Yes the question of Hilter is how much ‘butterfly effect’ v. how much ‘great man theory of history’ (great meaning ‘big impact’ not ‘really good’ obviously in this case).
But eliminating one particular drug would accomplish nothing. Already meth is becoming yesterday’s news as a drug scourge compared to (synthetic, prescribed, and traditional illegal) opioids.
Also most answers skate by whether one could/would really kill somebody, even Hitler. I guess that’s partly from the modern affect that it’s somehow putting yourself above others to openly doubt your ability to kill. ‘Everyone is capable of it’ but not actually. So it’s two rather unlike things morally, killing a human being v. ‘stopping’ a drug. Maybe some of the answers reflect that without highlighting it.
The other flaw in the question (sorry I tend to nitpick poll questions ) is the preamble presupposing killing Hitler prevents the Holocaust but not really emphasizing it, so some will answer based on accepting that premise and others will take the question as if it asks if they accept that premise.
If the Germans hadn’t invented meth, somebody else would have.
I’ve heard a story, which may be anecdotal, about an opposing soldier who believed he had the opportunity to kill Hitler during WW I and didn’t because he wasn’t in imminent danger, and always regretted it.
Forget meth, look at how many families alcohol has destroyed, but I wouldn’t vote to prevent booze.
Hitler, on the other hand, launched the most devastating war in the history of mankind. He set up factories to try and wipe out an entire race of people. The guy is basically seen as the epitome of evil in all of history. Meth? If it wasn’t meth, it’d be something else.
The problem with time-travel choices such as these is, since there’s obviously no experimental results to work with, we have no idea just how far and fast the changes spread from tweaking a single event, or doing away with a single person. Not to mention, if we change history by killing Hitler, do all the quantum dice after that event re-roll themselves, and do different outcomes at that level work up to the tangible physical level on which we live our lives?
It is quite reasonable to believe that if we kill Hitler, we also kill everybody conceived after we do so, and replace them with a whole different set of people - a holocaust far greater than the Holocaust. And even if we don’t believe that, certainly over the course of a few decades at most, you’d stop having any of the same people being born.
And anyone who messes with the space-time continuum far back enough to keep the Firebug from being conceived is gonna be in serious trouble from me. :eek:
Because that’s the one I deal with most often. I do encounter the others occasionally, but meth is a constant. I can count on my fingers the people I’ve met that beat it. Meth will make people walk away from their children, spouse, family, home, job, and anything else unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen babies born addicted to this stuff.
Wrong. Meth hurts a lot of innocent people who had no choice in the matter. Meth users commit crimes to finance their habits. People get mugged and robbed because of meth. Innocent people get caught in the crossfire in a turf war between rival dealers. Pregnant women use meth and cause serious harm to the baby. Meth users beat their spouses. Meth users drive a car while under the influence and cause multiple fatalities.
The idea that the victims of meth brought it on themselves is absurd. We are all victims of meth in one way or another. And most of us had no choice.
Because many people met their spouses through the events of the war. Eliminate the war , they would have never met, the children of that union would never be born. Other meetings would happen instead, and a whole different set of offspring would result.
I’m a specific example: My paternal grandmother was a war bride, and only met my paternal grandfather due to the Second World War. Without the war going as it went, my dad is never born, my brothers and I are never born, and my niece is never born. You can imagine that my paternal grandparents, conceived and born before the war, would meet other people and have other children, resulting in who knows how many completely different people three generations hence. Now multiply that by all of the other people who only met due to the war, one way or another.
Well, of course there’s no guarantee that killing Hitler prevents WWII. I don’t know the history well enough to speak intelligently in detail about the social and political climate of Germany at the time, but clearly the situation was highly unstable to say the least, and clearly Hitler’s prejudices and ideologies were not unique to him; had Hindenburg appointed someone else as chancellor, the odds are probably pretty high that person might also harbor a Hitler-esque ambition and agenda.
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Killing Hitler seems like it would fuck up “the timeline” too much. In these “kill Hitler” hypotheticals I’m always in favor of sparing the poor bastard, despite all the trouble he caused.
The problem is that if you somehow stopped meth from ever existing, we wouldn’t have Breaking Bad.
Other shows are like some tepid off-brand generic cola. Breaking Bad is like Classic Coke.
Do you really want to live in a world without Coca-Cola?
In recent years, some historians have transferred that “honor” to King Leopold of Belgium, who took over big regions of Africa and basically did what we did to the Native Americans and First Nations in Canada, only worse.
Yeah. to amplify what others have said, the problem with meth heads isn’t meth, it’s their heads. People who choose dangerous, addictive thrills will find something self-destructive enough, sooner or later, to mess up their lives. Removing meth just leaves you with another drug or fad or other idiots-are-killing-themselves crisis.
Killing Hitler, on the other hand, gives you that warm, relaxed glow.
Killing Hitler wouldn’t do shit. Keep in mind, before he was “Hitler the all powerful”, he was just some dude that frequented pubs, and preached his working class nonsense to his fellow bar patrons.
An already powerful man, with an agenda much like Hitler’s, just happened to stumble across him one day and took notice of his exceptional oratory skills. That guy, whose name escapes me, was the one that groomed Hitler to be the guy we all know and hate.
Pretty sure if he never found Hitler, he would have found someone else to groom to do just as many nasty things as Hitler did.
Erich Ludendorff, I think is who you mean. I don’t really know. Yeah there were other guys who believed the same stuff as Hitler but it seems unlikely that one of them would have the same combination of theatrical, oratory, and political skill of Hitler.
There’s also the possibility that if Hitler hadn’t taken over, Germany would have gone Communist, which I think could have been equally bad. If they had been an ally of the Soviet Union from the beginning, the ramifications for Europe and beyond could be unspeakably horrible. Could you imagine a German/Soviet alliance invading France and the UK, and America getting dragged into it?
He was a bum in Vienna for a while, when the Great War broke out. He enlisted immediately, and remade himself into a genuine, bona fide war hero. Iron Cross, First and Second Class, wounded more than once - he was a messenger when the average interval between being appointed to the duty and becoming a casualty was about thirty days. He was blinded by a gas attack and in hospital when the Armistice came.
Then the military appointed him to a sort of military intelligence position, where he was supposed to keep an eye on various fringe political movements. He happened across the National Socialists, liked what he heard, resigned from the military, and dedicated himself to the party. He built it up thru his undoubted genius for rhetoric and organization to the point where he was able to convince himself and others that he could lead a revolution (the famous Beer Hall Putsch). It wasn’t as far-fetched an idea as you might think - several others had been attempted, from all parts of the lunatic fringe. However, it failed disastrously when the military and police refused to join, Hitler survived arrest and was put on trial. Again, it was probably the best publicity he could have managed, and the trial made him a national figure.
He was sentenced to several years in prison, which he spent writing his book Mein Kampf and watching his party blow itself up in his absence. He emerged from prison as the last Nazi standing, and went to work repeating his message over and over (Germany is destined for greatness! We lost the war because of the Jews and Marxists and industrialists and slackers at home!) to the accompaniment of pageantry and spectacles to the point where the NSDAP went to the second largest party in in the Bundestag. They started losing ground eventually, but the Chancellor picked him because he thought Hitler was the only one who the country could rally around. Whereupon Hitler staged the Reichstag fire, took over as Chancellor, executed the Night of the Long Knives to eliminate any rivals - and set about executing what he had promised to do.
The industrialists backed him because they were afraid of the Communists, and because they were afraid of the unions, which Hitler was going to take over and put under state control. And because Hitler was going to renovate the German economy.
Would anyone else have been able to bring all that off, or was it the perfect storm of demagogue and circumstance? Don’t know.
) is the preamble presupposing killing Hitler prevents the Holocaust but not really emphasizing it, so some will answer based on accepting that premise and others will take the question as if it asks if they accept that premise.