Hitler

[MarBaS]

So i was thinking yesterday...what if Hilter was born 600 years earlier and did exactly the same thing in the 1300s. He would probably be a legendary general and leader. But since what he did wasnt all that long ago he is so taboo, no one really likes to talk about him. Thoughts??

[Cyclotron]

If Hitler was born in the 1300s he would have been a peasant, seeing as he certainly wasn't nobility. He'd be an angry little dirt farmer.

Edit: But to answer your question, I don't think he would have been a great general at all, since he was hopelessly incompetent. I don't think he would have stood out much at all; certainly his anti-semitism was not outrageous considering the time period.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Quite right. He'd have been a little non-entity.

[Kuciwalker]

Forgive my relative ignorance, but wouldn't Isabella and Ferdinand be the closest historical equivalents? They finished up a war of expansion and expelled the Jews.

[LordShiva]

He would've been a painter.

[Proteus_MST]

If I think about the catholic church and the inquisition during that time
I believe Adolf would have taken the clerical path and become an inquisitor.
This would have been closest to his psychology (instead of the arian race he just would have to consider his religion superior, everything else fits perfectly well)

[BeBMan]

Yeah, he would be a great hero. Nobody does remember any atrocities from the middle ages....

Oh wait.

[Dis]

nobody likes to talk about him? we talk about him all the time.

Nationalism wasn't a thing back then, so it is unlikely he could have rose to power. Assuming he did rise to power, I still don't know if we'd remember him for much. Sure he held a large area of Europe, but not for very long. Napoleon had it longer iirc. We'd still hold Napoleon in higher regard because he could actually command his troops.

The atrocities would be largely ignored. That's a non-issue.

[Dr Strangelove]

Though Hitler often paid lip service to the Church his writings make it clear that he despised Christianity and sometimes toyed with Wotanism. Oh, I think that would have deeply endeared him to the clergy. I imagine that if he let those beliefs be known he would have found himself on the wrong end of a bonfire.

It's possible that he could have run away from home and tried his fate and fortune in 14th century Vienna. Failing at that in real life he became attached to dissident socialist politicos in Vienna? Perhaps he might have become a Hussite ( but I'm not sure they were around in Austrai at that time ), or would have joined the army. It's crucial to remember that even though he was an enemy of democracy, it was democracy that gave him the opportunity to become what he was. He didn't even create the party he took to power, but it is almost as if the Nazi party was an opportunity tailor made for his unique "talents". I'm not sure that 14th century Europe really had a place for someone like him.
Who knows though, maybe in fact there have more leaders like him, ruthless charismatic opportunists who climbed there way up from the gutter, than we really know. He was decorated for bravery in WW1. It's possible had he been in the army that he might have been recognized and promoted. He might have ensnared his superiors with his hypnotic powers, after all, he ensnared the great general Ludendorff didn't he? From there he might have eventually worked his way to the councils of the Hapsburgs.

As Cyclotron pointed out he wasn't a very good general. He might have wound up doing to Austria in the 14th century what he did to Germany in the 20th. Would Austria wind up a province of Hungary, Poland or Bavaria?

[GePap]

Given the class structure of the time, he wouldn't have gotten anywhere important. Being a brave foot soldier got you only so far - his talent was in mass politics, something that did not exist at the time.

[lord of the mark]

seeing as his father was an Austrian customs official, and there were no austrian customs officials in the 1300s, he would have starved to death.

The whole question is silly. which attributes do you want to assign to some 14th c austrian? What combination of attributes would have been feasible in 1350? Doc SL mentions wotanism. Would a peasant born in 1350 really have adopted a post-Christian ideology? Would a peasant have aspired to to a military career? The nearest equivalent of being a Germany army corporal would have been to be included as a peasant footsoldier in a feudal levy. However there were no "freikorps" in 14th c, and no political officers. So after fighting, he would have gone home. Painter? Would he even have tried, without a 19th cent petit bourgeois background?

[Ned]

1345?

I think we did have just such a chap in that time. His name is Timor the Lame.

His tomb still stands, unmolested, in Sarmarkand. To some, he remains a hero.

[Ecthy]

What some people fail to see is that WWII and the Nazi rule in all its depth were a product of circumstances of the time, not of Hitler.

Since all humans are just parts of their environments, Hitler was indeed born 600 years earlier and is still born every day.

The "Hitler" as the political figure we know was just some random individual representing circumstances of his time.