I think I’d just step on a butterfly.
(Thanx and a tip of the hat to Ray Bradbury)
Hitler. But I like Hazel’s idea of just altering his life to prevent him from ever coming to power in Germany. I truly believe the world would be a better place if he had been killed off before he hurt anyone.
[simpsons]
Homer is hard at work at the power plant. Well, he’s at the plant, anyway, listening to the radio.
Announcer: … FDR is in the White House. An ice cream cone costs a nickel, and a hot new tune by Benny Goodman is hitting the charts. The year is 1939. [Benny Goodman’s hot new tune plays]
Homer: Nineteen … 1939! Oh, my God, I’ve gone back in time! I’ve got to warn everybody about Hitler – and get to the ice cream store!
[Lenny and Carl walk into Homer's work area]
Lenny: Hey, Homer, what’s all the hubbub?
Carl: Let me guess. You travel back in time again?
Homer: Shut up. You haven’t even been born yet.
[/simpsons]
Oh I think Trotsky would have done just fine. Stalin did murder off many officers whom could have provided a great improvement over the way Soviet Russia fought in the early part of their involvment of WW2. Trotsky IIRC was a general himself during the revolution. I think Trotsky would have been able to beat back Hitler.
Of course, would Trotsky have signed the treaty in the first place with Germany?
I might not be able to remember my soviet history during WW2 well, but I do not agree that Stalin was the only one who would have been able to beat back the germans.
What if Karl Marx had been taken out at a young age in a Bizzare fishing accident?
Osip
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- I would kill myself ten seconds before I died of other causes anyway. I figure that’s got to lead to something interesting.
(-I know the usual is ice-your-grandfather, but apparently you end up living in a big cornfield with a psychic brat ten-year-old, and I can’t dig that.) - MC
- I would kill myself ten seconds before I died of other causes anyway. I figure that’s got to lead to something interesting.
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Ack! responded before reading all the thread. So, Erasticity
wants us to leave Marx out of it. I can see that, where is the line between the philosopher who brings forth ideas people reacet upon and religious figures.
So, what if we were to take out Mr Romanov before he gave the orders to have Demitri son of Ivan the Terrible murdered?
Oh yeah forgot, Demitri died in Uglich when he had an epeleptic fit while holding a knife :rolleyes:
mohammad atta, on sept 8th 2001
i wonder how that would have disrupted the whole plan?
teddy roosvelt’s father
that woulda stirred up shit
teddy kennedy’s grandfather
hummmmm? that would be an odd one
of course, the big “H”-- i think this is the difinitive answer given vinnies rules
where is richard dawson when you need him?
(im not taking this too seriously, as i still have alot of work on the time machine yet to finish, but what does it matter, a day or 40 years?)
Ooh! Communism! Fun fun fun!
Killing off Karl Marx… That would SERIOUSLY fuck up history as we know it. Remember, Marx’s ideas weren’t just used in Russia and such. During the industrial revolution, the German Social Democrats focused on his ideals and took a standing position in the government. Worker reforms began, which in turn led into unions. If trade unions had never been developed, there would be no such thing as minimum wage, OSHA, etc., etc.
So what’s my choice? Obvious.
Jack Ruby.
I know Im not a key historical figure but I would kill myself, just to find out what would happen. :eek:
‘Lenin’ said:
In that case, I’d definitely have to vote for Karl Marx. But the problem is that ‘Lenin’ is making some amazing leaps of logic, that the German trade union movement led to OSHA and minimum wage laws. Can’t buy that.
If we are talking about just going back and saving as many people as possible, then I’d have to vote for whoever I would have had to kill to prevent the rise of the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union. Lenin, probably.
No ideology is responsible for more deaths of human beings than Communism. If Lenin is dead, would Kerensky have held power, or was that early social democratic movement doomed to failure anyway?
How would the world have turned out if the Soviet Union had been a socialist Democracy instead of a totalitarian Communist state? For one thing, I imagine that Hitler wouldn’t have stood a chance - a Democratic Russia would have been a LOT stronger than the miserable Communist screw-up that it really was.
But hey, we got through the last century without blowing ourselves up with nuclear weapons. I’m not sure I’d want to change ANYTHING, because the result might have been infinitely more horrible than what did take place.
For the sake of all humankind for all eternity, I would go back in time and kill Jesus Christ.
By killing Christ, I would single-handedly remove the catalyst for the most destructive, hateful, vicious, deadly cult ever invented by the sick mind of homo sapien.
(Just for the record-- I don’t have any problem with Jesus-- after all he taught his followers to “love one another.” Unfortunately, they took that to mean, “persecute and kill anyone different from you.”)
Imagine the paradise-- one bullet, NO Christians!
mmmmmmmmmm…
Vinnie as for your rule of “secular persons only.” I consider Jesus Christ to be a secular figure.
I can’t believe that someone would want to shoot FDR. Many non-Americans consider him the best US president ever, for his role in WW2.
My problem with this is scenario is that it depends when you shoot your victim.
Shoot Hitler when he was a youth, and one might argue that Goering would have brought the Nazi party to power anyway.
Shoot Hitler during the battle of Stalingrad, though, and the generals who failed in the coup would have seized power and achieved peace with the Allies.
Shoot Marx, and you still have Engels, or anyone else who was unhappy with the harsh oppression of the workers by capitalists in 19th century Europe.
Shoot Stalin during the battle of Stalingrad, though, and Beria might have come to power, and might have tried to achieve peace with Germany.
FDR’s death at the end of WW2 didn’t stop Truman from dropping the bomb on Hiroshima after all.
History usually just seems to play itself out, regardless of the actors, unless you get to key events when the characteristics of the actors determine the way events unfold.
When you’re through putzin’ around, give Uke his due.
I’m sorry, but i have to hijack the thread to laugh at this.
BWAHAHAHA
Thank you. 
Just wanted to point out that killing Roosevelt might have lead to a world you might hate more. With growing leftest sentiments in this country due to the Great Depression–Roosevelt might have been the one thing standing between the US and a communist/socialist revolution. Roosevelt’s New Deal absorbed a lot of socialist ideals…while also firmly guarding the capitalist open market system. He kept a delicate balance between both extremes in this country. At a critical time in our history – neither Fascism and Socialism ever took root in the United States due to FDR
Squishing a butterfly in the Jurassic leds to the election of a warmonger and phoenetic English. Good one Ray.
I like instead the Hallowe’en episode of the Simpsons, in which Homer sneezes on a horrible prehistoric beastie, and comes back to the future to find that his children are horribly nice and polite - he goes back to the past to change things back to the way they were, and doesn’t hang around long enough to see that reality has changed so that the sky now rains donuts.
Reelect Smith/Wallace in '36!
<<FDR’s death at the end of WW2 didn’t stop Truman from dropping the bomb on Hiroshima after all. >>
Hey, wait a minute…Roosevelt died, of a sudden unforseen medical condition, after most of the “important” stuff happened in WWII, but slightly before one of the last “biggies” that he should been responsible for…Did anyone else suddenly get the sinking feeling that someone got to him before us? 
Nick Gaston
You gotta go back earlier.
Kill Julius Caesar. Before he crosses the Rubicon. Preserve the Republic. Prevent degradation of the Empire via successively corrupt and/or incompetant Caesars. Eventually, the empire becomes more enlightened, outlawing slavery, spreading Pax Romana for millenia (OK, maybe they keep the gladiatorial arena for long enough for us who liked the movie to see it for real). The Dark Ages never happen, so there is no need for a Renaissance, as the empire has far exceeded that.
And as an added bonus, Latin really is the Lingua Franca.
Of course, absent him, you don’t kill Jesus, you kill the people who transcribed his teachings in a way that went “off message” by throwing a lot of judgmental moralizing on top of the underlying message of peace, love and sacrifice.