Quote:
Originally Posted by jason taylor
A lot of the scenarios that have the Nazis winning have the fundamental fallacy that Hitler was rational. When put like that, people would say, "You think?" But I mean he wasn't even rational in the way Stalin was. He had the mindset of a serial killer not of a Mafia don. He really could NOT avoid getting into a war with the whole world because getting into wars with people gave him thrills. You could say that Churchill liked getting into wars with people too. But he had a reasonable sense of proportion if only from being a self-satisfied member of the ruling class of a comfortable parliamentary state. It is hard to imagine Hitler keeping enough of a lid on himself to avoid going to war with everyone.
Furthermore, militarism was an inherent part of the Nazi platform. It appealed to the desire to reverse WWI, in the sense that a new coach rouses a team that had a bad year. If somehow the rest of the world could have contrived not to get into a war with Hitler, he would have been sorely disappointed.
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There were two Hitlers. There was the one described above, and there was also a relatively rational and competent version of him, and the two traded off over time, sometimes one was behind the wheel, sometime the other. The latter tended to dominate more and more as time went on, though.
(I say rational and competent, not nice.)
The early Hitler often made astute, perceptive moves, and sometimes displayed considerable self-control in pursuing his goals. If our hypothetical time traveler could somehow strengthen that side of Hitler, the outcome of things might have been at least somewhat different. Whether that could be done is another matter.