# Another time travel question **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 23, 2004, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-time-travel-question/270749 "2004-10-23T08:05:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![davenportavenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f8ce5/32.png) [@davenportavenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davenportavenger)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-time-travel-question/270749/21 "2004-10-25T01:57:48Z")
Wouldn’t kill him. Reason seven. Nobody is born “evil;” Hitler’s rise to power had more to do with the anti-Semitism that had been brewing in Germany (and Europe in general) for the past few centuries instead of some personal flaw. Yeah, he was a paranoid narcissist, a really not-nice guy, but it was society that allowed him to do what he did. And if he wasn’t there, it would have been Goebbels that would have become the Fuhrer, or Mengele, or some random peasant. The time was just right for that kind of tragedy to happen. Unless you have a time machine that can travel back centuries and have enough time and resources to educate the entire European continent, the Holocaust (and WWII) are still going to happen. [slight hijack]It’s been years since I read the Bradbury story, and I forget the ending. Can someone spoil it for me?[/slight hijack] ---
**Author:** ![davenportavenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f8ce5/32.png) [@davenportavenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davenportavenger)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-time-travel-question/270749/22 "2004-10-25T02:00:02Z")
> [@continuity eror](#): > > [slight hijack]It’s been years since I read the Bradbury story, and I forget the ending. Can someone spoil it for me?[/slight hijack] Nevermind, Wikipedia has a link to it. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-time-travel-question/270749/23 "2004-10-25T04:13:17Z")
I remeber seeing a documentry on him once. It said that when he was still realitively young he applied to some fancy art school and was denied admission. It kind of makes one wonder; had he been accepted, would we’ve ever even _heard_ of Adolf Hittler? Or even more so, can we blame this fancy-schmancy art school for WW2? /puts down the pipe… ---
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-time-travel-question/270749/24 "2004-10-25T05:56:23Z")
Not that it necessarily makes much difference, but Hitler was born in 1889 and was thus [fifteen years old](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler) in 1904. For the sake of argument, let’s say I choose to kill young Herr Hitler. Do I come back to a world in which all evidence of his adult life is wiped out, or are there all these stamps, photos, books, and other documents about a guy who never actually rose to power, let alone became a synonym for evil? Kind of a reverse of Holocaust revisionism, with a few crackpots insisting this Hitler existed despite all serious historians’ dismissive laughter at the very idea? Is a form of [Godwin’s Law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_Law) known to the online community (if, indeed, such a gathering of souls exists?) If so, whose name appears in place of Hitler’s? Another Nazi’s? Stalin’s? Hirohito’s? Churchill’s? ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-time-travel-question/270749/25 "2004-10-25T06:49:08Z")
There was a movie about this once. I remember it only vaguely and I’m pretty sure it was a tv/HBO movie. The basic premise was (IIRC), you’re sitting in a bar in 1930 having a drink with Hitler. You have poison, he gets up to take a piss. Do you poison him? This whole discussion led to the participants killing several people and burying them in their back yard in the name of the greater good, again IIRC. Does anyone remember the movie? ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-time-travel-question/270749/26 "2004-10-25T07:54:39Z")
> [@Aesiron](#): > > This is my answer, basically. Our current economic and technological levels are directly tied into WW II and the ensuing Cold War and I think that the world’s a halfway decent place. At least where I live. If I were in Eastern Europe instead of in the western US, I might think differently. > > Now, if I could somehow impress on him that Jews are people worth admiring and that there’s nothing wrong with being gay, a Gypsy, and all the other people he hunted down, I’d definitely do that. Any kind of tempering to that effect would be better than none. You may be interested to know that one of the groups Hitler had it in for were Jehovah’s witnesses; you can find out about that at the Museum of Tolerance. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-time-travel-question/270749/27 "2004-10-25T08:24:28Z")
You might enjoy [Making History](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0099457067/ref%3Dnosim/authordatabase/202-8740119-7157448) by Stephen Fry, which explores exactly this issue. ---
**Author:** ![Keapon\_Laffin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e274bd/32.png) [@Keapon\_Laffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keapon_Laffin)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-time-travel-question/270749/28 "2004-10-25T08:55:09Z")
> [@Little Nemo](#): > > Sure, but what if they teach him their ancient mystic secrets for control over mind and matter? Then you’d have Adolf Hitler - with superpowers. Ahh, so thats why he’s always raising his right arm in the air. He’s getting ready to fly. 😃 I blame Indy for not taking Hitler out when he had the chance. ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-time-travel-question/270749/29 "2004-10-25T09:01:44Z")
I’d kill him out of curiosity, to see how different history _really_ would be. I doubt the difference would be all that big. ---
**Author:** ![Ross](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e274bd/32.png) [@Ross](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ross)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-time-travel-question/270749/30 "2004-10-25T11:33:21Z")
> [@Keapon Laffin](#): > > I blame Indy for not taking Hitler out when he had the chance. That was never Hitler. That was Mr Bronson (aka Admiral Ozzel). ---
**Author:** ![yastobaal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/258eb7/32.png) [@yastobaal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yastobaal)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-time-travel-question/270749/31 "2004-10-25T15:23:58Z")
> [@Cisco](#): > > There was a movie about this once. > > I remember it only vaguely and I’m pretty sure it was a tv/HBO movie. The basic premise was (IIRC), you’re sitting in a bar in 1930 having a drink with Hitler. You have poison, he gets up to take a piss. Do you poison him? > > This whole discussion led to the participants killing several people and burying them in their back yard in the name of the greater good, again IIRC. > > Does anyone remember the movie? [The Last Supper](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113613/) ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-time-travel-question/270749/32 "2004-10-25T15:53:55Z")
> [@Mr. Blue Sky](#): > > There was an interesting take on this subject on last year’s otherwise abyssmal remake of the Twilight Zone: > > A woman travels back to when Hitler was a baby. She kidnaps baby Hitler and tosses him into a river. A housekeeper goes out and buys a baby from a poor woman and replaces Hitler, thus keeping history intact. I always interpreted this episode that, if the original baby had lived, history would have been changed. Baby #1 wasn’t the historical Hitler; baby #2 was. So history wasn’t altered. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-time-travel-question/270749.md?page=1)