Well, let me put it another way...any victor, no matter how powerful and dominant he is, eventually passes away and is replaced by something else. It's just a matter of time.

I knew you'd catch me on that one, Wolfgang. :-) One can quote various examples where a defeated side simply died out, like the Beothuk Indians in Newfoundland. There are none left now at all.

Hitler had a great deal of respect for England and the English culture in a general sense, and he viewed them as his natural allies, so I doubt that the Germans would even have had any intention of sweeping away the English culture (had they won). Their intention would have been more like: now that we got rid of that scoundrel, Churchill, and are allies like we always should have been, let's go and destroy the Communists together. Happy days are here again! (And a lot of English people would have been happy to do just that...anti-communism was very strong in the West.)

Given the fact that Stalin was probably just as destructive a leader as Hitler, it would not have been hard to unite western Europe into an anti-communist crusade in the 40's.

Hitler stumbled into war with England and France in 1939. He was not looking for a war with them. He expected them to stand aside when he invaded Poland. His next plan after Poland was to attack Russia, NOT attack in the West, but Britain and France declared war over Poland. Hitler did not expect that, and it derailed his entire plan of action and drew him into conflicts in western Europe that he did not anticipate until they erupted. He scored a very quick victory over France, against all expectations. France was considered the strongest land army in western Europe in 1939-40. He then was confronted with an insoluble war with England, the one country he LEAST wanted to be at war with in all of Europe. He then was drawn into conflicts in the Balkans, mostly through the very stupid actions of Mussolini (who decided to attack Greece)...and due to an anti-fascist coup in Yugoslavia, which had been friendly to Germany prior to that coup. He then was drawn into ever-expanding conflicts in North Africa, again through the stupid actions of Mussolini. And so it went...

A long tale of misadventure and miscalculation.

Am I making excuses for Hitler? No. I am saying that he was on a planned path of aggression, but he seriously miscalculated. He did not think the British and French would fight on behalf of Poland. He thought they would just grumble and complain, then accept it as an accomplished fact, then later help him destroy communist Russia.

He was looking for a great war in the East, but got one in the West instead. He committed the final folly by launching his great war in the East ANYWAY, in the spring of '41 when he attacked Russia. And that decision lost him everything in the end...but it took several years of hard fighting to decide it. The attack on Russia has to stand as one of the most stubborn and ill-advised decisions ever made by a wartime leader.