Poll: would you kill baby hitler?
- Thread starter DudeistBelieve
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Yeah but they did it out of ignorance and paranoia. Hitler and his brutally efficient extinction machine had some of the most brilliant minds in the world working out formulas on how to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible and that's what chills people to soul. Because everyone in that process knew exactly what they where doing.SimpleThunda said:
Stalin thought everyone with a high school diploma was out to overthrow him.
Many things have been said of the various situations about changing the time stream as well as the other various causes and people involved in the history of WW2.
So, I'll skip on that and just answer the baby killing question.
Honestly, even if knowing what he going to do, I don't know if I could actually kill baby hitler. The fact that he would be a baby at that point means he wouldn't know good from evil and technically didn't do anything that he will grow up to do yet. Thus, he is still innocent and at that point, I would be doing something which I would probably be doing something I would never be able to live down.
So, I'll skip on that and just answer the baby killing question.
Honestly, even if knowing what he going to do, I don't know if I could actually kill baby hitler. The fact that he would be a baby at that point means he wouldn't know good from evil and technically didn't do anything that he will grow up to do yet. Thus, he is still innocent and at that point, I would be doing something which I would probably be doing something I would never be able to live down.
Terror Drones......ThongBonerstorm said:
*shudder*
As for the topic at hand, no. Like many other people have said, I would try to get him into that art school. Hopefully things turn out better.
The great German religious leader Martin Luther wrote an anti-semitic manifesto in 1543. It was a part of German identity, not new and unique to Hitler. Hitler gets the blame for everything, as if his lack of existence would have left us with world peace. The treaty of Versaille made the German people feel persecuted and supporting of another war. Perhaps killing hitler would lead to Stalin taking over europe. Perhaps it would lead to a German leader who wasn't so openly anti-semitic, and actually used the Jewish intelligentsia to get themselves an atomic bomb before the USA.
Hitler was a mouthpiece and a figurehead. He was a skilled orator and a capable politician and leader, (as well as being, in Eddie Izzard's words, a mass-murdering fuckhead.) Now I would agree that the most important thing Hitler did was spark a chain reaction that led to the Holocaust but there is no way to know that this wouldn't have happened anyway given the tone in Weimar era Germany. Reinhard Heydrich probably had more to do with the extermination of 6 million people than Hitler himself did. Hitler had a notion for a "final solution" no question but he never defined what that was. Heydrich and his Nazi colleagues decided exactly what this "final solution" was at a conference held in Wannsee in 1942. Until then the situation for jews and other untermenschen was absolutely awful but it wasn't the systematic slaughter that happened in places like Auschwitz and wasn't what would be called the Holocaust.
So all that considered no I wouldn't. There is no way to know what effect it would have, (especially considering what happened in the post-war years,) there's no way to know it would have even prevented the Holocaust and given these unknowns it would be best to just let the past lie. So it's not a morality question, it's a logic question.
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Different question: If you found yourself in Berlin in 1933 and was in a position to steal Hitler's wallet containing nothing but 40 reichmarks which would have no impact whatsoever on his rise to power but really ruin his evening would you do it.
I would.
So all that considered no I wouldn't. There is no way to know what effect it would have, (especially considering what happened in the post-war years,) there's no way to know it would have even prevented the Holocaust and given these unknowns it would be best to just let the past lie. So it's not a morality question, it's a logic question.
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Different question: If you found yourself in Berlin in 1933 and was in a position to steal Hitler's wallet containing nothing but 40 reichmarks which would have no impact whatsoever on his rise to power but really ruin his evening would you do it.
I would.
He hasn't done anything and you could argue that, as enticing as it might sound- you would be killing an innocent child. Better to try and change the child's life. That or you could argue that events would hardly play out exactly how you read about them in your history texts. Rewinding everything back to Hitler's youth would allow for all manner of other outcomes and other events to come about.
World War I might have gone differently, different outcome for Germany, WWI might not have happened or prevented somehow from blowing up into a large conflict. That or Hitler himself could be killed in WWI. But even that would not stop what Hitler ended up doing. The problem with the fascism and the takeover of the Third Reich was only partially due to Hitler himself and more about someone taking advantage of the problems of his country and using that to unite people with their common problems and prior injustices felt inflicted on the German people. You could even argue that something similar to Hitler's Third Reich would have come up- albeit different and even with different goals.
World War I might have gone differently, different outcome for Germany, WWI might not have happened or prevented somehow from blowing up into a large conflict. That or Hitler himself could be killed in WWI. But even that would not stop what Hitler ended up doing. The problem with the fascism and the takeover of the Third Reich was only partially due to Hitler himself and more about someone taking advantage of the problems of his country and using that to unite people with their common problems and prior injustices felt inflicted on the German people. You could even argue that something similar to Hitler's Third Reich would have come up- albeit different and even with different goals.
Given the power vacuum that existed at the time, and how many of Hitler's own statesmen were bloodthirsty psychos themselves (seriously, look at some of the historical accounts of the S.S., even pushing past the bias some of those guys had issues), I somehow doubt the world would have been spared the hatred and destruction of WW2, with or without Hitler.
It's very easy to forget the conditions that allowed a political madman like Adolf Hitler to assume power in the first place. Germany wanted revenge for being handed the entire bill for WW1 (when a great deal of the blame also falls on France, Russia, and the now-defunct Habsburg Monarchy).
So no. Smothering baby Hitler to death with a pillow isn't going to accomplish anything apart from altering Godwin's Law slightly in the future.
It's very easy to forget the conditions that allowed a political madman like Adolf Hitler to assume power in the first place. Germany wanted revenge for being handed the entire bill for WW1 (when a great deal of the blame also falls on France, Russia, and the now-defunct Habsburg Monarchy).
So no. Smothering baby Hitler to death with a pillow isn't going to accomplish anything apart from altering Godwin's Law slightly in the future.
Hitler was the best thing for the German economy at that time. They may have never recovered from World War 1 if it wasn't for him reducing unemployment to like 0.4%. He vastly improved the infrastructure of the country and was the cause of many huge companies, e.g Volkswagen.
Fair enough him starting WW2 has led to the German economy suffering ever since, but at the time, he got them out of a huge depression. Pity he was such a psycho.
Fair enough him starting WW2 has led to the German economy suffering ever since, but at the time, he got them out of a huge depression. Pity he was such a psycho.
Why limit it to Hitler?
To answer the question: Sure why not?
As for the people talking about whether or not he was rehabilitatable from what little I have read he had a really poor upbringing so its quite possible he was.
To answer the question: Sure why not?
As for the people talking about whether or not he was rehabilitatable from what little I have read he had a really poor upbringing so its quite possible he was.
You are aware that it is not that simple?
And that it is actually very likely that without Hitler, Germany would just have found someone else? The historical events of those times are very very complex, they did not originate from only one man.
It could have been worse, it could have been better.
You can never guess at the consequences of one persons death.
And that it is actually very likely that without Hitler, Germany would just have found someone else? The historical events of those times are very very complex, they did not originate from only one man.
It could have been worse, it could have been better.
You can never guess at the consequences of one persons death.
I'd kill his parents and have him raised differently, but if i'm unable to do that I would kill baby Hitler, probably by cutting off limbs, one at a time.
well...If you come from the future to kill him, just the fact that you came from the future could alter the timeline so that you would either changed the future just by being there in a way that Hitler wouldn't grow up to be the Hitler we knew or that by making a time travel device for the purpose of killing Hitler and succeeding, you would have nullified the reason for you to build a time machine or go back in time, tearing the world up in a time paradox.
So if time travel is in the picture.. No.
If you got a message from the future or a vision, then the answer would also be no, since we gamers know that trap way to well. It could be a trap that would lead to something worse.
And I don't believe that the second world war or the Holocaust can be credited only to Hitler, He is just the best target for the blame (NOT that I am defending him or saying he was innocent, mind you)
So if time travel is in the picture.. No.
If you got a message from the future or a vision, then the answer would also be no, since we gamers know that trap way to well. It could be a trap that would lead to something worse.
And I don't believe that the second world war or the Holocaust can be credited only to Hitler, He is just the best target for the blame (NOT that I am defending him or saying he was innocent, mind you)
Oh...and sorry for the double post...
If Hitler didn't insist on attacking Russia, Germany would probably win the war.
So that makes it a little more complicated.
If Hitler didn't insist on attacking Russia, Germany would probably win the war.
So that makes it a little more complicated.