Soft on Germany

What if they didn't force Germany to dismantle their military, pay reparations or give up their colonies? And what if they didn't force Austria to dismantle also?

I still think Hitler would rise anyways due to losing the war anyways.

WW2 would of started with Germany in an even stronger position.

SHAM00E wrote:What if they didn't force Germany to dismantle their military, pay reparations or give up their colonies? And what if they didn't force Austria to dismantle also?

Soft on Germany
I do not believe Hitler would have risen because as can be seen in the after math of the second world war that if the people have good economic growth and an improving live standard they do not vote for extremists only if the people have nothing to lose anymore and the system as it is does not work do people vote for extremists. If the Germans would not have needed to pay the war reparations the golden years 1924-1929 of the Weimar republic would have continued. The golden years of the republic saw its production capacity grow 33% since 1913 even after the war destruction and the people where voting for centrist parties. This period of economic growth was caused by the Americans giving the Germans easy loans to pay the allies with and so the economy could grow as if there were no war reparations to pay. Only after the Americans stopped loaning money did the German economy collapsed and hyperinflation kick in if the payments would not have been needed to have been payed the economy would have been the same and Hitler would not have risen because people would simply care about their personal life and forget about imperialist ambitions.

Hitlers success was based on German humiliation - without it he would not have gained such support.

the Germans were also humiliated after the seconed world war and there were national socialists getting up to 15% in the elections but after the "Wirtschafts wunder" the Party’s lost popularity and People no longer cared about the end of the war because they could build up their own lives. A Nation that economically prospers does not go to war due to hurt pride.

Imagine Operation Unthinkable - the Germans would be so tired of war they would nearly refuse to fight lol

i do not understand?

It was a planned Warsaw Pact vs NATO war.

no i mean how it relates to the Topic from before

There would be no Second World War. Hitler's entire ideology was about regaining Germany's standing in the world and making it a superpower. If Germany was not treated so harshly it would have maintained its powerful reputation and would have still been a economic power house in relation to the other European countries, which would have suffered equally if not worse in the case of France and Belgium in terms of loss of industry and man power than Germany. Therefore, Hitler would have no ideology, motivation or support and would have never come to power. The Nazi party would still exist though, with different motives and may still try to seize power, just unsuccessfully this time.

I don't think the treaty of Versailles could of been much different territory wise though could of been lighter on reparations and military restrictions. France wanted Alsace-Lorraine and was going to get it, poles wanted territory, etc. Too many nations wanted territory to just make the treaty keep Germany intact. A revolution was already happened by the time the treaty of Versailles came along the future Nazis would not just be fine with the democratic policies of the Wiemar republic though Nazis probably would not gotten as much support if terms of the treaty were lighter, the Nazis still might come to power. For example Italy won the war but still succumbed to Fascism, so I don't Germany would of necessarily stayed democratic.

I believe the Nazi Party would have come to power anyways, but probably would have had different goals. One of the central tenets of Nazi ideology which brought it to power was hostility to communism, and a soft Versailles Treaty would have done nothing to change this.

In October 1918, revolutions began to rise in the German Empire due to the wretched conditions in the country during the war, forcing Wilhelm to abdicate and accept and armistice. The Weimar Republic was ruled by Social Democrats, but the more radical communists sought to overthrow them. This led to outbreaks of violence in Germany's cities as the leftists clashed with fascist authoritarians and what was left of the German military. Some of these workers uprisings were able to take over entire cities and provinces and raise as many as 50,000 soldiers. Even without the reparations, this instability would have persisted.

The reason I bring this up is because the rightist authoritarians and the fascists both wanted a more powerful government and state to keep the radicals in check. In the timeline of a soft Versailles Treaty, fear and haterd towards the communists would continue much as it did in our timeline, and many of the German people would turn to the Nazis to restore order. The Reichstag Fire Decree would happen almost exactly the same way, with some sort of crisis occurring, and the Nazis blaming the communists and finally forcing through reforms granting themselves absolute power to deal with the leftist threat.

This version of the Nazi Party would have different goals than the one led by Hitler in our timeline. During the revolutions, many of the fascist promoted conspiracy theories about Jews working with the communists to threaten Germany, and the Nazi Party would have still adopted this version of events and shipped people to the camps. They would have no need to reunite the German lands in Danzig and Posen, and would therefore have few reasons quarrel with the Western Allies, at least not in the short term. Instead, the Nazi Party's hostility towards communism would have led them to rearm the nation and march directly into a war with the Soviet Union, which probably would have happened much earlier. With few to no concerns to the west, Germany would have had a much better chance at defeating Stalin. If they won, Germany could then prepare to settle the score with Britain and France, once again with a much higher probability of victory.