Adele Hitler; Or, What if Adolf Hitler was born a girl?

I personally like think that Adele Hitler, given a lack of political or career opportunities, might throw herself more into her painting and refine her art, and what ends up happening is that by the 1990s we have a gallery display in the New York Met of "Adele Hitler: A Life In Oils".

Yeah, as a woman, she's not going to attain any kind of political power - and many of the events that led to Adolf Hitler becoming Führer aren't going to happen to her.

I suppose the only way in which she can exert any influence at all is if she marries an injured soldier, and then that injured soldier becomes this universe's Führer. Perhaps she ends up radicalising him, and he ends up doing all the things that Hitler would have done?

Do not think that is quit right mullauna.

I concur with the assessment of other posters this PoD means, given social conditions of the time, female AH never becomes a public figure or at most becomes a nastier equivalent of Rose Luxemburg. However, even the latter is far from being enough to let the KPD seize power in post-WWI Germany, barring more radical changes to the TL (e.g. the Entente trying to conquer Germany and impose a harsher peace deal than Versailles). In other words, this PoD is functionally equivalent to AH never being born or dying in WWI or during the Beer Hall Putsch. In all likelihood, if nothing else changes, this means the NSDAP never rises to prominence and its role in the German political spectrum gets filled by the DNVP. The most likely solution to the crisis of Weimar democracy becomes the establishment of a right-wing 'moderate' authoritarian-militarist regime that is basically indistinguishable from Italian or Spanish fascism or the many right-wing authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe and Latin America of the time.

The situation for Jews, Rom, homosexuals, and disabled people stays more or less the same it was under the Kaiserreich or the Weimar republic, or becomes the same it was in fascist Italy before it got influenced by Nazism. The regime gets political opponents killed, jailed, or exiled as usual; regrettable but the expected standard in these circumstances. At least in the case of the Communists, it is not such a big loss since in the absence of Nazism, Stalinism becomes the undisputable worst of the worst.

Except as it concerns the above, the DNVP regime pursues a domestic and foreign policy agenda largely indistinguishable from the pre-1939 Nazi one, including reduction of unemployment through public works and rearmament, cessation of reparations, rearmament and remilitarization of Rhineland, pursuit of Germany's territorial claims about Austria, the Sudetenland, Danzig, and the Corridor, a strategic partnership with fascist Italy, and support of the Nationalists during the Spanish civil war. Rearmament however happens at a somewhat less reckless pace that creates less international alarm and is more financially sustainable for Germany since the regime is not actively preparing to fight a general war in a few years. Its strategic aims are military parity with France, armed containment of the USSR, and being able to fight a victorious war with Poland.

It achieves pretty much the same pre-WWII milestones up to 1939, but respects the Munich Agreement and hence it keeps France and Britain mostly pinned to a appeasement mindset even when it moves to enforce its claims against Poland. It also helps TTL Germany has a significantly better international reputation since it does not persecute the Jews. Therefore, the British government never gives Poland a military guarantee and does not support the Poles vs. the claims of Germany about Danzig and the Corridor, and France follows London's lead as usual. As a result, either Poland capitulates to German demands or a German-Polish war occurs that sees Britain and France stay neutral and shake their heads. If the latter, the USSR almost surely intervenes to backstab the Poles and conquer the Kresy. A confrontation between the Germans and the Soviets is in the cards, but likely it does not escalate to war since the two powers share a strategic interest to a partial partition of Poland despite ideological enmity.

The peace deal sees Germany grab Danzig, the Corridor, and Upper Silesia, with a mass expulsion of the Poles, and the USSR seize the Kresy. Germany may or may not get Posen as well, depending on whether it thinks it can afford the international PR cost. IMO any non-genocidal German government that wins a war against the Poles after WWI is going to try and settle the territorial dispute for good by the same forced population exchange means that the Greeks and the Turks used after their own conflict.

WWII as we know it does not happen. TTL Germany tries hard with some remakable success to set up a fascist trade and military bloc under its leadership with Italy, Spain, and the Eastern European countries with right-wing regimes using the USSR as a common threat and Communism as a bogeyman. It otherwise goes on a development trajectory much similar to a more industrialized equivalent of Francoist Spain or right-wing Latin American or East Asian dictatorships, or what fascist Italy would have been in the absence of WWII, i.e. a lifespan of a few decades with a slow and gradual decline and fall followed by a peaceful return to democracy as the public becomes increasingly intolerant of authoritarianism. 

Well, let's say I am skeptical simple removal of Hitler from the TL, albeit in all likelihood more than enough to prevent NSDAP from seizing power or even gaining prominence, is sufficient cause to save Weimar democracy, unless the change also significantly ameliorates things for post-WWI Germany or at least makes the defenders of Weimar democracy more talented and/or luckier than they were in their hour of need. As a matter of fact, being a Germanophile optimist, I have indulged myself into writing about both kinds of scenarioes.

Otherwise, I agree the combo of the Versailles mess and the Great Depression mess in all likelihood is just going to put a different kind of authoritarianism into place. For various good reasons, I tend to assume it would most likely be a different brand of fascism, more akin to the Italian original model and devoid of Hitler's racial hatred. One such reason is indeed Mussolini's rise to power predating and being independent of Hitler's one; second, in interwar Germany a far-right regime change was much easier to accomplish than a far-left one; third, there was an important and strong far-right component in the German political spectrum that embodied just this different kind of model, before the Nazis outstaged it, and hence seems the natural candidate to replace the NSDAP if it fails but nothing else changes.

As it concerns the often told AH story of the disappearance of Hitler just causing the rise of a more competent Nazi leader that actually wins WWII, I deem it an interesting morality tale about the dangers of messing with the timeline w/o checking for the consequences, but I am skeptical about its actual likelihood, first because there was no trace any such character actually existed as a potential leader in the Nazi ranks that was charismatic enough to bring the Nazis into power and brilliant enough to make a much better job of leading Nazi Germany than Hitler. And if he did, in all likelihood he would have just outsmarted Hitler in the struggle for NSDAP leadership. Second, I strongly dislike and disagree with the implied lesson of the tale about Nazi Germany being somehow fated to happen, because it is deterministic, lazy, anti-German, politically biased, and excessively fond of the tiresome cliché of Nazism as iconic ultimate evil. If one needs to make that kind of alt-WWII morality tale I much prefer and deem more plausible the Red Alert version, where time-travel killing of Hitler and elimination of Nazism just emboldens and unleashes the parallel and independent other ultimate evil of Stalinism to go on its own bloody rampage.

I gladly agree that just like a lot things in history, the fall of Weimar was far from inevitable. However, I would not overestimate the role of propaganda into paving the way for the Nazis to power. Although such propaganda can often be extremely effective in painting the situation even worse than it is and offering the temptation of deceptively simple false solutions and scapegoats, that kind of propaganda tends to fall flat and fail if there aren't serious, actual problems it can exploit. Hitler could have talked his points to exhaustion, he would have never risen beyond obscurity if the nation had not suffered the sequence of Versailles, the post-war socio-economic and political chaos, the flaws of the Weimar system, and the Great Depression. For this reason, if I have to assume a way to save Weimar democracy, I prefer to pick one that simultaneously improves the balance between its defenders and all its potential enemies, not just the Nazis, such as removing at least one element in the sequence of factors that doomed Weimar or making the good guys luckier and/or more talented.