The lessons of a world without Hitler
What would the world look like without Hitler? Fiction is generally unequivocal about this: the removal of Hitler makes no difference, the world will still lurch towards a world war through some other path. WWII and the Holocaust are such major, defining events of the twentieth century, that we twist counterfactual events to ensure they still happen.
Against this, some have made the argument that Hitler was essentially sole responsible for WWII and especially for the Holocaust—no Hitler, no war, no extermination camps. The no Holocaust argument is quite solid: the extermination system was expensive, militarily counter-productive, and could only have happened given a leader lacking checks and balance and with an idée fixe that overrode everything else (general European antisemitism allowed the Holocaust, but didn’t cause it). The no WWII argument points out that Hitler was both irrational and lucky: he often took great risks, on flimsy evidence, and got away with them. Certainly his decisions in the later, post-Barbarossa period of his reign belie political, military or organisational genius. And it was the height of stupidity to have gone to war, for a half of Poland, with simultaneously the world’s greatest empire and what appeared to be the overwhelmingly strong French army. Yes Gamelin, the French commander in chief, did behave like a concussed duckling, and the German army outfought the French—but no-one could have predicted this, and no-one sensible would have counted on it, and hence they wouldn’t have risked the war. Hitler wan’t sensible, and lucked out.
Lay aside whether that argument is true, and let’s explore its consequences. The counterfactual history is fascinating enough on its own—no rise of the USA and USSR as military superpowers, no Manhattan project, most likely no war between Japan and any western powers in the Pacific, the continuing occupation of China, and probably a much slower and Japan-influenced decolonisation process. Speculation and more sensible models do point towards another war: most of Europe allied against the USSR, a war that the USSR would most likely have lost.
That is all entertaining; but much more important is the fact that if WWII was an unlikely event, then the lessons we’ve learnt from it have been over-learnt. WWII proved that a developed, modern nation, could instigate genocide against segments of its population—but this doesn’t mean that it’s particularly likely. Similarly, appeasement backed up with implicit and then explicit threats failed to contain the irrational Hitler—but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have worked with slightly more rational leaders. Through aggressiveness and focus Hitler did conquer much territory—but the Nazi state was a crumbling morass of conflicting groups that would not have survived their leader. And in a counterfactual world without Hitler, with a contained or defeated USSR and an occupied China, there would not have been the rise of the great ideologies that shaped conflict in the 20th century. There would have been no European Union or UN. And how nuclear weapons would have been developed and spread is a great unknown.
So, if instead of seeing WWII and the Holocaust as inevitable, we see Hitler as singularly responsible, where would that leave us? More confident in the niceness of developed nations. More confident in the use of negotiations. Less likely to see dictatorships as effective governments. Less likely to see secular ideology as an intrinsically powerful force. Less likely to believe that supra-national organisations are easy to put together. And less likely to see nuclear weapons as intrinsically stabilising influences.
Hitler may seem particularly crazy (in the sense of being irrational rather than amoral or immoral according to our values). But consider:
Hindsight bias
By default we ignore the crazy levels of all the other leaders. I don’t think he was markedly more irrational than Stalin or Churchill, though he may have cultivated such a image for both diplomatic and propaganda benefits.
Speaking of which, halo effect. Hitler may be particularly vulnerable to this not just because of the atrocities that many of us instantly invoke before our eyes when hearing his name but because of his style of public speaking. People today often completely forget that the angry shouting man was a carefully crafted public persona. The man studied tapes of his own speeches and had others analyse them to identify ways to improve!
I think its more accurate we ignore the crazy of the people on our side not leaders in general.
I wasn’t saying we ignore the crazy of leaders in general, I was talking about that specific set of leaders. Also note that while Mussolini and Tojo or Hirohito where not on “our side” but they are seldom singled out as being supremley crazy and irrational, though they did plenty of (at the very least seemingly) foolish things.
Note: I don’t really consider people like Stalin to be on “my side” in any meaningful sense of the word. In any case, generally I find it hard to think of say coalition forces (which includes a tiny number of my own countrymen under American command) in Afghanistan currently as “my side” and as a rule of thumb I never think of conflicts that started before I was born as having a “my side” and “not my side”, regardless of nationality, religion or ideology of the involved parties, it just seems an inappropriate sentiment to have when trying to figure out what actually happened or try and learn something from it. And I don’t think about history in almost any other context besides that one.
Hitler went to war with France and GB with no realistic prospect of winning. That’s the major irrationality; close second was his cruelty to the subject nationalities in the USSR that turned them back to Stalin. Churchill did nothing on this scale (perhaps staying in the war alone was irrational; but he did have an empire to back him up, and plausible hope the USA would join in). Stalin… internally did a lot of stupid things, and trusted Hitler, but didn’t commit massive external errors, and was often very prudent.
But Hitler just started war after war until one of them went badly for him.
No realistic prospect? I disagree. When Hitler invaded France in 1941, the potency of blitzkrieg had been demonstrated. The Germans knew that they could pull off a Schlieffen Plan end-run much more quickly than they could in 1914.
Of course the French and British thought differently, but I don’t think there’s any evidence that the German general staff thought that a conflict with France was a sure loss as of 1941. If you’d been talking about the Remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, I’d have agreed with you.
You need to read Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War.
BTW How is trusting Hitler not a “massive external error”?
Because each month spent “trusting Hitler” was a month spent by Marshal Timoshenko to ensure learning of some more soldiers to actually shoot. The problems were that bad...
Now, putting the airplanes in positions more suitable for attacking Germany than defending from it (so they were quickly destroyed on the 21 June) was a big mistake from the Soviet side.
UK was a naval empire; that meant that a very long standoff between Germany and UK was possible; checking that France was not ready to an invasion through Belgium was possible. So there were reasons to believe that crushing France would work, and neither UK nor Germany had any reason to be sure about the loss in the standoff.
As for USSR, well, his blitz attack worked exceptionally well. Germany didn’t have material advantage on the 20th June; it did on the 22nd June. Also it had a well-trained army. Actually, a regime with fascist ideology with less stress on nationalism to the point of extermination (like in Italy) had a chance to win the war against USSR with such a tactics...
This article should be tagged “politics”.
Okay—no Hitler is fine—but what is the exact scenario? With no Hitler—there is no rise of the Nazi party? Remember—Hitler didn’t start the National Socialists—but he did help make them popular.
So what happens with the history of Europe in the 1920′s and 30′s… I think to answer any question here, you have to play out the scenarios and figure out what’s going on...
I’ll take a scenario—Hitler is killed in WW1 and never exists as a major figure..
Changes this would effect… 1920′s.. German National Socialists in Bavaria are less popular than they are—they still exist—but not much happens with them and the remain one of the 50 parties trying to gain power. Germany still engages in military exchange with SU—Treaty of Rapallo (sp?) still exists Germany and rest of nations go through awfulness of early 1920′s and then Locarno seems to fix things a bit. Streseman and the nationalist type parties might be a bit stronger without national socialists having a charismatic leader… but prolly not strong enough to dislodge the Social democrats. Depression hits like everything else—and German economy tanks..
Now—here’s where the question comes—Germany survived the Depression better than a lot of other places—as the Nazis—when they got in power—totally boosted up the public works expenditures a lot.… but that happened post 1933, I believe...
What happens in 1930′s Germany without the Nazis.. Hjalmar Schacht really was the smart econ dude under the Nazis—and he was one of the more “sane” people in it—in that his goal was to help the economy through exports and trade—something that was then quashed by Hitler in the late 30′s with his Autarchy policies…
So—without the Nazis—does some sort of rightish-military-big-business party with Schacht in it become dominant? if so—who do they ally with? Do they stick with trying to get back at France—or do they worry more about Growing Soviet power? Without the Nazis—do the French Rightists (who were not powerless) find an alliance with German Nationalists to get back at those nasty commies who won’t pay back all the money the French lent the Russians?
Or does Germany keep its anti-French bias—and make a more serious play to be allied with the UK? Without Hitler pushing the submarine stuff so hard—and trying to piss off the Brits with a bigger Navy—do they work out an arrangement with the Brits and offer themselves as a Continental bulwark against the growing socialism of France and the Soviet Union?
Also—who leads this Germany—people like Stresemann? or more military oriented folks? Eventually—if Germany pulls its economy out again with big public works—there is still the issue of Re-militarizing the rhineland—which Hitler just did without thought—could other Germans have done so? Maybe they try to align with Britain—and get their ok to do so—or do they sign a re-affirmed Locarno and pledge only defensive measures?
These are the kinds of questions to ask first before going further. Any long term ideas are going to be grounded in what happens at these periods. One could speculate that you’d still eventually get War—but it might even be a war between UK/Germany against SU in the 1940′s as the SU tries to take over Poland… or maybe not?
Anyway.. thoughts from a Historian (of Technology) who spends a lot of time thinking about alternate european history..
If people are finding this a valuable exercise, you could always try out ‘what if there was no American Revolution/it had been lost’: http://www.gwern.net/Mistakes#the-american-revolution
Jews would probably still get interned at labour camps. When Germany would begins to lose the war, which seems probable and food shortages kick in, guess which camps are last in line for distribution? Also lots of people shot and dumped in mass graves probably also still happens. I would estimate a Jewish death toll from about 2 to 4 million.
Nuremberg Trials (by another name perhaps) also obviously still happen, since the interests of most of the major powers involved (if WW2 happens mostly as it did here) are also exactly the same. It would stand to reason that the trials mostly keep the same character.
No Hitler, yet undoubtedly we still have a (different) Shoah. And I bet Europe and America would probably develop pretty much the same symbolism around it as they did here..
If our history is to be believed the war aim was far more than half of Poland. Pretty much eastern Europe as well as the elimination of Bolshevism (an ideological plank of anything that could be called the Nazi party, Hitler or no). Also a plausible argument can be made that the German leadership at the time considered the war pre-emptive.
Besides the obvious point that Stalin may actually have planned to invade eventually, going of of the trends apparent at the time, the Soviet Union was rapidly industrializing and had just endured massive purges to both its military and civil personnel. It had just demonstrated its weakness by being defeated by freaking Finland. It was weaker in the early 1940s than it would be for the foreseeable future. Germany was a developed country for which it wasn’t really reasonable to expect massive enough economic and population growth to preserve its position relative to the Soviet Union.
The longer Germany was not fighting the Soviet Union the better positioned, if a war did occur, the latter would be.
Given that overconfidence is one of the big causes of bad policy, maybe a world without Hitler would have worse policies if Stuart’s guesses at the end were true. It would possibly be overconfident about niceness, negotiations, democracy and supra-national institutions. On the other hand, it might be more cautious about developing nuclear weapons. So maybe it would be more vulnerable to nasty totalitarian surprises, but have a slighly better safety against nuclear GCRs.
As a non-historian I don’t know how to properly judge historical what-ifs well: not only am I uncertain about how to analyse the counterfactual methodology itself, but I am uncertain about what historical data we need to know in order to do a proper counterfactual. But looking at how different worldviews depend on particular historical events and doing at least some estimate of how robust those events were, might indeed tell us a bit about where we might have ended up with contingent world-views.
In my own field of human enhancement ethics it is pretty clear that some of the halo effect of Nazism and its defeat in WWII led to a very strong negative value association that is relatively arbitrary but affects current policies. Had they been doing bad sociology instead we might have been decrying sinister social engineering, while happily selecting the genes of our children. If there had been an anti-USSR WWII the same might have happened.
I imagine a less war-weary populace would be less aversive to all-out war against the Soviet Union. And I imagine that a not-recently-decimated Soviet Union would be more keen and able to wage ideological war upon capitalist Europe.
And I doubt that the invention of nuclear weapons would take more than an extra decade or two.
Why would the USSR or Europe even start the war? They had no territorial issues to be worth a war (Balkans always simmered), France and Germany would not have become allies without a dire need, the UK and the US likely would have stayed out of it, and Poland was not suicidal enough to push for a war, however much they hated the Russians. Stalin had just consolidated his power in mid-1930s, and probably was more interested in economic development after nearly wiping out the peasantry, than in a war, given that Russia had no shortage of territory or natural resources. Maybe once he became paranoid in the 1950s, who knows.
Also, the odds of the USSR losing the war would not have been favorable without a concerted all-out effort by all of Europe and the US (it was tried once, in 1918-1922, with no success), something not likely supported by the public still somewhat receptive to the communist ideas.
If a general all-out war were delayed by 20-30 years, the nuclear weapons would have likely been developed in multiple countries at once (without a threat of war the secrecy would suffer), probably around the same time the industrial atomic energy production would.
Of course, all this is a rather pointless speculating, as there is no way to test any of it.
I suspect that nuclear weapons would be invented before we as a species saw just how devastating a total war is. The next total war might not have happened until the 1950s, when militaries were that much more devastating.
The big assumption is that a world without WWII is always better, but it could easily be far, far worse as well.
I agree it could be worse as well. But it would have to be much worse, enough to account for the “badness” of WWII itself to be undesirable.
The other part of the lesson is: seemingly stable and successful global orders can be radically destabilized by economic contraction and the mere presence of a charismatic and rabidly demented public figure. Perhaps the catastrophes of the 20th century would have been avoided without Hitler—but how rare do we think people like Hitler are?
What is significantly “like” for you? Would Mussolini count?
People like Hitler? Probably not that uncommon, alas. People like Hitler who climb to the leadership of industrialised nations? Well, that’s the interesting question...
Like others, I’m not seeing the likelyhood of a big European war involving the USSR without Hitler. Hitler’s absence wouldn’t have made things go any better for the Soviets in the Winter War, and likely that would have discouraged Soviet planners from trying to take on anyone bigger when it seemed like they could barely handle Finland. A saner German government would likely have viewed Poland as a valuable buffer against the USSR, rather than trying to get past Poland to attack the USSR. I find it easier to imagine the USSR being much more aggressive in the East if they didn’t have the Nazi threat in the West, though it’s very hard to know what all could have happened with Soviet-Japanese relations and the various third parties that would have taken an interest.
But fun though thinking through the details is, your larger point is obviously more important. There’s a tendency to view history as inevitable in general, and that seems to be wrong (so much luck involved!) and to offer the wrong lessons (seemingly similar situations can end up going wildly differently). Certainly it is very frustrating that Hitler has given appeasement such a bad name, when historically it has nearly always been an incredibly effective strategy (those who are bribed usually become motivated to play nice enough that the briber doesn’t regret the decision, and further they’re often motivated to eliminate potential rivals so that they get any potential future bribes themselves, so bribing one threat often protects against many).
What you say seems plausible, but are there unusually good leaders from whom you would draw diametrically opposed conclusions?
Isn’t Gandhi almost the canonical Anti-Hitler, and perhaps as much of an outlier, personality-wise?
Well, we could try without Roosevelt, possibly leading to a non-democratic USA growing from the depression era? So maybe ‘democracy is not inevitable’ as a moral?
Without Charles II of England (good for a king learning somewhat to live with Parliament)… no idea how that would have gone, actually.
No Nelson Mandela or Gandhi… maybe less appreciation for non-violence as an effective tactic? But that doesn’t tell us much, we know that non-violence can be pretty effective, it’s been used all over. In the counterfactual world we wouldn’t know this, but it doesn’t make it less likely to be true. Maybe without Gandhi there would have been another model of decolonisation and maybe—very maybe—it might have been better, so we need to take that into consideration, and think that decolonisation might work better than we know?
You do realize Roosevelt was pretty undemocratic right?
I doubt it. The British negotiated with Gandhi’s crew instead of the rest of the revolutionaries because they could save face that way by not having to fold to violent methods. Gandhi provided the release valve for the pressure built up by the violent factions. If he hadn’t been there, I think it would have gone much worse.
EDIT: I’m not a historian or anything. This could be wrong.
I think so too. But it’s possible there’s a model of decolonisation that we missed, and that they might have been able to find without Gandhi. Possible but not likely; unlikely but not impossible.
There are probably better examples that that, if you are looking for other decolonisation methods.
“Better Angels” doesn’t really make the argument for “no Hitler, no Holocaust” so much as just reference others who have.
Yep, but I lost my copy and couldn’t find those references—do you know them?
will try to look it up tonight—do remind me if I don’t get this for you—paul@ciphergoth.org—thanks!
The lower P(evil | no evil crazy dictator), the higher P(evil crazy dictator) or P(evil | evil crazy dictator), to produce the frequency of evil we see in history. So probably we should be much more cautious of situations where it seems one might arise.
You are holding the frequency of evil constant while removing one of its possible causes. Why do that?
The frequency of evil is given to us by the history of the world. Counterfactual considerations give us the conditional probabilities.
That sounds as if you are imagining a causal graph with arrows from “history” to “evil crazy dictator” and from “history” to “evil”, but not from “evil crazy dictator” to “evil”. So when you cut off the first arrow, this changes none of the causal influences on “evil”. But there should be an arrow from “evil crazy dictator” to “evil”. “History” does not reach around all the people, to cause “evil” directly, independently of what the people do.
No, but we know already know “evil”. Stuart is suggesting changing one of the arrows that lead up to this node; conditional on our already knowing the value of this node, we need to change other arrows to keep the fit.
I’m just talking of taking one evil crazy dictator out of the mix, and the consequences of his existence. Most of the real dire things of the twentieth century are due to Hitler, or an outgrowth of the communism he caused to become such a potent force.
Two sources to enlighten this conversation: 1) http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills --12 million non-jew dissenters also murdered by the nazi regime. Also, 2) http://peikoff.com/lr/home.htm --”The Ominous Parallels” by Leonard Peikoff—the Weimar was already philosophically and legally decayed. When you eliminate jury trials and robust freedom of speech, you get a tyrannical (and possibly democidal) regime The prospect of an existential or near-existential risk from a Singularity-delaying/preventing tyranny is the primary reason to be a rationalist—if you’re enough of one to allocate your resources toward a viable strategy of preventing democide.
Thanks Jake Witmer 312-730-4037