…
A) It works–the person actually DOES kill the baby that will grow up into Der Fuhrer? (IE–they don’t kill daddy Hitler’s baby only to have the maid steal the gypsy baby next door who, it turns out IS the one who grew up to be Der Fuhrer)
and
B) It makes things better? (IE, you don’t wake up in a bombed out atomic wasteland where mutants are crawling over the face of the earth eating the few remaining humans or a horrible Soviet dominiated tyranny or something)?
Yeah, I’m aware of the storytelling limitations of the “it worked! Happy ending!” version–no need to lecture on why the “You’re only fate’s puppet” or “Don’t mess with destiny, you’ll only make things worse” endings are more dramatic. I get that.
I was just wondering if there were any stories where it all worked out for the better*. Titles/authors would be appreciated.
*Other than The Murderer by Lawerence Watt-Evans.
Well, in my own story, Saving Hitler, it does work. In general, things are probably better – though I don’t go into that – but one particular small change makes the protagonist decide to save him.
ISTR a short story about a group of scientists who have discovered parallel universes where history unfolds identically to our own, but is at different stages in its history (I.e. it’s 1945 in one universe, 1812 in another, etc.), and were trying to improve the histories of those worlds by removing key individuals from them before they could affect the timeline. Said scientists abducted Hitler from a universe while he was in his artist phase, and at the time the story takes place, it had reached the late '30s in his native universe - President Hindenburg had just died in office and the Weimar Republic was still operating under democratic rule.
Since people are having trouble, and I’ve never heard of one, I went ahead and looked it up on TV Tropes. None of them are about “baby Hitler”, but one does have it where killing Hitler works without negative repercussions.
"…in Michael Moorcock’s Multiverse, a Vertigo mini-series that interweaves a number of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion arcs. In one, featuring “Seaton Begg, Metatemporal Detective” a time-travelling detective(who’s resemblance to the Tom Baker Doctor Who is purely coincidental, no doubt) investigates the murder of Hitler’s niece in an alternate universe. He ends up proving Hitler’s guilt, resulting in his arrest and execution years before the Nazis can ever rise to power, leaving his political machine in disarray. "
You don’t even need to kill him. Anybody with tech advanced enough to allow time travel is advanced enough sterilize both his parents without their knowing/remembering it and prevent his birth.
I would somehow take a large amount of money back with me, and offer young Hitler a full scholarship at an art school. In the United States. I dunno about Europe, but I’m pretty sure a mediocre, traditionalist artist could make a decent living in America in the early 20th Century. In any case, this would keep him out of German politics. And, as an immigrant, how much could he do in American politics?
The tricky question would be whether to do this before WWI – and try to keep him from enlisting, or at least from enlisting on the German side – or, if that is impossible, then, just after WWI, giving the disillusioned, directionless veteran Hitler something to do with his life other than radical politics.
Stephen Fry (yes, THAT Stephen Fry) wrote a kill-baby-Hitler book called Making History. In it, he sends his time-traveler to plant contraceptives in the Hitlers’ well. Upon his return, noone has heard of this Hitler bloke, but it turns out that another crazy dictator rose to fill the void. So, OP, (A) but not (B). Well, sort of (B) - not a worse result, but basically the same.
Yes, I really liked that book, too! It’s too vague as to the mechanism of time travel, but was otherwise a very well-told, interesting story. What happens is…
A woman who lost her son on Omaha Beach goes back in time and shoots Hitler while’s he’s a starving young artist in Vienna in the 1920s. World War II never happens, but a copy of an illustrated history of the war which somehow survives the time-shift inspires some pissed-off German nationalists to try to start a Third Reich of their own. Zany Nazi hijinks ensue.
That reminds me - I don’t remember if there’s enough information in the “introduction” to The Iron Dream to figure out if the world in which Adolf Hitler became a noted science fiction illustrator and then author after emigrating to the US is a better or worse one than the standard model.
At the end of the book there’s a “critical analysis” of the novel that, among other things, indicates that the Soviet Union has taken over Germany and much of Europe.
The movie Max postulates a Jewish art dealer (and fellow veteran) taking an interest in Hitler’s paintings and trying to turn him more toward art. Alas, Hitler finds politics becoming his “art” and abandons Max.
IIRC, Max and 'Dolph have an appointment with each other that should have led to 'Dolph becoming a full-time artist. Some of 'Dolph’s fascist buddies randomly waylay Max and beat him to death so that he misses the appointment. 'Dolph doesn’t know this and feels betrayed by Max (who is a Jew). He abandons art and throws himself into politics with a vengeance.
