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You are given the power to go back in time and kill baby Hitler, would you do it?
- Thread starter Slipknot666
- Start date
I wouldn't kill baby Hitler. I'd intercede with young adult Hitler, and attempt to steer him in a different direction. But if that failed, I'd smoke adult Hitler who's worldview wasn't going to listen to reason.
My thoughts exactly. This shouldn't even been a question. Also, if you'd kill baby Hitler there would have just another fascist to replace. He didn't invent the ideology.
But he's innocent at that point in time. Hell... one coudl argue all you really need to do is change his past. Maybe hitler could become a different type person and not be the person he ends up being in our timeline.
Killing Hitler as a child wouldn't have changed the Treaty of Versailles which strangled Germany and created the resentment that ultimately triggered a new World War, there would just be some other Hitler-equivalent, perhaps one that made better military moves like not attacking Russia.
PREVENTING THE HOLOCAUST.
Those are people who were not replaced by other people! People are getting sucked up in this weird actuarial genocide and they're forgetting about the actual genocide.
I already proposed preventing the Viking Age, which would change pretty much all European history since the Dark Ages, so the answer is prevent whatever genocide you want, because genocides are actually bad. Since I think this whole "erasing existences" thing is absurd, it doesn't move me at all.
It's time travel. Everything has already happened. That is the narrative purpose of time travel in speculative fiction -- to allow us to look at a choice in full knowledge of one of the possible outcomes, something we are otherwise never granted in life, and consider what full knowledge does to our moral options.
Eliminating the Holocaust would not suddenly lead to an empty earth, denuded of human life. Saying it would "end the existence" of billions of people is Aristotelian faffery. The billions of people would still be there. They would just be different people. But their lives and existences would also have already happened.
I'd hire Bruce Willis to blow up the Asteroid that wiped out the Dinosaurs ;)
Time paradoxon be damned :D
Time paradoxon be damned :D
No probably not. First of all it looks like a baby not the infamous leader of the Nazis with the Michael Jordan mustache. Second the effect the war had on the world is quantifiable in many ways but not able to be measured in others. I wouldn't want to undo what could be described as positive effects or even neutral changes that occurred as a result.
Putting aside the fact you are asking us if we want to murder a baby, we have no idea how history would play out if Hitler didn't exist. It is not worth the risk of making things worse.
Wouldn't really change much. The powers that be don't like to talk about it, but Hitler was not a self-made man. He was nothing more than a sockpuppet for the capitalist elite to carry out their agenda - Including the Holocaust. The same Elite responsible for the rise of Franco and Mussolini, and an attempt at a Fascist coup against FDR in the US. The real villains responsible for WW2 and all its atrocities went completely unpunished from the shadows, and made a tidy profit from it all while they were at it.
They would have found another person to mold and groom to carry out their will - Plenty of people within Hitler's circle that would have readily been able to take his place were he never there. Himmler, Goebbels, Goering...
In fact, I'd say things could have gone even worse if someone with a cooler temper was in Hitler's place - The Capitalist Elites would have more time to make more attempts at overthrowing democracy in America - When Hitler got the party started in Europe they lost their opportunities to make such overtures again lest FDR bring down The Hammer on them without hesitation. Which he should have done the first time IMO.
They would have found another person to mold and groom to carry out their will - Plenty of people within Hitler's circle that would have readily been able to take his place were he never there. Himmler, Goebbels, Goering...
In fact, I'd say things could have gone even worse if someone with a cooler temper was in Hitler's place - The Capitalist Elites would have more time to make more attempts at overthrowing democracy in America - When Hitler got the party started in Europe they lost their opportunities to make such overtures again lest FDR bring down The Hammer on them without hesitation. Which he should have done the first time IMO.
If there's not a single reality, what's the point in going back in time trying to change something? The people that died horribly still died horribly. The only difference is now you're a baby killer.
Hark at you throwing accusations of absurdity around in a thread about killing baby Hitler using time travel
The topic is a well-established one with large amounts of previous scholarship and debate!
edit: Relatedly, here is an alternate universe version of this exact thread:
That may be but it is inherently absurd, therefore moaning about absurdity in the responses just seems...absurd.
The traumatic near-death experience as an infant from a failed assassination attempt is what ultimately led Hitler down his dark path in adulthood. History would have been very different without that well-meaning but incompetent time traveller.
Best answer, if you're missing with the past, is to get the kid out of that environment and into one that is healthier. Don't have to hurt him at all.
Why is this always a question of killing a baby. If you have that opportunity, then you could just take the baby back with you into the future. You succeed in removing them from that moment in time and you aren't a murderer.
That said, is this being done under the assumption that you'll change your own timeline or just in an attempt to improve another timeline since ours can't be changed?
That said, is this being done under the assumption that you'll change your own timeline or just in an attempt to improve another timeline since ours can't be changed?
Nice this is just what I was thinking about. I wouldn't mind a new Red Alert. 😎
We have time travel. Take him back before the earth coalesced and drop him in deep space. Probably hold your breath first. Also going back that far and introducing a baby to the formless void before creation probably won't have any long-term effects, right?
Just go back in time and bang Hitler's mom instead. Bring her to New York, show her a good time. Take in the Ziegfeld Follies. Leave her a trunk full of cash and some good memories.
Could just kidnap baby Hitler and go to the other side of the country and give him to a family looking to adopt, bonus points if the family is Jewish. You now avoid his rise to power and you didn't have to kill a baby to do it. And who knows he might grow up to be someone who talks sense into the greater German populous.
i would however go back in time and kill every single european who stepped foot in west Africa to establish the slave trade and put their heads on a pike next to their broken down ships
i would however go back in time and kill every single european who stepped foot in west Africa to establish the slave trade and put their heads on a pike next to their broken down ships
This here is the right answer.
Hitler was just one man, the sentiments he had was something that the people who supported him had as well. And they all had it because of WW1 and to a further extent the ridiculously unfair Treaty of Versailles.
WW1 was pointless, but inevitable at that time and it's what led to WW2.
Is "replacing" somebody with somebody else justifiable? People are not just "interchangeable". Again, you are exchanging the existence of one group for the existence of another.
If those lives already happened then you are effectively killing people. At the very least, you are erasing lives they lived from "history".
People aren't saying there would be an empty Earth when positing you are eliminating the existence of millions or billions. The change in population, displacement of individuals, and shift in resources among other things as a result of World War 2 and the Holocaust is absolutely enough to completely change the shape of globally who is born. People who otherwise would have been born wouldn't be. If your parents conceived months earlier or later than yourself were conceived, their resulting offspring wouldn't be "you". Also possible your parents would never conceive at all. Basic "butterfly effect" in action, except in this case the butterfly is a global scale event.
Let's scale this dilemma down with a more personal example...
Joe is a good natured, single man who owns and runs his own general store. One day an unhinged individual decides to take his own life, but maliciously wants to "take somebody with him", and randomly chooses Joe's store, gunning down Joe in cold blood with a shot through the heart before shooting himself dead.
Joe is dead, tragic and unfair, his life cut short undeservedly. Mary and John, strangers to each other but known to Joe, attend Joe's funeral. They meet there, start dating, fall in love, get married and have a single child Mark. Mark grows up to become a good natured construction work, marries, and has 3 kids of his own. They are strangers to you, but all living their lives right now alongside you, right now.
You have a time machine, and the limited ability to go back to the general store on that fateful day Joe died. Joe is also a stranger to you, but you can stop Joe getting killed, by supplying a bullet proof vest, by locking the store front, or just getting him to go home early that day. You can overturn the selfish, evil actions of the shooter easily, allowing Joe to live out his life, probably having kids of his own. You have that power.
However, if Joe doesn't die, Mary and John don't meet, Mark is never born, and Mark's kids are never born.
Do you save Joe?
Yes, replacing somebody with somebody else, both of whom I know nothing about, seems obviously fine. I wouldn't even say "justifiable" because I don't think there is much if anything to justify. Again, I think people take actions every day that in practice have this effect without thinking much about it at all.
"Effectively killing" is doing a whole lot of work here. If killing people painlessly transformed them into different people, I think we'd generally have a different perspective on it.
Yes, all of this is true, and none of it seems important to me at all, as long as it doesn't lead to some sort of drastic fall in population as a result.
Yes.
Would you really kill Joe because you prefer Mark? That is effectively what the alternative would be.
Imagine that you discover one day that the unhinged individual is actually you, having time traveled back there deliberately to kill Joe, then escaping and leaving a false body behind. But you haven't done it yet, and could choose not to do it. Would you push the button, go back there, and kill Joe in cold blood, all so that you can ensure your life does not change and your friend Mark continues to exist?
If you discovered somebody was going to time travel back to WWII and prevent the Holocaust, would you travel back and personally ensure the Holocaust takes place to make sure none of the people born in the interim are affected?
This strikes me as sociopathic.
You aren't "transforming" people into different people. You are erasing the existence of some people to bring into existence other, different people.
This also strikes me as sociopathic. People aren't interchangeable. This is why the Trolley Problem exists.
I don't know what I would do. That's the point. It's an "impossible" choice. Both are strangers to me. I don't prefer anybody. Is it more fair that Joe lives and Mark never lives? Or more fair that Joe dies and Mark lives?
I will say that I wouldn't, personally, consider any inaction on my part "killing Joe", though I would consider saving Joe as "erasing Mark", and tantamount to "killing" him. Either way, I'd feel guilty. On one hand, I could have saved Joe. On the other hand, I erased Mark (and his descendants).
I don't even understand what you are trying to say here, or what point you are trying to make. Also, in my example, Mark was as much of a stranger as Joe.
I don't know. Again, how do you even begin to make this choice.
Yeah, I don't think so.
Those statements are equivalent.
I don't think you understand the Trolley Problem.
I don't see how you could possibly consider throwing up your hands and giving up to be somehow superior to my position!
Thats unequivocally wrong, though. Obviously if you have the power to prevent a death and choose not to you bear the same moral responsibility as if you had carried it out yourself. That's why the Trolley Problem exists!
I am offering a situation in which your moral responsibility for Joe's death is more obvious, to try to help you understand the previous situation.
You've already made exactly this choice by decreeing that it would be wrong to prevent the Holocaust!
Killing Hitler would not have prevented world war 2, it would have at best delayed it... Hitler didn't cause world war 1, Hitler didn't create Germany's awful economic conditions, Hitler wasnt the sole architect for the Holocaust.
There is also the fact that doing so would throw my existence into question at least, and as a knock on would have likely effected if my wife existed or not, or if we had met or not, or if we would have had kids... It's a ridiculous amount of variables. I would need a Tony Stark level guarantee that nothing we have now would be lost.
There is also the fact that doing so would throw my existence into question at least, and as a knock on would have likely effected if my wife existed or not, or if we had met or not, or if we would have had kids... It's a ridiculous amount of variables. I would need a Tony Stark level guarantee that nothing we have now would be lost.
I'd be willing to bet that not a single person alive today born after WW2 would exist if we prevented the holocaust. Not a one. Well, perhaps a tribe in the Amazon or on those islands off of India but for the rest of us, nah, none of us would exist today.
Where in your narrative does the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact fall in?
The baby must live.
Germany's retaliation after WW1 was guaranteed, their leaders shooting themselves in the foot wasn't.
We won the war thanks to Hitler. Here are his 10 dumbest mistakes.
Germany's retaliation after WW1 was guaranteed, their leaders shooting themselves in the foot wasn't.
We won the war thanks to Hitler. Here are his 10 dumbest mistakes.
I'd go back in time and try and keep Lenin alive for a few more years. If that doesn't change the global order in a positive way like I think it would, I'd go back in time again and try another option.