re: #259 Pawn of the Oppressor

My father worked in Germany in the late 60’s, when it was double extra good to be an American (4 Deutsch Marks to the dollar and plenty of things to do!) and of course there were more than a few German veterans of WW2 working in the civil services. My father related a conversation he had with an older German ex-NCO who asserted that if Hitler hadn’t started the war he may well have gone down in history as one of Germany’s greatest leaders. There are people who gloss over the racial, genocidal mania of the Third Reich even now. Imagine if he’d just been a purely domestic dictator - the world would be very different today…

Hitler needed the war to pay of all the debt he had incurred in rearming Germany. That is another one of those implausible “what-ifs” of history.

Other claim that Hitler would have won the war if he had only listened to his generals, but they were almost all against starting the war in the first place, they knew that Germany had no real chance over the long run.