Could Hitler have been stopped?

The fact that Hitler wasn’t stopped doesn’t mean to say that, if different choices had been made, he could not have been stopped, and it is interesting to consider this in order to properly look at those choices. I am going to consider the choices made by three groups: the German elite, the German people and the British and French. There may be things I refer to that you are not properly aware of. If you are going to study the German Depth study, you will learn more about these things later, though you might want to check them now with a little more reading (I would, of course, recommend my e-books) and if your school doesn’t opt for the German Depth Study, I would advise you fill any gaps in your knowledge that you are left worried about with a spell in the library.

The German elite could have stood up to Hitler on a number of critical occasions. They might have dealt more firmly with him after the Munich Beer Hall Putsch when the judge in his trial, in which he was convicted for what was an armed resurrection, only meted out a light prison sentence. Then the political elites and their scheming (particularly that of Schleicher and von Papen) led to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor by Hindenburg. They preferred anything to more liberalism or even worse, socialism. Then the elites, including the army, stood by when Hitler led the Nazi’s in their bloody purge of the opposition from within the Nazi Party itself in the Night of the Long Knives. Somewhere between two and four hundred were murdered yet Hitler got away with it. The army also failed to stand up to Hitler when he was determined to remilitarise the Rhineland and they thought that to do so, was likely to lead to national humiliation. Hitler was proven right and from that point onwards, the army would be subservient to his wishes.

Of course, it was the German people who, in enough numbers, voted for Hitler which led him to be appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg. And whilst the scheming that led to Hitler’s appointments had come from the traditional elites centred around Hindenburg, the votes had come from right across German society. The small peasant-farmers were amongst the first to turn to the Nazis as they saw their farms and their livelihoods endangered by the world-wide depression. Strong decisive leadership was an attraction to all classes but particularly the middle classes: white collar workers, government employees and the self-employed who feared the Communists. Of course, businesses large and small were concerned about Communism and this would spread from owners to employees. Incorporated into all these groups were ex-soldiers, attracted to someone who offered strong leadership and who would overturn the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles. Whilst women looked at the Party’s commitment to the family. The point is that the middle classes had other parties to choose from, either conservative or liberal, but in fact deserted them in large numbers. Whilst the working class had the socialists or the communists. But enough of them chose Hitler’s Nazi Party despite its blatant thuggery and the more uncompromising rhetoric coming from Hitler and other leading Nazis.

And, more familiar territory for you, British and French appeasement of Hitler’s revision of the treaty of Versailles: rearmament, remilitarisation of the Rhineland, Anschluss, and the surrender of the Sudetenland at Munich, not only meant that Hitler wasn’t stopped, but was in fact encouraged. Of all these, the remilitarisation of the Rhineland would have been the easiest point to have stopped Hitler in his tracks. Hitler himself was to later recall that the forty-eight hours following the march into the Rhineland as being the most nerve-racking in his life. Indeed, France could have responded, its forces were still considerably stronger than the Germans, but without Britain it hadn’t the confidence and the British response was that the Germans were only going into their own back yard. And then there was Munich, ‘a total and unmitigated defeat’ according to Churchill for Hitler should have been stopped, this was not a revision of the Treaty of Versailles (even if it was a matter of self-determination) and Czechoslovakia had a treaty with France promising support, and Hitler could have been stopped: Czechoslovakia had strong defences.

So, we are reminded that history is about the choices not made as much as the choices made. This is not an argument that WW2 would definitely have been avoided if different choices had been made, but it might well have been, and it would almost certainly have been a very different war. For one thing, there would not have been a Nazi-Soviet Pact. And in looking at those choices we appreciate the importance of the role of the German elites, the German people and the British and French leaders in the sorry path that took the world to a second world war.