So, we all know how old Adolf killed himself once he knew it was the Red Army taking Berlin. Let’s imagine an alternative scenario where the first army reaching Berlin would have been the USA or UK, am I wrong to assume he would not have shot himself?

He knew the war was long lost at this point, and he could have killed himself a very long time before that, but it clearly appears he clinged to hope that anyone else except Zhukov’s army would breach the city first. The coward clearly didn’t want to face accountability and likely humiliation which the soviets would serve.

Mussolini got killed because PCI partisans got to him first, had he gotten to the Western allies he might have lived. Same logic for Hitler. Hirohito got nothing, not even a fake punishment. The Nuremberg trials only happened because of Soviet insistence (no such thing happened after WW1, or ever again, really) and without the Fall of Berlin at the hands of the USSR would the Soviets have enough leverage to force the trials?

  • OrnluWolfjarl@lemmygrad.ml
    50·
    15 days ago

    There’s some evidence to suggest that Hitler’s decision to commit suicide was influenced by the news that Italian partisans captured and lynched Mussolini and his mistress.

    He had announced a week earlier to his closer associates that he would stay in Berlin and kill himself if the city wouldn’t hold. But nonetheless, within less than a day of learning of Mussolini’s fate he did the deed. He was also in a very unstable mental state during that week, going on tirades about the worthlessness of German people, how he was surrounded by traitors and cowards, and how they all deserved to be erased from history for their failure.

    So it’s possible he’d had killed himself either way to avoid being lynched by a mob or to not confront the day after a German surrender, whether the Western Allies had reached Berlin first or not.

    If the scenario you are talking about had happened, it’s possible he might have lived, but I still doubt it. Hitler had a much higher international profile than both Mussolini and Hirohito. To the average European, American or Soviet, he was THE reason for the war. It’s likely he would have still been tried and executed, especially as the attrocities at concentration camps had been uncovered and made public. It would be a very difficult task for the Allies to rehabilitate Hitler in the eyes of their own citizens, the world, and also the Germans.

    Also, the Soviets would still have plenty of leverage to force the trials, particularly since it was agreed beforehand at the highest level, and they occupied territories the Allies were interested in, like Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

    Japan is a different story, precisely because its own attrocities were never really part of the public discourse in the West during or shortly after the war. Some things, like Unit 731 did not become public until the 50s and 60s.