1890. Adolf Hitler is a baby. You're yourself, just happen to live in a different time. You're the only person on earth to know what Hitler will become in the future. Trying to explain this to other people would be pointless, as no one would believe you. A perfect occasion comes about and you can kill Hitler while being unnoticed. Would you do it? Note: The topic is about the act now or never. Options like I'd become Hitler's mentor are out of the discussion's scope.

Yes No, I wouldn't be able to handle this morally No, I'd feel it's not my job to change the courses of history like that see voting resultssaving...
9 opinions, 6 replies
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100
User voted Yes.
3 votes
Feb 5, 2016

Yes because according to the question I would have lived during the time of Hitler and did not travel back in time. Therefore, I wouldn't have to worry about paradoxes and changing a future that has yet to be written.

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100
2 votes
Dec 31, 2015

No, I would not kill Hitler. It has nothing to do with whether I think I would be morally justified in killing someone who would later order the death of millions. I'm not a violent person. I'd be too nervous to get away with slipping poison in his food or drink, I would hesitate too long with a gun in my had and he'd probably take it away from me. A violent attack, like stabbing, strangling, etc. isn't really in me. Maybe I could kill someone in self-defense, but not as a premeditated act. If I'm just me as I am, but living in Hitler's time, that's what would stop me.

I'm not sure it would help anyway. Killing Hitler wouldn't change the rampant inflation and starvation that was occurring before Hitler took power. People were desperate for a leader who could fix things. Someone very much like him could have taken power instead of him. So even if I could bring myself to kill him, I'm not sure that it would be morally right to do so because the alternate outcome would be at best uncertain. The only sure way to prevent Nazi Germany, or something like it from happening, is to prevent the desperate circumstances that allowed Hitler to rise to power in the first place.

(This response has been edited in such a way that it has been rewritten entirely.)

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0
User voted No, I'd feel it's not my job to change the courses of history like that.
main reply
0 votes,
Feb 5, 2016

That's a nice opinion, but the topic has been updated (see the description) – feel free to update your op. or post another one.

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0
0 votes,
Feb 6, 2016

So people can change the question after it has been answered? How unusual. Why not just start a new post with the question rephrased? If I change my answer and the people who up-voted the old answer don't like the new answer, can they change their vote?

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100
User voted No, I'd feel it's not my job to change the courses of history like that.
1 vote,
Feb 6, 2016

The question hasn't been changed. A single sentence has been added to the description to define the topic better. Your original answer was out of the voting options' scope in the first place, and the update has been made just to make the topic clearer. Users can always change their vote.

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100
User voted Yes.
1 vote
May 6, 2016

I would kill him just to satisfy the curiosity of seeing what would happen after that, and witness the new course of history.

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100
1 vote
Aug 8, 2016

It is very hard to accept, but i would have killed him. We better lost one human life , not million's..

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50
2 votes
Jan 15, 2016

Read more sci-fi. Killing a person may not possibly change the course of the history much; if the circumstances are so anyone can be a bloodthirsty dictator, possibly even worse than the one you're targeting. In this specific case I suggest you read on Stalin, you'd be surprised how much similarities you'll find. And that's just the 1930s.

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0
User voted No, I'd feel it's not my job to change the courses of history like that.
0 votes
Dec 20, 2015

ww2 is a heavy lesson of what we should not to do, but, there is no way, to change 1 thing in the history chain without changing the others. Just answer urself do u really want to kill this world just to make justice in time?

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main reply
1 vote,
Dec 22, 2015

So: Hitler was actually good for the world because we have learned what not to do. It's good all those people died.

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100
User voted No, I'd feel it's not my job to change the courses of history like that.
3 votes,
Dec 22, 2015

There is no definitive proof that the world would've been better without Hitler. A minimal knowledge of history at the time will bring other potential, perhaps even greater threats to one's mind.

Let's say Hitler never existed - or that he died as an infant.

Japan, Italy, and let's not forget about Russia, probably were on their way to create WW2 sooner or later anyway.

And of course, the high ranked officers and politicians who were behind Hitler would still be in that Hitler-less world.

All the people involved with Nazi Germany still would have been Nazis. Obviously, someone else than Adolf Hitler would've taken the lead. Maybe the party's name would've have been different. Maybe some of their ideas would've been slightly different. But the core would still have been there. Hitler didn't come out of nowhere; his ideas and also his hatred were shared by many, many people in this region. This includes antisemitism. Hitler simply had a tremendous presence, was a formidable orator, and unearthed the people's anger. Nothing proves no one else could've done the same.

So, I don't believe a world without Hitler would've been better. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure if we would be able to talk so openly today if it would've been the case.

Hitler, despite being one of the most powerful men on the planet during the 30's and early 40's, was quite unstable as a human being and this affected everything he took control of. Including military decisions.

It can be assumed, on a certain scale at least, that Nazi Germany's defeat is the result of Hitler's unstability. Now imagine if someone like Erwin Rommel - who wanted to get rid of Hitler - would've had more control over Germany because Hitler wasn't there. Rommel was an experienced WW1 veteran, was an extremely cunning, mentally stable man, a great strategist, and his respect towards his enemies kept him from underestimating them.

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100
User voted No, I'd feel it's not my job to change the courses of history like that.
1 vote,
Dec 22, 2015

It's very hard to find a words, where just a little more spices of emotions can color ur answer to something very different from what do u mean. To be more clearly u can think that my answer based on the tv series "Steins gate". It's not 100% correctly, but proceed the same feelings.

imagine: you're back in time and killed a child, lets think, that a good circumstances happen and u stopped ww2. Whats next?
Lets come back to the current days.
Yes u save the world, u r a hero, congrats, but with all of this u change the future. That means that a lot of nowadays peoples have never born, the husbands and the wifes are never met and etc... This means that ur friends, ur gf/bf can never born... and so on, and u know what? there is no walls to hide in, by changing the future u kill all of them, not straightforward оf course, but there is no difference

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0
User voted No, I'd feel it's not my job to change the courses of history like that.
0 votes
Dec 22, 2015

first thing that came to my mind is Hellboy. But then i can't and i shouldn't change history. So let it be. Its better to live with the pain of knowing what will happen than to live with the pain of guilt.

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0
opinion
0 votes
Mar 1, 2016

I'd let the guy who denied his art studies disappear...

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0
User voted No, I'd feel it's not my job to change the courses of history like that.
0 votes
Oct 20, 2018

No, think about this, what if, as bad as Hitler was, he as the better than the alternative? Say instead of Hitler, we got Alfred, Alfred was smarter than Hitler, and because he was smarter he didn't make the mistakes Hitler did. So Germany didn't lose WWII because it was never fought, but slowly slowly Germany took over, Alfred still blamed the Jews, and killed them and many other who didn't agree with Alfred, only given there was no war, nobody would have stopped him.

Beside if time travel is possible then everything is preordained, and there would be NOTHING you could do it change it.

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