What would happen if the Nazi party didn't rise in Germany.

Ok, extremely hypotheorical time now. What would have happened if the Nazi party failed to rise to power in Germany. Would the Second World War have still be inevitable. Would the Soviet Union rise to power again as well?

Yeah, the problem with saying "I am going to remove Hitler and the Nazis" is that there are too many events that would be affected.

Span off the time travel thread

There's a couple of guys who believe Hitler was the only thing that stopped Stalin from conquering Europe, and I bet they didn't even play Red Alert.

Will that be the timeline divergence? Will it need to be earlier for backstory?

Italy and Japan would probably have been the same making WWII inevitable, but without Germany being an Axis Power making it easier for the Allies to beat Italy and then Japan.

There were nine elections in Germany from 1919-1933

• 1919 aka 1
• 1920 aka 2
• May 1924 aka 3
• December 1924 aka 4
• 1928 aka 5
• 1930 aka 6
• July 1932 aka 7
• November 1932 aka 8
• 1933 aka 9

Which party will fill in the void or will it be a coaltion?

Ok fine, the timeline divergence is Hitler being found guilty of treason in 1923

The brewing industry will suffer as beer halls become associated with extreme politics.

Maria Rosenberg wouldn't have an enormous bruise on her forehead as she didn't collide with a lamppost while looking to a SA rally and walking at the same time.

Small mustaches would not be associated with evil.

Yuri Karakinov, Russian farmer, wouldn't have stubbed his toe on old unexploded ordnance in the 60's.

And much more.

Do we just delete NSDAP from the elections lists? What do we do with the voters, delete them or apportiont them to other parties in specualative ways?

Scenario:People who otherwise would have voted NSDAP due to the WR crackdown and illagalization of the NSDAP vote KPD and Germany becomes Communist. The Weimar Republic is transformed into the German Soviet Republic or atleast the People's Republic of Germany.

edited 6th Sep '11 12:39:02 PM by secretist

Why would far-right voters support the KPD?

At any rate, if Germany had went commie, we'd all be speaking Russian right now. No chance in Hell the rest of Europe could have held both Commie Germany and Commie USSR at bay.

edited 6th Sep '11 12:42:23 PM by SavageHeathen

I'd disagree, I mean most of Europe might have been red (The Republicians might have the Spanish Civil War but without getting help from the Soviet Union). But, the British and the French wouldn't have bled themselves to death and still might have their power.

Ah, the good old "we'd all be speaking language X now!"

There are alternatives who could have won:

• SPD: Social Democratic Party
• KPD: Communist Party (which I gave in the previous scenario)
• Z: Centre
• DNVP: German National People's Party
• BVP: Bavarian People's Party

If Hindenburg doesn't make the mistake of appointing Hitler chancellor in 1933, the Nazi party should lose support over the next couple of years as Germany recovers from the Great Depression. They were already beginning to backslide by the time they got into power, iirc.

edited 6th Sep '11 12:59:30 PM by pagad

List But what parties would form coalitions or dominate by itself?

• Bavarian People's Party (BVP)
• Centre Party (Zentrum)
• Christian Social People's Service (CSVD)
• Communist Party of Germany (KPD)
• Communist Party of Germany (Opposition) (KPO)
• Conservative People's Party (KVP)
• German Democratic Party (DDP)
• German National People's Party (DNVP)
• German People's Party (DVP)
• German Racialist Freedom Party (DVFP)
• German State Party (D St P)
• Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD)
• Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD)

edited 6th Sep '11 1:16:15 PM by secretist

A different right-wing party turns the Republic into a one-party state, or the Communists do. The Republic was completely broken, causing hyperinflation to pay the blatantly unjust reparations and illegitimate in the eyes of much of its own judicial branch.

That depends if you count Nazis as right wing, but actually evidence says otherwise. Communists, Social Deomcrats, and Nazis would strategically vote for each other.

The Social Democrats were more moderate than either party, though. If they succeeded they might have salvaged Weimar.

...well. With the given time divergence? World War Two is between France, Britain, and a useless Germany against a powerful Soviet Union.

If we change the ending of World War One by keeping the United States out, then it could be a fairly even draw between the three Western European Great Powers and the Soviets. After World War One, though? Germany gets royally anal fucked by the Soviet Army...

I wouldn't write off central and western Europe as a hopeless case assuming our point of divergence is "no Nazi rise to power". The Soviet Union's epic clusterfuck in attacking Finland shows just how unready the Red Army was for offensive operations after the purges.

edited 6th Sep '11 1:25:50 PM by pagad

And Hitler's initial attack on the Czechoslovakians (I think...) shows that he wasn't much better off. Now take away all that lovely militarization he did, and, well...

Didn't the Stalin stop the purges just before the Germans invaded?

I'm referring here specifically to the purge of the Red Army's officer corps. The damage done there was long-term - one cannot simply replace a competent officer corps overnight, even when the purges ended - and seriously undermined the Soviet Union's military capabilities for years, especially when the influence of idiots like Voroshilov (who still thought that horse-drawn guns and cavalry would win over tanks) was very strong with Stalin and visionaries like Tukhachevsky were liquidated, meaning Soviet military strategy and tactics were hideously anachronistic. Even when the Germans were invading in 1941 Stalin was lamenting that he didn't have any Hindenburgs when what he needed was Guderians.

edited 6th Sep '11 1:41:48 PM by pagad

@pagad: The Social Democrats were a cruel joke. They accepted Germany's abuse by France and the catastrophic hyperinflation. The only "moderates" who made life decent for Germans were Stresemann's right-liberals (Deutsche Volkspartei).

True, Stalin would have gone in with crappy leadership, but manpower and industrial capacity are powerful things.

Without Hitler, and with the shit-useless fuck up that was the Treaty of Versailles, Germany is basically SOL. No standing army, no real technology. It would be awhile before they were even ready to start fighting, and that's time they don't have...

Rott: By the early thirties - which is what I'm assuming we're talking about at the moment - hyperinflation was a bad memory and it was the Great Depression that was the order of the day. Germany was on the road to economic recovery by the time the Nazis rose to power.

British and French reluctance to actually enforce Versailles - even when they could easily have intervened against Germany when it was overtly violating it as in the case of the re-militarisation of the Rhineland - doesn't mean that a non-Nazi Germany couldn't gear up in the mid-to-late thirties.

edited 6th Sep '11 2:13:31 PM by pagad

You can't really blame them for accepting the inevitable. Germany, without any allies, had to suck up to France the assassination of many leading Socialdemokrats (Rathenau, Erzberger ...) certainly didn't help their cause. I think the main question in this scenario is, whether Germany and France could forge an alliance against Russia. Combined with the UK and maybe even Poland (sure most Germans hated Poland, a feeling which was mutual, however I think pragmatic leaders like Józef Piłsudski could have agreed to that against the archenemy Russia), there is a big chance Western Europe could have prevailed against the SU. Now if we suggest that Stresemann and his successors followed the policy of reconciliation with France and provided that France didn't slip in a civil war (I would call the risk of Germany turning communist pretty small, every party to the right of the KPD, read every party, hated the KPD and the Reichswehr already suppressed one coup d'etat.), a united front should be more than enough to fend the Soviets off. Moreover without the whole “killing potential allies among the suppressed people under the SU”, chances are high people in the SU would rebel against Stalin’s regime, improving the bets even more.

edited 6th Sep '11 2:28:48 PM by Zarastro