You said it right here: Now of course, people might have responded to Hitler much earlier if they had taken all his Jew-baiting and so on at face value, and re

You said it right here: Now of course, people might have responded to Hitler much earlier if they had taken all his Jew-baiting and so on at face value, and realized that when he talked about exterminating large groups of people he meant exactly that, as opposed to just conquering and looting in the traditional fashion. If people had called Hitler's bluff, things would have gone differently. Do you think the next one will be able to bluff? Of course, another major factor in enabling Hitler to become Hitler was the circumstances of world power. WWII didn't happen in a vacuum. It was the dramatic culmination of the centuries-long rise of Europe. You mentioned that WWI was destructive. But not destructive enough: thirty years later the same adversaries were ready for another attempt to settle scores and dominate Europe. WWII had to be the end of that cycle: after WWII, Europe was shattered, and world power had shifted to the east and west. The Europe that the combatants had sought to dominate no longer existed. I'm not much of a scholar of Napoleon, but the way it was framed to me was that the Napoleonic war(s) was the first total war: the size of the French forces were unprecedented, and contemporaries could have been forgiven for not predicting the outcome. Each subsequent war of this type raised the stakes further. That cycle has run its course forever, because the stakes are now so high that victory would mean acquiring territory that was radioactive and uninhabitable. PS. One of the things that's striking about Mein Kampf is how provincial and small-minded it is. I read a little bit, and one of Hitler's biggest bugbears was the Habsburgs and their treatment of Austria. Hitler was very much a product of his time and place. That time and place is gone forever. My final point: no one wants to be the next Hitler. What do you suppose was going through Hitler's mind when he committed suicide in a bunker beneath Berlin, surrounded by foreign armies closing in from all sides? He may have anticipated being hanged as a war criminal, or feared retribution from his own people now that defeat could no longer be credibly denied. People make a lot of how Hitler was a maniac and insane, but he knew he lost. In photographs of Hitler from near the end of the war, he looks clearly downcast and exhausted. Hitler started the war maniacally certain of victory, and he ended his reign thoroughly aware of his failure. Hitler was not an imbecile, and if he had known what was coming, I don't think he would have chosen it.