StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Borgholio wrote:I'm surprised nobody mentioned the possibility that we'd go the way of Command and Conquer if Hitler was removed by a time-travelling Albert Einstein...

I consider it.

If there are no fascists in Germany, there will be fascists in France and Spain. France by far was the most right-wing country in Europe until the NSDAP got power and had a long history of racism against jews (see Dreyfus).

However, if there is no Nazi party in Germay but instead simply a nationalist revanchist one in the mold of conservatives, then there would not be such a heavy WWII and certainly not one started by Germany. France and England were very happy to accept Germany's grievances after Versailles as legitimate because popular opinion had come to regard Versailles as an unjust treaty. So let us say that a revanchist Government does nearly the same thing as Hitler did except for one thing - they don't break the munich accords or stop after the annexation of Chzechoslowakia.

The main problem with Hitler is that he started WWII in the first place because he wanted to have a war. There was no real need to do so. Chamberlain was willing to lean on the Poles to give Danzig until Hitler broke Munich. Poland might have been persuaded via diplomatic means to agree to relinquishing that theory (probably not). But even if not, Germany simply needed to do nothing but sit back and watch Poland get into trouble with the soviets or continue its political claims. Meanwhile, Germany already annexed Austria, parts or all of Czech territories and managed to get recognized as a great power again. Even if Poland does not agree to relinquishing territory, there are always other decades and in the meantime Germany is stronger than it ever was at any point in history. Unless there was a colossal idiot like Hitler in charge, who by that time clearly thought of himself in messianic terms there is no chance Germany goes to war. Imagine if not HItler but somebody like Beck would have led Germany back then. There would be an economic crisis probably, but maybe not if rearmament does not wreck the treasury.

Seriously, Hitler and the Nazis were worse than even the German nationalists, who would have erupted in jubilation at anything close to the 1914 borders + Austria. Nobody, not even Chamberlain, thought he would be committing Genocide over the idiotic idea of Lebensraum, essentially trading lives for relatively worthless tracts of land.

Getting back to the time machine, simply sniping Hitler in 1938 would probably lead to the Nazi party self-destructing with the Army taking over. Not ideal, but better than OTL.

Thus, by eliminating Germany from the equation, who else is going to start a war? The Italians might (paradoxically with Germany which they will lose, or with Greece/France which they will lose even harder), the Soviets might (but they would not go up against the Allies united against them and especially not if such an attack might pull Germany into it in exchange for territorial concessions). France might but any aggressive war they start will be fought without England.

So just by eliminating Germany from the equation it is very hard to see a war being that destructive or even that devestating to the populace. Worst case scenario would be that the Finnish war escalates but even then it would most likely be a short war as Russia could not resist all of Europe.

Thanas wrote:So just by eliminating Germany from the equation it is very hard to see a war being that destructive or even that devestating to the populace. Worst case scenario would be that the Finnish war escalates but even then it would most likely be a short war as Russia could not resist all of Europe.

Not even that - the war against Finland hinged on events unfolding as they did IRL. If there is no Nazi Germany and no pact with it, how and why would one need to secure Leningrad? It would be impossible to justify internally. The USSR would be a lot more careful there, since it would also not have all the territories that it got due to the partitioning of Poland in 1939. If any expansion is at all possible, it would be the East - conflicts with Japan over China.

True. A negative thing might be that with the Soviet Union being less powerful there would be a less rapid decolonialization as the nations involved would have a lot more resources and popular will to pour into colonial wars. Decades of colonial warfare might not be that good - then again the nations that exist today are not beacons of progress either.

Maybe another thing would be the unresolved situation in the east, I can easily see Poland getting into a war with Russia (considering the British alliance would not have held up if Britain would pressure Poland to give Danzig or it might not have been renewed once Germany stopped making war noises) at which point Germany might jump into the thick of it again.

Still in both scenarios it is hard to think of a huge devestating war on the scale of WWII. Even the worst case scenario - another partition of Poland - would not cause deaths on the scales of dozens of millions if sane people were in charge instead of Nazis. Maybe in the east though considering Katyn but still nothing on the scale of the Hungerplan.

Outside of World War II the biggest military-caused deaths were confined to the colonial sphere (Indonesian massacre of a million people, Vietnam war that took several million lives and poisoned the land for decades). So while the death toll may be only slightly smaller, removing Hitler would probably spread the violence around.

Then again, it was spread around in WWII, sparing only the Americas.

I guess the question then is, for lack of a better term, what is more damaging to human progress? Killing 40+ million in Eastern Europe and wrecking nearly all central European states or having a lower number killed in Africa with a longer lifespan for colonial empires?

The war in asia would still happen though I can't see Japan going up against an unoccupied UK, France, US and possibly Germany (provided Chamberlain agrees to the colonial concessions he was mulling over though I can't see Germany going for worthless land in Africa or the pacific).

Thanas wrote:I guess the question then is, for lack of a better term, what is more damaging to human progress? Killing 40+ million in Eastern Europe and wrecking nearly all central European states or having a lower number killed in Africa with a longer lifespan for colonial empires?

The war in asia would still happen though I can't see Japan going up against an unoccupied UK, France, US and possibly Germany (provided Chamberlain agrees to the colonial concessions he was mulling over though I can't see Germany going for worthless land in Africa or the pacific).

Not sure. "Human progress" is a complex thing. WWII had a colossal human death toll, but the rapid scientific advancements it brought later saved or otherwise improved the lives of billions of people.

And then again, it also killed off a lot of promising scientists. Some inventions would have happened nonetheless, others would not. Like you said, it is complex.

But it would probably result in a lesser net number of immediate impact deaths, even staggering out the devestation over several decades would cause less net deaths.

Over half of World War II deaths weren't in Europe, too - they were in Asia. Removing Hitler is unlikely to prevent this. Japan's racist third way politics developed with minimal infusions from European fascism (which would still exist even without Germany).

Yeah but considering that China would still be trained and supplied by Germany in this scenario I think Japan would collapse much earlier. Krupp was quite bitter about the loss of their greatest customer as were a lot of former army officers who made a living "advising" the chinese.

Thanas wrote:Yeah but considering that China would still be trained and supplied by Germany in this scenario I think Japan would collapse much earlier. Krupp was quite bitter about the loss of their greatest customer as were a lot of former army officers who made a living "advising" the chinese.

But Japan still held large areas of China at the end of WW2, despite having to focus much of their resources fighting elsewhere. Even with German training and supplies I wouldn't expect the Chinese to defeat Japan alone in the short term. Would other powers intervene or would there still be a Pear Harbor without Hitler?

Lolpah wrote:

Thanas wrote:Yeah but considering that China would still be trained and supplied by Germany in this scenario I think Japan would collapse much earlier. Krupp was quite bitter about the loss of their greatest customer as were a lot of former army officers who made a living "advising" the chinese.

But Japan still held large areas of China at the end of WW2, despite having to focus much of their resources fighting elsewhere. Even with German training and supplies I wouldn't expect the Chinese to defeat Japan alone in the short term. Would other powers intervene or would there still be a Pear Harbor without Hitler?

The USSR would intervene if Japan kept with their 'Strike North' strategy, but without the German threat in Europe (or it being a lot less dire), Japan would just get their ass handed to them and will probably lose Manchuria sooner or later.

You guys clearly know more about European history than I do, so I'll concede that removing Hitler and the Nazi Party from the equation would have prevented the war in Europe and the Holocaust. However, isn't there a risk that avoiding the major horrors of WWII (genocide, indiscriminate bombing of civilians, nuclear weapons used in anger) would make it more likely that they would make their first appearances later with far more devastating consequences due to more advanced technology? For instance, if the world had never been exposed to the bombings of Guernica, London, Tokyo, etc. and therefore had no particular aversion to the concept of large-scale attacks on civilians and a major war did not break out until the late 1940's or 1950's with bombers like the B-47 and B-52 that could carry many times the payload and unleash far greater destruction, would that not be worse? Also, would the US and USSR show such restraint in incidents like the Cuban Missile Crisis if the world had never witnessed the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? We could potentially be talking about a timeline in which human civilization is essentially extinguished by full-scale nuclear war.

Without WWII, the atom bomb would most likely occur much later. And everybody already knew the dangers of bombarding civilians - the bomber will always get through, remember?

The dangers were if anything greatly overestimated, which helps explain why most people were so reluctant to risk fighting another war even on a limited scale; they thought that a few hundred 1935-era airplanes could flatten a city the way the historical bombing of Dresden or Tokyo did.

On the other hand, without the war, there is no visceral experience of people living in cities being steadily demolished by air attack. In the long run that may matter- there's nothing directly in the Western experience that shows what happens when civilization is utterly destroyed and laid waste by an all-destructive war. All or most of the dying happens 'elsewhere.'

Borgholio wrote:I'm surprised nobody mentioned the possibility that we'd go the way of Command and Conquer if Hitler was removed by a time-travelling Albert Einstein...

Damn, beat me to it!