I actually don't foresee another Hitler rising, because the first Hitler ruined it for all future Hitlers. I think what was most damning was the manner in which Germany lost the war. If I thought it was mainly Hitler's values and racism, I would not feel as safe. Hitler bet big on war and he lost in spectacular fashion. I think he forever associated that style of leadership with catastrophe.
People told themselves the same thing about Napoleon, though. And they told themselves the same thing about WW1 - it was 'the war to end all wars,' and everyone was so thoroughly sick of it afterwards (not least Hitler, who was gassed), that somply having the audacity to march an army around was treated as a a strategic victory.
For some time governments that were opposed to Hitler congratulated themselves on resolving international territorial disputes without all the messy fighting and dying. Hitler's troops were clearly superior to those of the countries he was invading (in terms of number and equipment) so the outcome was obvious and the actual business of conflict seen as archaic, other than maybe a few token shots to satisfy military honor. Even when Germany and Britain finally declared war on Hitler, there was no actual fighting at first - this period is referred to by historians as 'the Phoney War', and at the time it was humorously called 'Sitzkrieg' (a pun on the Blitzkrieg, or 'lightning war' style of Hitler's conquests up to that point). It was imagined that when Britain and France had their forces in place, they could be sized up against the German forces, and a simple economic calculation would quickly bring Hitler to the negotiating table.
To the astonishment of most of the allies (though not Winston churchill, who had dourly foreseen exactly this outcome) Hitler responded to the deployment of forces with an all-out attack, ignoring treaties and invading the Low Countries (Belgium, NL, Luxembourg) almost incidentally in order to encircle the British and the French, dealing a crushing blow. France in particular wildly overestimated the robustness of its own defences, which were essentially a giant fortified wall (the Maginot Line). Since the Germans had been manning their version (the Siegfried Line) without doing anything very much, the French convinced themselves that they had forced a stalemate and that sooner or later a diplomatic solution would emerge.
Obviously, I'm simplifying a great deal here.
Now of course, people might have responded to Hitler much earlier if they had taken all his Jew-baiting and so on at face value, and realized that when he talked about exterminating large groups of people he meant exactly that, as opposed to just conquering and looting in the traditional fashion. But I can easily imagine contemporary parallels.
Now of course, people might have responded to Hitler much earlier if they had taken all his Jew-baiting and so on at face value, and realized that when he talked about exterminating large groups of people he meant exactly that, as opposed to just conquering and looting in the traditional fashion.
If people had called Hitler's bluff, things would have gone differently. Do you think the next one will be able to bluff?
Of course, another major factor in enabling Hitler to become Hitler was the circumstances of world power. WWII didn't happen in a vacuum. It was the dramatic culmination of the centuries-long rise of Europe. You mentioned that WWI was destructive. But not destructive enough: thirty years later the same adversaries were ready for another attempt to settle scores and dominate Europe. WWII had to be the end of that cycle: after WWII, Europe was shattered, and world power had shifted to the east and west. The Europe that the combatants had sought to dominate no longer existed.
I'm not much of a scholar of Napoleon, but the way it was framed to me was that the Napoleonic war(s) was the first total war: the size of the French forces were unprecedented, and contemporaries could have been forgiven for not predicting the outcome. Each subsequent war of this type raised the stakes further. That cycle has run its course forever, because the stakes are now so high that victory would mean acquiring territory that was radioactive and uninhabitable.
PS. One of the things that's striking about Mein Kampf is how provincial and small-minded it is. I read a little bit, and one of Hitler's biggest bugbears was the Habsburgs and their treatment of Austria. Hitler was very much a product of his time and place. That time and place is gone forever.
My final point: no one wants to be the next Hitler. What do you suppose was going through Hitler's mind when he committed suicide in a bunker beneath Berlin, surrounded by foreign armies closing in from all sides? He may have anticipated being hanged as a war criminal, or feared retribution from his own people now that defeat could no longer be credibly denied. People make a lot of how Hitler was a maniac and insane, but he knew he lost. In photographs of Hitler from near the end of the war, he looks clearly downcast and exhausted. Hitler started the war maniacally certain of victory, and he ended his reign thoroughly aware of his failure. Hitler was not an imbecile, and if he had known what was coming, I don't think he would have chosen it.
I agree with all that/ What I mean about another Hitler being possible is that I find it quite easy to imagine that establishe powers will turn a blind eye to disturbing rhetoric if it suits them, much as people shrugged off Vladimir Putin's repeatedly expressed nostalgia for the USSR until very recently (although I don't think Putin is an ideologue in the mold of Hitler, just strategically ambitious).
I do agree that nobody could be as obvious about their ill intentions as Hitler was; mass communication through radio, film newsreels and so on was a fairly new phenomenon when he rose to power and people were not fully aware of how it could support totalitarianism as they are today. But you can get away with a lot in politics by simply making the right noises, sadly.
Yes. It's instructive to look at the examples of the two major autocrats of the 20th century. Hitler died a lonely death surrounded by ruin. Stalin died in his own bed as an old man. Stalin bided his time and played the patient opportunist. Hitler was feverish for military victory. It's obvious which dictator Putin wants to emulate.
Just like every other empire that ever failed stopped all other empires from ever forming again? As Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the like fall further into historical curiosities, things like Putinism and whatever you call what goes on in North Korea seem like viable answers distinct from those that came before it. And indeed, in many ways they are different, but especially in the case of the former, I think they clearly show that cult-of-personality authoritarian style of leadership will always be a problem.
There are and have been plenty of small Hitlers. It depends on where you set the bar for "a Hitler" as far as significance. Hitler was significant because he was leader of one of the world's most powerful countries at the time.
> I actually don't foresee another Hitler rising, because the first Hitler ruined it for all future Hitlers.
He only "ruined it" for all future Hitlers in the next ~100 years. A lot of peace and prosperity we have enjoyed in the last 60 years can be attributed to people remembering and recovering from death and destruction of the II World War. There are only few people alive today who lived during WWII, soon there will be no one with first-hand memories of what has happened then. You can already see a new wave of nationalistic trends. For many young people today, Hitler is no different than Napoleon, Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan - some dude who killed a lot of people some time ago. They can't relate to them in any way.
The name Hitler is still virtually a curseword. People may not know much about history, but they know one thing: don't be Hitler.
A lot is made of the fact that people are ignorant of history, but Hitler wasn't: he loved history, perhaps a little too much. He inserted himself into historical events and imagined that he could right historical wrongs and slights suffered by Germans. That is the underlying theme of Mein Kampf. You can say that he distorted history, and I won't dispute that point -- however, his ideas were based on real events, with added sentimentality and sensationalism, the way Hollywood movies are.
Nazism was crushed as thoroughly and decisively as probably any movement ever has been. Hitler is despised by people that don't even know history. Historical events may become dormant, but they are remembered when they become pertinent again, and there has rarely been a historical event as clear and one-sided as WWII: whether Hitler was wrong is a matter of opinion and can be debated (not a good idea in public), but that Germany suffered total military defeat under Hitler's leadership is indisputable fact.
He did fight Great Britain alone (well, the Dominions as well) for over a year once France was occupied and before the invasion of Russia.
Britain couldn't have defeated Germany on her own but she also wasn't going to be defeated. Even leaving aside the Battle of Britain Germany had no way to invade the UK - some of the plans to defeat Operation Sealion (the planned German invasion) were pretty effective, like setting the English channel on fire.
If Hitler had just left Stalin alone the latter would have been happy to let the capitalists destroy each other, and Germany could have conquered all of western Europe.
The USSR was initially part of an anti-fascist pact but made amends with Germany after the western allies' betrayal of Czechoslovakia.
It's interesting to speculate on what would have happened if Hitler hadn't betrayed Stalin. Hitler had reasons for doing so (I can't remember what they were), and they probably had some validity -- but the Soviets were certainly uneasy allies with the US and Britain, so perhaps the Soviets could have been kept out of the war, at least for a while. If Germany was weakened, though, Stalin might have seen an opportunity and attacked Germany on his own.
Hitler's reasons for invading the USSR were batshit insane. He wanted to wipe the Slavs out, and thought he could do it before winter set in.
If Germany hadn't broken their agreement with the USSR the Soviets probably would have stayed out of the war - remember that they had just been humiliated by the Finns.
I took another look at the wikipedia entry [1], and it's inconclusive. Hitler had tipped his hand in Mein Kampf by describing war with the Soviets, and the Germans needed the oilfields at Baku, so completely avoiding war might have appeared impossible to Hitler. If one accepts that war was inevitable, then it probably was better sooner than later from the German standpoint: the Soviets began upgrading their tactics in response to Germany's from the first German action in the war, so the Soviets were becoming stronger adversaries. On the other hand, German observers with cooler heads could see that the odds of success were low and the action was foolhardy. But then, why pick on one aspect when the entire war was foolhardy?
