# Hypothetical: Would it really be wise to kill Young Hitler? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 13, 2010, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602 "2010-09-13T13:44:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/21 "2010-09-13T19:11:07Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > > > Since there’s no way to predict if the result would be better or worse, I’d take him out just for the hell of it. > > I’m surprised no one has tried to put to film (or animation) the result of the invention of a time machine. All of a sudden probably millions of people would instantly appear back in 1935 (give or take) and attempt to kill Hitler. > > I think it would be a hilarious scene. James P Hogan wrote a short story somewhat like that; a time traveler goes back to kill Hitler and promptly is told by harassed soldiers (“What, another one?!”) to go stand over there and wait to be interviewed with all the other time travelers who came to kill Hitler. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/22 "2010-09-13T19:58:43Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > James P Hogan wrote a short story somewhat like that; a time traveler goes back to kill Hitler and promptly is told by harassed soldiers (“What, another one?!”) to go stand over there and wait to be interviewed with all the other time travelers who came to kill Hitler. Another SF author (I can’t remember which, and it’s driving me nuts) used the concept as conclusive proof that not only won’t humanity build a time machine in the near future, but we never will : there’s no crowd of time tourists suddenly popping up at every important historical event. You’d think someone would have noticed the crowd 100x times the total population of Palestine showing up at the Crucifixion 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/23 "2010-09-13T21:02:18Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > > James P Hogan wrote a short story somewhat like that; a time traveler goes back to kill Hitler and promptly is told by harassed soldiers (“What, another one?!”) to go stand over there and wait to be interviewed with all the other time travelers who came to kill Hitler. > > Another SF author (I can’t remember which, and it’s driving me nuts) used the concept as conclusive proof that not only won’t humanity build a time machine in the near future, but we never will : there’s no crowd of time tourists suddenly popping up at every important historical event. > You’d think someone would have noticed the crowd 100x times the total population of Palestine showing up at the Crucifixion 😉 Niven’s law says that if time travel permitted changing the past, eventually time travel would be edited out of the time line > **[Niven's laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niven's_laws)** > > Niven's laws were named after science fiction author Larry Niven, who has periodically published them as "how the Universe works" as far as he can tell. These were most recently rewritten on January 29, 2002 (and published in Analog magazine in the November 2002 issue). Among the rules are: > A different law is given this name in Niven's essay "The Theory and Practice of Time Travel": > Hans Moravec glosses this version of Niven's Law as follows: > Ryan North examines this law in Dinosaur Comics #18... Stephen Hawking suggested that the absence of time tourists means that no time travel will ever be invented [Time travel - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel#Tourism_in_time) ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/24 "2010-09-13T21:46:50Z")
Someone brought up the issue of nukes, which I think is an important one. Obviously the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki wouldn’t necessarily see it this way, but you could certainly argue that the use of nukes that actually happened in our timeline was about as minor as possible while still being horrifying enough to keep them from being used again in anger, ever. If they hadn’t been developed more or less exactly when they were, we might have ended up with a cold-war-like standoff in which the itchy trigger fingers behind the bunkers did NOT have such an incredibly strong example of why not to actually pull the trigger. When people argue about whether we should have nuked Hiroshima, I always want to argue that if we hadn’t, we almost certainly would have used a lot more nukes, and a lot bigger ones, in Korea. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/25 "2010-09-13T22:01:13Z")
Yet another story (author unknown) had the first time traveler go back to interview Shakespeare, only to be told, “No pictures, please, you’ll have to talk to my agent.” Seems that time travelers had been hanging around him since well before he was born. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/26 "2010-09-13T22:33:35Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Another SF author (I can’t remember which, and it’s driving me nuts) used the concept as conclusive proof that not only won’t humanity build a time machine in the near future, but we never will : there’s no crowd of time tourists suddenly popping up at every important historical event. > You’d think someone would have noticed the crowd 100x times the total population of Palestine showing up at the Crucifixion 😉 They’d be damned sure to blend in/be camoflaged/invisible (Predator style at worst), or a mechanical sparrow with a minicamera will be flying around taking pictures/videos for them. ---
**Author:** ![Rumor\_Watkins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@Rumor\_Watkins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rumor_Watkins)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/27 "2010-09-13T22:37:49Z")
They made a whole video game series premised on this very issue, you know? ---
**Author:** ![ChrisBooth12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@ChrisBooth12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisBooth12)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/28 "2010-09-13T22:43:26Z")
I saw a web comic I am still looking for it which shows 2 German soliders guarding a room. You then see a poof and a futuristic looking man comes out. The guards shoot him. They look at eachother and say. Hey man I love the Fuer but I have to wonder why all these time traverleres keep coming back tryign to kill him ---
**Author:** ![Blaster\_Master](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cab0a1/32.png) [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/29 "2010-09-13T23:07:38Z")
I probably wouldn’t kill Hitler for precisely many of the reasons outlined in the OP. If Hitler never rose to power, I’m disinclined to believe that WW2 wouldn’t still happen within 5-10 years. Yes, the Holocaust is probably a lot less likely to have happened if Hitler weren’t in power, but also, like others mentioned, we might not have seen so much mismanagement of the war and possibly a similar number of additiional casualties may have occurred from another year or two of war. Worse, Nuclear energy was due to be harvested soon, even without the war. How much many millions of deaths more could have occurred if the bomb had been developed in the middle of the war instead of right at the tail end? Without the mass exodus of Jewish Scientists to the US with their expertise and urging of the President to initiate a Nuclear program, I think it’s quite likely a more dangerous country might have gotten to it first, and we might have seen it used many more times, both in the war, and as a coercive threat afterward. If Germany had gotten it, they very well could have won. If Russia had gotten it, Communism very well could have overrun all of Europe or worse. Assuming WW2 still would have happened, but probably a little later, how else may things have gone? Would the US economy have gotten stale enough in another 5-10 years of depression that we would have been a less effective ally? Might additional technological advantages prior to the start of the war made it even more deadly? It’s difficult to say. And, of course, I think there’s some important lessons that all of humanity took from WW2 that we might not have learned yet or have had to have learned in an even harder way (otherwise, we’d have learned them sooner than WW2). ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/30 "2010-09-13T23:32:10Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Well… truth be told I’d rather go back and whack Augustine of Hippo. > > He knows why. Stole your pears? ---
**Author:** ![Hold\_Fast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/58f4c7/32.png) [@Hold\_Fast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hold_Fast)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/31 "2010-09-13T23:42:14Z")
> [@VarlosZ](#): > > Assume for the sake of argument that you have no qualms about doing the deed _as such_; you’re only concerned about the best consequences. > > The potential benefits to killing Young Hitler are obvious: maybe there’s no WWII, or if there is maybe it’s more limited in scope, and either way it likely doesn’t come with the Holocaust or the otherwise especially deplorable treatment of POWs or conquered peoples. > > On the other hand, there are plenty of potential problems with trying to alter history this way, including: > – It might not work very well. While the specific group of people that came to power in Germany certainly fails to do so without a Hitler, it’s no coincidence that expansionist, authoritarian, nationalist factions took hold when they did. You might just wind up with a slightly different shade of war. > > – Perhaps you do more or less stop the next war, but in the process you also stop the defeat of fascism and the chance for the Western democracies to write the history books. Anti-democratic, strongman (i.e. more or less fascist) regimes were rather in vogue in the pre-war years in Europe. It wasn’t just Italy, Germany, and Spain; states such as Poland and Austria had also essentially dumped their liberal institutions for autocracies. Without the war, perhaps this trend fails to reverse itself, or even gathers steam. > > – The history of the Soviet Union would be altered in unimaginable ways. Perhaps without the war the state softens, or fails to exert the influence in Eastern Europe that it eventually did, or even collapses sooner. OTOH, perhaps Stalinism would still be with us. > > – Nukes. This is the big one, probably. They would be coming along at some point, and maybe in a manner that’s relatively less benign than has actually happened so far. Maybe a still-fascist Germany (or some other expansionist power) gets there first and uses them liberally. Maybe the taboo against their use never quite develops, so that dozens or hundreds of major cities have been leveled by now. Etc. > So, if you actually had the opportunity to hop in your time machine and kill Young Hitler, should you? Well, looks like two options…either a bunch of little bad things that _might_ happen…or 70 million people dying. Personally, if I **knew** without a doubt that killing young Hitler would stop WWII from occuring, and save the lives of millions, then I would. But thats not something you could ever really know, and so that doesn’t translate so well into our terms of situational ethics. ---
**Author:** ![bengangmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/32 "2010-09-14T07:38:47Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Then he gets scientists to analyze the water in a certain town in Austria, which has the remarkable property of making men infertile, and has them synthesize a pill which is administered to all Jewish men… But isn’t the qualifier for Judaism passed on by the MOTHER? ---
**Author:** ![DWMarch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwmarch/32/1010_2.png) [@DWMarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DWMarch)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/33 "2010-09-14T08:31:36Z")
If you go back in time and kill Hitler, we lose all those great Downfall parodies! ---
**Author:** ![VarlosZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d78d45/32.png) [@VarlosZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VarlosZ)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/34 "2010-09-14T08:42:22Z")
> [@DWMarch](#): > > If you go back in time and kill Hitler, we lose all those great Downfall parodies! Sure, but that would free up so many man-hours that could be put to other creative uses. It would be a veritable LOLcat renaissance. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/35 "2010-09-14T14:23:08Z")
> [@bengangmo](#): > > > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > > > Then he gets scientists to analyze the water in a certain town in Austria, which has the remarkable property of making men infertile, and has them synthesize a pill which is administered to all Jewish men… > > But isn’t the qualifier for Judaism passed on by the MOTHER? Yes, but he sends the lot of them, male and female, to the Jewish Free State, a country carved out of the Caucasus (ostensibly to protect them), where presumably they slowly die out. ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/36 "2010-09-14T19:49:52Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I’m surprised no one has tried to put to film (or animation) the result of the invention of a time machine. All of a sudden probably millions of people would instantly appear back in 1935 (give or take) and attempt to kill Hitler. I think it would be a hilarious scene. It would be like the sequence in that one _Pink Panther_ movie — where a dozen agents are all trying to kill Inspector Clouseau, but all they can manage to do is kill each other and/or themselves, one by one. Meanwhile, Clouseau/Hitler goes about his business, totally oblivious. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/37 "2010-09-14T20:19:04Z")
Don’t kill Hitler, introduce him to [hipsterism](http://hipsterhitler.com/2010/09/on-the-battlefield/). ---
**Author:** ![Mozart1220](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@Mozart1220](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mozart1220)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/38 "2010-09-14T20:41:09Z")
> [@Wandering\_Hero](#): > > Well it was Hitler’s charimsa that helped unify the nazi party, so its possible it wouldn’t have got so far without him. But liekly another extremist party would have gotten in, and with how harsly Germany was treated, the odds of another was seems likely. And if the Nazi’s got in without Hitler going crazy and doing stupid things like attackign Russia in the winter, its possible we would have lost the war, and that would be bad… > > To stop the whole thing, maybe a better way of doing it would somehow ensuring germany gets punished less harshly at the end of WW1, thus the country doesn’t reach the desperate conditions that let the nazi’s rise up and take control, and Hitler ends up as a fail rebel and nothing else. > > BUT without the Nazi dictatorship to set an example for the world, would we have had more gennocidal dictatorships across the world? > > Messing with the past is a tricky thing indeed… One of the things Star Terk’s Gene Roddenberry wanted to do, was a story about the Enterprise crew going back in time to save JFK. When it’s discovered that the result would cause WWIII, they have to go back again and see that he does die. And get this, Spock is the shooter on the grassy knoll. Yeah, I know…and I’m a Trek fan. That’s why Roddenberry wasn’t allowed much authority over Star Trek after the movies started. They did go back and save the whales though, which was alomost as bad a plotline. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/39 "2010-09-15T11:59:14Z")
That plot eventually became merged with the Guardian of Forever plot–Edith Keeler somehow became so popular teaching peace that people acquiesced to Germany even after the invasion of Poland. Hitler took over the world, but did not have the temperament to not use nuclear weapons, and wound up destroying the earth. (Or maybe he otherwise ran it into the ground. I can’t remember.) Originally, the consequences of saving Keeler were more personal. Also, all of you are forgetting about [Hitler’s Time Travel Exemption Act](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct), which states that you can’t go back and try to kill Hitler without something going wrong. At the very least, it doesn’t change anything. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602/40 "2010-09-15T12:19:54Z")
> [@Mozart1220](#): > > One of the things Star Terk’s Gene Roddenberry wanted to do, was a story about the Enterprise crew going back in time to save JFK. When it’s discovered that the result would cause WWIII, they have to go back again and see that he does die. And get this, Spock is the shooter on the grassy knoll. Yeah, I know…and I’m a Trek fan. They did a better version of this on _Red Dwarf_ - the crew (in a variety of hilarious ways) prevent Oswald from shooting Kennedy. They then discover that in the new timeline a surviving Kennedy got blackmailed by the Mob due to the Marilyn Monroe connection and was arrested for corruption. The crew rescue the “future” Kennedy from a police van at Idlewild Airport and convince him to go back in time with them and shoot **himself** from the grassy knoll. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hypothetical-would-it-really-be-wise-to-kill-young-hitler/553602.md?page=1)