This is the follow-on article to my previous essay entitled “What if the Treaty of Versailles Had Been a Just Negotiated Peace” published a couple of weeks ago which explores the potential “what might have beens” of an alternate history timeline much more peaceful and secure then the one we are living through.
Hitler and the Nazis Never Come to Power
It is acknowledged by most historians that the single most important by-product of the much-hated Versailles Treaty was the ascension to power of a certain Bavarian corporal named Adolf Hitler. Herr Hitler once remarked that he had only to mention the Treaty of Versailles in all of his public speeches to rally tens of thousands more German citizens to his cause since they had suffered so extensively because of it.
However, if the Treaty of Versailles had been a negotiated compromise peace along the lines of Wilson’s ‘Fourteen Points’ and generally included the terms listed in the previous article including self-determination and unity for the ethnically German territories of the German Reich, the humiliation of Germany stemming from the peace Treaty ending World War One would have been far less severe. Hitler would not likely have been able to use the Treaty as an effective rallying cry to achieve political support for his National Socialist Workers’ (Nazi) Party. In fact, he might have even supported the Treaty had it allowed for the fulfillment of his top demand, which was the Anschluss between Germany and his native Austria including the German Sudetenland, which German Austria had voted for in November 1918. His Nazi Party would not likely have ever been able to win more than five to ten percent of the vote in Reichstag elections, thus effectively eliminating any hope he ever had of becoming the Fuhrer of the Germany. The best he could have hoped for would be that he would have been offered a ministerial position as a minor partner in a grand coalition government led by one or more of Germany’s right-of-center political parties such as the German People’s Party, German National People’s Party or its offshoot the Conservative People’s Party. However, even when Hitler was offered the position of Vice Chancellor, he refused insisting on nothing less than the position of Chancellor itself. Accordingly, the chances of him accepting a lowly ministerial position would have been essentially non-existent, effectively locking him out of power for good.
