One way for Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act to work would be to claim that Hitler himself wasn't necessary for Germany to turn into the Third Reich and kickstart World War II. The idea here is that removing Hitler at any point in his timeline — even before he was even born — wouldn't prevent the war from happening and shaking the world at least as badly as it did in "our" timeline. However, this would likely not be the case for the following reasons:
- The Nazi party wouldn't have been as influential as it was in its early years without Hitler. It was started by an unimaginative nobody named Anton Drexler as the German Workers' Party, and it wasn't particularly influential. Hitler changed that; his speeches were what made the party popular. Emboldened, he completely changed the party's focus; he basically rewrote their manifesto to solidify the party's platform, added the "National Socialist" moniker to better appeal to nationalist sentiment, and pushed Drexler aside into a life of political obscurity. He didn't plan the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch — other far-right figures had beaten him to the punch — but when those figures decided to abandon it, Hitler forced them to go along with it (at gunpoint, no less). It failed miserably, but it did make Hitler and his movement famous across Germany. Even after a brief jail term and a lengthy absence from politics, Hitler had already built a reputation for himself, so when he came back, he was easily able to take the Party back from the moderates who ran it in his absence.
Furthermore, after Hitler came back, he ensured that the "National Socialist" bit didn't actually mean "socialist". Many existing Party members, like Gregor Strasser, were more open to friendly relations with the Soviet Union and some level of co-existence with the German Communists. Hitler was dead-set on crushing Bolshevism and purged those left-leaning elements from his party. In fact, he even ordered Strasser to refuse an appointment to be Vice-Chancellor. He also did a good job of coalescing the other scattered right-wing parties behind his own agenda and essentially assimilating them and their supporters into the Nazi party. - Many other candidates to start the war instead of Hitler only came to power through Hitler's help. It's sometimes claimed that another notorious Nazi figure, such as Heinrich Himmler or Joseph Goebbels, would have taken Hitler's place if a time traveler eliminated Hitler. But without Hitler, those people would have been on the fringes of the Party. Only after Hitler radicalized the Party would their ideas and skills become valuablenote ; he essentially brought them with him to positions of power. And none of them had the complete combination of charisma and reputation Hitler had built for himself to be a plausible populist leader. What they did have, though, were the smarts — and the hard-right ideology — to help build that reputation into a real personality cult. This made the Nazis much more of a totalitarian group than they otherwise would have been.
- Hitler was the most prominent mind behind German expansionism and The Holocaust. This isn't to say that racism and anti-semitism weren't a thing in Germany before he came to power, but Hitler was the one who wanted to make it key to the party's platform. He bolstered this sentiment by tying it in with populism and the German national identity. He made several pushes to recover or gain German territory that saner politicians and military minds would have considered too risky. He was not at all bothered by the prospect of war. And we know that he did personally order the Holocaust, even if other Nazis carried out those orders just as enthusiastically. There may have been war and anti-semitism without Hitler (and the Jews made a perfect scapegoat for a country with a struggling economy who wanted to blame anybody but themselves), but likely not on the scale of what actually happened.
- The economic and political meltdown of the Weimar Republic would not have been enough to spark the war on its own. One common thread is that Hitler simply took advantage of the massive increase in political extremism seen as a response to Germany's dire situation in the 1930s. This, however, does not mean that the type of extremism would have been the same as what we actually got. Many of these groups were hopelessly fragmented, and there was a schism between leftists who blamed extreme capitalism for the problem and right-wingers who blamed it on non-German influences. Hitler was a charismatic right-winger who converted many more leftist German extremists to his side. As it happened, Joseph Stalin ordered the German Communists not to oppose Hitler or ally with more moderate socialists, thinking that Hitler could be useful to him — without that, it's possible that a leftist extremist group would have emerged in control of Germany. Even then, they could easily have fallen into a Civil War with the right-wing remnants, which would be pretty bad — after all, the Soviet Union would probably have gotten involved — but (a) not the same as what we got, and (b) likely not as bad because nobody would have been ready for civil war to break out in Germany.
- 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:
- It had a (for the time) pretty progressive constitution that guaranteed several rights, like woman's suffrage and labor unions. And during what was known as the Golden Twenties, the Weimar achieved a degree of prosperity, with a decent welfare state and a flourishing cultural scene to boot.
- While President Hindenburg and his followers weren't exactly staunch supporters of democracy, they themselves were not supporters of the far-right extremism, with Hindenburg himself personally detesting Hitler. When the political crisis of 1930 began, their initial strategy was to manipulate and divide the far-right parties, with some hoping that the Hohenzollern monarchy could be restored. Had Hitler not existed, the far-right movements might have been weaker and easier to divide.
- By November 1932, the forces of extremism in Weimar had 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 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 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. 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.
- 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, 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.
- Hitler's aggressive foreign policy and swift invasions influenced other actors during the war. It's likely that his actions either emboldened or scared other countries into being more aggressive themselves. Fascist Italy might not have invaded Abyssinia if Hitler's success wasn't making Mussolini look bad. Japan might not have been so desperate as to attack Pearl Harbor (although they were probably invading China one way or another). A more moderate Germany might not have propped up fascist dictators elsewhere, like Francisco Franco in Spain (meaning the communists could have won the Spanish Civil War). Certainly, all those other countries would probably have engaged in expansionism (after all, they did it for their own reasons, and the Germans weren't telling them what to do), but the Germans' grand vision — and initial success — in taking over Europe for themselves might have led the other Axis powers to believe they could (and should) replicate that in their own spheres of influence.
- The Soviet Union was not likely to take Germany's place as the bad guys. One thread to this trope has the Nazis never take power, but for an emboldened Joseph Stalin to try and take over Europe and thus become the main antagonist instead of Hitler. But this is unlikely for several reasons:
- Their military was woefully incompetent after Stalin's purges at the time, so they wouldn't have been as much of an initial threat.
- The failure of various communism movements across Europe in the 1920s in addition to the devastation of the Russian Civil War convinced Stalin to prioritize the rebuilding of the USSR under his "Socialism in One Country" beliefs. Stalin was also extremely cautious about uniting the world against them until he was confident the USSR was ready. Until such a time, Stalin's preference was instead for 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.
- The idea of aggressively expanding communism in a global revolution was more aligned with Leon Trotsky's vision of the USSR. He was highly critical of "Socialism in One Country" and Stalin's chief rival within the Soviet system; hence why Stalin exiled him upon ascending to power, more or less bringing an end to the idea of expanding communism within the near future. Stalin only changed his mindset after the Nazi invasion and the early signs of the Cold War convinced him that spreading communism was the only way to protect the USSR from future conflicts.
- Many peoples in the Soviet Union were already fed up with Stalinist rule after years of famine and repression. Belarusians and Ukrainians were initially quite welcoming to the Nazis. They hoped the Germans would aid them in regaining their independence, which ended when the Nazis' genocidal intentions became apparent. The sheer viciousness of the Nazis toward the Slavs 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 its 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 that without 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.
- 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 conclusively beaten Russia 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 hammered them in Mongolia and the Far East 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.
- No, nor would Fascist Italy. Italy did get on the fascism train before anyone else and had conquered 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 La Résistance.
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 League of Nations trying to head off the world's Moral Myopia, 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 even turned on their own military, eventually leading to Mussolini's ugly demise.
That said, Italy might have been the best-equipped to replace Nazi Germany as the Big Bad 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 Cold Sniper, 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, which quickly demonstrated that just about everyone in Italy's military above the infantry level was hopelessly incompetent. 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 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.
So no Hitler would probably mean no major conflagration...at least on the European continent for the foreseeable future. Japan would still invade China, but from there, events get murky: one of the reasons Japan invaded Southeast Asia was because Nazi aggression distracted Europeans from their Asian colonies, making them seem prime for the taking. If the Europeans didn't have to deal with the Nazis, they might be better prepared to defend their colonies from Japanese expansion. But if Japan still tried to expand its war into Southeast Asia and the Pacific, it would still lose because it simply didn't have the resources to fight America and hold down China.
However...
While Hitler was a monster and the war he unleashed was a bloodbath, the lack of war would've had serious repercussions that wouldn't have necessarily made the world better. Before you prepare your time-travel assassination plot, there will be massive changes to the world if you succeed...and not all of them good.
- The world would be far more authoritarian and nationalistic: Before Hitler, fascism wasn't seen as an evil ideology, nor was the worship of a strong man and unyielding obedience to a state or nation seen as bad things. Even in democratic states, there was no shortage of fascist sympathizers like King Edward and Charles Lindbergh. Without the horrors of fascism and the human, financial, and emotional sacrifices of a bigger war, the world could end up looking more authoritarian than it was in the 1950s and 1960s. Mussolini may not have been violently overthrown, meaning fascism would last longer and Italy might not have returned to a relative "normal" or even remained a monarchy.
Even after the fall of the German Empire, Germany's political culture still retained a degree of authoritarianism and militarism. Modern Germany's relative pacifism and multiculturalism are a backlash against the hypernationalism of the Nazis. A Germany that never endured the rule of Hitler would be far more militaristic. - Imperialism would be far more common: Without a massive war to drain the resources of the European powers, imperialism and colonialism would remain relatively profitable for some countries (not so much for France), leading to continued periods of subjugation in the third world. The British Empire and to a lesser degree the French Colonial Empire would likely continue to exist to some degree. Both were at their greatest extents in the years following World War I, but that war had caused such a loss of men and treasure that some contraction was inevitable, as many of the two nations' African colonies were money sinks and would likely have been given independent status sooner rather than later. But India in Britain's case, Indo-China and Algeria for the French, and Indonesia in the Netherlands' case would certainly have been kept as priorities. But it was the second World War that caused much of the world to turn decisively away from colonialism, expansionism, and the idea of nations taking land from others, with the costs of the conflict making colonialism untenable as an economic venture as well. Without the impetus of the war, as well as the ascendancy of the (nominally) anti-colonialist United States and the Soviet Union, independence movements may or may not have gained support, as many outside nations and their peoples would have taken the view that they were 'internal' movements of those countries and their colonial masters and not to be interfered with. A good discussion (or argument) could be had as to the pros and cons of independence movements in the wake of World War II, where the second great loss of men, money, and material made a rapid cutting of ties necessary without the time taken to establish a more self-sustaining infrastructure and legal system in the new countries before withdrawing, as opposed to a more careful and gradual (and therefore time-consuming) granting of independence. On the other side, the continued existence of colonial regimes meant that many subjects would continue to suffer many indignities, including economic exploitation and acts of ethnic cleansing.
Ironically, without the war, Israel and its nearby lands would likely have remained a British colony. The Palestinian Mandate given to Britain from the Ottoman Empire after World War I made the area a kind of half-colony, half-caretaker nation that would, in theory, be given independence when they were 'ready' for it (on a timetable and under conditions to be determined by the British, of course). Over the years, Jewish and Arab independence groups began fighting with the British occupying forces, themselves, and each other, turning the place into a hornet's nest of unrest. That, the cost of maintaining a presence there, the lack of exploitable natural resources, and the good PR of granting a Jewish homeland after the war made granting Israel's independence a good way to kill a whole flock of birds with one stone. Without the war, Israel and its holy sites could have remained a British holding to this day, or even a Commonwealth nation, perhaps with the Union Jack quartered onto the Star of David on the national flag in the manner of New Zealand or the Bahamas. Or perhaps a return to the Ottoman status quo ante, a Palestine with a significant, agitating, but overall tolerated Jewish minority. An interesting course of history to think about. - Technological advancement would be slower: For better or for worse, the military competition of the 1930s and 1940s led to major technological advancements: synthetic rubber, rocket technology, computers, sonar, radar, etc. Without World War II, these innovations would've taken longer to develop. Of course, there's one significant innovation that would've been pushed off for years: nuclear weapons. The U.S. went full throttle into nuclear research over fears that the Nazis would've gotten the bomb first, and without Hitler, there wouldn't be as much incentive to develop nukes. The development of nuclear weapons and the fear of Mutually Assured Destruction are what have led to the decline of interstate conflict since the mid-20th century and without them, war and conflict would be far more common in the altered 20th century.
- International institutions would be significantly weaker. The destruction of the Second World War prompted many nations to start building international institutions that would deter conflict. The League of Nations, while it did have some diplomatic successes in the interwar years, was still a weak institution that lacked any real teeth. The Second World War revealed how impotent the League was and drove nations to build stronger organizations that would ensure peace, like the United Nations.
In the same vein, European integration was driven by the powers of Europe wanting to prevent another major conflict by joining their institutions and economies together, replacing the centuries of imperialist struggle with unity and internationalism. Without a world war, Europe would be less united and probably more prone to rivalry and conflict. - America would not have become a superpower: Before World War II, America was an isolationist nation with a relatively weak military for a country of its size. It might have remained so for a while as most Americans, put off by the failures of World War I, did not want to involve themselves in another European conflict as World War II. It was the aggression of the Axis Powers that drove America to build a massive military-industrial complex needed to extend its reach around the globe. The wealth it amassed from selling arms to the rest of the world allowed it to become an important global player, and the postwar aggression of the Soviet Union drove it to play a leading role in the construction of institutions that would ensure global trade and cooperation to counter Soviet influence. A lack of a wealthy and interventionist United States to ensure a global marketplace and international cooperation would mean that the world would be far less interconnected, and war and conflict would be far more common.
- Racism would be an acceptable viewpoint: The horrors of the Holocaust turned racism and Social Darwinism from acceptable viewpoints to fringe pseudosciences that no one would support (at least explicitly). Before Hitler's rise to power, racism and even the sterilization of supposedly inferior people were not only legal but in America, Supreme Court precedence upheld eugenics as beneficial for society. Much of Nazi scientific racism was built on America's own system of legal segregation and ableism.
If the war hadn't happened, racism and the persecution of the mentally and physically disabled would've remained mainstream beliefs. In America, the Civil Rights Movement would've likely set back decades, and discrimination against immigrants based on skin color and national origin would've also continued. The persecution of non-whites in places like Canada and Australia would've remained government policies. - 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 emigration. 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.
As stated above, Britain restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine during the 1930s in an attempt to appease Arab interests, to the point of forcing illegal migrants into internment camps. Without the horrors of the Holocaust, Israel would not have been established as a haven for Jews, even if Eastern Europe became more hostile to Jewsnote . Other nations like America and South Africa also heavily restricted Jewish migration due to rising backlash against immigration amid the Great Depression. In Quebec, the hatred of Jewish refugees was so great that even as Canadians were fighting Nazis in Europe, the right-wing Maurice Duplessis was elected Premier of Quebec in 1944 by stoking fears of an International Jewish lobby. If the situation for Jews in Eastern Europe deteriorated, this could've forced Jews to move to an African colony like Madagascar, which would have brought suffering to the native population. - Racialized mass murder and ethnic cleansing wouldn't be criminalized: Before World War II, most nations saw the mass murder of an "enemy" nation as an internal issue or even a sovereign right. While the Armenian genocide was denounced in many Allied countries, almost no one who committed massacres against Armenians was ever seriously punished note . The horrors of the Holocaust led to the establishment of tribunals that would punish war crimes. The word "genocide" and the laws against it that were enacted by the United Nations were coined in response to the horrors unleashed by the Nazis. Without the war, there would be no International Court of Justice that would punish crimes against humanity.
- 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.
In short, without a Second World War, the world as we know it would look very different and not completely for the better.
