Did Hitler really die in Berlin?

@ladymccormick Generally speaking, I wouldn’t recommend using speculative forum posts as source material for a university thesis. Anyway, for some more details, see: https://coolinterestingstuff.com/did-hitler-escape-to-spain
But I don’t really believe it, as I already explained in my 2016 reply to this topic (see above).

@CWO:

Intereting hypothetical question.  One amusing aspect is the idea of Hitler, with his long track record of breaking treaties and of attacking other countries without warning, expressing shock over Japanese treachery – though I guess it’s not unimaginable, since the same track record basically shows that he was quite capable of changing his foreign policies in any way that he felt served his interests at any given time.  And relations between Germany and Japan were not always cordial.  For instance, Germany supposedly expressed shock over the Rape of Nanking and offered itself as a mediator between China (with whom I think it had a degree of military advisory relations) and Japan.  And Japan was highly annoyed when Germany signed the August 1939 nonaggression pact with Japan’s old enemy, Russia.

Even taking Hitler’s impulsive and erratic nature into account, however, it’s pretty hard to fathom why he’d declare war on Japan in December 1941.  The two countries were partners under the Tripartite Pact, whose bottom line was, frankly, that Germany and Japan agreed to stay out of each other’s way as each nation pursued its expansionist policies on opposite sides of the globe.  A war between the two countries, even if it had been declared, would have been virtually impossible to wage since German and Japan were separated from each other by vast stretches of land (notably the USSR, which was unfriendly to both countries) and ocean.

It’s even harder to fathom why Hitler would offer support to the US in December 1941, since the Americans were actively supporting its enemy Great Britain.  I can understand Britain’s wartime partnership with the USSR against Germany, on the principle that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, but Hitler’s support of the US would have been a case of “the friend of my enemy is my friend”, which makes no sense.

Just for argument’s sake, however, I’d guess that if Hitler had inexplicably offered to the US a wartime alliance against Japan, the Americans wouldn’t have accepted it.  Nazi Germany was, to put it mildly, neither liked nor trusted by the Roosevelt administration, and its reaction would probably have been to treat a partnership proposal from Hitler like the offer of a bottle of poison.

it’s pretty hard to fathom why he’d declare war on Japan in December 1941.

I don’t want to speak for Gargantua. But it’s possible that the goal of this declaration of war would be for Germany to distance itself as much as possible from Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack. The underlying objective would be to make the political climate in America less favorable for going to war against Germany.

Nazi Germany was, to put it mildly, neither liked nor trusted by the Roosevelt administration, and
its reaction would probably have been to treat a partnership proposal from Hitler like the offer of a bottle of poison.

The goal of Stalin’s foreign policy was to foster war between Germany and the Western democracies. Stalin hoped to achieve this goal by promoting “anti-fascism.” The Soviet Union would stay neutral in this hoped-for war. This war would weaken both Germany and the Western democracies. Ideally it would be like WWI, and bleed both sides white. That war would set the stage for Soviet expansion westward into Europe. The first stage would be at the expense of Germany and Eastern Europe. The second state would be at the expense of France and possibly other Western democracies.

FDR was extremely eager to embrace the pro-Soviet, anti-fascist foreign policy Stalin envisioned for Western democracies. I don’t see anything Hitler could have done to change that. He didn’t begin to have the kind of penetration into the FDR administration Stalin had. Nor was there any readily available way for him to achieve that penetration. FDR hated Nazis and other Germans, but was very intrigued by communism and by Stalin. It was this mindset which allowed a number of outright communists to achieve positions of great influence in his administration, while anyone with right wing views was either excluded entirely or eased out of any real policy-setting role.

But FDR did not work in a vacuum. Had it been up to him, the United States would have declared war on Germany back in the '30s. The fact it did not do so was because due to strong isolationist forces. While FDR and his allies in the media were working diligently to weaken those forces, even by December 1941 they were still strong. Had Germany declared war on Japan in December '41, it would have been a clear, simple statement. Even FDR and his allies would have found it difficult to distort that statement into something which made war with Germany seem necessary.

By the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, the American pro-war faction had built up too much political momentum for a German declaration of war against Japan to stop them. Sooner or later, the pro-war faction would succeed at getting America into the war; much like it had succeeded in WWI. Even over the short-term, the pro-war faction would still have been able to send large quantities of weapons to Stalin and the Soviet Union, as well as to Britain.

Let’s say that declaring war against Japan would have bought Germany two years of nominal peace with America. While Germany would still have had to deal with large numbers of American made weapons during that two year period, at least it wouldn’t have had to face American soldiers. That two year grace period would have allowed Germany to concentrate more of its military force on its eastern front, instead of having to use as much strength defending against potential or actual Anglo-American invasions elsewhere. (Though they would still have had to defend against the Anglo half of that threat.)

That concentration of force against the Soviet Union would undoubtedly led to a more favorable situation on Germany’s eastern front. More victories, more Soviet soldiers captured, more conquered Soviet land. But I do not think that this alone would have been sufficient for Germany to win the war in the east. In the absence of other factors helping Germany, the German objective on the eastern front should (in this scenario) have been to grab what land it could in the western U.S.S.R., including at least some of the Caucasus oilfields, and then negotiate peace with Stalin. The more successful Germany was on its eastern front, the more presumptively likely Stalin would have been to negotiate an end to hostilities.

This peace treaty would by no means have represented the end of the war. It would merely indicate Germany had survived the first phase of the challenges ahead of it.

I read the book about him. Very awesome story. Read the book, then watch the movie.  :-D

I vaguely recall seeing an old Popular Mechanics cover which showed an alternate solution to the problem of widening the Panama Canal to accommodate warships broader than the 110-foot width of the locks: building a railway that would allow the US to move battleships overland from the Atlantic to the Pacific and vice-versa.

@Gargantua:

Are you on DRUGS?

Uhm, I won’t answer any questions without my lawyer present.   :wink:

I regard most television documentaries as highly entertaining, but at least sometimes containing information of dubious reliability.  They are there to entertain and inform, and sometimes propagandize, not simply inform.

It is in stacks of dry dusty books that one finds interesting facts, and hot lonely librarians.   :evil:  The internet also does decently as a search tool, although you often have to have a good idea of what you are looking for.  (For example, you won’t typically find mention of “The Protocols of Zion” in any discussion of the Holocaust, which is, well, really bad.)

My understanding of the history of the StG 44 is that production of the gun itself was generally approved of by Hitler.

The MKb 42, FG 42, and MP43 were the predecessors.  I think the referred to “stoppage of the StG 44 by Hitler” (to paraphrase an earlier post) referred to the real infighting in Germany over the design and production of these various predecessor guns.  To sum up, there were various plans for various assault rifles / machine guns, but there was a lot of bureaucratic infighting.  Rather than allowing them to continue arguing to no positive end, Hitler at various points told them to shut up and shut down.

So naturally there was some delay in StG 44 production, but saying Hitler made a stupid decision, or that he completely lacked vision, is like yelling at your cat after you burn your toast.  It’s not the cat’s fault, even if it was in the room at the time.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2091261/Inside-Hitlers-private-world-Wartime-pictures-rooms-Fuhrer-spent-quiet-time.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2026494/Albert-Brown-Oldest-survivor-Baatan-death-march-died-aged-105.html

OK, as a non-american who could really give a ratts-a$$ about who runs the US, right or left wing some personal observations.  It really is sad to see the right and left fighting and rearranged deck chairs as the titanic is taking on water. I for one would welcome a strong, prosperous and introspective america.  MSNBC is about as left as FOX is right.  FOX tends to make more factual mistakes however, like Anne coulter arguing with a Canadian journalist about Canada sending troops to vietnam during that war.  Canada didn’t, but Anne is not one to let facts get in the way of a good insult.
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/sticksandstones_multimedia2.html

CNN is becoming irrelevant.  Nobody mentioned PBS, they are accused of being lefties by FOX types, but PBS puts out a high quality product, perhaps a bit left as right wingers don’t tend to pursue journalism as a career.

Perhaps to get a better perspective on America, Americans should watch non-american news shows.  It might just surpise you what non-americans think are important issues and what important issues are to the rest of the world that most US media outlets ignore.

BBC world report is highly respected around the world and should be one of many sources.  While Al-Jazzera has its critics and often rightly so, it is an interesting window on the grievences of those who wish american harm.