Current Events > Hypothetical: Would you kill baby Hitler?

(+) Yeah! (+)

IfGodCouldDie posted...

Asherlee10 posted...

fenderbender321 posted...

Asherlee10 posted...

fenderbender321 posted...

It's baffling, because if Hitler's reign actually prevented something worse, how can we judge him? Just stuff to think about, I guess.

Pretty easily.

If someone murders 6 million people but prevents someone else from doing something bad, it doesn't expunge the 6 million murders.

But what if him doing that somehow prevented somebody else from murdering 10 million people?

Both people who mass murdered people are still wrong.

So I guess the question becomes would you kill a man to save 6 million people that creates a man that will kill 10 million or would you let the man that kills 6 million live so that the man that kills 10 million does not.

The trolley problem if we want to summarize it even further.
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No.
Europe was in such a state so it was probably a matter of time before we would see another war.
And if not, the world we know would most likely be in a worse state. We took a huge technological step thanks to the war. Heck, we had cavalry units at the start of the war, and nukes and jetplanes at the end of it.
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THIS many people wouldn't kill HITLER

smh
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l33t_iRk3n_Rm33 posted...

Darklit_Minuet posted...

The Admiral posted...

I'd rather go back and amend the Treaty of Versailles. That was more responsible for the rise of Hitler than Hitler's existence. If Hitler were dead, some other similar figure would have still risen to power.

Indeed, I'd make it much harsher so Germany would never think of pulling this kind of shit again

That would not help

That said

How the fuck could any of us amend the Treaty of Versailles?

If we made it so that Germany didn't lose any land they probably would have put up with it. That was probably the biggest issue.
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no, i also wouldn't kill hitler

i don't have the right to play god, no one does

glitteringfairy posted...

From watching TV for many years history only gets worse when it's changed

Why?
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FightingGames posted...

glitteringfairy posted...

From watching TV for many years history only gets worse when it's changed

Why?

when you change history it really fucks up everything. anyway, like i said before, without Hitler, someone else, who is more competent takes over Germany and wins the war. is that what you want? killing Hitler means Nazis rule the earth

No, because we don't know the outcome and there could be even worse consequences. While he headed an organization responsible for murdering 11m+ people in their camps (around 6m of which were Jews), the conditions which allowed him to rise to power would have been available to other people who might have been able to do a more competent job.

Plus Europe is, has, and always will be a hotbed for antisemitism. In all likelihood, somebody else would have come along and done the same. They might have even been better at it.

UnfairRepresent posted...

This is your and humanity's one and only chance of changing the darkest chapter of Western 20th Century history. But you have to be the one who does it and "it" is Infanticide

Except there's no guarantee of that.
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Zeus posted...

No, because we don't know the outcome and there could be even worse consequences. While he headed an organization responsible for murdering 11m+ people in their camps (around 6m of which were Jews), the conditions which allowed him to rise to power would have been available to other people who might have been able to do a more competent job.

Plus Europe is, has, and always will be a hotbed for antisemitism. In all likelihood, somebody else would have come along and done the same. They might have even been better at it.

UnfairRepresent posted...

This is your and humanity's one and only chance of changing the darkest chapter of Western 20th Century history. But you have to be the one who does it and "it" is Infanticide

Except there's no guarantee of that.

You're seriously arguing that the removal of Hitler would have no effect on the 20th century?

I think that's as much of a guarantee as it gets
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27_Sandman_40 posted...

If any of us killed baby Hitler we all would more than likely cease to exist

Hitler is your dad?

Explains a lot
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27_Sandman_40 posted...

Im a jew so the implication you would think Im a nazi is baffling to me.

Hitler's wife was a jew.
Hitler's docter was a jew.

But regardless I was making a joke.

I don't see how the butterfly effect of Hitler's life means your parents didn't fuck. Unless they met during WW2 or something
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Klaras eyes are stunning even in black and white.
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UnfairRepresent posted...

I don't see how the butterfly effect of Hitler's life means your parents didn't fuck. Unless they met during WW2 or something

his parents probably wouldn't even exist. it's more about his grandparents not meeting. nearly everyone alive today probably would not have been born if WW2 didn't happen or happened differently. Countless changes would occur to the timeline and entire generations would not be born.

UnfairRepresent posted...

27_Sandman_40 posted...

Im a jew so the implication you would think Im a nazi is baffling to me.

Hitler's wife was a jew.
Hitler's docter was a jew.

But regardless I was making a joke.

I don't see how the butterfly effect of Hitler's life means your parents didn't fuck. Unless they met during WW2 or something

The baby boomer generation happened because all the soldiers went from the war to the bedroom.

Also the war while horrible did have a side effect of jump starting the us economy, at a time where a lot of Europes industry had been severly damaged by the war.
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Sadly, it's been so many years, killing him would change this world completely, maybe for better, maybe for worse

A lot of people would not exist anymore and would be replaced by others. Who's to say there won't be a new, even worse hitler among all of these people in all these new circumstances?

Too many variables and things have already happened for several decades. If it were to be a decision made, say, tomorrow, then it's easier to take because we don't know shit about what will happen
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UnfairRepresent posted...

Mikablu posted...

No because it's a colossal mistake to fuck with the time stream. You have no idea what changes could be caused by it.

I can think of 6 million Jews who have a pretty decent idea.

What if one of them gives birth to an evil scientist who destroys the world with a crazy nuke?
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27_Sandman_40 posted...

UnfairRepresent posted...

27_Sandman_40 posted...

If any of us killed baby Hitler we all would more than likely cease to exist

Hitler is your dad?

Explains a lot

Im a jew so the implication you would think Im a nazi is baffling to me.

That being said, you clearly have no idea how the butterfly effect works.

You realize the butterfly effect is not real, right? It was a plot device from the fictional short story A Sound of Thunder.
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ChromaticAngel posted...

You realize the butterfly effect is not real, right? It was a plot device from the fictional short story A Sound of Thunder.

no it is real. maybe time travel is possible, maybe it isn't. but assuming it is, the butterfly effect is too. because it's a logical attachment to changing history. it's not something we have to "discover". it's just how logic works. if you change history, that's the butterfly effect. you can't do time travel without it.

27_Sandman_40 posted...

The day before your father meets your mother, he dies in a car accident.

There you go. I proved the butterfly effect

No, you typed a one-line terrible story with no plot and no conflict.

Additionally, you don't seem to understand what the butterfly effect is.
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ChromaticAngel posted...

Additionally, you don't seem to understand what the butterfly effect is.

I think you are the one who doesn't understand what it is. it's not something invented by a story. it's a logical aspect of how the universe works

Zikten posted...

no it is real. maybe time travel is possible, maybe it isn't. but assuming it is, the butterfly effect is too. because it's a logical attachment to changing history. it's not something we have to "discover". it's just how logic works.

1. There is nothing logical about travelling backwards through time.

2. Saying "it's obvious" is bullshit because the majority of important discoveries were not obvious

3. there are alternate competing theories to the butterfly effect, and none are any less valid than others.

As already mentioned, the "you kill hitler, and the nanny replaces the baby with someone else who becomes hitler" otherwise known as the HG Wells story where a man goes back in time to investigate what started this horrible fire and while investigating he startles a cow that kicks over an oil lamp onto some hay that starts the fire.
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Zikten posted...

ChromaticAngel posted...

Additionally, you don't seem to understand what the butterfly effect is.

I think you are the one who doesn't understand what it is. it's not something invented by a story. it's a logical aspect of how the universe works

time travel is not how the universe works

This is like fucking arguing about "if magic was real, what kind of spells could you cast?"

You'd get nothing but half the nerds insisting it works like Harry Potter and the other Half insisting it works like Lord of the Rings and that weird guy in the corner insists it works like it does in Cthulhu Mythos.
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The easiest solution is to bribe the admissions board at that art school.
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can we steal baby hitler to the future?

I mean if butterfly effect were actually real, going back in time to kill hitler invalidates the reason you went back in time in the first place.
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so then what is your theory? what would happen if you changed history? how you explain away the lack of the butterfly effect? we are looking at it in totally different ways. you seem to think it's just something made up. to me, I see it as impossible to not exist. if time travel is possible, than the butterfly effect is a thing. it's as simple as that to me

Ballstopshere posted...

can we steal baby hitler to the future?

Or adult Hitler mid-war. He'd start gushing over Muslims and all the neo-Nazis would just quit.
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Zikten posted...

so then what is your theory? what would happen if you changed history? how you explain away the lack of the butterfly effect? we are looking at it in totally different ways. you seem to think it's just something made up. to me, I see it as impossible to not exist. if time travel is possible, than the butterfly effect is a thing. it's as simple as that to me

As I already said.

If you go back in time to kill baby Hitler, why would you go back in time in the first place? The Holocaust never happened (this is presumably the goal of killing Baby Hitler) and even if it DID happen, the Holocaust would not have been caused by Hitler, it would have been caused by Hanz or some other German/Austrian dude. Going back in time with the explicit purpose of removing said thing from history removes the motivation for going back in time in the first place.

The butterfly effect worked in A Sound of Thunder because the guy stepped on a butterfly by accident. Additionally, it didn't have this wide sweeping change wherein everyone stopped existing. It changed the political climate just such that the popular people's candidate who was winning by a landslide suddenly lost to a nationalist plutocra...heyyyy....wait a minute....

Seriously, though, There are 3 possible resolutions I see to such a scenario.

1. Hitler happens anyway (known as the Time Forgives resolution)
2. You actually just can't do it. If you try, you'll fail, and it'll get logged in the annals of otherwise uninteresting assassination attempts.
3. It creates an alternative timeline a.k.a. Future Trunks.
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What has happened has already happened.

Doing that would only create an alternate reality where he died without changing the original reality you came from.
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Ninja-Yatsu posted...

What has happened has already happened.

Doing that would only create an alternate reality where he died without changing the original reality you came from.

Says man who has never time traveled
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UnfairRepresent posted...

Ninja-Yatsu posted...

What has happened has already happened.

Doing that would only create an alternate reality where he died without changing the original reality you came from.

Says man who has never time traveled

Speak for yourself. I time travel all the time. I just only go forward.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVdv30PqF9Q

What if you went further back and became Hitler's dad?
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ChromaticAngel posted...

Zikten posted...

ChromaticAngel posted...

Additionally, you don't seem to understand what the butterfly effect is.

I think you are the one who doesn't understand what it is. it's not something invented by a story. it's a logical aspect of how the universe works

time travel is not how the universe works

This is like fucking arguing about "if magic was real, what kind of spells could you cast?"

You'd get nothing but half the nerds insisting it works like Harry Potter and the other Half insisting it works like Lord of the Rings and that weird guy in the corner insists it works like it does in Cthulhu Mythos.

Magical Girls.
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Bullet to the skull. Wouldn't feel a thing. A mercy killing.
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The Top Crusader posted...

hollow_shrine posted...

I already have, but it just created a branching timeline where the cold war actually got hot and nuclear war decimated millions of lives across western civilization. It was a major drag.

1/10. Would not commit temporally divergent infanticide again.

Man I miss the Command & Conquer: Red Alert series... and C&C in general. :(

Came in here to mention Red Alert lol
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It would completely change history. Are you prepared to face the consequences?
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The Twilight Zone (00s revival) already did this one: The time traveler kills baby Hitler along with herself by jumping into a river but another nurse to the Hitler household buys a baby that looks like him from a woman on the streets (she shows up multiple times throughout the two parter), thus preventing the paradox.

Question for the hypothetical: Would there be any witnesses able to identify the time traveler in the present (ie: Mama Hitler's description to the police, other time travelers)? Or would this just be something the time traveler takes to his or her grave along with all knowledge of who Hitler was?
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No you'd change history, and who knows if you did you could end with somebody worse.

Nah I'll wait till after he writes Mein Kempf up until the invading Russia part to kill him. Then I'll take over the world.
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Nah. Without him and WWII there is a decent chance there would have been all out nuclear war, killing countless more people. As is, the first nukes ended a war while things would have been very different had they started one.
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No, because:

1. He's completely innocent at that point.
2. It'd be more ethical to just kidnap him and raise him yourself.
3. His absence would just have someone else take his place; it's not like Hitler was 100% responsible for everything Nazi Germany did.
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