What if Hitler had never been born or had been assasinated

Stalin himself was responsible for estimated 43.000.000 deaths acording to this site.

Also shown are many other megamurderers (persons or regimes). Hitler was no lonely case.



Hitler was no incompetent man. Sure, he lost the war. Every beginning has an end. But before that he made the whole world tremble! Just look at the death rates..

That site is incorrect according to a number of academic estimates I have read. I'm looking back through some journal articles I have saved and the highest estimate I can find for Gulag mortality is 20 million, and that article has come under a lot of criticism. The NKVD did not keep meticulous records of mortality, and there are discrepancies between prisoner arrivals and departures, and they did not always discriminate in their records between death from "natural" causes (being worked to death or death from disease) versus summary execution. But in reality most academic sources I've read seem to place the death toll much lower than 20 million (in the Gulag).

It is beyond question that Stalin did not summarily kill anywhere close to 43 million. His kind of atrocity was different than that of Hitler, Pol Pot, Bagosora, i.e. rapid and systematic industrial death. The Rwandan death toll was 800,000, less than Treblinka alone, yet never in human history have so many people been systematically murdered in such a short time. The only thing in the CV of Hitler or Stalin that matches that was the Nazi action against the Hungarian Jews in the summer of 1944. In a span of just 2 months or so, 700,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz and 470,000 killed. They were killing up to 14,000 a day. This is a different sort of death machine than, say, the Ethiopian famine (which was a man-made catastrophe).

Imperial Japan's occupation of mainland Asia is often left out of these discussions, but from what I recall their own systematic brutality cost up to 10 million people their lives.

Comparing crimes against humanity is in a way a stupid endeavor. They're all superlative examples of how low we can go, and often time it's only circumstance that determines the final tally -- I mean imagine if Hitler had forced an armistice with the Soviet Union based on the front position in the winter of 1942. Hitler would have had YEARS to execute his policies in the occupied territories.

By disagreeing with the figure you link, I'm not in any way diminishing the importance of Stalin's crimes, just questioning the accuracy of their numbers. Methodology has a lot to do with it. With a 30 year reign, I have no doubt that attributable mortality to both murder and stupid policies accounted for tens of millions. Making estimations of attributable mortality is dicey enough -- laying the blame for it is even dicier.

Yes he was, and his own generals thought so. The best battlefield tactician in Nazi Germany, Heinz Guderian, almost got himself arrested because he was so fed up with Hitler's blundering.

Here are some examples of his incompetence:
1) Hitler specifically chose to bomb civilian targets in the Battle of Britain rather than military targets, esp airfields. This killed and terrorized people, but proved tactically useless and did nothing but expose the Luftwaffe to the RAF reprisals. After the Battle of Britain had ended, Germany had no chance of EVER having air superiority over Western Europe again

2) The invasion of the USSR in the summer of 1941 was hubris of the highest order. Many even within the Nazi Party opposed it. Hitler was insane to think that he could win a Blitzkrieg war over such vast distances, yet that is exactly what he thought. Stalin's failure to anticipate it (despite receiving 80 separate warnings of an impending attack) allowed the Nazis to penetrate so deeply into Russia that they became impossible to supply by the time the winter came around. When the Wermacht got stopped in front of Moscow that winter, there was no chance of ever recovering -- because Germany could not sustain a war of attrition against Russia (as Speer knew).

3) Hitler's declaration of war against the US following Pearl Harbor made no sense. Instead of the US fighting a war exclusively in the Pacific, he effectively invited them to Europe.

4) The Atlantic Wall was a near carbon copy of the Maginot Line, which Hitler had easily bypassed in 1940. Sure, the invasion of Normandy was brutal, but even Omaha Beach had been reduced by noon on D-day and the other 4 beaches were captured within the first couple waves. Hitler disdained the idea of mobile reserve units poised to deploy to the site of the invasion and counterattack, and preferred Rommel's idea of a static fortified defense.

5) Stalingrad. Need I say more? They started the battle by bombing the city into rubble (killing 40,000 people in the process), which made it impossible for the German tanks to penetrate. The army of Blitzkrieg was not built for street-to-street fighting in a foreign city in winter. Furthermore, the Wermacht failed to take the east bank of the Volga before the battle, and they thus had no way to prevent supply of the Russian soldiers in the city or anticipate the counterattack. Once the German 6th Army had been surrounded, Hitler refused to divert troops to break them out, and more than 300,000 troops were lost (800,000 in the battle on the German side, 1.2 million on the Soviet side).

6) Kursk (summer 1943). Need I say more? Hitler attacked a Red Army salient knowing (he admitted it!) that it was an obvious point of attack and that Stalin was preparing for it. Hitler pulled out of the battle, but by then he had lost so many tanks and so many planes that he wasn't able to launch another significant offensive until the Bulge roughly 18 months later.

7) The SS diverted so many resources and troops for operating death camps and labor camps, guarding ghettos, and shooting "partisans" in Russia that it consumed a major part of the German military personnel, budget, and especially rail transport system.

8) Despite urgings to do so from Guderian and others, Hitler refused to let Germans retreat to consolidate forces. Thus, for the last 6-12 months of the war, the Red Army just ran over them because there was no concentration of mass. By the time the Red Army got to Berlin, Hitler only had teenagers and old men to throw into the battle.

9) The V2 rocket program was an ill-conceived terror weapon that was never used tactically. Some have pointed out that this could have been used tactically against the invading forces on D-day, but it never was.

10) The Battle of the Bulge was not only a hopeless venture, but it was effectively a kamikaze mission on Hitler's part. The Wermacht was done as a fighting force after this battle. The war lasted another 5 months only because Hitler was able to trade distance for time.

If the slightest thing differed, I wouldn't have been born. (I'm an advocate of Chaos Theory/Butterfly Effect)

There's the irony. All 4 of my grandparents survived the death camps, and one of my grandmothers lost her first husband in one of the camps. My grandparents met in displaced persons communities.

So had it not been for the Holocaust, I'd have never been born.

My other grandmother often says that when she looks at us (her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren) that she survived so that she could have us, that we are the reason she survived. She was 18 when she was liberated.

As much as I hate having any causal relationship to Hitler, Hitler's birth, actions, and death as it was historically done, is necessary for my existence.

Well, fortunately causality is already done by the time we effects get to reflect on it. It might be obvious to say I would will my birth out of existence in order to undo the suffering my grandparents endured (let alone the rest of the victims). But better to internalize that knowledge of one's self, one's roots, and act as a small counterbalance to it. Do good for people.

It comes down to the fact that wishing history to change could create an even worse scenario , we must live it at the time to the best of our ability and learn from history.I can remember a science fiction story where a time traveller is being attacked by an ape like creatures. He has to fight them of, as one of them attacks him he has eye contact with him and notices a certain humanity. He shoots him in self defence.The traveller and his time machine disappear.

Hi,

Hitlers was a systematic calculated murderous killer if all the blame for world war 2 and accountability is accorded to him by history then he is directly responsible for at least 55 000 000 deaths

Stalin was in some sense was terrifying than Hitler, Hitler seemed to love Eva his girlfriend /wife and his German Shepard dog. So if one really scratched deep maybe even this evil monster had just a flicker of light in him. Maybe he did care for the German people so long as they were not Jewish.

I would like to add although my name is really Alan McDougall my late mother was Jewish and if I had been living in the area of Poland were she originated I and the rest of my family would have died in one of the death camps, most likely Auswitch

Stalin had a total disregard for human life by it from what segment of the population, he had his own brother murdered and even became a pall bearer at his funeral

Stalin was incapable of any descent human emotion

His wife committed suicide.

Below are some statistics from a site

Note I have pruned it down but left the statistics as is


http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM


[CENTER]Truth is tough
---- O.W. Homs. The Professor at the Breakfast-Table [/CENTER]



CONTENTS





61,911,000 Victims: Utopianism Empowered 1917 to 1987

• 
  
  • 
    
  • Table 1.A. 61,911,000 Victims: Totals, Estimates, and Years
    
  
  

3,284,000 Victims: The Civil War Period 1917 to 1922



Chapter 3. 2,200,000 Victims:

The NEP Period 1923-1928 . 11,440,000 Victims:

The Collectivization Period 1928-1935 4 345 000



5,104,000 Victims: Pre-World War II Period 1939 to June, 1941

Chapter 7. 13,053,000 Victims:

World War II Period June, 1941 to 1945

Chapter 8. 15,613,000 Victims:

Post-War and

Stalin's Twilight Period 1945-1953



. 6,872,000 Victims: Post-Stalin Period 1954-1987
???

Alan, the Gulag records sort of disappear during WWII. It's much better known how many Russians died at the hands of the Germans than at the hands of the Soviets.

The Soviets committed plenty of war crimes themselves, including the systematic rape of millions of German women towards the end of the war (leading to hundreds of thousands of suicides).

One point is that neither Hitler nor Stalin would have been anything without their people. What would Stalin's crimes be without Lavrenti Beria? What would Hitler's crimes be without Himmler, Heydrich, and Eichmann?


By the way, is your family from Hungary? I've known a number of South African Jews whose families originated in Hungary.

There's no way to do ceteris paribus analysis of history like you are trying to do now. Especially in the case of an Earth-shattering event that happened over sixty years ago. If Hitler had never been born, who knows what might have happened? If the wrong person died at the Battle of Hastings maybe the integrated circuit would not have been developed until the 1980's, bla bla bla

odenskrigare


[QUOTE]There's no way to do ceteris paribus analysis of history like you are trying to do now. Especially in the case of an Earth-shattering event that happened over sixty years ago. If Hitler had never been born, who knows what might have happened? If the wrong person died at the Battle of Hastings maybe the integrated circuit would not have been developed until the 1980's, bla bla bla[/QUOTE]

I think you are right but it is, nevertheless, interesting to try, don't you think?

We have dicussed at some length how the absence of despots would have altered history, but what about the removal of the influence highly influential people like Jesus or Mohammad?

They are like huge stones that were thrown into the pond of human history.

Some people created huge ripples in the pond of history and others less, but the pond always settle down and await the next stone

Most of us are tiny pebbles and hardly cause a ripple, by the time of our grandchildren we are forgotten

The despots mentioned during this thread had mostly negative effect on humanity, If we move the topic over a little to supposedly hugely influential people of history like Buddha, Abraham Mohammad. etc

What would the effect of them never been born, on the pathways that make up our history


Our first communication I see nice you read your input may there be many more

Aedes

Paul




You are right, Hitler without his obedient blind followers would never and could never had done the depravity he visited on the human race, and the same applies to Stalin

Hitler had a few close to him that felt fairly safe, but Stalin terrified everyone, no one got close to him and he trusted no one

"My late moms family came from Poland somewhere near the Polish Ukrainian border her surname was Siderasie. They changed it to Davies for some reason, after fleeing to London"

I have read two books by Alexander Solzernesen, "Cancer Ward" and "The Gulag Archipelago", in the latter he gives some true insight of what happened in those appalling slave camps

My father after the war had to escort a train full of white Russians who had fought with the nazis into the Russian sector of Berlin.He did not realise at the time he was assisting talking hundreds of Russians to their deaths .While in east Berlin he tried stopping two Russians from raping a German women but they beat him with their rifle butts and he was hospitalised.He said it was terrible lying injured hearing the women's screams.

xris




The first Soviet soldiers that entered Berlin were of a fairly descent kind, and they warned the people of Berlin that those coming after them were raging barbarians without any scruples or decency and complete disregard for human dignity

Yes like Paul said in an earlier post, there were countless suicides by these inhumanely humiliated and traumatised woman . Age meant nothing to these barbarians they raped little girls as young as five and very old woman in their late eighties.

But if we backtrack the thread a little, would all this evil have been visited on the world , including these German girls and woman now under our discussion, if this one man Hitler had never being born

The first world was started with a single bullet the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the second world war started in the mind of one disturbed man , both wars were intertwined and linked, so in reality the bullet that killed the archduke led to both world was and to the unspeakable horror and suffering that these wars caused to humanity

If he had missed, would the world have experience these wars?, maybe not I think!

I've read "The Gulag Archipelago" and "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". Another one you might read is "The Unquiet Ghost" by Adam Hochschild.

I would dispute the first cause. The first world war was caused by the massive political tensions between the great powers, and with a complete lack of any mediating influence world war one was almolst inevitble. The assasination sparked what was known as the 'balkans powderkeg' but it could just as easily been another spark that lit it.
The second cause, Hitler, is more difficult. He was not quite the same as other facist leaders- merely nationalist- he ran the only national socialist country. In Italy and Spain millitaristic autocrats pushed democratic institutions out of the war, but in Germany, where democracy was stronger, Hitler was voted into power. This was only really possible, only really enabled by Hitlers brilliant and horrible rhetoric- only through his maddned dreams. I think that there would have been wars, and fascist states without Hitler, but I think that world war would have been avoided in the absence of Hitler.

How about the idea that if it weren't for Stalin, the half of Europe would be speaking German today, and the half of Europe governments would be run by skinheads and Nazis.

Who agrees/disagrees and why?

Was fur eine person bist du?
Reignet es?
Mein vater Mensschletet das nazi ouberflen schlescht?

Uh, well, sort of.

I mean you're absolutely right that the Red Army is what broke and destroyed Nazi Germany.

But I'm not sure you can credit Stalin with that:

In 1936 the Red Army Marshall M.N. Tukhachevskii (First Deputy Commissar for Defense and Chief of Red Army Ordnance), proposed to the General Staff of the Red Army that they conduct intelligence and wargames to anticipate a war with Germany. This was before the Nazi-Soviet Pact, before there were discussions of dividing Poland, etc, and the Red Army leadership anticipated that if any nation posed a threat to the USSR, it was Germany. Tukhachevskii was also very similar to Hitler's main battlefield tactician Guderian, in that he was in favor of combined infantry / armor / air / artillery operations -- something that defined the "blitz" but that the Red Army never really got until 1942 or 1943.

By 1937 Tukhachevskii had been executed after a sham trial along with nearly every other member of the General Staff, and approximately 10,000 other senior officers in the Red Army (including anyone with battlefield experience in WWI and in the Russian Civil War).

In 1941, Germany moved something like 3 million infantry troops, thousands of tanks, thousands of artillery pieces, and thousands of aircraft to the border of the USSR. They were conducting air reconnaissance missions, and Germany had pulled their diplomats out of Moscow. Stalin refused to believe that Hitler would attack, and he openly prevented the army from mobilizing for an imminent invasion.

Germany's invasion was an utter catastrophe -- massive encirclements of Soviet troops, who were just decimated. Tens of millions of people in Russia died as a result of this confluence of circumstances. I mean without question it was the Nazis who conducted genocide and scorched earth warfare throughout the Eastern Front -- but they wouldn't have gotten anywhere near Moscow or Leningrad in 1941 had Stalin actually been competent. The war would have been bad no matter what, unless Stalin had mobilized in such a way to be a deterrent (I doubt that would have happened -- they were too economically backwater in the 1930s). But the utter apocalypse that was the Eastern Front of WWII happened in part because of the abysmal leadership of Stalin.

Now, Stalin got better and less meddlesome as the war went on (and Hitler was the opposite), so he led a more effective war especially from Operation Uranus onwards. But give credit where it's due -- Chuikov, Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Yeremenko, etc.

Well I didnt know much about any of those people you named. But I meant to say as USSR as a whole and it was Stalin at that time in charge who stopped the Nazis.

The original question wasn't about Nazi Germany as a whole. It was about Hitler. Nazi Germany without Hitler (say he croaked in 1934) might never have been a belligerent state; and they might have persecuted Jews, but they might never have gone as far as genocide (something that happened at only a small scale until 1941).

Under almost any other leader, the USSR would have done better than it did in WWII. When Germany failed to take Moscow in the winter of 1941, there was nearly zero chance of them winning the war. They just didn't have enough people, resources, and industry to sustain a war of that scale against the Soviet Union. But were it anyone other than Stalin, they would have probably not gotten nearly that close to Moscow.