Stopping Hitler

[Loderian]

what happens if you kill hitler and that not what was intended?

What if hitler was someone in your position who came from the future to with the basic knowledge that (X) social or religious group would be the downfall of humanity, and due to the lack of knowledge he was forced to commit horrible crimes? You wouldn't know if that was the case or not, and how much the timeline would change.

 

[Lordshadow]

The way I see it, there are two ways time travel works out.
A) The future you already went back in time and attempted to do it in your timeline. Since it still happened, you obviously failed, or worse, caused it.
B) Time is incredibly fragile and by going back in time and changing the past, you alter the future. This itself can branch off in two paths
1) The future is now worse than it would have been had you done nothing
2) The future is fine and the present you has no incentive to go back in time and change things, therefore they happen, congratulations you made a paradox and the universe implodes.

 

[Fineldar]

what happens if you kill hitler and that not what was intended?

What, like you're trying to blow up this art school you hate and little Hitler happens to be inside it?

Killing off Hitler while he was a kid would be terrible. The world needs Hitler. Without him, all kinds of shitty stuff would have happened instead. Maybe he wanted to kill off all those "inferior" races, but he's indirectly helped more lives, and probably saved some. Also, who would we have for our pinnacle and paragon of evil? Would we use one of those other, more bad people, no, they aren't German.

 

[jasoncyrus]

If I could still have my WoW and Internet to this day and age standard then yes I would go back and make him disappear for shits and giggles.

But sinc eno internet or wow back then...i think a'll stick around here

As for changing events in history, if we assume its a linear approach then its a simple tri split branch in history.

One branch goes off assuming you didnt go back to kill him and carries on as usual, another branches off with you having killed him and caries on as usual with the appropriate changes. The centre branch however continue sin an infinite paradox loop where everything is in a state of existing and not existing at the same time.

 

[corporate_gamer]

I don't know if someone else had said this but read Making History by Stephen Fry. It A) deals with this exact topic and is B) a brilliant book.

 

[AuntyEthel]

Aren't we meant to learn from history so that it doesn't repeat itself? Who knows, if someone stopped Hitler way back then, then another dictator could have risen up somewhere else to invade other countries who aren't a security threat, kidnap their leaders, bomb their civillians and steal their resources.

Oh wait... thats happening right now!

 

[Lord Krunk]

No. Time is time, I won't screw with it.

Anyway; Hitler stopped the Great Depression. You have to commend him for that.

Not to mention; Winston Churchill would not have made so many awesome quotes, America will have won a grand total of 0 wars, everyone would still hate the Jews (no sympathy), Germany would be a developing country, and we wouldn't have the knowledge to tell that the nuclear weapons everyone was manufacturing were actually a really stupid idea.

I'm not pro-Hitler, but I can't help but think that he's one of the defining people in history.

 

[Brett Alex]

I think it was in a Pratchett book, but the quote went something like:
"Shoot the dictator, stop the war. The problem is there'll be another one along soon enough. Shoot him too. And shoot the one after him. And the one after the him. When you've gone that far, why not invade Poland yourself?

 

[TheBluesader]

Why not go back around the same time and take out Stalin? Or go a thousand years earlier and take out Genghis Khan?

Why is it always Hitler? If I'm going to be stuck in the past, I'll go back to the 70s and take out Pol Pot. Here's a guy who really was almost singlehandedly responsible for crazy murder. And Cambodia is smaller, so the impact of my actions would be more localized. And while I'm there I'll head up to North Korea and pop Kim Jong Il back when he was just a privileged wannabe.

If I can run around history taking out brutal morons, I'm not just going to fixate on Hitler. Yeah, what he did was terrible. But there's lots of other terrible to stop. Let's here it for killing EVERYONE with our Assassination Time Machine.

 

[hippo24]

well obviously I would go back in time, befriend 18 year old Hitler, gain his trust as a general, become an adviser to him, tell him not to waste money a Jews, or attack Russia, or even allow the Italians to command their own forces. After we won the war, then I would kill him and become the ruler of the world... then promptly hunt down the great grandparents of all the writers for Lost, so they wouldn't ruin the show.

 

[Lukeydoodly]

What happened happened.


And they didnt have video games back then.

 

[Fraught]

If I did that I would cease to exist, my German grandparents would never have met. Thus my mother would not exist. Thus my father would not have met her. Thus I would in theory, cease to exist. I'm fairly sure alot of people, especially Europeans would likewise never exist.

Ofcourse. Because people had sex because Hitler killed people? I actually think there would be more people living today.

 

[KittywifaMohawk]

I would have to go with a No I wouldn't on this one.


Stopping Hitler would have been good back then, very good You'd stop a humongous catastrophe, but you wouldn't know how it would change the future. Yes we all assume(or mostly all) that it would be for the good, but we never know. It could turn out terrible.

And if I did decide to go back and stop him, I don't think I would because staying back in the 1900's....well that would not be good for me. I know of no one back then. I'm sure it would be decent if I got use to it and was able to see for myself, but the first few years wouldn't be that great on my part.

 

[NeedAUserName]

well i am a bit Jewish (not practicing) so probably yes, but if i was in the 1900's i'd totally own everyone by inventing everything.

How can you be a "bit Jewish"? Like, my left arm upto my shoulder is Jewish, from my belly button down I'm an Atheist, My face is a Christian, and the rest of me is a Buddhist.

 

[crepesack]

whoaaa slow down there, the boom that came from post ww2 helped end the depression you cant just go around raping every baddie.

 

[goodman528]

If you traveled back in time you wouldn't have the power to alter history that much, you'd just be a stranger in a strange land, I mean most of us are not even German. In any case history and fate is such that somethings are simply meant to be, some people are just meant to live.

I would however join the Chinese nationalists if I went back to 1907, and do my part in the subsquent wars against Japan and the Communists. Because it's not about how much you can change, but would you do the right thing no matter what?