if he had just invaded a few hapless countries and had not
tried to exterminate the Jews.

Then maybe it would be "cool" to wear apparel/jewelry adorned with his likeness?

Read Hitler: Profiles in Power by Sir Ian Kershaw.



Invading "hapless countries" and extermination of the Jews were not mutually exclusive actions. His ideals and actions were interlocking. There is no alternate reality.

He should still be viewed as an aggressor like Saddam was when he invaded Kuwait.

Something like Napoleon, I imagine.

But with a major part of his platform built around uniting the country in hatred for a supposed scapegoat for the prior two decades, I suspect he wouldn't have achieved the power necessary otherwise.

Well, the Soviets had plans to take Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Poland before Germany started moving themselves.  In a scenario minus the holocaust and the invasion of the USSR, after probable Soviet successes in the east they were bound to continue expanding west under Stalin, so it's not impossible that Hitler could have been known to history as the hero who stopped (or at least bled out) the Bolshevik westward invasion with British and French assistance.  The German invasion of a few small countries would be glossed over.

about the same as we did the soviet union.

both invaded neighboring countries at approximately the same time in history and both killed millions in their own countries.

the only difference is Germany struck England our closest ally so we were asked, almost begged by Churchill to help out.

if not for that we probably would have only fought the Japanese, or not been in the war at all if the Japs didn't strike America and Germany only took Poland and France.

just a wild ass guess though, I was born in 1965 and a product of publik edumacation.

I don't get the point.  What would we have said about him if he hadn't been a politician at all but instead sat around in a bar all day telling jokes?   (Picture "Norm" from Cheers but everyone yells "Adoph!" when he walks in the bar).  
What would we have said about him if he had been a street sweeper?

Trying to take over the world and exterminate Jews, Gypsies and "inferior" people was pretty much what made him Hitler.

Communism was Hitler's other scapegoat, and his favorite of all was Jewish Communists.  Suppose he had served on the Eastern Front in WWI against the Russians instead of the Western Front and focused his hatred on ethnic Russian Communists.  Then twenty years later it's a race between him and Stalin to see who invades who first.  If Stalin moves first Hitler doesn't get a chance to massacre anyone and Germany looks like the victim.  You'd still have the mid-30's eugenics programs (murder and sterilization) in Germany as an indicator of what he might have done, but that was relatively limited in scope and much emphasis on that would have been lost in the greater story of the war and the natural preference to view an ally favorably.

Somewhere between Napoleon (for the military genius and leadership) and Stalin (for the tight controls & secret police), I guess.  He'd still be a villian and a threat to democracy, but you might have a larger and less stigmatized subset of society that would consider it cool to wear Hitler t-shirts with a picture of der Fuehrer staring off into an unspecified point in the distance.

If he had just annexed Austria, taken Poland, ran through the Low Countries, France and then stopped, who knows. I know you said hapless, but there was zero question that he as well as a large portion of Germany wanted retribution for the ToV. France was getting it.

Obviously Barbarossa was the beginning of the end for the Germans for many reasons. Had he stopped, fortified and negotiated - we MAY have seen an allied Britian at one point when it got to the inevitable point where Russia was a problem as the non-aggression pact was simply a mutual bid for time. The US may have never gotten involved.

But who knows.

Some say Churchhill would have rather shot himself than ever ally with Hitler because of his aggressions in France and elsewhere as well as the Nazi theology. Then again, it would have been the lesser of 2 evils as soon as Russia would have started doing the same thing some years later. We will never know, but it is an interesting idea that many people have kicked around for years..What if.

As far as the jews, remember, a VERY small percentage of the military and populas as a whole ever knew this happened. There was no internet, cell phone cameras and facebook pages where SS guards posted their daily evildoings. The vast majority of Germans had zero clue as to exactly what was going on in regard to the Jews past the fact that they were not wanted in Germany. Had the war not ended the way it did with the liberation of these camps and the discovery of detailed records and accounts as to what went on - it may have been completely downplayed and pushed under the rug. Had they not done ANYTHING to the Jewish people except maybe forceibly deport them - this would have just been another war.

I am pretty sure that the knowledge of the Holocaust wasn't known until they started finding the camps. Except for of course the survivors etc.

The Allies declared war on the Axis because of a pact. Not because of the holocaust.

There would have been no alternative once he invaded Poland, holocaust or no holocaust. History would be written the same way, Hitler invaded countries, the Allies fought back and prevailed.

IBTeverysoldierandcivilianwasintheSSandknewexactlywhatwasgoingon crowd

Uh, Germany declared war on the US after pearl harbor.   Some have speculated that the president was looking for a way into the war that wouldn't involve his getting fired.

I don't know about that, I've read transcripts of broadcast radio speeches by Nazi officials from the late 30's in which they strongly implied that the Jews were being killed.  They weren't saying it absolutely point blank, presumably to avoid excessive international pressure, but there was no mistaking the implications.  IIRC one comment was something like "we're moving the Jews 500km east and 2 meters down" or something like that.  The live audience laughed and applauded.

ETA: There was also a pretty fair amount of public awareness of the internal German eugenics programs before the war, plenty of people had mentally retarded/homosexual/disabled relatives disappear in German "hospitals".  There was some public discussion, some media exposure, but the regime clamped down hard and discussion ground to a halt when opponents of the program started disappearing too.

If Hitler had died in 1938 he would still be hailed as a German hero (like FDR is today) for taking the Germans out of the depression, giving them hope and getting them back a country (telling the treaty of Versailles to fuck off) and taking down the communists inside Germany.

Eh, the Final Solution didn't come down until 1942 while having been thought up/talked about previously in 1941.  They weren't systematically killing that many Jews in hordes in the '30s.  Rounding them into the camps for political prisoners/disabled/Jews/etc, sure.  Maybe the radio was talking about the occasional Jew who didn't want to go along with the plan so he was killed or random acts by random units just killing Jews but again, nowhere near the outright slaughter from 1942-1944.

I agree that people knew that the Jews were being removed. That was fine with them, but they didn't know exactly WHAT was going on. Out of sight, out of mind. Noone besides the SS and people in the Nazi party knew of the camps. Germans in general figured they were being removed (which everyone wanted) and that was the end of it.

I guess it would be something like if the US would go around and wrangle up all of the illegals and then report that they were being sent away. We would all hear that they are going away, would applaud the effort and assume they were being sent back home or anywhere but here. Personally, I wouldn't think that they would be rounded up and sent to a death camp in the middle of nowhere - nor did any of my family that was alive and served in the Wehrmacht during that time.

Would this be the "made from hair, teeth, skin version" or the non-lethal version of apparel/jewellery?

A better question to ask would be... How would history have gone down had he not invaded Russia, nor restarted his conflict with Britain?

I don't think someone like hitler could have risen to the position he did without a scapegoat.  The Jews gave him someone to blame for all the ills of the country and that focused hatred was what brought him to power.  From blaming the burning of the reichstag on them to Kristallnacht?sp?? the energy behind Jewish persecution was the driving force for his rise to power.

He was a megalomaniac piece of shit in any case, Jews or no Jews.

I've always wondered why Hitler was so demonized when people like Stalin and Pol Pot are given a free pass comparatively speaking. Their atrocities are more like footnotes.



Disclaimer- I think they all have a special place in hell and am not defending Hitler in any way whatsoever

He would be remembered merely as another would-be European hegemon like Louis XIV or Napoleon, the memory of whose villainies has faded almost to insignificance.  The World War would still have occurred, since Britain and France didn't fight for the sake of the Jews, but to preserve their position within the European state system.  But the eternal Hitler, the secular substitute for Satan, the perverse pole-star who is always lurking just at the edge of consciousness, and whom we must excoriate and flee continually, even 65 years after his death - that Hitler would not exist.

Hitler's were the most well-known and publicized because of the war and on the scale that it happened.  Plus, since we fought him while fighting alongside Stalin and the Allies won, we get to write the history books.

I've put some thought into this:
-The Germans industrialized killing, at a time when the threat of industrialization to traditional living was on a lot of people's minds
-The Germans kept excellent records, much of which were recovered after the war, including photographs
-The Jews kept excellent records.  You've heard about Anne Frank, right?  Never would have if she hadn't kept a diary.
-Both murderer and murdered were amongst the most educated people in the world, can't blame "savages"
-Both murderer and murdered were, at least technically in Germany's case, "people of the book", can't blame it on another religion or atheism.
-Many more photos and film exist of the bodies and liberated camps
-The drama of the creation and continued defense of the Israeli state
-"Never forget", the surviving Jews have made it a mission to write books and make movies about what happened, and have the resources to do so

It's really unique in a lot of ways.

If there were NO camps and NO systematic executions of anyone, then he would just be seen as an asshole, instead of one of the most evil persons to live.

You know what else is interesting is how close to being on the verge of what Hitler did we are right now.

I don't think it will ever be possible, just because we are so divided as a country.

Still, when arfcom sees articles they instantly accuse a common person. The biggest one that jumps out to me would be when the white american shot up a jewish museum. 5 pages of people going, "ROPer" and shit like that.

Funny how they don't realize what the similarities are. It could almost be entirely possible to have a 1930's era Germany thing going on here if it weren't for a few things in my opinion. The internet and the availability for dissemination of information quickly. Even still people jump to conclusions super fast before all the facts can come in, which is ridiculously fast compared to 70 years ago. All we would need is a catalyst now, and the instant damnation and hatred for muslims would dominate everything else, and they could be rounded up in internment camps. We already see how it has effected some people, religion of peace that, this, they are barbarians, they are filthy, they are inhumane, the way people talk about all of them just because of the act of a few.

Oh wait, I forget. Thats because they are barbarians. What was I thinking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht

Do I think the German people knew that the jews were being exterminated? Some for sure. Most just used them as a place to direct hate and make excuses for things that shouldn't have happened or why the country could be doing better etc. They were pulling out of hard times and they had plenty of angst to direct somewhere.

Remember Hitler was TIME magazine's man of the year.......

The massacre in Rwanda was triggered by a radio broadcaster........