Give me a summary of what the last 100 years would have been like if Adolf Hitler would have died at birth.?

Question

Would the USSR have become as powerful as quickly?
Would they have been bigger than they were at the end of the cold war?
More communism or more democracy?
Did rebuilding Europe do good things for their modernization that otherwise wouldn't have happened?
Would we be more or less technologically advanced?

What are your thoughts?

Answer 1

My thoughts are that there would still have been a second world war and we still would have had a following cold war with the Soviets.

Considering the ridiculous amount of blame placed on Germany, which was at the outbreak of World War I probably the eminent power in the world (or soon to become with the rate of industrialization and wealth it was creating), the Treaty of Versailles seemed to do its best to keep Germany down. Hitler played his cards well to put himself in a position of power, but the fact of the matter is the German people were unhappy with their situation, the Wehrmar government was not effective at placating the humiliated population, and in the absence of one radical, another would surely fill that void.

Antisemititism wasn't a Hitler phenomenon, in Germany it was widespread for hundreds of years. Martin Luther himself was antisemitic and supportive of pogroms. Hitler found an easy scape-goat, whereas maybe the amount of blame placed on Jews for the German defeat would have been less, I still think German society saw Jews on the whole as outsiders who did not integrate and were all too willing to "sell out" the Kaiser's government to the Entente.

In my opinion we place far too much emphasis on the individual and not enough on the situation, as though Hitler piloted his course, rather than the perception that maybe Hitler steered Germany only direction it could be steered. Yes, Hitler's obsession with eugenics promoted itself in the state policy, and Hitler called for the invasion of Poland and planned for the invasion of Czechoslovakia prior to the Munich Treaty, but are these unique to Hitler himself? Can we be so certain that another German leader would not find a populist calling in the unfair treatment of Germans in the Sudetenland (they were hardly treated unfairly in the newly formed Czechoslovakia, but it made for a great populist argument for the young German nation)? Would any other German ruler not find communism a threat and probably advance in the direction of fascism, as Italy had done, considering how impotent the democratic government had become and how perceived as a puppet regime of the French and British it had become? We give Hitler far too much credit for shaping our world, when really we should bear more of the blame for the way things happened. Good, bad or indifferent, one man didn't shape our world.

So to answer your questions, we would be about the same in technical advancement - any German leader would place the same emphasis on military modernization that has been taking place in Germany since before the Franco-Prussian war. The USSR would probably not have become as powerful as quickly, Hitler himself was very over-confident of his Luftwafte's success in Poland and France and underestimated the British ability to disrupt German supply lines in the Middle East. This is a particular trait to Hitler that another leader would probably have avoided for a while, though we cannot overlook the centuries of competition and mutual distrust between Russians and Germans - I don't think the two nations would build any cozy partnership. But by staying out of Russia, perhaps there would be less Russian influence west of Belarus and Ukraine. So we'd have more democracy and fascism in Europe leading into the 1940s and 1950s, and less communism. That being said, the USSR would have been smaller than it was at the end of Cold War, not having incorporated the Baltic states or Moldova, and much of Belarus would be a part of the Polish state.

Answer 2

Ernst Roem would have superseded the Nazi Party with his S.A. stormtroopers and become the Fuhrer(Hitler had him assassinated) but Roem was such an incompetent fanatic he would have lost the war in 1940 and the Soviet Union would have conquered the whole of Europe in 1941.
America,Great Britain and the rest of the World would have formed an alliance and would of had some kind of Cold War with the Soviet Union ,but they the Soviets would still have crumbled but probably earlier than in real history.

Answer 3

Without Hitler, Germany would've been taken over by Ernst Roem in 1933. He makes the decision to push forward with heavy water experiments and ends the decade with the development of the first A-bomb. With that weapon, he easily defeats mother russia, completes the Final solution and enslaves half the planet.

Answer 4

Chances are, not much would be different. Keep in mind that at least 54 people joined the Nazi party before Hitler did...