History Analysis / HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct

* '''No, nor would UsefulNotes/FascistItaly.''' Italy did get on the fascism train before anyone else and had conquered UsefulNotes/{{Ethiopia}} by 1937. But that took a protracted and costly war, which would have left them ill-equipped to take over the rest of Europe -- which they proved when Hitler roped them into participating in the Spanish Civil War. And they still needed the military to hold on to their North African claims and put down the remaining pockets of LaResistance.

That said, Italy might have been the best-equipped to replace Nazi Germany as the BigBad of World War II. Italy had already survived embargoes and international pressure in response to their Ethiopian conquest, and Hitler allied with them thinking ''they'' were the role model for European fascism, not the other way around. And Mussolini was a clever man who could lead this empire -- as a former journalist, he had a keen gauge for public opinion, and as a former ColdSniper, he knew the value of patient and methodical warfare. His main failure in "our" timeline was allowing Hitler to goad him into more expensive wars to protect his pride. Even still, if Mussolini wanted to fight a war as bad as "our" World War II, he would have to have been as aggressive as Hitler, and we know that his aggression in "our" timeline led to the Allies [[CurbStompBattle completely kicking his ass]] in North Africa, so what would have resulted from a Mussolini-led Europe might have been ''bad'', but it wouldn't have been World War II.

## They were extremely cautious about uniting the world against them. Stalin's preference was instead for [[LetsYouAndHimFight the capitalists to fight each other rather than get involved himself]]. This was in part Stalin's motive for the Nazi-Soviet Pact, with Germany and the Soviet Union agreeing to split Poland and then giving Germany a free hand to fight in Western Europe. The plan backfired, however, when the Nazis easily conquered Western Europe before turning toward Russia.

* '''No, nor would UsefulNotes/FascistItaly.''' Italy did get on the fascism train before anyone else and had conquered UsefulNotes/{{Ethiopia}} by 1937. But that took a protracted and costly war, which would have left them ill-equipped to take over the rest of Europe -- which they proved when Hitler roped them into participating in the Spanish Civil War. And they still needed the military to hold on to their North African claims and put down the remaining pockets of LaResistance. Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was still campaigning passionately for his nation's freedom and the downfall of fascism, despite being in exile -- he gave a stirring speech to the UsefulNotes/LeagueOfNations trying to head off the world's MoralMyopia, saying, "It is us today. It will be you tomorrow." All of this led to an eventual collapse of public support for the fledgling Italo-African Empire, and outraged Italians [[NeutralNoLonger even turned on their own military]], eventually leading to Mussolini's ugly demise.\\

## They were extremely cautious about uniting the world against them. Stalin's preference was instead for the capitalists to fight each other rather than get involved himself, the Soviet Union in fact originally intended the Axis Alliance as a way to do this, but the Nazis took only ''six weeks'' to conquer Europe before turning toward Russia.

In short, without a Second World War, the world as we know it would look very different and not necessarily for the better.

## They were extremely cautious about uniting the world against them. Stalin's preference was instead for the capitalists to fight each other rather than get involved himself, the Soviet Union in fact originally intended the Axis Alliance as a way to do this, but the Nazis took only ''six weeks'' to conquer Europe before turning toward Russia.

In short, without a Second World War, the world as we know it would look very different and not necessarily for the better.

* '''Antisemitism would be far more common''': The horrors of the Holocaust heavily discredited many antisemitic conspiracy theories and eventually led to the Catholic Church rejecting Jewish deicide in the Second Vatican Council. Without the war, antisemitism would be far less stigmatized. The continuing acceptability of antisemitism would have serious consequences in Europe, as the status of Jews in Europe and elsewhere was still quite precarious, even without the Nazis. Nations like Hungary and Poland were already enacting antisemitic legislation in an attempt to encourage Jewish assimilation or immigration. Hell, the Polish government considered its own Madagascar Plan and only backed out because of how implausible the plan would be. Under Joseph Stalin's rule, the Jewish communities of the Soviet Union suffered religious persecution, and many Yiddish writers were executed or sent to the Gulag after a short period of relative tolerance. And in Arab states like Algeria and Iraq, rising nationalism and anti-imperialism were making life difficult for Jews in Muslim states.\\

* '''The Cold War wouldn't have occurred''': World War II set the stage for the rough half-century geopolitical struggle that was the Cold War. On the one hand, the nations of Eastern Europe would not have decades under Soviet domination, an era of history they resented. But other effects of the Cold War, including decolonization and investment into science due to international competition, would be absent.

** The Soviets wouldn't have been any closer to Japan, either. Japan was actually ''terrified'' of the Soviet Union during the war. They might have [[CurbStompBattle conclusively beaten Russia]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War in 1905]], but that was in a previous era, and the Russians hadn't forgotten that. That's when they hit them with a then-obscure general named Georgy Zhukov, who [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Japanese_border_conflicts hammered them in Mongolia in the 1930s]] and showed that he would have returned the favor had Japan tried anything on them. Japan even kept a large contingent of troops on the Manchurian-Russian border throughout the war and very carefully refrained from doing ''anything'' that might provoke their neighbor, to the point where American merchant ships running lease-lend supplies to Vladivostok were able to sail with impunity through Japanese-controlled waters simply by flying the Soviet merchant marine flag. When the Soviets attacked in August 1945, they rolled over the Japanese forces in Manchuria in ''six weeks''.

** It is often said Hitler was voted into power, but this is a massive oversimplification: The Nazis never gained ''any'' majority in the Reichstag. In 1928, during the relative prosperity of the Golden Twenties, the Nazis only got ''twelve'' seats in the Reichstag and 3% of the vote. In the 1933 elections, the Nazis only got 43% of the vote. And this was after the Reichstag Fire Decree had allowed Hitler to persecute his opponents on the left. The Enabling Act was only ratified after the Nazis formed a coalition with other reactionary parties, [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness, which they proceeded to backstab once they gained the power to abolish them.]] Without Hitler, the anti-democratic forces would've had a much harder time building a coalition that would allow them to repeal democracy.

** By November 1932, the forces of extremism in Weimar had actually been in decline, with the Nazis losing over 30 seats in the Reichstag in that month's elections. By this time, the Weimar economy was actually beginning to recover thanks to public works spending, and many Germans were becoming leery about a Nazi takeover. Had Hindenburg declared another state of emergency for a few more months, the economy could've recovered, the extremist environment would've dissipated on its own, and Hindenburg might have been able to form a stable coalition through popular franchise rather than continue to rule by decree. One of the reasons why Hindenburg made the fateful decision to appoint Hitler chancellor was the fear that the Nazis could start a civil war, but without Hitler, a revolt by a unified far-right force would've been unlikely.
** During the 1920s and early 1930s, the foreign policy goals of the Weimar government were mainly centered around peace and reconciliation with much of Europe, and Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann achieved quite a bit toward that aim: a treaty with the Soviet Union which they renounced all pre-war claims, the Young Plan, in which they were able to get generous concessions on the Treaty of Versailles reparations, and entry into the League of Nations. While some of the Weimar leadership were interested in merging with Austria and gaining lands that were given to Poland, it is unlikely that if the Weimar Republic had survived, its leadership would've felt the need to prosecute a war or menace its neighbors to the degree the Nazis did.

* '''The end of the Weimar Republic itself was not an inevitability.''' A lot of people have described the Weimar Republic as a failed democracy that was doomed to collapse under the pressure of its own weakness. It didn't help that it was constantly attacked by extremists on both sides to the point that it was labeled "a democracy without democrats," and it certainly had many institutional problems, like Italy-levels of parliamentary instability, a President with the power to suspend the Constitution and rule by decree, and the lack of thresholds to keep smaller parties out. However, the picture of the Republic is more complex:

## Many peoples in the Soviet Union were already fed up with Stalinist rule after years of famine and repression. Many Belarusians and Ukrainians were initially quite welcoming to the Nazis. They hoped the Germans would give them aid in regaining their independence, which ended when the Nazis' genocidal intentions became apparent. It was the sheer viciousness of the Nazis toward the Slavs that gave the Soviets an enemy to rally the population against. Had the Soviets been fighting a less brutal enemy, perhaps a unified bloc of democratic nations, those Belarusians and Ukrainians would've likely sided with them over the Soviets.
## Soviet Russia would've been lacking major avenues of foreign support to enhance their war machine:
** For starters, they have not received Lend Lease from the United States. While Soviet propaganda would downplay the role of American aid, both Khrushchev and Stalin privately acknowledged with American industrial support, they wouldn't have been able to win the war. If they started a war of aggression, no American president would ever have given weapons to a communist superpower. While the Soviet Union ultimately would have become more robust in the 1940s without getting invaded by the Nazis, it is likely not to have been enough to win a war, which is something they would be acutely aware of.

So no Hitler would probably mean no major conflagration...[[UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar at least on the European continent]] for the foreseeable future.