• KombatWombat@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Convincing the allies to be sympathetic to Germany after WWI would be really hard. While the US had Wilson trying to establish cooperation with the League of Nations, he had to compromise with others who wanted more punitive measures. France had long-standing ire with them over Alsace-Lorraine and wanted them permanently crippled, since their shared border made them a looming threat in the future. They also suffered a lot of damage and needed aid themselves. Britain’s attitude was kind of in between. Plenty of people guessed the treaty could lead to another war in the future, but many were too angry to really care. So we got stuff like the war guilt clause.

    A professor in college told me Hitler went from about the normal amount of racist to turbo racist after having some chemicals leak into his brain near the end of WWI. So Hitler’s racism might have been a symptom of actual brain damage. Either way, racism and conspiracies don’t tend to come from a rational position so it is very hard to pull someone out of them with reason.

    I doubt Israel would exist without Hitler but there would still likely be some conflict in the region. Britain made the Balfour Declaration before WWI had even ended and the collapse of the Ottomans Empire that controlled the region left it unstable and in British control. They would have supported the jewish minority in the region even without the Holocaust available to help them justify creating a new state.