Stopping Hilter Pre-WWII

Unfought Wars That Would

Have Changed Everything

Some day we're going to look back at the wars of the 20th century and laugh. Except not really, because they were awful and horrifying. But we can take comfort in knowing that as terrible as the wars of the last century were, some of these near misses might have really messed your shit up. Or saved the world. It could go either way, really.

WARNING: The following article contains historical speculation from a comedy website.

Fall Grun aka Stopping Hitler Before WWII

World War II, as you probably already know, started when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, and lasted until the Axis nations surrendered in 1945. Over those years, 60 million people were killed and most of the world's countries got involved with over 100 million people deployed in some form or another. Now, imagine if the entire thing could have been avoided by taking the Nazis out before they ever really got started. That's what some historians think might have happened if the Fuhrer would have gotten his way in the Fall of 1938.

If the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts had lowered its standards in 1907, we could have avoided all this unpleasantness.

In 1938, Hitler wanted the Sudetenland, the western part of Czechoslovakia that was largely occupied by ethnic Germans. And Hitler wanted it bad, so bad that he was ready to launch a war for it. The invasion he planned was called Fall Grun, or Case Green, and the Fuhrer was going to use all of the Nazi military might to get it.

What Stopped It:

This miracle of peace.

Way to go, Chamberlain.

Even though Hitler wanted war more than anything else that Christmas, England and France were still shaken over the previous world war. So the European powers managed to talk Hitler into a group therapy session at Munich, and Hitler got the Sudetenland (without Czechoslovakia's approval) in exchange for promising to be nice for the rest of the century.

He has his fingers crossed underneath that podium.

But what if Hitler had shown up drunk, pissed on the carpet, and left?

If The War Had Happened...

WWII would have been over before it began.

Hitler's generals whipped up their plan to invade Czechoslovakia, Fall Grun, but they may as well have called it Operation Many Dead Nazis. The German military was in no way prepared for what would have been war with France and England in 1938, especially while the bulk of their army would have been fighting their way through the Sudetenland. Their whole military was "under-trained, underprepared and unequipped" for any kind of a fight, which is why Hitler's chief of the general staff Ludwig Beck resigned in protest over the operation.

German Wehrmacht, circa 1938.

So, if the Munich Pact hadn't blundered its way into existence, Hitler would have invaded, England, France, Poland and Soviet Russia would have rallied against them, the Nazis would have exhausted their resources, and they would have been soundly defeated in months. Boom. Done. The conflict would likely have gone down as one more European war, getting a one-page summary in the history books. No blitzkrieg, no fall of France, no Holocaust and a new cast of characters in every WWII shooter ever made.