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THE POET AS SCIENTIST

THE POET AS SCIENTIST, THE POET AS SCIENTIST

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The Geek's Raven
[An excerpt, with thanks to Marcus Bales]

Once upon a midnight dreary,
fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bedsheets,
Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
Having reached the bottom line,
I took a floppy from the drawer.
Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
But got instead a reprimand: it read "Abort, Retry, Ignore".

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Form input - by Günter Born

Wednesday, May 10, 2023

What if Adolf Hitler had been deemed unfit for military service by the Bavarian army in August 1914?

This seems by no means inconceivable, since Hitler was indeed deemed unfit for military service in the Austrian military earlier in 1914. He'd volunteered for the Austrian army several years earlier, in hopes of escaping his impoverished, transient lifestyle as an itinerant and not particularly successful artist. Having never heard from them, it being peacetime and there being no particular need for his services, he didn't leave them a forwarding address when he moved from Vienna to Munich, in 1913. So, it was with some surprise that he encountered a Munich police officer at his door in January 1914, telling him he was being arrested for evading military service in Austria. However, Hitler was already pretty socially skilled even in 1914, so he was able to talk the Bavarian officials out of formally holding him, and he was sent back to Salzburg, Austria by the Bavarian officials, where he failed his physical exam on February 5, for induction into the Austrian military. This is hardly surprising, given that Hitler had been pursuing a rather unhealthy lifestyle for many years already, with little physical exercise, and poor, and inadequate nutrition. He was weak, and he was sickly. Now, of course, the bar in peacetime for induction into military service is likely to be higher than in wartime. Still, Adolf Hitler -- a withdrawn, intellectual dreamer, used to spending his days sketching and painting in cheap rooming houses, or arguing politics with the other inmates -- would hardly have seemed an optimal military recruit, either from a physical or a psychological point of view. It seems perfectly possible that the recruiting officials would have told him that with his good education, wide reading and manipulative skills with people, the Fatherland could much better use him in wartime as a government clerk, particularly when they were being deluged with physically fit and more conventionally social conformist young men. Now, of course, Adolf Hitler turned out to be an excellent soldier. The only reason he ended up as a corporal, and not an officer, despite being repeatedly decorated for bravery, was that no rank beyond corporal could officially be used as "runners" or "messengers", and Hitler was deemed indispensable in this role, because of his bravery and capacity for evading enemy fire. But this, of course, was all in the future. So, let's suppose Hitler is constrained by his military rejection, and the lack of demand for art in wartime, to become what his father always dreamed for young Adolf -- a government official. Hitler was always quite skilled at adapting to circumstances, and conforming to them, eventually, anyway. So, Hitler would probably have become quite a competent government official, and would have become immersed in their culture. As such, given the progressively more anti-war stance of much of the German population, he likely would have opposed the war, as well. Indeed, he might well have become precisely what he most detested OTL -- a "red" and a "slacker". Indeed, Hitler showed no particular antisemitism until towards the end of WWI, OTL, and particularly after the Soviet inspired Spartacist uprising in 1919, largely led by communist Jews like Rosa Luxemburg, "Red Rosa". If Hitler sits out WWI as a government clerk, is it entirely inconceivable that with his charisma, public speaking skills and political leanings, he might not have ended up as Rosa Luxemburg's right hand man, helping to lead the communist Spartacist uprising, himself? I think not.

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