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I believe it actually got so bad in germany that people took wheelbarrows full of money in order to buy bread.

Charismatic leader + desperate populace = Dictatorship.

I'd say that was the most obvious cause for the war itself, but I also think that the culture of appeasement that emerged in the mid-to-late 1930s at best exacerbated the problem. The Anschluss should have made it obvious that Hitler had expansionist plans; I'm not quite familiar enough with the period to be sure of what would have happened if France and Britain had responded more aggressively to Hitler's invasian of Poland, but I'm pretty confident that the war would have ended earlier. Might have helped stave off forty-five years of cold war, too.

As to the Russian Revolution? No idea. I have only a passing knowledge of Russian history, except as it relates to periods that I have an active interest in.

Regarding the WW1:

I'd say that the allies need not have lost to prevent the rise of Hitler. However, AFTER the war, I'd say a slightly more sensible peace contract (YOU, germany, are the REAL reason why this war was started! Forget about how the Austrian-Hungarian empire-and this would be yours truly-actually started the fighting, this is YOUR fult because it's more convenient that way for us) might have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

And regarding the Revolution, I think that Stalin was actually preferable to the other world leaders, when compared to Trotsky. Sure, Trotsky was sane and everything, but he was also a real old-school revolutionary who wouldn't have been satisfied with only liberating the workers of Russia. Stalin, on the other hand, was quite happy to turn Russia into is own power-base and was thus in all actuality just like the rest of the world leaders, only with a slightly diffirent economic model and a paranoia to put Mulder's to shame. Trotsky would have tried to incite the Revolution everywhere.