Most likely someone else would have taken his place. The conditions were such after WWI that conditions were just ripe for discontent. If not Hitler maybe someone else in another country even. Greg
I have just finished reading The Man Who Invented The Third Reich by Stan Lauryssens. It is supposedly about Mueller van den Brueck, but after 100 pages I still didn't know that much about the man or his influence on Hitler. But it does provide an interesting picture about Vienna of the 1910's when Hitler was living there and his influences; the people he hung around with, etc. What I gather from this book is that Hitler was initially used as a frontman to bring across the ideas of others that he happened to agree with, but, as we all know, Hitler developed his own political agenda when he joined the DAP. As to what would have happened if Hitler had never appeared on the scene; from this book I don't get the idea that there were many, if any, in this group that could have brought the ideas across in the way that H. did. You had a lot of intellectuals that didn't have a clue about reaching and captivating large masses(something Hitler actually studied). Who knows what would have happened; some other Hitler might have taken the stage or some less charismatic leader which failed to secure such a following as H. did. It is hard, if not impossible to say. But again, from this book, it appears to me that the party would have lacked an charismatic leader and thus would perhaps remained a small party that never ended up in power. Although I agree with Greg that Germany was more than ready for these ideas and political agenda. [ 20. February 2003, 01:30 AM: Message edited by: Stevin Oudshoorn ]
First off all I'd like to say that abortion as we know it today, didn't exist at the end of the 19th century. And second if it wastn't Hitler, it would be someone. Maybe Himmler, Goering, or so ...
I'm admitedly no expert on the Eastern Front or the politics of the region. Perhaps something that involved Western Europen Nationalism in general vs. Communism? Perhaps if Germany had been nationalist to a point, but had not taken the Nazi route, things would have been much different. But, for the most part, yes, my guess would be that it would have been someone else that did essentially the same thing as hitler. He was by NO means the single stimulus of the war or Nazism. But, as said above, he did make it what it was, I suppose. It would have been present in some way, but maybe not as charasmatically accepted as Hitler made it? [ 21. February 2003, 01:50 PM: Message edited by: Doc Raider ]
The key here is at the time that Hitler joined the NSDAP and took it over. He sought out those who would be helpful to his agenda and only associated with them. All of the others rode on Hitler's coat tails. I do not think there was anyone who could have taken Hitler's place at the time for everything afterward to occur.
No. Hitler is not replaceable. There would have been another conflict after WWI, maybe started by Stalin and Germany would have been involved for sure. But without Hitler there would not have been a Second World War as we know it... There would not have been an SS, an Stalingrad, a Battle of Britain, etcera. Unfortunately, the Jewish race would have been annihilated from Europe ayway. This, according to professor Ian Kershaw, Hitler's most aclaimed biographer.
Germany in the 1920-1930´s something to think about: http://www.ul.ie/~scaoil/issue3.4/page4.htm in the 1930’s Six million were unemployed and most of these were in the cities, had not something similar led to the rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia; which was not nearly so urbanised a state as Germany. Statistics complied by the historian Jurgen Falter shows the NSDAP achieving little support from the manual unemployed, who were more likely to vote Communist. The advantages held by the Communists over the Nazis appeared to be formidable. They held a fixed ideology of some intellectual pedigree; the Communist Manifesto had been first published in 1848 nearly 90 years earlier and it was expected that promulgating an already established doctrine of economic and political theory would be less onerous than having to make up one and explain it on the hoof as it were. An already radicalised working class existed in the cities and had risen once before in the Spartacists revolt of 1919. Popular opinion held that revolutions happened in great urban centres where the Communists were strongest not the provincial backwaters, which constituted the bedrock of Nazi support. The July 1933 elections saw the Communist KPD garner 5.25 million votes and left them holding the balance of power between the centrist Democratic SPD and the Nazis. Yet almost unbelievably a mere year later their organisation had been smashed to dust and their leaders either chased into exile or interned in Dachau. the KPD were well supported in the larger cities however the bulk of their support there was drawn from the disaffected unemployed, who, although sincere in their support for the Communist cause lacked the political influence or financial funding to make themselves truly threatening to the existing order. Street demonstrations and turning out on voting day were their only contributions to the KPD. One sympathetic Judge or bureaucrat would have been a hundred times more useful to the Communists than a whole sack full of proletariat votes. Unfortunately Communist Rhetoric made this scenario most unlikely, after all that was the class they had promised to overthrow. Another problem for the KPD was that in Germany power was decentralised to a much larger degree than in Russia so far the only country to have had a successful Communist revolution. Germany had never centralised to the extent of either France or Russia; Berlin as the capital of Germany had never held the importance that Paris or Moscow had to their respective countries. Instead there existed thousands of small cities and towns inhabited mainly by the Mittlesand, small businessmen, shopkeepers, independent artisans and the self-employed; who were to be among the most fanatical of Hitler’s supporters. He could offer them a strong, new Germany in which their positions against the excesses of big business would be guaranteed; the Communists threatened them with liquidation as a segment of the hated Bourgeois class or immersion in the Proletarian mass. Under Communism private property was to be abolished and the land collectivised, unsurprisingly the KPD never fared well in rural areas. Several factors militated against that organisation's support for Communism aims. Most senior officers were either of, or descended from the conservative Junker class of great landowners. Communism was anathema to them and it is doubtful that even if the Communists had received a democratic mandate that these officers would have let them take power. . If privately the army top brass thought of Hitler and his party as an uneducated gang of hooligans, publicly they showed rather more enthusiasm for his policies. As the Chief of the Army Command, General Von Hammerstein said after a four hour talk with Hitler "apart from the speed, Hitler really wanted the same thing as the Reichwehr". Indeed throughout the early Thirties an unmistakable pattern is evident, although vast sections of the Establishment were hostile to the Weimar Republic and would have preferred either a return of the monarchy or an authoritarian government, they could not do so alone. The party of the Establishment, the German Nationalist Party DNVP simply did not attract the number of votes necessary to rule Germany by itself; a coalition was the only solution. The Communists who were to the left of the hated SPD were unthinkable as partners; the only other party attracting widespread support and one, which had a broadly similar philosophy, were the Nazis. For example on June 16th 1932 the ban on the SA was lifted; Thalmann the Communist leader described the lifting of the ban as "an invitation to murder". . A common response of a rank and file Nazi who had joined before 1933 to the question why he supported Hitler was “My belief is that our Leader, Adolf Hitler, was given by fate to the German nation as our Saviour, bringing light into darkness”. The Communists had no comparable figure in their leader Thalmann. Thalmann also lacked Hitler’s political instincts, in 1933 had the KPD joined forces with the SPD it is more than probable that the Nazis would never have come to power . Thalmann however still saw Social Democracy as the real enemy of the working class and spurned such a compromise with Communist principles. This catastrophic mistake by the KPD leader, was influenced by Stalin’s belief that social democracy was not essentially different to Fascism. He would live to regret such inflexibility. Hitler although not completely satisfied with having to enter a coalition government with Alfred Hugenberg’s DNVP, nevertheless bowed to reality, though not before making certain that he would hold the Chancellorship, again putting Nazi pragmatism before principle. it was the threat of Communist revolution which had already led to so much suffering in Russia that finally drove many uneasy voters into the arms of the Nazis. Plus some army point of view in 1930´s Germany: http://www.althist.com/regime.htm
