Would you tell Hitler's mom to have an abortion?

[The Duke]

I'm surprised no one has said this yet.

I would not tell her to abort, because I don't believe Hitler was inherently evil, or that anyone is inherently evil.  Instead, I'd tell her to raise her child in a more loving atmosphere that could have changed the course and nature of Adolf Hitler's life.

I believe people are a product of their circumstances in large part, and I don't think killing Hitler is necessarily the only way to stop the Holocaust because it was not inevitable that Hitler would become what he did.

[The Duke]

Factor,

I'm quite sure that the Nazis aided the Finns.  It was geostrategically advantageous to Germany to have Finland defeat Russia in the Winter War.  Other nations however gave more aid, and more critical aid.  As to how Russia was beaten in the War, one reason is that they were poorly equipped for winter combat (surprisingly).

The Soviets were not as strong as the US until the 1950s.  The reason the Soviets were seen as so formidable is that they were physically part of Europe, and so had an inhgerent advantage over what became NATO.  The US, NATO's strongest member, is seperated from Europe by 4,000 miles of sea.  The USSR was seperated from central Germany, the main prospective battleground for WWIII by an overland route that was mostly flat plains.  It was this geographic advantage, not anything else, that put the USSR on parity with America in the early Cold War.

It is broadly accepted that the US recovered in large part because of war industry.  Not only did the US begin slowly ramping up its forces in the alte 1930s, but they profited immensely from selling material to the Europeans, who were building up much faster.  If you look at unemployment rates, for example, the fastest rate of decline pre-WWII in the US was between 1939 and 1941, indicating that job creation and wealth generation had more to do with war industry than with out peacetime policies.

[The Duke]

One thing I'd add to my psot is that Factor said that the Germans had signed off on Soviet control of Finland.  However, the Germans also signed off on Soviet control of much of Eastern Europe, but we all know how that turned out.

The Nazis only kept deals that were advantageous to them.

I'd also disagree that the USSR had the world's most powerful military in 1945.  In their Navy and air forces, they were not even in the same ballpark as America (or Britain).  The Soviets never had the kind of massive strategic bombing capability America had, and America's immense naval power was enough to defeat the entire Japanese Navy and tip the balance against the once formidable German Navy.  In land forces, Russia was comparable, but even here superiority is disputed.