POD-In 1917 Corporal Adolf Hitler takes a wrong turn in the German trenches whilst delivering a message from the German HQ and gets shot and killed by a sniper from the trenches opposite, and ends up as just another forgotten name on a German war grave. Without him, Anton Drexler still forms the Nazis, but without Hitler, at best ( best from a Nazi POV that is) they get two or three German MPs, at worst, (best from our POV) they fizzle out and disband in the late 1920s. Certainly they don't get to take power. Mussolini, however, survives WW1, forms the Fascist Party and takes power like in OTL but without Hitler pressuring him, refrains from passing anti-Semitic laws (historically, he only went anti-Semitic under pressure from Adolf Hitler from about 1937 onwards.) Obviously many Fascists would range from anti-Semitic to very anti-Semitic still, but not necessarily all of them in the way that all Nazis hated Jewish people.
Countries like Austria that went Fascist would still go Fascist in this timeline but what about Germany?
Would it
-stay democratic?
-go authoritarian but not Nazi or Fascist?
-go Fascist?
-Go Communist instead?
And would there be a WW2 in this timeline, and if there was, who would be the opposing sides and how long would it last? Would there still be a Holocaust in this timeline?
Historically, apart from Italian special forces like the frogmen who sunk at least one British battleship with limpet mines in WW2, and one or two well trained and armed Alpine Divisions, most of Mussolini's armed forces were rubbish, able only to take over Albania and Ethiopia on their own (in the latter case using poison gas.)
Countries like Austria that went Fascist would still go Fascist in this timeline but what about Germany?
Would it
-stay democratic?
-go authoritarian but not Nazi or Fascist?
-go Fascist?
-Go Communist instead?
And would there be a WW2 in this timeline, and if there was, who would be the opposing sides and how long would it last? Would there still be a Holocaust in this timeline?
Historically, apart from Italian special forces like the frogmen who sunk at least one British battleship with limpet mines in WW2, and one or two well trained and armed Alpine Divisions, most of Mussolini's armed forces were rubbish, able only to take over Albania and Ethiopia on their own (in the latter case using poison gas.)