Adolf Hitler's legacy was one of death and destruction on an unimaginable scale. But would history really look any different if history's greatest monster had never been born?
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00:00Adolf Hitler's legacy was one of death and destruction on an unimaginable scale,
00:04but would history really look any different if history's greatest monster had never been born?
00:09The question of whether or not World War II would have come to pass without Adolf
00:13Hitler is fairly complicated, to say the least. There's certainly an argument to be made that
00:17there were enough external factors in play to allow a vengeful and aggressive faction to come
00:20to power in Germany in the 1930s. But it's also true that Hitler was fairly central to the rise
00:25of the Nazi Party. Prior to his appointment as chancellor, the Nazis weren't actually that
00:30popular, so Hitler reaching that position was in part a result of his own machinations.
00:35In other words, without Hitler, there might never have been an Ascended Nazi Party,
00:39or any Second World War as we know it. This is potentially true in the East, as well. For
00:45context, World War II technically began in 1937 in Asia, owing to Japan's invasion of China.
00:51Even if those events remained the same, however, everything that followed would
00:54be another question entirely. Part of the calculus of Japan's military strategy was
00:58based on the power struggles in Europe. Without Germany causing issues in the West,
01:02Japan might have limited the scope of its ambitions to only Asia,
01:06which subsequently might have prevented the U.S. from ultimately intervening.
01:10The American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory."
01:17The term Final Solution refers to the final and most deadly stage of the Holocaust,
01:21beginning in 1941 and lasting until the end of World War II. The Nazis wanted to kill 11
01:27million Jews by the war's end. They managed around 6 million before the fall of the regime.
01:32So if Adolf Hitler wasn't around, and working on the assumption that the Holocaust would never
01:36have happened, what might the Jewish population look like today?
01:40Researcher Sergio Della Pergola has done the historical number crunching on this,
01:44explaining that, prior to the Holocaust, there were about 8 Jewish people per thousand worldwide.
01:49As of 2009, there were only two per thousand. Pergola has also estimated that, if not for the
01:55Holocaust, the worldwide Jewish population would be some 32 million, compared to the 13 million
02:00that exist today. He explained this by pointing out that the Holocaust wasn't just a one-time
02:05destructive event. It destroyed an entire generation of people, many of whom were young
02:09when they were killed. Effectively, the Holocaust didn't just wipe out an entire generation,
02:14but an entire generation and all of its potential descendants.
02:18Prior to World War II, some of the West had resisted the creation of a Jewish state in the
02:22then-British colony of Palestine, largely due to Western nations hoping to maintain good relations
02:27with Arabic communities. After World War II and the Holocaust, however, these views changed,
02:32and international support grew for the foundation of Israel. But if Adolf Hitler never existed,
02:37the situation could have been very different. Dr. Jeffrey S. Gurok has posited that,
02:42even if the Holocaust had still occurred but merely claimed fewer lives,
02:45Jewish communities in America might never have embraced Zionism, the movement to create a Jewish
02:50state. Accordingly, the American government might not have supported the creation of Israel,
02:55likely leading to weaker diplomatic ties between the two nations.
02:58Dr. Shalom Solomon-Vald has made similar claims, going so far as to say that,
03:03in a hypothetical situation like this, Israel might have never existed at all.
03:07There would have been far fewer displaced Jewish people needing a home,
03:10and Zionists wouldn't have been the majority voice in the Jewish population.
03:15One odd byproduct that often stems from large-scale conflict is innovation.
03:19Making things better, faster, more efficient, or more deadly — those are the needs that
03:23often arise thanks to the demands of war. And World War II was no different.
03:27But under the assumption of no Adolf Hitler and possibly no conflict,
03:31then what technology might we not have today?
03:34We enjoy plenty of products nowadays that have their origins in World War II military designs.
03:38Duct tape, for example, was originally designed to keep soldiers' equipment dry in the rain.
03:43Superglue came out of research for gun sights.
03:45Toys like Silly Putty and the Slinky were accidental products of wartime science.
03:50Everyone wants a Slinky. You ought to get a Slinky.
03:56The old reliable Jeep was even born from the military's desire for a durable vehicle.
04:00Even synthetic rubber wouldn't have been invented without wartime politics cutting
04:04off America's access to natural rubber sources.
04:07And of course, there are the more obvious military advancements.
04:10The nuclear bomb and all of the research carried out by the Manhattan Project stands out.
04:14Would nuclear technology be anywhere near what it is today without World War II?
04:18The Germans were also responsible for more than a few advancements in military technology,
04:22creating the first fighter jets and ballistic missiles.
04:25The Soviet Union had long existed in Nazi Germany's crosshairs,
04:29chiefly owing to the concept of Lebensraum, or living space, which emerged prior to World War I.
04:34That said, Adolf Hitler made Lebensraum a key aspect of Nazi doctrine,
04:38calling not only for the extermination of Jewish communities, but also the acquisition of Soviet
04:43lands. While Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia entered into a non-aggression pact in 1939,
04:48Hitler chose to break the pact just two years later. What followed for the Soviets were some
04:53of the deadliest battles of World War II, to which Germany committed most of its military assets.
04:58The western regions of Russia were effectively razed to the ground,
05:01with millions of Soviet soldiers and civilians losing their lives during the war.
05:05Had Hitler not been around, would any of that have happened?
05:08Maybe the Soviet Union would have been less of a target for German aggression,
05:12or the non-aggression pact could have stood for longer. Stalin, for his part,
05:15did seem genuinely keen on negotiating with Germany. Even if war had erupted between the
05:20two nations, the conflict might have been much less destructive under a different German leader.
05:25While it's very easy today to see Hitler as the gravest threat of the 1930s,
05:29contemporary accounts held a very different view. Rather, many western nations feared
05:33Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union more than they feared Hitler and Nazi Germany,
05:37even as late as 1938. According to the BBC, people would even claim,
05:42better Hitlerism than communism. And those fears weren't entirely unfounded, either.
05:47Secret protocols in the German-Soviet non-aggression pact seemingly proved that
05:51the Soviets did have imperialist motives. The countries had essentially divided Eastern Europe
05:56between them, and up until the breaking of that pact, the Soviet Union was busy
06:00annexing neighboring countries. So that raises the question, without Hitler,
06:04what would the Soviets have gone on to do? Some speculation posits that Stalin would have
06:08attacked and annexed even more of Europe, eventually forcing direct military confrontation
06:13between the Soviet Union and the U.S. Other theories claim that, while Stalin might never
06:17have picked a fight with the U.S. or Western Europe directly, the extant fears surrounding
06:22communism would have led the world into a Cold War even earlier.
06:26That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
06:34Adolf Hitler's unlikely link to NASA all comes down to an American project known as Operation
06:39Paperclip, which involved Nazi scientists being given jobs in the U.S. after the war.
06:43The military effectively covered up the war crimes committed by those scientists in order
06:47to poach their abilities and gain an advantage over the Soviets in the Cold War.
06:51NASA was one of the American organizations to benefit the most from this initiative.
06:55The Nazis were ahead of the curve when it came to rocket technology. Recognizing this,
07:00the U.S. recruited Germany's leading rocket scientists and put them to work on space
07:03exploration. They did so to great effect, too. Poor quandary society, at least.
07:08The first director of the Kennedy Space Center, Dr. Kurt Debus, who oversaw the Saturn and Apollo
07:13programs? A former Nazi. The former director of the Marshall Space Flight Center and father
07:18of American rocketry, Wernher von Braun? Also an ex-Nazi. And they were far from the only Germans
07:24engaged in NASA's research. Had Hitler not been around, who's to say whether or not the circumstances
07:29leading to Operation Paperclip would have happened? And in turn, would NASA have ever
07:33become the organization it is today? Politically speaking, Germany's Weimar
07:38Republic faced a great number of problems. But it's worth noting that contemporary Berlin was
07:42actually something of a cultural marvel for its time. Notably, Berlin in the 1920s showed an
07:47astonishing degree of acceptance toward LGBTQ-plus communities, making it one of the most socially
07:52liberal places in the world at the time. Despite homosexuality technically being illegal, the law
07:58just wasn't really enforced in Berlin, and dozens of gay and lesbian bars were allowed to operate
08:02openly throughout the city. Fledgling gay rights movements sprung up. LGBTQ-plus publications were
08:08distributed in spades. Transgender people were recognized and accepted. Cross-dressing became
08:13socially acceptable to a degree. In an era of the republic, Berlin became something of a safe
08:18haven for queer culture. When the Nazis rose to power, however, they brought with them the notion
08:22that homosexuality was a plague to be eliminated, something unnatural that threatened the purity of
08:27the Aryan race. Accordingly, laws against homosexuality became much harsher and more
08:32strictly enforced in the 1930s, and remained the norm until the late 1960s.
08:37Had Adolf Hitler never seized power and spread Nazi doctrine throughout Germany,
08:40Berlin may never have been subjected to these laws. And if queer culture had continued to
08:45flourish in a major urban center in the West, it could well have become the flashpoint for
08:49the modern gay rights movement, a distinction now typically given to the Stonewall Uprising.
08:54It's not particularly exciting to imagine that little might have changed as a result of removing
08:59Adolf Hitler from history. After all, Hitler is widely considered to be one of the worst
09:03monsters of the 20th century. Surely the world would have looked completely different if he
09:07had never been born. And while yes, that's a totally understandable argument to make,
09:12it's also hard to ignore the fact that Hitler himself didn't make World War II happen.
09:16Rather, his rise to power was tied to pre-existing issues and ideologies.
09:20The events of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles left Germany's economy in ruins,
09:24and its people humiliated. Not only did World War I constitute a terrible military loss,
09:29but Germany was also forced to give up territories and pay $33 billion of reparation payments.
09:34The latter led to catastrophic inflation, with 4 billion German marks equaling one American dollar
09:40in 1923. Both the Great Depression and the rise of communism only led to further chaos in Germany,
09:45leaving people looking for hope, guidance, or simply someone to blame.
09:49Hitler was in the perfect place at just the right time to provide all of that.
09:54Even anti-Semitism did not begin with Hitler. It had existed in one form or another since antiquity.
09:59In other words, the ideas and circumstances underlying the Third Reich weren't unique
10:06creations of Hitler. Another dictator could easily have come along and benefited from
10:10the same conditions, essentially leading Germany down the path we know from our history books.
10:15Any discussion of a world without Hitler will no doubt revolve around historical questions.
10:19You know, simple cause and effect, the ripples that form from one of history's greatest dictators
10:24never rising to power. But there might also be some value in taking a scientific approach
10:28to the subject. The question of Hitler having never existed often bleeds into discussions of
10:33time travel. And wrapped up in those discussions is something called the Novikov self-consistency
10:38principle. Essentially, the idea that paradoxes cannot exist. In other words, for the purpose of
10:43this thought experiment, history is basically immutable. It can't be changed under any
10:47circumstance. So, if you were to alter the question slightly and ask what would happen
10:52if a time traveler tried to kill Hitler before he ever had the chance to become a dictator,
10:56then the prospect of self-consistency will come into play.
10:59Speculative histories that abide by this idea posit that even if Hitler was killed as an infant,
11:04then a different individual would come to fill the exact same role. Hitler's mother might just
11:08adopt another child and name him Adolf, for example. Alternatively, an attempted assassination
11:13might actually turn out to be what led Hitler to become a dictator in the first place, feeding into
11:17the ideologies that came to characterize the Nazi Party. At the very least, history would work to
11:22self-correct in the long run. At most, nothing would change at all. Of course, these questions
11:27are ultimately tied to a hypothetical. And so, for better or worse, it seems almost certain
11:32that we will never learn the answers.