Should the axis powers have won the first world war?

If Germany and it's allies had won the first world war, then the Nazis would never come to power, and WW2 might not have happened. Do you think it would have been better if the axis had just won the conflict?

Yeah, they should have won 4
No, it's good they lost 17
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Comments ( 25 )
  • Grunewald

    History is what it is. Someone else would have risen up. Fascism and totalitarian ideologies were in the air at that time. To stop them I think you'd have had to do away with Marx and Nietzsche, and undone the Enlightenment before them for the belief in human endeavour and goodness that it instilled, which WWI dashed. At least, that's what I think.

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    • What does Frederick Nietzsche have to do with Nazis

      I understand Marxism was the West's take on communism and that it was deemed practically impossible

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      • Grunewald

        Hitler owed Nietzsche a debt, apparently. His idea of the 'superman' is supposed to have underpinned some of his thought.

        No Marx, no Stalin. At least, not in the form we have known him.

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        • Nietzsche's superman is a self actualized person, not a genetically superior person

          But you're saying Hitler used Nietszche's work to justify his actions? I never heard that, I'm trying to wrap my mind on how that's believable if you understand his work

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          • bigbudchonger

            Yeah, Grunewald is right, but so are you. The superman shouldn't be interpreted in the way Hitler did, but supposedly he was influenced by him.

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            • But it's not right to say Nietsche is bad because Hitler hopped on the bandwagon

              It should be that we acknowledge the finesse someone can have with social manipulation, public speaking, and information, not the mere thread of connection the two had by Hitler only quoting Nietszche's work

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          • Grunewald

            You mad, bro? ;-) Lighten up. So your favourite philosophers don't have a record free of controversy. Whose do?

            The idea of genetic *means* of obtaining übermenschen can have come from elsewhere: let's not wander into a zero-sum fallacy. And the notion of the übermensch can be about self-actualisation and still have contributed to Hitler's thought in some way.

            And nor does being influenced by a philosopher mean that that writer's ideas will necessarily be the primary justification for something! Let's not take the part of Hitler's influences for the whole.

            University College London wouldn't have banned Nietzsche for nothing ;-).

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            • No I've just really never heard that. I've watched YouTube videos about him and his work and skimmed through the comments, I've read his own work in his own words, even Thus Spoke Zarathustra

              I've never come across any reference to Nazis before. He lived in the 19th century though, so that was a little after his time. Schools ban and unban authors all the time, they recently banned a few Dr. Seuss books. I don't personally feel that's any reason he should be discredited

              Could you link me to how the Nazis used his work? I can see how someone could be manipulated by it, same with any religion or faction that utilizes indoctrination. "Behold, the super man. He is the elite among human beings and that is what you are. Go, my soldiers, rid the impurities of humanity and I'll give you the world" I'm sure Hitler could sell that, he wasn't a bad orator

              But the Superman also embodies humility. Like yes, being self actualized helps you turn thoughts into reality, but you're not really the superman if you're arrogant about it. You're just another selfish person. Maybe Hitler tried to tie himself to Nietsche, like the swastika, but that doesn't make those things bad

              Edit: not the swastika itself but that symbol in the center. It's called a solar cross in a general sense. Many ancient cultures used and adopted that symbol, like the Vikings for sure had a three pronged version. I believe it was designed after a star, our sun, emitting energy and turning. The Vikings version I feel like is more inspired by water and femininity. Like an acknowledgement to time, and made the universe out to be like a clock, or like whirlpools and tides, it gave framework and structure. I also wanna say Mayans or Aztecs used this symbol, and I feel like I've heard about eastern cultures using it as well. The point is, that's something I can prove Hitler misappropriated, and I read something on about how his widowed bride edited his last book Ecce Homo and made a fortune selling books made out of his massive collection of writings to ultra conservatives who then started cherry picking out of his work for propaganda for their cause.

              Well damn, I may have just discovered a causal factor in Hitler's rise to power in my effort to defend Nietszche's honor. It wasn't Nietsche who conspired with Nazis, it was his wife.

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  • ChrissySnow

    I'm not into history enough to have an opinion on this. Go ask an old man, they seem to love history

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  • my_death_my_way

    I would need to look into this more to give a proper answer

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  • BleedingPain

    No need to speculate on what could have happened. They lost, and the rest is history.

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    • LloydAsher

      Unless people want to repeat it (it tends to do that)

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  • I remember Hitler swore revenge after WWI

    I think it's in theoretical physics or something, but there's new science that says the grandfather paradox wouldn't actually be a problem, that someone else would fill in the open spot

    They even referenced Hitler, that if someone went back in time to kill him then someone else would just come along to murder millions, or a disease or something

    So basically like the movie The Time Traveler, you're not really stopping anything from happening, just how it happens

    I mean maybe he'd come back from that victory like "y'all bitches better be ready for round two"

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    • S0UNDS_WEIRD

      Not exactly but I know what you're talking about. Basically, the world of physics dictates that in a deterministic universe, if something leads to someone going back in time, it _always_ did, and nothing really changes. Therefore, if you go back in time and murder baby Hitler, he's swapped for another Hitler who was _always_ the one you intended to stop. This is what happened _originally_ and you merely fulfilled it.

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      • Boojum

        If that's true (and if I understand how this is supposed to work), then maybe Adolf was just the last iteration before the time-travellers gave up on the idea.

        Perhaps in other versions of history, the world ended up reviling Lutz Cuntzsch, Herman Bonk, Willy Fuchs, Dieter Horni and Helmut Wank.

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        • S0UNDS_WEIRD

          While I find your alternatives _very_interesting, no, that's not what I meant.

          I've seen you (accurately) refer to even our thoughts and opinions as electrical signals. That's the real root here. Basically, in a deterministic universe everything is governed by definite laws. While it would arguably require a computer larger than the universe, one could hypothetically measure the trajectory of every subatomic particle in the universe and perfectly predict the future, even including the thoughts of future people. So the thinking is that the future already exists in a sense, maybe even literally exists if we think of temporal dimensions exactly as we do spatial ones, the past and future just over there no different than left or right.

          This school of thought says that if any events would lead to someone going back in time, they _always_ did, had no choice but to do so. If something happens in 2050 that inspires you to revisit the year via a time machine from the year 2060, it turns out that if you sufficiently examined the year 2050 the first time around, you would have witnessed a future version of yourself visiting.

          Ergo, if you go back in time to kill Hitler and replace him with another baby, it turns out this always happened and the Hitler you tried to stop was always the replacement baby, unbeknownst to you.

          It's called the block universe theory scientifically and eternalism philosophically. Most determinists view it as supportive data that reverse time travel is impossible though. Surely one could be fully aware of one's self coming back to switch Hitlers and then willfully do something different. At that point it literally requires that something changes your mind and coerces you to fulfill it no matter what. Seems rather unlikely right? That there's absolutely no way around it? Hell, my curiosity alone would make me do something different just to prove I could. So it's a rare example of philosophy informing physics (rather than the other way around) and saying that if we live in a deterministic universe, reverse time travel isn't possible.

          On the other hand, some think the universe isn't deterministic and that some things are either random or beyond our understanding regarding the manner in which determinism is defied. Just as they believe every collapse of a wave function yields multiple universes at subatomic levels, they believe reverse time travel simply yields multiple universes.

          I'm more with Einstein and his infamously religious-confusing assertion, "God doesn't play dice."

          It was about just this. While Einstein was wrong about some things, I just really don't see a world with the possibility of randomness. It's uncomfortable because it basically squashes free will (another discussion), but come on; randomness is impossible. Obviously everything follows hard physical laws.

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          • Boojum

            This sort of stuff does my head in.

            I'm a practical sort of guy, and leaving aside all the philosophy/physics stuff, it seems to me that there's one enormous practical problem with time travel to the past.

            Earth is rotating at a speed of around 1,600 km/h at the equator. It's orbiting around the Sun at about 110,000 km/h. The solar system is orbiting the galactic centre at around 830,000 km/h. Our galaxy is moving at about 2.4 million km/h.

            And all that doesn't take account of the fact that the universe is constantly expanding.

            So even if someone could design a time machine and set it up across the street from baby Adolf's home with the idea of solving a huge problem with a little infanticide, the device would not only have to move back in time but also travel trillions of kilometres in space.

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            • S0UNDS_WEIRD

              I think it does that to everyone. Our, or anyone's, intelligence does very little to aid an intuitive understanding of things that are completely counterintuitive regarding the macroscopic world and/or the linearity our brains are optimized to understand as reality.

              It's a bit like quantum superpositions, particles simultaneously occupying more than one place; we can spend years learning the mathematics, physics, and reasoning behind it, we can see the data that says this is possible, but it always feels quite supernatural and that we've gone wrong somewhere despite all this. In fact, I would bet that if people were asked if this could happen 1,000 years ago, it would counterintuitively be the more intelligent people who said they couldn't wrap their heads around such a thing as an eventual possibility because it innately seems obviously untrue.

              You're absolutely right and this is always overlooked. Any so-called time machine would have to actually be what's essentially a spacetime craft and would either require god-like calculations done in advance or first temporally travelling so as to occupy a safe area in space before spatially travelling to the target just as a conventional spacecraft might. It's a huge stumbling block but doesn't necessarily render the whole thing impossible.

              Determining whether or not it's possible is likely going to be beyond the current state of humanity for quite a while. On most days Hawking was pretty sure it's impossible, but he took it seriously enough that he once attempted to meet people from the future. He held a party for them and sat alone for hours. It wasn't BS and a fantastic party could have happened. He was ready. The thinking was that in a deterministic universe, if it was known that he did this in the future, that would attract people from the future wanting to meet an influential scientist from their past. Ergo, they _always_ came back (as nothing can be changed) and he would instantly get to meet them due to the fruits of this simple experiment. No one showed up. He even made a bigger announcement about his invitations _after_ the party to further cement the fact that this would be a known thing in the future, which it will, and therefore proving that either it's impossible, humanity is wiped out before it is, or no one goes back to do it out of either disinterest or ethics concerns in the future regarding visiting more primitive people.

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        • LloydAsher

          See its shit like that make life worth living. Dispite the point of the paradox being that nothing really changes no matter what. A self correcting identity crisis of existance. It will always be as it was. It can either be interpreted as pointless existance devoid of actual free will or complete freedom through our own perspective but continuing down a predetermined path only when looked upon from an outside observer.

          These deep theoretical concepts is a fun pastime for me.

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  • LloydAsher

    They would of lost anyway. They had an extremely unstable power structure. Hell japan and germany both had plans to double cross eachother in the event that they won.

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  • Meatballsandwich

    To be fair, the axis powers committed tons of crimes against humanity during the first world war, far more so than the allies did. Germany was, by far, the least " bad " of the axis powers in the conflict, if you ask me. I kinda wanted Germany to win because of the whole Nazi thing, but then again, Austria-Hungary, and especially the Ottoman empire, deserved to burn in hell.

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  • 1WeirdGuy

    Germany was already gearing up to fight against communism. Nazi Germany was already starting. They already hated jews and took their liberty. I think maybe Germany would have invaded other countries even if there was no WW1. Maybe even sooner than they did.

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    • But if Germany had won a swift victory against France in 1914, and then conquered Russia afterwards in 1915, ending the war, the communist revolutions may not have happened.

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      • 1WeirdGuy

        You have a point. If they did take over france and russia successfully maybe they'd be too strong for the allies to even try to continue fighting. Maybe they'd sue for peace or something. The war is what broke the straw on the camels back for the communism revolution in russia. The tsar showed how dumb he was.

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