What The World Might Look Like If Hitler Never Existed
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.