# Kill Hitler or Prevent Meth? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 12, 2018, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309 "2018-04-12T18:09:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2018, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/61 "2018-04-13T19:46:32Z")
Hitler. If we’re going to go butterfly effect and propose the world wouldn’t have changed in some beneficial ways without him, let’s also consider the possibility that some of the 9-11 million who died in the Holocaust might have improved the world dramatically, had they lived. We simply don’t know. Either way, I can’t say the systemic murder of 9-11 million people isn’t as bad as one particular addictive substance. Meth is a horrible drug, but according to the [UN](https://www.unodc.org/wdr2017/field/WDR_2017_presentation_lauch_version.pdf), the majority of the 190,000 drug-related deaths annually are due to opioids, and that pales in comparison to the 6 million deaths annually from tobacco. Hm. Hitler vs. tobacco. There’s an interesting choice. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2018, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/62 "2018-04-13T20:23:55Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > True, but they also have victims. The kids, spouses, parents of the addicts pay a hefty price for doing nothing wrong. And I get to deal with the aftermath… In WWII, you &/or your loved ones were killed. Either you _knew_ they were killed or, even worse, you had to assume so while holding on to a glimmer of hope. Your home may have been destroyed by bombs/fire. If you were Jewish, you’re possessions were stolen, you had to wear certain things, you were discriminated against & spit on. You were forcibly relocated. Do you see things that bad for the majority of who you have to work with? Sure some people die from meth, & some people go to jail, but you can still have limited contact with them. Meth upends lives but not nearly as much as WWII did for Europeans, especially the targeted populations like the Jews & others (Poles, Roma, gays, etc.) ---
**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:** [April 13, 2018, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/63 "2018-04-13T23:59:16Z")
Kill Hitler. There are more replacements for meth, but there hasn’t seem to be anyone to replace Hitler. Though possibly what happened to him was a deterrent… ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2018, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/64 "2018-04-14T00:06:31Z")
It seems to me that in sheer numbers, never having meth would prevent more lives being lost than never having Hitler would. People keep saying that not having meth would just mean some other drug would take it’s place but not specifying in any way what drug or what type of drug that might be. It seems much more likely that there would be another Hitler taking the place of the original one if you just never had him in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2018, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/65 "2018-04-14T00:17:18Z")
I would take out Hitler because I have more interest in the alternative time line that would ensue. Also, I think I would catch more shit from the average person if they ever learned I had an opportunity to take out Hitler and decided not to. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2018, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/66 "2018-04-14T00:22:05Z")
I think Hitler strikes a stronger emotional nerve that the disparate and more vague impact of meth. I don’t criticize this at all, emotions are much stronger influences than intellectual facts. But I do believe if the intellectual truths of both options are objectively compared, never having meth introduced to this world would be a larger sparer of human tragedy than never having one individual name Adolf Hitler would. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2018, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/67 "2018-04-14T02:37:21Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > If I kill Hitler, I think Stalin would have started WWII, and he wasn’t any better than der Fuehrer. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I don’t think he would have. Stalin was a coward. He never took chances that he could avoid. That’s one reason he killed so many people; he’d kill anybody who might pose a threat to him rather than take the chance that they didn’t. > > War’s always a risk. I don’t think Stalin would have worked up the nerve to start one. > [@Shodan](#): > > He invaded Poland at nearly the same time as Hitler, and had previously invaded and conquered Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. > > Although the USSR got kind of embarrassed by their military’s performance in Finland, even though they eventually won. I believe their poor performance was one of the things that encouraged Hitler to invade the Soviet Union. Czechoslovakia would probably not have posed much more of a challenge - maybe less. > > Would he have invaded Germany? Don’t know. Without the military buildup of the Reich, maybe, and maybe even won. To avoid derailing this thread, I started a new thread [Would there have been a WWII without Hitler?](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=852951) ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2018, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/68 "2018-04-14T03:49:15Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > So what do you say? Two in the head for Hitler, or no meth ever? I went meth but in part it depends on when. Hitler in 33 or Hitler dead in 43? ---
**Author:** ![MarvinKitFox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ba0ec/32.png) [@MarvinKitFox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarvinKitFox)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2018, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/69 "2018-04-16T21:24:04Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > OK…wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff happens and you find yourself with the ability to either kill Hitler and prevent the Holocaust, or you can stop meth from existing. So I have to choose between a world where another drug takes the niche of Meth, or a world ruled by Germans? Meth: It is just one family of drugs. Very similar to many,many,many others. A bit easier to make in the kitchen than most, but there are others just as easy, just as deadly. Hitler: The war with/by germany was **inevitable** following the way the german nation was screwed by the treaty of Versailles. If you defeat an enemy, then you should either conquer them completely, or allow them a chance of retaining their dignity. The treaty of versailles allowed such things as the 1923 invasion by france+belgium, which was _purely_ financially motivated. And the german nation just had to bend over, pass the vaseline and pretend it didn’t hurt. So _of course_ they were hell-bent on revenge and restoration of their pride. . So why is killing Hitler a Bad Idea? Because while he was a gifted politician, an inspiring rabble-rouser, and a dang charismatic leader, he was also a _much_ worse strategic military leader than the world had seen in a long time. He made numerous errors of judgement that crippled his military’s long-term success. . Without Hitler, the Germans would still have militarized, would still have gone to war. Would still have needed to consolidate national identity by first blaming, then suppressing, then exterminating the gypsies and jews. Hitler did not cause the holocaust, the german people’s anger and humiliation did that. That resentment allowed people like hitler, goebbels and himmler to attain positions of power. And without Hitler, they might have had a leader that had more brains, to the extreme detriment of all non-germans out there. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2018, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/70 "2018-04-16T22:42:17Z")
Everyone knows that killing Hitler never works. You go back in time, you’re about to shoot Hitler, and then a bomb set by another time traveler who is trying to kill Hitler goes off and blows your legs off. Or instead of Hitler you get Schneider. Oh, you never heard of Schneider? Maybe everyone goes back in time to kill Schneider, and they succeed, and then they notice this guy Hitler, and they think, “Yeah, that’s bad, didn’t expect that, but this timeline is still much better than Schneider would have been.” Anyway, bottom line, Hitler is a fixed point in time, immune to wibbly wobbly timey wimey. Try to fuck with Hitler and it’s never going to work out. Besides, you know who else killed Hitler? And look what happened to him. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2018, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/71 "2018-04-17T00:15:22Z")
> [@MarvinKitFox](#): > > . > Without Hitler, the Germans would still have militarized, Probably, at some point. Though at what point and to what extent is hard to say. > [@](#): > > would still have gone to war. Possibly. Though for what and at what level of intensity is again hard to say. > [@](#): > > Would still have needed to consolidate national identity by first blaming, then suppressing, then exterminating the gypsies and jews. That’s a huge stretch IMHO. Huuuuge. > [@](#): > > Hitler did not cause the holocaust, I think you’re just dead wrong here. Virulent anti-semitism was already out there, but he whipped it into a frenzy and virtual raison d’etre. > [@Lemur866](#): > > Oh, you never heard of Schneider? History’s [greatest monster](https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=xEz7tAVD&id=40892D3581A6A62BA751DBFAD58CC38DD899157D&thid=OIP.xEz7tAVDZ4Pwq8fAu7_DdgHaLH&mediaurl=http%3a%2f%2fcdn3.thr.com%2fsites%2fdefault%2ffiles%2f2015%2f11%2fone_day_time_earlyharrington_-p_2015.jpg&exph=1572&expw=1047&q=Schneider+One-day+at+a+Time+picture&simid=608011545663702062&selectedIndex=0&adlt=strict&ajaxhist=0)? ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2018, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/72 "2018-04-17T00:21:24Z")
> [@MarvinKitFox](#): > > So I have to choose between a world where another drug takes the niche of Meth, or a world ruled by Germans? > > Meth: It is just one family of drugs. Very similar to many,many,many others. A bit easier to make in the kitchen than most, but there are others just as easy, just as deadly First of all, the fact that it is so easy to make is part of what makes it stand apart as so deadly. Secondly, can you name all these many, many, many other drugs that are so, so similar to meth that people are dying from? ---
**Author:** ![MarvinKitFox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ba0ec/32.png) [@MarvinKitFox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarvinKitFox)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2018, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/73 "2018-04-17T13:19:49Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > me-\>Would still have needed to consolidate national identity by first blaming, then suppressing, then exterminating the gypsies and jews. > That’s a huge stretch IMHO. Huuuuge. > > I think you’re just dead wrong here. Virulent anti-semitism was already out there, but he whipped it into a frenzy and virtual raison d’etre. Consider that there were already anti-jew literature in germany as early as 1543 (Martin Luther), you cannot blame Hitler for creating it. Consider that the “Jewish question” was a _very_ hot topic in all of europe, including Britain, for 75 years before the holocaust began. The only difference is that the more peaceful countries ‘solved’ it by low-level cultural supression, whereas in Germany the Jews (and Gypsies) were selected as scapegoats to vent their anger on. So you cannot blame Hitler for starting the anti-jew movement. He _did_ support it, carry it, and use it as the emotional core for his party’s view of “germans are superior, look at these animals, you are better than them”. Consider that Germany was _well_ on the way to re-arming itself for war by 1930, when Hitler’s party was still a distant fourth in the Reichstag, you cannot blame Hitler for initiating the rearmament. Without Hitler, would the Holocaust have happened in the form it did, with mass extermination rather than expulsion? Maybe, maybe not. Hitler himself preferred to shove the jews out, let them be other people’s problems, but none of the other countries were even _remotely_ willing to take the flood of refugees that tried to leave germany in 1930-1938. After Kristallnacht in 1938, of course, there was no future for Jews anywhere near germany, including no practical escape even if they could find a willing host country. Without Hitler, the war would still have happened. Possibly a year or so earlier (linked to the spanish events), and less effectively. ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2018, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/74 "2018-04-17T15:39:31Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > First of all, the fact that it is so easy to make is part of what makes it stand apart as so deadly. Hitler was easy to make, too. And more fun, I would imagine. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2018, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/75 "2018-04-17T22:37:25Z")
I don’t see how you could stop methamphetamine from ever being invented- it’s pretty much inevitable given research into biochemistry. But if we’re postulating that it could somehow be done, then I voted for prevent meth. In addition to the other reasons mentioned, methamphetamine made World War Two worse. The Germans and especially the Japanese lived on the stuff. I recently ran across one comment on [Quora.com](http://Quora.com) that’s worth reading in its entirety [http://qr.ae/TU1mdT](http://qr.ae/TU1mdT), but to quote just part: > [@](#): > > The Germans noted that meth dulls the emotions and blunts down conscience and makes the soldier an unemotional, murdering robot. The Japanese actually saw these effects as desirable. The Japanese forces were the only armed forces in the WWII where meth belonged in daily rations! ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2018, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/76 "2018-04-18T14:14:46Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > OK…wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff happens and you find yourself with the ability to either kill Hitler and prevent the Holocaust, or you can stop meth from existing. > > I’m somewhat conflicted here. Hitler was probably the biggest monster humanity has ever produced, responsible for previously unimaginable evil. Hitler was small potatoes. Change him to Stalin or Mao and you have something to work with. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2018, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/77 "2018-04-18T14:55:47Z")
Does it always have to be “kill”, though? Can’t we just make Hitler a much nicer guy? ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2018, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/78 "2018-04-18T17:22:20Z")
Or got him a job as a Disney animator? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2018, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309/79 "2018-04-18T17:26:03Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Does it always have to be “kill”, though? Can’t we just make Hitler a much nicer guy? If they’d stop trying to kill Hitler and just get him that scholarship to art school, we could finally create Timeline 27-Bravo that everyone will be has been talking about. But do they listen to me? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-hitler-or-prevent-meth/812309.md?page=3)