The World Hitler Never Made Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism

What if the Nazis had triumphed in World War II? What if Adolf Hitler had escaped Berlin for the jungles of Latin America in 1945? What if Hitler had become a successful artist instead of a politician? Originally published in 2005, Gavriel D. Rosenfeld's pioneering study explores why such counterfactual questions on the subject of Nazism have proliferated within Western popular culture. Examining a wide range of novels, short stories, films, television programs, plays, comic books, and scholarly essays appearing in Great Britain, the United States, and Germany post-1945, Rosenfeld shows how the portrayal of historical events that never happened reflects the evolving memory of the Third Reich's real historical legacy. He concludes that the shifting representation of Nazism in works of alternate history, as well as the popular reactions to them, highlights their subversive role in promoting the normalisation of the Nazi past in Western memory.

Part I. The Nazis Win World War II: 1. Great Britain defeated: between resistance and collaboration; 2. The United States and the dilemmas of military intervention; 3. Germany's wartime triumph: from dystopia to normalcy; 4. Other nations: a dissenting view; Part II. Alternative Hitlers: 5. The fugitive Fuhrer and the search for justice; 6. The world without Hitler: better or worse?; Part III. Hypothetical Holocausts: 7. Hypothetical holocausts and the mistrust of memory.

What if the Nazis had won World War II? What if Adolf Hitler had escaped from Nazi Germany in 1945 and gone into hiding? What if Hitler had been assassinated or had never been born? Gavriel Rosenfeld's 2005 study explores why those questions about Nazism have proliferated within Western popular culture.