I had a friend some years ago that used to say, “One monkey don’t make no show!” Obviously, he was making reference to the fact that no operation should be reliant on one person, and the notion that there is nobody that can’t be replaced. I would say to a large extent, this is quite true. Usually there is always someone that can step up and take over in your absence. Still, you look through history, and sometimes the show is the damn Monkey. If Hitler had been eliminated during the beer hall putsch of November 8, 1923, would things have turned out differently for Europe in the 1930s and 1940s? What if Stalin had never existed? Would there still have been pogroms, and purges in Russia? Like most “what if” questions, there are no accurate answers, since that is not how it happened. All we can do is a “best guess,” which renders these questions little more than either conversation starters at a professorial dinner party, or the basis for an alternative history book.
Still, I love a good guess, so I’m thinking that the answer about Hitler would be that someone else might well have stepped up and done a different kind of damage, but damage nonetheless. Many of the players were in place, and instead of Hitler, it could well have been a guy named General Kurt von Scheleicher. (See The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, W. L. Shirer, 1959, at page 150). General Scheleicher was by all accounts a sneaky power monger, who was quite dangerous. Would he have established a military dictatorship? Probably, if given half a chance he would have done so, and eventually, he would have launched a war. In fact, for the world at large, he would have been as, or perhaps more, dangerous than the schmuck we got.
As for Stalin, there were countless scoundrels waiting in the wings, and in a cut throat society, especially during hard times, there never seems to be a shortage of vermin to step up and take control. What if? Simply put, the “what if” is likely not going to be all that different from the “what actually happened,” at least when it comes to the ultimate conclusion. This just sets up the question for us today, which is simply, “if not Putin, then whom?” ~ Michael S. Pauley
Still, I love a good guess, so I’m thinking that the answer about Hitler would be that someone else might well have stepped up and done a different kind of damage, but damage nonetheless. Many of the players were in place, and instead of Hitler, it could well have been a guy named General Kurt von Scheleicher. (See The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, W. L. Shirer, 1959, at page 150). General Scheleicher was by all accounts a sneaky power monger, who was quite dangerous. Would he have established a military dictatorship? Probably, if given half a chance he would have done so, and eventually, he would have launched a war. In fact, for the world at large, he would have been as, or perhaps more, dangerous than the schmuck we got.
As for Stalin, there were countless scoundrels waiting in the wings, and in a cut throat society, especially during hard times, there never seems to be a shortage of vermin to step up and take control. What if? Simply put, the “what if” is likely not going to be all that different from the “what actually happened,” at least when it comes to the ultimate conclusion. This just sets up the question for us today, which is simply, “if not Putin, then whom?” ~ Michael S. Pauley
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