Poll: Would you time-travel and kill Hitler?

[Gahars]

Nope, not at all.

Games, movies, and books have taught me that if you go back in time and kill hitler, or hell, just step on a butterfly in his garden, that when you go back to the present, it'll be a 1000 times worse, like the world will be ruled by dinosaurs or zombies attack. You know, something along those lines.

 

[[zonking great]]

As the title suggests, this is a hypothetical situation here.

Lets say you were offered the chance to time travel, only once, and only to the beginning of World War 2, to kill Hitler. After the job was done, you would snap back to your own time, although it would be altered due to your actions. Would you take this opportunity? (and before anyone tries to get cute, if you refuse to kill Hitler when you time travel, you automatically go back to your own time, and receive a kick to the balls for wasting everyone's time)

Remember, time travel is a VERY complicated business. Killing Hitler would have DRASTIC effects on the future, in ways you couldn't possibly know.

Perhaps without Hitler, another tyrant would assume power, and do things even WORSE than Hitler. Maybe taking Hitler out would completely avert the war. Maybe without Hitler... you do not exist. Do you take the chance to save countless lives, without knowing the potential consequences?

Depends on what kind of time travel theory we go by!

Would someone take over and be worse than Hitler? Would something happen? Etc, etc etc.

 

[mjc0961]

*looks at Red Alert series*

Yeah let's NOT do that.

I mean yeah that is just a game, but still it is one of the ways in which history as we know it could be severely screwed up if you go playing with history. Granted it would probably be something more like Germany winning the war, or the Cold War becoming not so cold or something, but still. We won WW2 in part because Hitler made some poor military decisions, I say leave him there to make sure we win.

 

[CaptainCrunch]

No, and I would go back to stop all the people going back to kill him too.

If there's anything truly Karmic about the world, it's that removing a source of evil only makes room for an even greater one. Knowing the Allies will be victorious is good enough for me. After all, without Hitler the US stays xenophobic, and has no chance to become allies with Japan - meaning the advancements in technology come at a snail's pace. In essence, no Hitler means no video games.

We must preserve the balance, at all costs.

 

[Joe_Musashi]

I wouldn't kill Hitler.

I'd let Patton, the strongest standing navy at the time, and the A-bomb have a go at taking out Stalin, though.

 

[Purpleboomerang]

You couldn't kill Hitler.

If you go back and kill Hitler, the majority of WWII would no longer have happened, so it would no longer BE a world war. Ergo, there'd be nothing to prompt you to go back to kill him.

 

[Geekmaster]

No I would not.

 

[Shadu]

I've watched too much Doctor Who to know that this is a bad idea. Hitler's reign is probably a fixed point in time and therefore shouldn't be changed. And if it was, there would be drastic consequences. Chances are someone far worse would take over anyway.

You wouldn't want mega ultra super Hilter would you?

 

[Saskwach]

No. For a very selfish reason: without Hitler my father's mother would never have met her husband and my father would never have been born. Therefore I would never have been born. Selfish, yes, but honest.

History's just one damn thing after the other; taking one of those damn things away makes the whole Jenga block tower fall apart. Even the horrible things.

(And I'm not getting into the time paradox issue of whether I'd spawn a new universe or pop into non-existence and etcetera. For the sake of my point there is one universe and I'd be changing it.)

 

[Voodoomancer]

Only if doing so generates an alternate reality and I can travel back and forth between there and our world at will.

You know, instead of a "TIME PARADOX *BOOM*"

 

[tj236]

Maybe I could go back and see Da Vinci paint the Mona Lisa. Leo wonders WTF you are doing in his house and invents a gun with bits of scrap lying around. DEAD

C'mon. if you could get a word in edgeways and explain the time machine you KNOW Leo would be fascinated and follow you around asking you to tell him more.

That is, of course, assuming you can speak rennaisance-era Italian. If not you could draw him a nice picture and hope he understands.

I would be sure to pack a digital translator as a gift for him.

 

[Spygon]

No way! Have you not played the red alert series i am not being drafted into a war where the enemy has giant metal spiders and tanks that can fire electricity at anybody nearby.

But to be serious alot of people died that was terrible but at least we know how the war played out god knows what would have happened if Hitler died before the war.I deffinly would not risk something alot worse happening

 

[GeorgW]

Yes. Not because I think it will help the world, to save people or just cuz I think he's an aweful person. I actually didn't mind him that much, he had some good ideas, and awesome execution. He was just a liiittle bit insane. He also enriched the world in many, many ways. And yes, I'm serious.
No, I'd do it for fun.
1: I'd get to kill muddafakkin Hitler!
2: I'd get to see a different timeline! I think it'd SUCK!

 

[Yopaz]

If the allies and Soviets never teamed up against Hitler, the cold war may have gone over the already very close line of nuclear war.
Can't take the risk of EVERYONE dying to potentially save a smaller number, despite that number being very large.
And if it was the actual beginning of world war 2 the war probably would still have happened.

The cold war was a post-war incident so that wouldn't have improved much. I think a lot of the problems after the war could have been avoided if no-one had dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I think that the war has been good when it comes to racism. When Germany started killing off Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals that was all good, no-one really cared about that and no-one treated either as real humans (I am exaggerating here). When Germany started a war against the important countries that was what really made Germany evil. Killing off Jews because they were Jews or invading Poland because it was close enough to be convenient was OK. There were no reactions to those. Hitler set a face on racism that we've learned to hate, thus we've started to hate racism.

 

[XJ-0461]

No. If I go back and kill Hitler, and he dies and is never heard of in the present, then I wouldn't have a reason to go back. And if I don't have a reason to go back and kill him, then he won't die, and events won't change.

So either way he wouldn't die, and it'd be a waste of a trip.

 

[Luke Cartner]

I take the red alert (tm) view. If Hilter was killer history would create a new monster worse than Hilter.. The Brotherhood of Nod perhaps...

 

[AlwaystheUnlucky]

No, but I would make sure he got into that art school instead of fighting in WWI. Maybe instead of gathering followers through experiences in "the front lines", he would have been an artist.

 

[TheTim]

no because i would be too afraid that it would alter one the good things that is happening today.

 

[kakaomasse]

i think its pointless to think about such things hypothetically....it then would be better to make the naive British or the egoistic Americans act instead of having jolly conferences at that time.
also, Hitler wasnt the first to.."use" concentration camps. it already had been invented decades ago.