Would you help Hitler?

[Sean Renaud]

Not with that whole extermination of the Jews thing. Everybody has been asked at least once would you kill Hitler if you had a time machine and a lot of people say no, that it's morally indefensible to kill someone who hasn't comited a crime yet so I pose a different question. If you could find young Hitler and let him live a happy uneventful life (we're working right now on the pre-req that this prevents WWII not that it allows someone competent to step up) would you?

 

[FGB]

Well, from my point of view killing Hitler before he was finished or almost finished with his evil tasks would be a waste of time...as in someone else would be raised up to finish it.

I doubt if circumventing his young life would be allowed or perhaps his future would have been transferred to someone else and / or another time.

It was "Time" for a "Hitler" to step onto the stage of history.

It's just that simple.

Would I have busted a cap in his ass?

Sure.
How could one not try to resist darkness? Especially from our point of view looking back?

 

[Sean Renaud]

Well, from my point of view killing Hitler before he was finished or almost finished with his evil tasks would be a waste of time...as in someone else would be raised up to finish it.

I doubt if circumventing his young life would be allowed or perhaps his future would have been transferred to someone else and / or another time.

It was "Time" for a "Hitler" to step onto the stage of history.

It's just that simple.

Would I have busted a cap in his ass?

Sure.
How could one not try to resist darkness? Especially from our point of view looking back?

I agree one hundred percent with this statement. Which is why I said for the sake of argument this is going to work. Because like you said it's probably a waste of energy even if you could do it.

I also would have no problems just shooting him in the face and being done with it but not everybody shares our morals and I'm curious if the ones who don't would take a different path.

 

[smoothg103rd]

Probably shoot him in the face? But yet you would've ran and left your people behind to fend for themselves when them slave ships came? Lmao, this fucking guy. And you talk about uplifting your people. We got a better chance with Elmo and Big Bird leading us.

 

[pollynova]

Everyone kills Hitler their first time.

http://www.abyssapexzine.com/wikihistory/

 

[patient1]

I can only speak for myself. I can't see the future. I don't have infinite wisdom.
Even with honorable intentions and the best of efforts, things don't always go the way I plan. Sometimes there are unintended consequences. I'm not a God, so I shouldn't play at being one. If I could time travel, I'd try to stick to being a tourist/reporter.

I kinda figure that the vindictive treaty of Versailles led to WWII in Europe. Likewise, efforts to keep Japan down by trying to keep oil out of their hands put things on the road to war in the Pacific Theater. To prevent the war, you'd have to deal with those issues, or perhaps better yet, do something about the alliances that caused a Balkan problem to become the 1st World War.

1) For example, wars are great drivers of technology. Governments fighting for survival spend unlimited money on R&D when they are fighting for survival. Atomic energy, radar, missiles, etc. Even streptomycin and other antibiotics. We learned to do rehabilitation. We wouldn't have reached the moon without WWII bringing the scientists and resources together to make the weapons that led to the Cold War.

2) I often contemplate how a war scrambles the genetic lottery. Every hero that comes home draped by a flag gives somebody else a better chance to marry and breed. For better? For worse? Probably both. It also redistributes people and causes them to meet people they might never have met. It also gives people training, experience, responsibility and education they wouldn't have had otherwise. I doubt Eddie Rickenbacker would have founded Eastern Airlines without WWI.

Presuming overpopulation and sluggish technological development instead, would we survive the next pandemic, solar flare, meteorite, global warming crisis? Can you be sure?

It doesn't seem to me like helping people to lead uneventful lives is a good practice. How will they reach their human potential? How will humanity reach it's own under those circumstances? Maybe the trick isn't to strive for uneventful, but for re-direction. As a peerless public speaker, he could have been a great evangelist, fund raiser, social advocate, etc.



All any of us can do is put our hubris aside and do our best at the time.

 

[Saint Peter]

I would put a cap in your ass to keep this thread from happening.

 

[Mike_Yates]

When Hitler was a toddler, someone saved him from drowning in an icy river.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ertain-death--drowning-icy-river-rescued.html

 

[Saint Peter]

I might as well stop by and take out Yates while I have the time machine fired up.


yw

 

[bronzeage]

I might as well stop by and take out Yates while I have the time machine fired up.


yw

One of the most common themes in science fiction is the time traveler who returns to the present to discover he fucked up everything and has to go back to fix it, which only fucks it up worse.

The lesson to be learned from this is, if you go back into the past, stay there.

 

[Skiddles2015]

I would trade mark his stache.

I would also tie him to a tree naked and let goats eat his nads.

 

[NeverEndingMe]

did you mean the obama?

Not with that whole extermination of the Jews thing. Everybody has been asked at least once would you kill Hitler if you had a time machine and a lot of people say no, that it's morally indefensible to kill someone who hasn't comited a crime yet so I pose a different question. If you could find young Hitler and let him live a happy uneventful life (we're working right now on the pre-req that this prevents WWII not that it allows someone competent to step up) would you?

 

[Pookie]

One of the most common themes in science fiction is the time traveler who returns to the present to discover he fucked up everything and has to go back to fix it, which only fucks it up worse.

The lesson to be learned from this is, if you go back into the past, stay there.

Many couples never would've met after the war without the war. You could end up like Marty McFly almost did.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/filepicker%2F7IHl3P7jRjWBDfrPV0Mb_marty_mcfly_fading_away.jpg

 

[Recidiva]

I am pretty sure I'd kill him. Wouldn't feel bad.

Wouldn't help him die, definitely.

After I tried to help him live an eventful life.

Of course that.

Sure.

 

[DesEsseintes]

Making History, by Stephen Fry, is a fun read on this exact topic. Hitler's mother has an induced miscarriage after the time travellers poison the local well. On returning to the present they find that a far more capable dictator took over Germany, expelled rather than slaughtered the Jews, made peace with Russia and stuck to it, and now controls mainland Europe and Britain.

 

[doowdniw]

Many couples never would've met after the war without the war. You could end up like Marty McFly almost did.

I'm in that boat. As much as I would love to, if I went back in time to knock off Hitler, I would not be here now to go back in time to knock off Hitler. My parents met during the war, when my mother's parents were evacuated from London and sent to Gloucestershire. No war, no me.

 

[Pookie]

I'm in that boat. As much as I would love to, if I went back in time to knock off Hitler, I would not be here now to go back in time to knock off Hitler. My parents met during the war, when my mother's parents were evacuated from London and sent to Gloucestershire. No war, no me.

There could also have been a different person who did even worse atrocities and actually WON a world war.

It's the devil you know ...

 

[Not Normal]

I understand that it could have big consequences, and I understand the wa might still have happened, bit I think, to avoid the genocide of the Jews, I would be worth it to try.

 

[spacekowboy]

That depends... Are we talking about Hipster Hitler?

http://theawesomer.com/photos/2010/09/091610_hipster_hitler_t_shirts_t.jpg

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/234/963/755.jpg

 

[Sean Renaud]

I'm in that boat. As much as I would love to, if I went back in time to knock off Hitler, I would not be here now to go back in time to knock off Hitler. My parents met during the war, when my mother's parents were evacuated from London and sent to Gloucestershire. No war, no me.

I assume the majority of us wouldn't. Next time I'm gonna write out the entire tldr instructions for this.

 

[spacekowboy]

http://zaloopa.slonique.net/%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%BA%D1%81%D1%8B/hipster%20hitler/logo.jpg

 

[Pookie]

I understand that it could have big consequences, and I understand the wa might still have happened, bit I think, to avoid the genocide of the Jews, I would be worth it to try.

There are a few old boyfriends I'd love to "redo". It would be worth a try.

 

[Recidiva]

I assume the majority of us wouldn't. Next time I'm gonna write out the entire tldr instructions for this.

I'd say the major question is would you undo suffering of people you know about to put others you don't know about in danger?

I can only act on what I know. Based on all the time traveling stuff, I think the fear about it is more about what could go wrong because we can't do it.

Heinlein said a paradox can be paradoctored and I'm with him.

Would I do it if I didn't exist and my parents wouldn't get married? Yeah.

Stories about time travel where everything was fixed don't exist because we can't do it. I'd give it a try.

 

[Sean Renaud]

I think stories where we fix it and everything works out don't exist not because we can't do it but because that wouldn't really be a story unless it was absurdly difficult to pull off. On TV Tropes the Hitler Exemption Act points out that in power Hitler was constantly surrounded by guards and survived 42 known assassination attempts (maybe one of them was yours!) Records on where Hitler spent most of his time between WWI and WWII are scant and unreliable. (Though not at all times.)

But goes back in time, strangles baby Hitler, returns to bright shiny future doth not a story make. For the same reasons that nearly all heroes are reactive rather than proactive. I forget what the fan fic was about, I think it was Buffy but an immensly powerful and mostly neutral if amoral being simply said you know what? Fuck it. Good guys follow me and we're gonna win this thing. If you good guys instead of waiting for Hell to open up and come to you just banded together, got your little spells up and running and stormed Hell you could have prevented everything that's happened for the last century at least.

 

[Recidiva]

I think stories where we fix it and everything works out don't exist not because we can't do it but because that wouldn't really be a story unless it was absurdly difficult to pull off. On TV Tropes the Hitler Exemption Act points out that in power Hitler was constantly surrounded by guards and survived 42 known assassination attempts (maybe one of them was yours!) Records on where Hitler spent most of his time between WWI and WWII are scant and unreliable. (Though not at all times.)

But goes back in time, strangles baby Hitler, returns to bright shiny future doth not a story make. For the same reasons that nearly all heroes are reactive rather than proactive. I forget what the fan fic was about, I think it was Buffy but an immensly powerful and mostly neutral if amoral being simply said you know what? Fuck it. Good guys follow me and we're gonna win this thing. If you good guys instead of waiting for Hell to open up and come to you just banded together, got your little spells up and running and stormed Hell you could have prevented everything that's happened for the last century at least.

I think Hitler was crazy really. I have no idea how to "save" or "fix" him and so yeah, that probably was one of mine.

Influencing an individual requires genuine trust and I don't think he was capable of it.