the Ukraine (two things Hitler desperately sought and cherished in 1941 and 42), and enormous reserves of iron and coal. The size of the Soviet Union, it need hardly be said, was also a major factor in its defense, perhaps the only reason why it didn't capitulate in a year or six months or even two months, as some western prophets gloomily predicted; Blitzkreig had worked well against France and Poland, which fell in a matter of weeks, but that was not the case with Russia - and Hitler had some foresight of this. Operation Barbarossa was a gamble from the get-go, and the fact that the Soviet Red Army was the only army in the world to rival the Wehrmacht in size, made it a dangerous gamble indeed.

As for the 'abysmal shape' of the Soviet infrastructure, a point often cited - it needs to be qualified. By 1943, at the zenith of the conflict of the Eastern Front, the Soviet Union was the world's second largest producer of iron and coal, surpassed only by Great Britain; its heavy industries, which were mainly based on engineering and metallurgy, were capable of producing the greatest numbers of tanks, planes, rifles, mortars and shells of any European combatant. (True, the tanks and plans didn't always *work*, but that is another matter entirely.) For all that it was 'backward', the Soviet Union managed and maintained a remarkably durable and robust war-time economy, despite setback after setback. Just consider how Stalin managed to transport the whole of Russia's industries, by train, more than two thousand kilometres east, from the front-line to the safety of the Urals - a triumph of planning, organization, and bloody-minded determination if ever there was one! The bulk of Russia's infrastructure lay westward, near the Polish border, and that promised disaster when Hitler invaded in 1941: as much as a quarter, it has been estimated, of its total industrial capacity was lost in the first months of Barbarossa; more in the winter months of 'scorched earth'. The speed with which the Soviet Union was able to reorganize and rearm, to reassert itself in the face of its enemy, in spite of six months of confusion, and Stalin's hapless leadership and a reckless policy of 'scorched earth', was nothing short of miraculous, a feat which none of the western Powers, not even Germany, could have accomplished. (When the Soviets invaded Eastern Germany in 1944 they were surprised to find the Germans' industries and agriculture relatively intact, the people by and large contented and well-fed: Hitler, despotic though he was, was mindful of the war-time feelings of his compatriots, unlike Stalin, who was a fearsome tyrant indeed, and fought tooth and claw for every scrap of territory.) And this despite the fact that between 1940 and 1942 Soviet national income fell by 33 percent, gross industrial output by more than 20 percent, and gross agricultural output by more than TWO thirds, recovering only slowly after 1942: by 1945 these figures were at just 88 percent, 104 percent and 54 percent respectively of their pre-war values. Despite this gross armaments output (the amount of tanks, planes, weapons and munitions the USSR produced) increased to over 180 percent of its 1940 value by 1942, and by 1944 to 250 percent. [Source: A. Nove, An Economic History of the U.S.S.R. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969) p. 272.] In short, the flexibility, durability and sheer energy of the Soviet war economy were simply astounding, a fact too often overlooked or underestimated by western observers. The only other Western power to see a comparable rate of war-time rearmament and 'recovery', the US, did so with a relative leisure and ease, and with considerably less of a starting handicap.

The troops of the Red Army, ill disciplined though they were, frequently ill-trained, and often expected to go into battle without even a gun or grenade in hand, were nonetheless extremely hardy and determined soldiers; and combining a natural toughness and resilience with exposure to a bitter climate and years of privation, they were perhaps the best prepared of all the European soldiers to fight a long and difficult war of attrition. Stalin on more than one occasion scoffed at the perceived 'weakness' of his Western Allies, who repeatedly delayed Operation Normandy until the 11th hour of the War, desperate to avoid getting their hands bloody; and Churchill blanched when 'Uncle Joe' suggested in 1942 that a few British divisions be sent over to the Eastern Front, to help in the defense of the Motherland. Much has been said, written and sung about the heroic British 'Tommies' of the First World War, and the trials they had to go through; but the Russkis were nothing if not heroic, stalwart allies, although their efforts were less often heroic than suicidal. (Admittedly, of course, this does not change the fact that the Red Army suffered from terrible indiscipline and poor internal morale, and was held together only by the fear of retribution and Stalin's iron will. Surprisingly Stalin, unlike Hitler, despite stumbling through a series of disasters in the early days of the War, never faced a coup - which speaks volumes about the loyalty and terror the 'Iron Leader' inspired in his men.)

In conclusion, although it is easy to dismiss the Soviet Army as disorganized, 'backward' and obsolete, as many western commentators have done, sometimes scathingly and without due respect to all the facts, that is to do it a grave disservice. Such prejudices and oversights no doubt accounted for Hitler's ultimate defeat on the Eastern Front - even after Sebastopol, Stalingrad and Kursk he held confidence that the Russians would be defeated in the end - but even in 1941 he was wary of the danger of entangling Germany in a long, drawn-out conflict.


The US was a strong, well-developed industrial and economic power, even at the onset of the Second World War; but it was also experiencing a period of relative decline, if one considers the figures I mentioned before. The Depression was a bitter blow to western capitalism, and the US was hit most heavily of all; it was still recovering in 1941, and only the intervention of the Second World War allowed it to recover as quickly as it did. Probably it would have recovered anyway, but otherwise certainly not at the pace of 1942-1944; British funding and Lend-Lease greatly fuelled the economy's expansion, and in their absence the American economy would have to revitalize itself on its own.

True, the US had the largest navy in the world, one of the best air-forces, and the Atlantic presented a physical and strategic obstacle to any invading foe: America, alone of all the combatants, was fortunate never to have to face the threat of invasion, and this was one reason why it was so successful (and actually 'profited', if one can use that word, from the experience of the War.) But the US army in 1941 was in pretty bad shape: whereas the Soviet Union and the Third Reich, the principal combatants of the War, both managed vast standing armies, of around 20 million and 8 million men respectively (at its height the Red Army probably conscripted more), Britain had an army of considerably under a million, and the US's was comparatively anemic. Even Poland's army in 1939 had been at least two million strong; France's, geared to national defense, was several times the size of Britain's. Britain, with its naval superiority and protected by the English Channel, traditionally had never needed a large standing army; the US, having decided to wash its hands of Europe after the First World War, had effectively disbanded the bulk of its army in the 1920s, focusing its efforts on building up its air-force and navy instead. However, the air-force and navy could NOT win a war against Germany, or even play the principal role in doing so. (These were more decisive, though, in the Pacific conflict against Japan.) For all the investment ploughed into the Allied bombing campaign, it seemed to have little discernible effect on Germany's war-time industry: Albert Speer's war economy was producing twice as much at full mobilization in 1944 as in 1941, though cities like Hamburg, Dresden and Berlin lay in smoking ruins; the Ruhr, the industrial heartland of Germany, had been bombed so many times that it was astonishing it was able to produce anything at all, yet it clamoured on. And of course, an air-force could not occupy or invade an enemy territory, it could only weaken it through aerial bombardment; and towards the end of the War it lost sight of even that goal, as its focus shifted from industrial dismemberment to carpet bombing and civilian 'terror raids.' It did so in the hope that such a strategy might provoke the Germans to rebel and end the war, but had the opposite effect of stiffening civilian resolve, much as happened in the Battle of Britain. This demonstrated all too clearly the ineffectiveness of using an air-force as the primary tool for conducting a war, a strategic fact which the Americans still seem to have difficulty grasping today. (I have a cousin serving in the Marines who has pointed out this very deficiency to me.)

As for the navy, both the British and American navies played only a supporting role in the European theatre. It is obvious that any amphibious campaign (such as the invasion of Normandy, Italy, Operation Torch, Malta, or Sicily) needed a large navy, but the navy's role, though important, could NOT be decisive. For the war to end Europe had to be liberated step by step, Germany invaded, Berlin crushed under the heels of an Allied army; the bulk of this effort was made by the Soviet forces, NOT by the Western powers, who dithered and dallied until June 1944 and faced in Normandy a force less than two-thirds the size of that encountered by the Soviets on the eve of 'Bagration'; the US and Britain were simply unable to pay the blood price necessary to ensure the defeat of Hitler's Reich, and if they had attempted to do so they would probably have faced a general public uprising. (Churchill was all too aware of this danger, hence his need to keep on good terms with the Soviets.)

My final words on this matter: the US was an economic and industrial power, I don't think anyone can dispute that, but it was by no means as powerful as you are suggesting; and economic and industrial supremacy do not a world power make. Moreover, it was not until AFTER the War that the US became a superpower, in large part BECAUSE of the War - it was the only nation to emerge stronger, not weaker, from the ashes of 1945. In our 'alternate timeline', or 'parallel universe', or whatever you think it should be called, one cannot say for sure how the US would fare. Perhaps the US before 1940 was not destined for greatness, but the Second World War changed the course of its history; who can say?

Lastly, bear this in mind: The US played only a small role in the Great War; in the Second World War between 1939 and 1942 it more or less sat on the sidelines, and only involved itself fully from 1944; during the Cold War it engaged in only two major campaigns, in Korea and Vietnam, and the latter was an unmitigated disaster; and even now, in Iraq and Afghanistan, America is struggling to defeat an entrenched, insurgent, and determined enemy, despite an overwhelming superiority in technology and strength of numbers. The Americans, unlike the Soviets, and unlike the Germans, have never been prepared or willing to spill their blood on the battlefield. On the contrary - that is one of the main reasons for the US's historical isolationism. The Founding Fathers left Europe to get away from the struggles of 'bishops, kings, and oligarchs.' It has been remarked that more Americans died in the Civil War than in any every conflict in which America was involved combined since, which can only suggest that they are (naturally) an inward-looking people, more concerned with their own affairs than those of the wider world - a fact that remains relevant to this day. (The Second World War, however, went some way to change this thinking; but even today there are Americans who cannot point out the UK, their #1 ally, on a world map.) If in our 'Hitler-less' timeline, without the galvanizing effect of the Second World War on American power, the US independently decided to embark on a serious war or on a policy of conquest - very unlikely - it would have these formidable difficulties to contend with, as well as the constant expectations of a reluctant, suspicious, and above all democratic populace.


Let's hear your views.

No particular arguments with the above. The Soviets had the best tanks in the entire war in the T-34 and the best artillery unit in the katyushas, and if I'm not mistaken these units had been designed before the war. They just were never produced or deployed in meaningful numbers or with useful tactics until later.

I think it's an impossible discussion to consider who would have taken Britain's place as a world power if WWII hadn't happened, because for this thought experiment we need to also consider WWI never taking place. Britain was declining as a colonial and naval superpower before WWI, and the US, Germany, Japan, and Russia were all rising before WWI. WWI crushed Britain with war dead and with unmanageable debt. Russia was in a calamitous civil war, and Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman states had completely collapsed (as had Russia).

The United States was greatly spared by WWI in terms of economic hardship and battlefield losses, and it had already greatly advanced its mass-production capabilities during the war.

Now you've presented the state of military unreadiness that the US faced at the beginning of WWII, but I don't think that that is directly relevant to the question of whether they were rising as a dominant world power. They already were, plain and simple -- and I don't think it's an inscribed rule of history, even if frequently observed, that the world must always have dominant military superpowers. Their military condition between wars was a much shorter term matter of interwar economics and politics.

But the United States had all the factors necessary to become a dominant power: 1) political stability, 2) massive industrial capabilities and efficiency, 3) an efficient rail and canal network, 4) huge seacoasts with lots of deep sea ports, 5) one of the largest labor forces in the world, 6) natural resources, and 7) freedom from imminent threat of invasion.

Not a single other nation in the world had all of the above. The USSR under Stalin had 1, 2, 5, and 6. Japan and Germany only achieved a critical mass of these by invading and enslaving entire populations and conquering territory.

So who else could it have been?

I can't think of a satisfactory answer to that, and because it is a thought experiment there are no 'right' or 'wrong' answers. However:



The main issue was not so much the military unreadiness of the United States, which was only a transitory thing as you point out, but rather the psychological unwillingness and unreadiness of the American people, ingrained through the generations, to be involved in European and international affairs. If America wanted to assert its position as a world superpower, it had to be INVOLVED, and not preoccupied with its own corner in the world. It had no intention of doing this until Hitler came along, and forced it to take action. WWII was the wake-up call. The question is, would our 'alternate history' have produced a similar wake-up call - the rise and dominance of communism in Europe, for example?



I never said military superpower, although that might have been implicit in my argument. A world power need not, after all, be a military power; America certainly was not a military power in the 1930s, and Britain was not the strongest military power either. That position goes to Nazi Germany, which managed to re-organize, re-industrialize and re-arm itself in a very short period of time; without Hitler, and without the rapid rise of a fascist, militaristic regime in Germany, the Soviet Union would have posed the greatest military threat.
The British Empire by the end of the 1930s was still the world's largest Empire, and therefore the 'world power' of the day, albeit one in decline; but it did not have the strongest army, and Britain itself did not pose too great a military threat to Germany. France actually had the largest army and air-force in 1939, but it was very quickly knocked out of the War; its status as a military power was no defense against a less well armed but more inventive, more ambitious power such as Germany. And that is my point - that abstract things such as ambition and determination can mean more, in the long run, than sheer economic, industrial or military power. America in the early decades of the twentieth century may have had all the ingredients necessary to become a world power, but it did not yet have the vision, or desire to become one.



America had RELATIVE political stability, but it was not spared the hardships of the Depression - rather, it was the most heavily affected, and that impacted directly on its war-making ability, as well as its political stance. If the US had been economically 'strong' at the end of the inter-war years, and confident enough to be assimilated into the League of Nations, it could have done something to prevent the rise of fascism in Germany and in wider Europe; Churchill in his four volume series The Second World War stated several times that Nazi Germany could have been defeated easily without a single bullet being fired, if only the European nations had stood up and done something. America's failure to provide that leadership, which it deserved, was crucial. But it was inexplicable. A fascist Europe, or possibly a Communist Europe (which might have transpired in the absence of Hitler, as speculated in my earlier hypothesis), would not bode well for America's own future, however much it might want to distance itself from European affairs.



That, it is true, was one of the Soviet Union's main weaknesses - but as I said before, being a continental superpower, for purposes of defence it did not especially need or want an overseas empire. The Soviet Union's sphere of interest lay in Eastern Europe, and in the Far East; 'imperialism' furthermore ran counter to its communist ideology.


The Soviet Union never enjoyed such freedom, hence its internal instabilities and its deeply ingrained paranoia, but it did enjoy a period of relative 'security' at the very end of the 1930s, thanks to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - which guaranteed the Soviet Union freedom from the threat of Nazi Germany. But, if the Soviet Union had succeeded in neutralizing Japan (or achieving a separate peace with it, as it did prior to June 1941), and managed to build up a strong 'buffer-zone' against invasion in the West, which was its foreign policy main aim both before and after the War, it would have been much more secure than it was on the advent of Barbarossa. Had the Soviet Union succeeded in implanting a Communist and therefore Soviet-friendly regime in Germany, as indeed it attempted twice to do in the 1920s (and failed), and MIGHT have done in the 1930s if not for the arrival of Hitler and the subsequent banning of the Communist Party, it would have quickly guaranteed itself a much greater degree of safety.

You really need to read the book I keep mentioning, War of the World by Niall Ferguson.

The 19th century was full of popular revolutions in Europe, the rise of national political ideologies, and the rise of nationalism. I suppose that the French Revolution started it all, and the Napoleonic wars sort of infected this nationalism (along with a sense of vulnerability) on the rest of Europe. The rise of Germany and Italy as cohesive states, the rise of Russia after the abolition of serfdom, all led to a turn of the 20th century with brand new dynamics in Europe. At the same time the populations were getting larger and moving about, which led to a lot of xenophobia. Pogroms against Jews were widespread in Eastern Europe, esp Russia, and of course there eventually was the Armenian genocide.

In the early years of the 20th century, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Imperial Germany, and the Ottoman empire were already tottering and corrupt and near collapse. Hegemonic control of areas like the Balkans was fracturing. And eventually a Europe that had not known truly modern warfare (unlike the Americans who experienced trenches and machine guns in the American Civil War) imploded in WWI.

It is truly impossible to consider a WWII-free Europe without asking how one first accounts for the crises that created the first war, let alone the new issues and old unresolved issues that bridged the two wars.

Suffice it to say that the United States was very sheltered from this, and the beginning of the 20th century marked a steep growth curve in American industrial productivity.

So I think that it's impossible to imagine a US that did not become a dominant world economic power, and with that it became a dominant diplomatic power as well. This was never guaranteed when the Civil War broke out, but America somehow got through it.

The cracks in Europe's dam were just too widespread, too interwoven, and with too much potential energy. And as was seen in the Napoleonic Wars and in the two World Wars, a big European war nearly always consumed much of the continent. What made Britain a dominant power was its isolation, its navy, and its colonies. And its colonies were more of a liability than a benefit by the time of WWI, I mean there was fighting in their Middle Eastern and African colonies during the war, they were getting mired in conflicts like the Boer War before WWI, and Imperial Britain had already been on a downslope certainly since the War of 1812 if not before.

I think Teddy Roosevelt had that vision, and Woodrow Wilson certainly had that vision (at least in terms of America being a world leader in its diplomacy and ideals).

I think that if this conversation begins with the Depression then most of the variables we're interested in here were already past history. The US became a very strong central state during the American Civil War, and by the early 20th century its infrastructure and industry were dominant. As for political stability, the only major ally of the United States that did NOT change leadership during the 1930s and 1940s was the USSR. FDR served the entire time from his inauguration in 1933 until he died in 1945 -- that's pretty stable, in fact no other American president has ever served four terms.

I'll be sure to get Niall Ferguson's book. I've read one of Ferguson's books before (can't remember which one), I'm sure it must be interesting.

I have read much about the Finland USSR conflict and while the Russian army was not motivated and sluggish, one must never overlook the determination, skill and bravery of the Finish people and Finish army. Due to this Finland never fell under the Russian bear or USSR after the war.

It just goes how to show how a courageous determined small nation can hold off a huge state like the USSR.

That's absolutely true, but it wasn't just skill and bravery that won it for them. It was brazen arrogance and tactical incompetence (with horribly antiquated tactics) on the part of the Soviets. The Red Army did a lot of soul-searching after the war against Finland.