Poll: Would you time-travel and kill Hitler?

[Gilhelmi]

I would go and kill the Nazi party founder.

No, you do not know the consequences pf this action. The technological development that only war seems to be able to bring on (sad, but true), the odd chance that one of the murder victims would grow up to be worse then Hitler (very low 1-in-a-googlplex), us not having the fear of another world war (The Cold War would have became hot if we had not been exhausted of world wars, heck we did not even like small scale wars).

The consequences are just too unpredictable

 

[SturmDolch]

No. If Hitler died, an even more competent leader may have risen in the Nazis. One who wouldn't attack Russia.

Or it averts the second World War, Germany remains a third world country, and Japan is never nuked. Which would be terrible. And before you rush to your keyboards to proclaim me some racist, bigoted fool for saying that, I should probably explain. I don't like the idea of dropping the nuke on Japan. But it was a necessary evil. A nuke would have to be dropped somewhere to show the world the power of it. If Japan had not been nuked, the US and Russia may have been more likely to use them against each other. Without World War 2, the world might have had a full scale nuclear war.

Or something else happens. I wouldn't want to change anything.

 

[motyr]

To be honest, if it werent for WWII, chances are I wouldn't exist at this moment (long story about by grandparents), but, if i were to guarantee that the universe would not implode, and that there would be a world for me to time travel back to, I'd risk my birth so millions upon millions of people could potentially be spared a horrible death.

Now, to bring something up that hasn't been thought of, the OP stated that you would be snapped back to the present day after the job was completed. That isn't to say I wouldn't be able to kill Himmler, Goering, etc. first - Hitler's right-hand men who would take over as leader of the Nazi party after his death.

 

[Creator002]

Reminds me of the episode of the Twilight Zone when a lady goes back in time and kills the baby Hiter (and herself in the process). The housemaid who witnessed the murder buys another from a homeless woman and that grows up to be the Hitler we all know now.

OT: No. As others have said, it could make the outcome of WW2 even worse. Let history take its course and don't alter anything as best as possible. Better yet, if you discover the formula for time travel (or somehow aquire a machine), destroy it.

 

[Dragonforce525]

It's really the word time travel that makes people say no, and I agree, I wouldn't do it because I know how it ends, and knowing how it ends is better than hoping it all ends well, in our timeline it ends relatively well, good guys win, like many others have said and will say, what if killing Hitler results in more death?

 

[Imp Poster]

It is better to learn from history so that we may not repeat it. At least the bad parts of history.

 

[zxcxczczx]

I don't think I could kill someone.

I would be open to the idea of sending someone else however.

 

[spookydom]

My heart wants to go back and rip his entrailes out through his face and then staple him to the ceiling by his testicles. But my head remembers what hapened in Command and Conquer Red Alert.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

No. Imagine the present as on top of teetering tower of mismatched bits and pieces, remove any of them and the whole thing changes completely. Every single thing ever happened because of an exceedingly long and complicated chain of events, which is tied in with a separate, but equally long and complicated chain...

Basically, it wouldn't be worth it. Who knows what might be different?

 

[badgersprite]

Honestly, I think WWII would have happened with or without Hitler. Nazism wasn't some small isolated movement. In fact, if someone did go back and kill Hitler, I think it's equally likely that the war would have gone on LONGER since he was a speed addicted mess by the final years of the war and made really bad tactical decisions that left the Nazis vulnerable to Russian attack.

Wars like this are bigger than one man. Killing Hitler would likely alter history far less significantly than one might think, and it certainly wouldn't avert WWII. At most, it would just change when it happened.

 

[Mr.Petey]

"Time will tell. Sooner or later...time will tell"

Erm not really. Considering what happened during those turbulent 6 years of the war and the immediate effects after, it's too much a focal figure of human history to tamper with. Good or evil, prominent people like them played their part in history to shape it as it is now.

Then again I believe there was an episode of the twilight zone where someone tried to do that but even though they assume they succeeded, the replacement was still named adolf and went onto to do his evil deeds.
But that's the "time is impervious to change" paradox/theory which is a whole new can 'o worms

 

[Naheal]

No. Fucking with time is not something that I'm too keen on.

 

[Pips]

I wouldn't do it. Believe it or not, Hitler was not the worst person who could have assumed power. Under his leadership, the Nazis were terribly disorganised, and spent a great deal of their energy on in-fighting. If Hitler was dead/had never been born, the power vacuum would be filled by someone else, and they would possibly be even worse than he was. (A level history FTW!)

 

[Wildcard5]

I would not kill hitler because I have kind of taken a vow to not kill any human being. I take this vow very seriously.....

That and even if I did kill Hitler the Time Police would just get another Hitler out of the cloning facility...no point to kill him really...

 

[Muzzyloper]

Would I time travel and kill Hitler?

I already have.

But in all seriousness, I think time travel works a little like this: you aren't changing anything. You are traveling back in time, but the insane thing is, technically you've already been there. You going back in time has already happened in history and is affecting the present. It's a fictional concept, but it definitely makes writing about time travel a little easier, given paradoxes can't happen, but that's a whole different subject...

 

[Mr_Czar]

World War 2 caused the deaths of over 60 MILLION people. Surely, that's a pretty strong case for trying to stop it.

Not actually sure what I'd do though. Just playing devil's advocate somewhat.

 

[baseracer]

No. Have any of you played Red Alert?

 

[vehystrix]

Wait, no hitler means no rocket powered flight, so no space exploration, no sattelites, etc.
Also no jet planes, no color TV, no internet...

Think about it, the technological impact alone would reshape the world. All this assuming the war would never have happened.

Now there's the possibility that someone else would just have taken his place, and instead of a 5 year war we'd have gotten a much longer war, with years of stalemate in between conflicts, due to some better tactical insights on hitler's replacement.

So hell no, don't mess with time, never mess with time. Except if you're the doctor

 

[stygN]

Well, for the sheer slaughter of millions of innocent people, I guess so..

But for the war, no.

Just try to forget the horrible stuff that Germany did to the people they subjected and instead look at the war.

Yes, it was horrible, and so are all wars. But WW2 brought forth a multitude of technological achievements that can be used for good!

......... And, if you want to look at the very dark side of the history that never occurred.... Without Nazi-Germany it is most likely that Soviet-Russia would have attacked eastern Europe around 1942.

What would the world look like then?

Again, the senseless slaughter of innocent civilians: No go!

 

[Leemaster777]

Well, it seems like this topic has more or less proven what I had hoped.

I had hoped, while making this, that most people would realize that messing with time is a very, very bad idea, even ignoring the possible "you don't exist" thing.

See, science fiction is good for something after all.