What about the effect of the Great Depression on Germany? I know the terms of surrender were punitive for Germany but the country would likely have avoided Hitler if the depression hadn’t compounded their troubles. You can play this game all day and it’s fruitless.
Exactly my point.
Hitler needs the Depression to make the German middle class sufficiently desperate to try anything to escape the economic and political chaos they were living through. No depression, and a prosperous Germany is unlikely to be susceptible to Hitler’s xenophobic, antisemitic propaganda line. No Hitler, no “Gathering Storm” (as Churchill termed it) in Europe in the late 1930s and 1940s. Germany remains prosperous and eventually pays off the reparations it owes to France and Great Britain. Mussolini finds himself isolated politically in Europe and his overseas adventures are opposed by an effective League of Nations.
However ... does Germany continue to rearm (something it was already doing in secret during the Wiemar Republic) and how does France and the United Kingdom react when it is finally discovered/revealed? How does all of Europe react to the nascient power of the Soviet Union once it gets through the bloody throes of collectivizing and industrializing Soviet society? How does Europe react to the civil war in Spain? Is there even a civil war in Spain? Without Germany and Italy to take some of the diplomatic heat off of it, does Japan eventually yield to international diplomatic pressure and withdraw its forces from China? Does Chang Kai Shek (sp) finish hunting down and killing every last Communist he can get his hands on in China (as he had been before being so rudely interrupted by the Japanese)? Without the growing threat in Asia and Europe, does the United States embark on the most massive military buildup in its history? Even more important, do I get still get to be born if there is no Baby Boom following the non-WWII?
Yeah, you’re right. You can play this game all day and it is fruitless. Better to think about the future and how the "real" past continues to influence it.