Could Hitler and Germany have been stopped without war?

There is no way to say for sure but I think there would have been. Certainly without Hitler Germany's history and political development would have been very different. I doubt though that she could have sustained a republic. Some kind of Dictatorship would have arisen. If Germany had not rearmed and sought vengeance for her defeat in World War I, I think it would have been almost inevitable that the Soviet Union, under Joseph Stalin, would have attacked the west sometime in the 1940's or 1950's. That would then have become the Second World War. Michael Montagne

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No, conclusively. The Second World War was entirely a direct consequence of Hitler taking power in Germany, and using Germany's resources to pursue his insane dreams of exterminating "lesser" races to give Germany more living space in the east. It seems highly unlikely that any other German leader could or would produce the same long series of events that led a world war.

There would inevitably be other wars, but there is no sensible reason to appropriate the name "Second World War" to describe some other hypothetical conflict.