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AH WI: Historiography when the Nazis have a different ideological "lean".

Anchises said:
An ATL were Hitler dies in 1931 while Gregor Strasser avoids the accident that drastically worsened his health could lead to a situation where he takes over the party but the resulting policy changes wouldn't be drastic. Gregor had good ties to industrialists and I would argue that he was a political pragmatist. "His" NSDAP wouldn't be too different from the NSDAP of OTL ideologically. The real difference would be that Gregor actually was a great organizer. He would probably not rely on Hitler's brand of organizational rivalry and charisma to lead.
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He'd also probably wind up politically outflanked by the officers--Gregor was a decent organizer, but not much of a political strategist, I'd argue.
 
Space Oddity said:
He'd also probably wind up politically outflanked by the officers--Gregor was a decent organizer, but not much of a political strategist, I'd argue.
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Gregor wasn't a political strategist and his position in the party would be weaker than Hitler's position IOTL. Göring, Röhm and Goebbels would pose a serious threat to his leadership and he lacks the public brand recognition that Hitler carefully developed during the 20s.

An NSDAP under Gregor Strasser would probably throw in their lot with the officers/aristocrats in a broad right wing unity government where said officers would probably win a struggle for dominance. I could definitely see a scenario where the NSDAP participates in a government headed by von Papen or Schleicher and quickly splinters due to internal conflict. Without the "Führer" people like Göring or Röhm have no reason play second fiddle. They could simply take their followers and splinter of into a "true National Socialist successor party".
 
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Anchises said:
Gregor wasn't a political strategist and his position in the party would be weaker than Hitler's position IOTL. Göring, Röhm and Goebbels would pose a serious threat to his leadership and he lacks the public brand recognition that Hitler carefully developed during the 20s.

An NSDAP under Gregor Strasser would probably throw in their lot with the officers/aristocrats in a broad right wing unity government where said officers would probably win a struggle for dominance. I could definitely see a scenario where the NSDAP participates in a government headed by von Papen or Schleicher and quickly splinters due to internal conflict. Without the "Führer" people like Göring or Röhm have no reason play second fiddle. They could simply take their followers and splinter of into a "true National Socialist successor party".
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Pretty much my thoughts.

I'm also a bit skeptical that the officers could produce a particularly successful government--their general approach was so contemptuous of the public that it's hard to see them managing to reach Hitler's level of approval. So you'd get a brittle technocratic-style government--minus much in the way of technocrats--that would likely start to crumble at a reversal.
 
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Wasn't a huge part of the impetus for the constant pressure Hitler exerted in the build up to outright war because, in general, the Soviets moving past their godawful starting circumstances and the hindrance Stalin sometimes was for his country scared the shit out of the German right wing and, in specific, the mass rearmament like any variation of Nazi, military, or Nazi-military government would do come home to roost as Germany screws up all its prior trade deals and then runs out of hard currency to bargain with sometime in the late 30s, early 40s? So doesn't that mean that in the middle of all this there's something of an urgent deadline coming up for all these hard-right players (or even "mainstream" conservatives that still refuse to acknowledge that Poland exists)? That seems like the perfect circumstances for some faction's goons to get a bee up their ass and decide to turn to their old friend, the let's-just-do-it-and-be-legends style Putsch.
 
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bookwyrm said:
Wasn't a huge part of the impetus for the constant pressure Hitler exerted in the build up to outright war because, in general, the Soviets moving past their godawful starting circumstances and the hindrance Stalin sometimes was for his country scared the shit out of the German right wing and, in specific, the mass rearmament like any variation of Nazi, military, or Nazi-military government would do come home to roost as Germany screws up all its prior trade deals and then runs out of hard currency to bargain with sometime in the late 30s, early 40s?
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Not really, no. The whole world, except for Imperial Japan, still gravely underestimated the Soviet Union in 1941. The Nazis viewed the Soviet Union as easy prey because of German experiences in WW1 and doctrinaire anti-communism. In his unpublished 1928 book Hitler already identified the United States as the ultimate enemy of National Socialism while downgrading the Soviet Union.

The rearming at a non-sustainable speed happened because the Nazi leadership was well aware that France and Britain could easily outproduce them in an arms race quite easily.

Space Oddity said:
I'm also a bit skeptical that the officers could produce a particularly successful government--their general approach was so contemptuous of the public that it's hard to see them managing to reach Hitler's level of approval. So you'd get a brittle technocratic-style government--minus much in the way of technocrats--that would likely start to crumble at a reversal.
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I think it heavily depends on who ends up leading this new right wing government. There was a huge power vacuum in the late period of the Weimar Republic. Any hard right government that is willing to destroy the opposition as ruthlessly as the Nazis did is guaranteed some breathing room. Long-term viability demands at least the appearance of economic recovery and foreign policy successes.

I would generally agree though because the new Junta is likely going to be busy with backstabbing.
 
Anchises said:
I think it heavily depends on who ends up leading this new right wing government. There was a huge power vacuum in the late period of the Weimar Republic. Any hard right government that is willing to destroy the opposition as ruthlessly as the Nazis did is guaranteed some breathing room. Long-term viability demands at least the appearance of economic recovery and foreign policy successes.

I would generally agree though because the new Junta is likely going to be busy with backstabbing.
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I suspect they'd be just brutal enough to get a bit of breathing room, but not quite brutal enough to settle things, while, yes spending a lot of time aiming their knives at each other's back.
 
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