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PurplePlumz
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21 Apr 2018, 10:23 am

I find Alternate History questions like: "what if Nazis won" to be really boring and uninteresting, probably because they've been done to death already.
So I'm going to go a bit outside the box.

What if Hitler was a Communist or a Strasserist?

Say either:

-Hitler passes art school (perhaps he would be more exposed to Marxist/leftist beliefs/ideologies from there).
-Hitler returns to Vienna when a Communist uprising breaks out.

And let's say that The Communist Party of Germany wins the election with Hitler taking charge. What would have happened/what would have been the aftermath?



Kraichgauer
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22 Apr 2018, 2:18 am

Actually, just after WWI, a group of German soldiers were near mutiny and issued a statement promoting Marxism. The spokesman was Adolf Hitler. So he very well could have become a Marxist. As it turns out, he and other German veterans had been used as informants to infiltrate various political parties. The party Hitler was assigned to was the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party, which he ended up joining for real, resigning from the army.
With Hitler, I don't believe he was any sort of ideological fanatic, though he certainly knew how to turn others into just that. Rather, he was all about selfagrandisement and gaining personal power. The political establishment behind him might as well have been incidental.


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PurplePlumz
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22 Apr 2018, 2:01 pm

I imagine that Stalin might still see a Red Germany as a threat (perhaps it would be too independent for his liking). There would also run the risk of two megalomaniacs running Communist Great Powers. During and after the actual war, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact surprised many because it was an agreement between two ideologies which were entirely at odds with each other, but it might become less of a surprise when you look deeper; the Weimar-Soviet cooperation, both isolated, revanchist regimes. On the other hand, Red Germany and the Soviet Union would be seen as natural allies but might surprise some laymen when they come to find the possibility of there being hostility within such a relationship.



Pepe
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22 Apr 2018, 10:49 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
Actually, just after WWI, a group of German soldiers were near mutiny and issued a statement promoting Marxism. The spokesman was Adolf Hitler. So he very well could have become a Marxist. As it turns out, he and other German veterans had been used as informants to infiltrate various political parties. The party Hitler was assigned to was the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party, which he ended up joining for real, resigning from the army.
With Hitler, I don't believe he was any sort of ideological fanatic, though he certainly knew how to turn others into just that. Rather, he was all about selfagrandisement and gaining personal power. The political establishment behind him might as well have been incidental.


Interesting...



funeralxempire
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26 Apr 2018, 1:54 am

Red Hitler becomes Rosa Luxemborg's secretary and we all live happy ever after. (which I believe is the appropriate ending for fairy tales?)


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PurplePlumz
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25 May 2018, 5:57 pm

PurplePlumz wrote:
I find Alternate History questions like: "what if Nazis won" to be really boring and uninteresting, probably because they've been done to death already.
So I'm going to go a bit outside the box.

What if Hitler was a Communist or a Strasserist?

Say either:

-Hitler passes art school (perhaps he would be more exposed to Marxist/leftist beliefs/ideologies from there).
-Hitler returns to Vienna when a Communist uprising breaks out.

And let's say that The Communist Party of Germany wins the election with Hitler taking charge. What would have happened/what would have been the aftermath?
I was actually meant to say: OR let's say the KDP won the election with Hitler taking charge. I'm aware that he likely wouldn't have actually been running if he passed art school.



kraftiekortie
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25 May 2018, 6:01 pm

Hitler would never have been a Communist, in my opinion.



Kraichgauer
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25 May 2018, 8:50 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
Hitler would never have been a Communist, in my opinion.


He toyed with communism briefly after WWI, then joined the Nazi party when it still had a socialist wing. But thanks to Hitler, the right wing nationalist faction won out, either purging and executing elements of his party's left such as Ernst Rohm, or winning them over, such as in the case of Josef Goebbels. I'm convinced Hitler could have been at home with any totalitarian political ideology, as long as it magnified him personally.


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