Rather than taking Ghanima’s route, how about going back 2005 years, getting an accurate record of what Jesus said and did, and then hiding that document somewhere safe. Return to the present and point some archaeologists at your secret hiding spot.
As a Jew I hate Hitler and everything he caused to happen in the 20 th century. But, and it causes much pain to me to admit this, the one thing that theNazis prevented is the Communist takeover of The Weimar Republic which would’ve been a certainty without Hitler. World War II would’ve happenened anyhow, the fight in Europe would have been the Allies attempt to save Germany from the Soviet Union. And I don’t believe the US would’ve joined in the struggle. Whether the Soviets would’ve allied with Japan and therefore sucked the US into a European war is arguable. I think it unlikely though. The Pacific war would’ve occured regardless. I think Germany would’ve fallen to the Soviets and the rest of Europe would’ve then followed one country at a time. The eventual European union would have occured after the Soviets finally toppled France but it would’ve given us a Communist Europe not a capitalist one. China would’ve gone communist regardless and the world would’ve been well on its way to what the Soviets always preached, the inevitable triumph of the worker over the capitalist.
The United States would’ve eventually have beaten the Japanese. Without the war in Europe, Japan would’ve fallen more quickly thought he cost in American lives would’ve been hideous. There probably would’ve been no atomic bomb, certainly not one in 1945 as it was the belief that there was a German program that spurred the Manhattan project’s formation.
So no Hitler would’ve meant no bomb and a US isolated geographically and economically from a Soviet dominated Europe. Stalin was a madman but he was very patient. When he died in 1953 someone else, maybe Kruschev, maybe Molotov, would’ve just continued the spread of Communism which would’ve led to an inevitable confrontation between the US and the Soviets. Could an isolated America last very long when the rest was united against it? I doubt it. Perhaps Japan would’ve gone first. The Russians had no great love for Japan after Port Arthur. Perhaps World War 3 would’ve been sparked by a Soviet invasion of a US reconstructed Japan.
So I have to conclude, despite the horrors of the Holocaust, killing Hitler before he took power would’ve made the post World War II place an even more miserable mess than it was with Hitler.
Perhaps we should return to preventing World War I and the Wilhelm, Princeps Rasputin concept.
It is perhaps apocryphal that Wilhelm II muttered at the beginning of the Great War, “If only Grandmother were here!”
I propose that we preserve the life of Victoria until the 1920s.
“Alix, how dare you allow that nasty Russian peasant in the same room as My grandchildren!”
“Willie, shut down, hush up and let your cousin Nicky speak.”
I’m sure what her connection to Duke Ferdinand was, but I believe she would be equally effective concerning Serbia…
<tearing my hair in frustration that my books are currently packed away>…
I’d go back to the 1940’s and prevent Robert Heinlein from getting malaria…
Hey, I like the theoretical changes that could bring… and I’ll offer bragging rights to the Doper who knows the story…
Then he would never have been a writer! I don’t like that idea at all!
He was already a writer.
He suffered from I think TB to knock him out of the Navy. I cannot place the Malaria in 40’s connection. I think its a mistake.
TB is correct, in the early 30s, I think. He was not a writer before he was discharged. He turned to writing to pay off his mortage after dabbling in politics. He had seen a short-story contest and wrote a story for it, but realized he could make more money by submitting it the usual way.
Yes, you’re right it was TB. My bad. <looking up at the attic and glaring in direction of all my books, packed away where I can’t reach them>
I was referencing a short story in a collection of alternate history books where a politician who hated wasting money on the space program (thinking that money should be spent on poor people instead) found a crackpot scientist who actually built a working time machine. The politician used it to go back and cure Heinlein of TB while he was still in the navy. His thinking was that since many scientists were inspired to choose their profession by reading his stories, then if Heinlein didn’t become a writer the space program would be dead.
His mission was a success. He returned to the present day to find the cities immaculate and no poor people… Everyone was gainfully employed putting together the first manned mission to Mars commanded by Admiral Heinlein.
(I know it don’t have all the details of the story right… )
In the afterword to the story, it related how the author sent the story to Heinlein who read it and liked it… just days before he passed away.
Well, if you wanted me to be HONEST about it, I’d go back seven months ago and get my friend into therapy, hopefully preventing his suicide.
If you want me to pretend to be altruistic…I’d try to find some way to slow down the spread of industrialization and modernization to the non-Western world so that the acclimation period was the same as that of Europe. Hopefully, that would mean that, by the time life spans really started getting longer, people would already have been acclimated to the idea of having fewer children. Hopefully, this would prevent massive overpopulation from occurring.
Of course, I have no idea how I could actually accomplish this. Maybe I could write a really convincing paper…
Somehow keep them from sentencing Socrates to death.
If you track done the name of the story and the author please let me know, it sounds like one I would really like.
I guess you think this is selfish, but I’ll pipe in to say it’s not. If you changed some major historical event, even with altruistic motives, you have no idea what would really happen, and things could very well turn out worse.
If somebody kills Hitler’s mother… maybe Goebbels becomes Fuhrer, leads a more efficient genocide, and doesn’t interfere with his generals as much, allowing Germany to kill far more people.
If you stop the September 11 attacks from happening… maybe terrorists get into America with nukes instead.
If you get your friend into therapy, probably the worst thing that happens is that he still kills himself. At best, he’s probably okay. Not likely that tons of people will die as a direct result. You’re opting for concretely helping someone over taking a big chance. I’d probably do something similar.
You know they are making that into a movie?
I would go back in time and make mommy love me enough so I wouldn’t be in thearpy today.
Another safer one…supposedly, the Air Force has had Mullah Omar in Afganistan and Zarqawi in Iraq in the sights of Predator drones, but they both got away.
Assuming that we’re not just leaving them alive on purpose (like if Omar is a big burden for what’s left of the Taliban to support and hide, or Zarqawi is actually the least competant guy that could have been deployed), it might be worth a shot letting one of 'em get blown up.
Or, taking the risk of more major alterations, how about offing Ho Chi Minh, or Pol Pot, or keeping Sihanouk from going over to the Reds? It’d be interesting to see how things turned out, at least.
Heck, or what if the Tieananmen Square protests had gone better, and actually lead to meaningful political reform in China? (Well, might as well scratch that last one. Since this is about timeline alterations, not miracles.)
Larry Niven - “The Return of William Proxmire”
The story is The Return of William Proxmire, and is by Larry Niven. It appears in Requiem, a posthumous collection of some Heinlein works and other authors’ writing about him.
As far as the OP goes, without being Hari Seldon, I would hesitate to go back to events that have already been more or less ‘resolved,’ such as World War II, for fear of making things worse. However, I might try to find a way to prevent Karl Rove from entering politics, unless I could also instill in him a true sense of right and wrong (as defined by me, of course :D).
Oops, LurkMeister beat me to it. Sorry!
Thank you LurkMeister and Oy!. I think I might even have Requiem, I know I have Grumbles from the Grave.
<Monty Hall>
Hello and welcome to the first ever time travel exposition. We have compiled your votes, tabulated, and decided. The purpose of the first ever time travel exposition will be to visit Socrates.
Now, as you can clearly see, we have paused time itself, removed the hemlock that
Socrates would normally drink at this point, and substituted Folger’s Crystals, as per the wishes of our sponsers. Let’s see if he notices.</Monty Hall>
I would stop my ancestor from selling 65 acres of Manhattan in ~1700.