What if Hitler had never been born or had been assasinated

Whatever dude, the plebiscite you're citing took place AFTER he had already made himself dictator -- so who gives a ****. Not to mention that you don't seem to appreciate the question that they were even asking in the 1934 poll.

The question at hand in the 1934 plebiscite was not a vote of Hitler versus some opponent and it wasn't even a vote on whether Hitler should be in power or not. It was a yes/no approval of his consolidation of the presidency and the chancellorship. He was already chancellor, and the president (Hindenberg) had just died -- so he was already the sole executive in Germany and the question was whether he should add on Hindenberg's role. Germany was already a dictatorship by then, so whooptidoo, of course he won the vote when he had had violent paramilitaries in the streets of Germany for the last decade and was now in unopposed power.

Woo hoo, they got 85% of the vote on this question after he had suspended the Reichstag, effectively declared martial law, was shipping political dissidents to Dachau (which opened the previous year), and had had SA thugs roaming the streets (I meant SA up above, not SD), soon to be replaced by the even more brutal SS.

But when Germany was a REPUBLIC, up until the Reichstag fire in 1933, Hitler NEVER EVER ONCE STOOD FOR OFFICE, he was NEVER ELECTED, and his party only won 43.9% of the vote.


No, only 43.9% of Germans wanted him there -- at least when they were allowed to have a choice in the matter and there was some legitimacy to their elections. And the only reason there was no coup d'etat or civil war was because Hitler convinced Hindenberg to appoint him chancellor. There would without a doubt have been one had he not been appointed. It's not like Hitler had never tried a coup before, and in 1933 the SA was a legitimate military threat that forced Hindenberg's hand.

A few points, if I may.



Can't disagree with Krumple there. As this century's most famous Jewish historian, Eric Hobsbawm, points out in The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, if a well-informed person from the nineteenth or early twentieth century was to be told by someone from the future that a European country would, in a few decades or so, launch an all-out campaign of extermination against the Jews, Germany would be the last country they would think of (chapter five). Anti-semitism was widespread throughout Europe - had been for long periods of history - and not just in Germany. In fact in Germany the Jews were very successful and influential, despite being a very small part of the national population (that's even if you count "non-practising Jews", or mixed-marriage families), so to most observers they would appear to be "safest" there. Not so in Tsarist Russia, with its pogroms against the Jews, or in early 1900s France, where the Dreyfus affair had scandalized the Jewish population. Historical revisionism - or "slantism", to borrow Krumple's term - seems to have taught us the opposite view, that anti-semitism was most rife in Germany, and almost bound to turn nasty there. Maybe in the 1930s - when the Jews were an obvious target for blame - but not before.



True, but that depends on what your definition of a is. Hitler certainly didn't overthrow the German state - his rule was legitimate, or so it seemed, even if it was under-handed - but it was also subversive. Not long ago people were criticizing George W. Bush of being a "dictator", because of his illegal invasion of Iraq, his subversion of American civil liberties, and even the niggling doubts that he might have had something to do with September 11th (not to mention the fact that he wasn't even "properly" elected the first time around.) Yet Bush, most of us can agree, was nowhere near as "bad" as Hitler. Likewise, there have been many fascist and "anti-democratic" regimes throughout the world, propped up by American arms (during the Cold War especially), whose leaders maintained only a semblance of democracy; to any who wanted to observe their rule was patently undemocratic, often forcing voters to vote in elections, but the Western world was content to ignore it. Saddam Hussein, lest we forget, was once supported by the US; while we wouldn't shy now from condemning his regime as "illegal", "coercive", or "undemocratic", it was accorded legitimacy then, when it suited the Americans to turn a blind eye. My point is, legitimacy is never a simple, clear-cut thing; politics is a decidedly messy business. Hitler's government may have been legitimate, in the eyes of the world, but the methods it used to expand its power were definitely not legitimate, and the very opposite of democracy.

There is a famous saying (can't remember who by): "Concentration of power is the greatest enemy of freedom." We can take it for granted that "democracy" and "freedom" are compatible ideas (I'm not going to be cynical here); we also know that Nazi Germany was an extremely centralized political system, and therefore in direct opposition to freedom. Therefore, it was in opposition to democracy, as well. Q.E.D.




I for one don't believe that the Holocaust was Hitler's original plan; at the very least the idea was not fully formed in his mind until 1939, possibly even 1941, at which time the scope of the War was widened and his true ambitions revealed. The Final Solution was not authorized until early 1942; Jews had been rounded up and killed before then, mostly in Poland, but in a haphazard, unsystematic fashion. Not until after 1942 did the Nazi regime devote a sizeable share of its war effort to the concentration camps, and genocide become central to its war aims. Before then, Hitler had rather undermined and terrorized the Germany Jewish population, before expelling them to other countries - a policy which makes no sense if one assumes he intended to conquer Europe afterward, and exterminate those Jews anyway. To my mind, the Final Solution was enacted more as a policy of retribution - for Germany's ill-fortunes in the East, which (naturally) it blamed on the Jews - than anything else. In the 1920s and the early 1930s, Hitler may have entertained visions of racial genocide, but it seems unlikely that he intended to put them into action.



That, I should tell you, is nothing if not a slantist view. The Germans did notthe German people, and not the Nazis, the actual villains, for their country's actions. Formed in ignorance, attitudes such as these can only foster hatred and further misconception.

The German people followed Hitler because they believed he would be good for Germany; because he promised to lead them to a new era of hope and glory, at a time which was sorely lacking in both. Can we condemn them for that? Should we? That is a very poignant question. Many, it can be admitted, would have agreed with Hitler's more contemptible policies (his hatred for the Jews, for example, and his later terror campaigns against them), and perhaps a great number of them were brainwashed by the Nazi creed, so it is uncertain whether we should forgive them; but the great bulk of the German people, I believe, would not, could not have known, or even conceived of, the full scope of Hitler's plans. (Which, in 1934, even he probably didn't realize.) And to begin with, Hitler did a very good job of rebuilding his country - revitalizing its industries, drastically cutting unemployment, improving social cohesion and stability through policies such as Volksgemeinschaft; even facing up to (as the Germans saw it) their wrong-headed Western neighbours, and the punitive terms of Versailles. And many in the Western world, not only the Germans, recognized the good Hitler did for his country. For much of his time in office he was an idealized, well-respected leader, not just in Germany, but in Britain as well, which helps somewhat in explaining its policy of appeasement. (Not so much in France, which entertained a serious grudge against the Germans.) Even Winston Churchill (shock!) once thought about making an alliance with Hitler, a fact he recalls unashamedly in his autobiography; fortunately he decided against it. (Hitler's racial pretensions did not sit well with the future Prime Minister.)
It was not until afterwards - many years afterwards, when the Eastern Front began to turn sour, when the War finally turned decisively against Hitler and his allies - that the German people as well as the rest of the world began to wake up and recognize him for the monster he was.

I should point out some similarities between Adolf Hitler and Barack Obama. Not in a bad way, of course, not to condemn the new American President; in fact I for one would probably have voted for Obama if I wasn't a convicted felon. (Just kidding, I live in the UK.)the American people, and not their leaders, for the hurt their nation might unleash upon the world? This is the sort of logic a terrorist might use to justify his actions - no sane-minded person could attack the crowd, and not the person responsible. Be warned, my friend: when you use inciteful language like that, you are treading on a slippery slope.

If we bend logic a little and accept that Hitler was democratically elected, then in this case the majority of the German people made an awful mistake and unknowingly elected an evil monster

Just to clarify that you're quoting me and commenting on my post. :flowers:

---------- Post added 09-17-2009 at 06:55 AM ----------

In the second half of 1941, i.e. BEFORE Wannsee, more than 1 million Jews were systematically killed by the Einsatzgruppen in Russia -- I mean this is between 15 and 20% of the entire death toll of the Holocaust before the Final Solution had been authorized.

I for one DO believe that it was in his original plan -- but he didn't have a practical plan for it until war began.

Germany needed a leader, the people were blind to what Hitler was really like and they disagreed with him too but lived in fear.

Sorry, my mistake.

---------- Post added 09-17-2009 at 06:07 AM ----------



Indeed, it is a murky issue. I don't think there's any real consensus on this point, there's so many conflicting arguments. More than anything else though Adolf Hitler was an opportunist, and as much as he may have been capable of scheming and planning things years in advance, I believe he chose rather to take advantage of opportunities when and where they arose. Occupied Russia and Poland in 1941+ was a perfect situation to realize his goals of racial cleansing.

Hitler was an amazing organiser,a rabble rouser of the first order. I once asked my professor how did Hitler control all those people, turning them almost into non-thinking robots

He said it was the careful use of NOISE ; if you scream at people they stop thinking and the repetitive "zig heil, zig heil" reduced to them to a mindless mob ready to worship him and obey his every command, instead of a leader he was now a dictatorial demigod.

James do you agree with my Prof?

Hitler was a very good speaker and he used his speaking and presentation skills to manipulate the people in to believing his propaganda, I can think of one or two people like that myself!
Thanks.

Your Prof is right that masterful oratory can captivate an audience, and even stop them thinking, but it is useless if the speaker has nothing meaningful to say. A lot of what Adolf Hitler said made sense, and that is why he was able to twist the German people to his whim.

I agree Hitler had a superior intellect, he must have had a high IQ to run the war like he did at first before he descended into psychoses and became very ill with Parkinson syndrome

I think we should give Hitler's personal doctor credit for helping the allies win the war. He almost killed Hitler with the cocktail of of highly destructive drugs

And we should give Stalin's doctors credit for letting that evil despot die when he did. When the Great Leader fell ill in March 1953, his personal physicians were reluctant to revive him, knowing that if he survived he would have them quickly dispatched to preserve his cult of personality. It was fortunate for a number of highly placed Politburo members, such as Beria, that Stalin died then, and not later, as the paranoid dictator in his later years was falling deeper and deeper into psychosis, and suspecting everyone around him - especially those closest to him - of treason. (It didn't make much difference to Beria in the end anyway, he was executed six months later; however the NKVD boss would certainly have been executed if Stalin had been allowed to live. Beria at the time was already gathering evidence to use against Stalin in the event, for purposes of blackmail. On the other hand Khruschev, the later Soviet Premier, was hardly on favourable terms with Stalin himself and might have been for the chop sooner or later. The period of 'De-Stalinisation' presided over by Khruschev would therefore not have happened, and the Soviet Union might have followed a very different course; the 'liberalisation' of Soviet political culture which began in the 1960s might have come to pass much later, or not at all. Either way, it could have extended the Soviet Union's lifespan significantly. Hmm, now this sounds like it could make an interesting discussion in itself.)

I think a trained monkey could have defeated 1939 Poland and 1940 France with generals like Guderian, Hoth, Von Manstein, etc -- Hitler deserves credit for audacity but not intelligence. Hitler's military successes were not based on any strategic brilliance with the exception of his confidence that his opponents lacked the will to fight. You can count terrible mistakes of his from the very very beginning of the war -- ones that came back to destroy him in the end even though he won smaller victories at first.

Yeah I have a similar view of this. He also had a horrible military structure with a rule that all decisions are made by him. So many of this generals had to wait for his decision to act which made communication very slow and clumsy.

It is interesting though. Out of all the countries that Germany took over there is one tiny country in the middle of all that "Red" which they could not take and Hitler even is noted by saying it would be insane to attack Switzerland.

Just before hitler came to power, Germany had passed a law forbidding citizens from owning firearms. This law made it easy for the German troops to round up the Jews. If this law had never been passed it would have been far more difficult to round up all the Jews. They could have put up a fight but it is hard to resist when you have a gun pointed at you.

So from a military standpoint Switzerland would expend too much military resources to conquer it. Because a majority of it's citizens not only were trained in firearms but a majority owned firearms. So dislodging all of them would be very difficult and time consuming, so hitler ignored invading.

All leaders make mistakes. Hitler made them; Stalin made them; Patton, Montgomery, and Rommel made them; Churchill made them (ever heard of the Dardanelles fiasco? Look it up.) What separates a good leader from a bad leader, in my view, is whether he is able to learn from his mistakes. That is the essential difference between Hitler and Stalin: while both were stubborn, ego-centric men who insisted on making all (or most) important decisions themselves, the latter was at least shrewd enough to bow out and hand over the reins of leadership to more capable and experienced men, such as Zhukov (although that didn't stop Stalin from interfering from time to time.) Stalin recognized where his strengths lay - he was a superb organizer and motivator - and devoted himself fully to that, while leaving the tactical decisions to his subordinates. Even the Battle of Stalingrad, the pivotal moment of the War, while directed nominally by Stalin (who else?), was overseen personally by Khruschev. Hitler, on the other hand, grew more stubborn and more paranoid as the war went on, even removing some of his best generals, such as Rommel. Patton and Montgomery, the arbiters of the Western front in 1944-1945, are generally considered the "best" Western generals of the Second World War, but most commentators would agree that they were not as capable as their German and Russian counterparts, at least when it came to directing and managing vast ground armies. They committed more than a few grave errors, and paid for them heavily - the Battle of the Bulge, Operation Market Garden - and were perhaps a little too overconfident at times (Germany from the summer of 1944 onwards was practically finished anyway); should we relegate them too to the ranks of "bad" leaders?

Hitler's genius was not in his grasp of military affairs or tactical events - things of which he had a very limited knowledge; he had only minimal army experience - but rather in his ability to recognize his enemy's weaknesses and exploit them. That was seen most clearly in his swift defeat of France and Poland in 1939 and 1940 - say what you will about the Polish Army, but the French was the largest and best equipped at the time, surpassing even the Wehrmacht, although it was doomed by its outdated tactics and mode of thinking - and in the rapid conquest of Russia in 1941 (which was to some extent due to Stalin's own hopeless leadership, yet there can be no denying the success of Hitler's achievements.) It was only when Hitler allowed his ego to cloud his own judgment that he put the fate of Germany, and the course of the War, at risk.

Hi Alan. My names Sophie I'm 13 and I'm doing a study on World War ll, Hitler, The Afrikaners, The Boer and Apartheid. I'm keen to get a excellence on my essay and one of the essay questions is why the Afrikaners and Hitler support each other. I've been searching the internet for a while and havn't been able to find a vaild answer. I was wondering if you knew? :bigsmile:

You are only 13 already interested in history, I would be glad to answer all you questions on South African history Use the private message tool of this forum to contact me privately

I try not to think about "what if"s . . I believe that everything happens for a reason . . .whatever that reason may be, and whether we ever figure it our or not . . . . . Maybe the global example of horrible bigotry led people to be more open to the Civil Rights movement . . . . . maybe there wouldnt have been such a great number of Jewish immigrants coming to the US, and becoming prosperous individuals who contribute greatly to society . . . .who knows?

Everything happens for a reason.

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Hitler was a great speaker . . .and a bastard. It's easy to take one's fear or ignorance and turn it into rage and contentment . . . .if you know how to word it right!!

No jet engines, no mass travels.

No computers!

I'm really greatful for WW2, it was a technologically blessing.