Editor says, what if Adolf Hitler had killed himself after the Beer Hall Putsch? muses Jackie Rose. Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the June 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.

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Editor says, in reality Helen Hanfstaegnl persuaded Hitler to put away the gun. She must later have bitterly regretted her generous action, when she returned to America completely disillusioned with the new Reich. Ernst Rohm also left Germany, but returned at the urgent request of Hitler .. who soon had him executed as a potential rival on the notorious "Night of the Long Knives". And Kaiser Wilhelm II died in exile in Holland. Four years later, when World War II was hopelessly lost, Hitler made his second attempt to shoot himself .. and this time he succeeded .. but 22 years too late.

Scott Palter commented on 2012-05-24 05:36:19 ~ The Nazi party in 1923 was a regional thing in parts of Bavaria. Rohem was head of the SA which was allied with but not exactly at that time part of the Nazi Party. Absent Adolph the union of the various regional far right movements is never completed. The Army takes over Germany 1931-32 with support of the Nationalists, Center [Catholic Party], Goring and probably the Strasser Brothers. The rest of the far right and the Com,munists are smashed in street battles. The socialists stand aside in opposition.

Comment from Steve Kudlak on Facebook: i STILL WANT A GOOD SCENARIO FOR HITLER GETTING ACCEPTED TO ART SCHOOL AND BECOMING A MODERNIST.

Scott Palter commented on 2012-05-24 05:36:24 ~ Changing Vienna is difficult. Changing Munich postwar is MUCH easier

Eric Oppen commented on 2012-05-26 09:55:02 ~ Kaiser Bill himself might not have been welcomed back, but his eldest grandson, I am told, would have been a really good monarch.

Richard Roper commented on 2012-05-26 10:47:30 ~ STILL WANT A GOOD SCENARIO FOR HITLER GETTING ACCEPTED TO ART SCHOOL AND BECOMING A MODERNIST. Yes, yes! He conyinues as an artist in Vienna, graduates from the art school and then embraces Modernism. It is possible in Vienna if the A-H government embraces the "minorities" and the Slavs in a muti-cultural state. The Austrian-germans have less influence and the German Austrian Volks Sociall Party of which Hitler was a member has less influence and he his less impressed, watchng from the public gallery of the Viennese parliament their speakers speaking from the rostrum in the exact style which would become his speeches. He decides to concentrate on art. They did actually use the swastika. However, Wilhelm II returning in the twenties is problematic - given the hatred and hostility by the former allies to Germany, desire to punish Germany, and self-righteous crowing over the disaterous Versaillers Peace.

Eric Lipps commented on 2012-05-26 15:04:19 ~ I did a timeline resembling this once, jumping off from Hitler being killed in a car crash in 1930 (I borrowed that from someone else). The Nazis tear themselves apart and Hugenberg's Nationalists, who had a royalist element, take power; a few years llater, the Kaiser is welcomed back and installed as a figurehead.

Jeff Provine commented on 2012-05-26 15:59:42 ~ How close it came... this TL might've dodged a lot of the war, but we'd have little advancement in the way of rockets and nuclear power, probably a lot less in the way of military-industrial complex as well to give us things like Internet and cell phones. Or, worse, a Soviet War ravaging Europe in the '50s.