I stumbled across this thread, which asks whether you would kill Hitler if you had a time machine that took you back to 1900 or so. No other options, kill him or let him alone.
Several people have said no, because they wouldn’t exist if not for Hitler. I realized that I am in that group.
So I thought it might be interesting for people to explain why they wouldn’t be here, if not for Hitler. My own story is very straightforward: my parents, from widely separated states, met when they both migrated to a distant third state to work on the Manhattan Project. Not a chance in hell they would have met otherwise.
Too late to edit, but I forgot to say that while I realize that the difference of a couple of seconds during intercourse might result in a completely different child, let’s ignore that, and just consider macro effects, like in my example.
I don’t have a cool story like yours, I just assumed that a world changing even like that would be enough to make sure that THIS particular sperm that created THIS particular body wouldn’t have been the first to reach the egg. I mean I was lucky to win against millions of other brothers, and if the total change was just that my dad ejaculated 1 second earlier or later, that might have been the deal breaker. But considering my parents were not even alive at the time… I don’t think it is possible to even guesstimate the chances.
Mine is kind of roundabout. Unfortunately, My grandfather needs to fight in WWII, so he can develop PTSD, which leads to his untimely death. Without that, my grandmother probably wouldn’t have moved her young children to the state where my parents met.
My grandmother was engaged to a man who was killed in WWII. She later met and married my grandfather, who also served in WWII but (obviously) survived. My grandparents were not from the same town, or even the same state, but there was a military base near where my grandmother was going to college and she met my grandfather at a dance her sorority organized for the servicemen.
An alternate world where WWII either never happened or played out in a different manner is most likely one where my grandmother does not marry my grandfather and their descendants are never born. Even very small changes to the events of WWII could, if they happened at the right place and time, save the life of my grandmother’s fiance, kill my grandfather, or prevent my grandmother and grandfather from ever meeting.
Mine is pretty straightforward: my dad was a baby during WW2. His family was on vacation when Germany invaded Lithuania. When they got back home, they were informed by a bunch of people fleeing the city that there was no point going home; everything was burned or destroyed. So they ended up drifting as refugees and eventually ended up in the US.
My grandmother, along with her immediate family, all German Jews, escaped from Germany in the 1930s to Canada. She was a skilled artist and forged changes to their papers that allowed them to leave. In Canada, my grandmother met my grandfather, a Russian Jew whose parents had emigrated to Canada a few decades before.
Many of my grandmother’s extended family did not escape Germany and were never heard from again.
So I would not be alive if not for Hitler, because there’s no way my mother’s parents would have met. But their extended family and their descendants would probably be alive.
This is an odd thread IMHO. If the criteria is whether Hitler’s premature death would have altered the timeline (could have) in such a way that I might not have been born, well, price I’m willing to pay.
WWII is not called a “world war” for nothing, so most families were touched by it. I think that’s insufficient cause to allow Hitler to live.
All of “us” may disappear with our timeline, but hopefully the new timeline would be less tainted by the acts of evil men like Hitler.
My parents’ families both fled the Soviets and escaped from Latvia on German troop ships. They both spent some time in German DP camps. My mother’s family worked on farms in Kansas and Texas before being sponsored by a Latvian Lutheran congregation in Tacoma which helped them move there. My father’s family came straight to Tacoma.
I agree it would be an easy decision if you knew for certain that you would be saving millions of lives. But you really can’t know that, can you? Yes, it’s likely that the Holocaust would not have killed so many so quickly, but if someone less insane than Hitler had come to power in Germany, maybe he would have listened to his generals, and avoided the mistakes that led to Germany’s defeat. Maybe the truce with Stalin would have held, and they would have worked together to divide all of Europe and much of Asia between them. Maybe they wouldn’t have driven all the Jewish scientists away, and would have beaten the US to the atomic bomb, and conquered the world, causing many more deaths in the long run.
Kinda, yeah. I’d totally be willing to kill Hitler even if, hypothetically, that would mean I would never have existed. (Which isn’t necessarily true, in my case) Basically it’s like asking if I’d give my life so others could live. If it would prevent so much death and destruction and suffering? I hope I’d have that strength.
In a time travel scenario ones willingness to kill Hitler might not matter. In my case, if not in yours, killing Hitler could very well result in an indirect version of the Grandfather Paradox. If my grandparents never married and had children – or married but had different children – then I would never have been born. And if I was never born, who traveled back in time and killed Hitler?
There are ways around this paradox depending on what time travel “rules” one goes with, but most of these wind up with my attempt to kill Hitler not actually preventing much death and destruction. I might just create an alternate world where WWII never happened (or happened differently), while our timeline remains the same. In a 12 Monkeys type scenario, it would be impossible for the past to be changed via time travel at all. A variation on this would be that it’s possible to change the specific details of the past, but history marches on in basically the same way.
You may need to brush up on how babby is formed. Another couple could not possibly have become his parents. Different parents would have produced a different child. Even TonySinclair’s actual parents would have produced a different child if conception had occurred at a different time.
Me, too. But, as I said in the other thread… oh, what the heck, I’ll just quote myself:
[QUOTE=me in the other timeline, I mean thread]
If killing Hitler would mean a world where everything was gummy bears and unicorns (which it wouldn’t, humans still being humans), but one where I would no longer exist because of the non-meeting of my grandparents, or whatever (which doesn’t really follow, time travel logic-wise, although I’d turn into a living ontological paradox, no longer having a cause), I’d still kill Hitler. I don’t value my own life over preventing the suffering of millions.
But if you said that it would cause the non-existence of a person I love (I have someone in particular in mind), then… I’d certainly hesitate. I don’t think my brain is made for that kind of decision.
[/QUOTE]
Or, to rephrase: I don’t mind sacrificing myself, even though it’s probably moot, thanks to the Grampa Hitler paradox. But there is someone else that I’m not really cool with removing from the universe.
Hmm. My father and grandmother fled the Soviets and escaped from Latvia as well, though we don’t know the transportation. They both spent at least three years in a single German DP camp until being sponsored by a Latvian Catholic congregation in Dallas, which helped them move there. My father subsequently joined the army, was stationed in Germany because he could speak the language, and then met my mother there.
I didn’t take this as a thread about whether you’d be willing to erase your own existence to kill Hitler, but as an offshoot of that - whether you’re alive because of the things Hitler set in motion. And if you are, you might not even be able to kill him, as Lamia pointed out.