Would you kill baby Adolf?

[David]

I thought this was rather amusing:

http://www.vox.com/2015/11/9/9698394/jeb-bush-killing-baby-hitler

[think positive]

i scumbag to save how many good and bad people? too easy

[David]

Too easy!? We're talking about a baby here. How would you kill him?

The question is not just whether or not you think it's a good idea. Would you actually be able to follow through on it once you were there?

[Tannin]

Of course not.

Hitler didn't cause all those bad things to happen, he was simply the leader of the social dynamic which caused all those bad things. Strangle Hitler in his cradle and there would have been a different leader: maybe a less effective one (good!), maybe a more effective one (bad!).

Do you feel lucky? Lucky enough to commit one of the worst of all possible crimes (strangling an innocent baby) in the hope (pure guesswork on your part!) that it would (a) change history and (b) change it for the better?

Think it through. Who would have led the Nazi Party instead? Goering? Himmler? Eichmann? Goebells? Bormann? Or some other equally evil individual?

You might find it difficult to imagine a leader being even more of a monster than Hitler: that's a failure of your imagination, not a guarantee of anything. There were more evil individuals in Nazi Germany than Hitler, plenty of them. Start with Himmler and list them from there.

Or you might imagine a leader like Hitler in most respects but lacking that peculiar magic personal quality Hitler had. (Hitler had incredible charisma. It doesn't show in films or speeches or even in transcripts of his conversations, but in person he had a unique ability to persuade otherwise sensible people that he, Hitler, was the absolute dog's nuts. Even intelligent, hard-nosed, relatively liberal people like Erwin Rommel were taken in by him, converted overnight into loyal supporters - and Rommel was nobody's fool.)

So suppose that the non-Hitler Nazi leader lacked that ability (as is almost certain). Does that mean that the Nazis could not have come to power? Of course it doesn't! If that was true, then all those other fascist regimes in history would have failed to gain power too - none of them had a Hitler, he was unique. And they didn't. Plenty of examples to learn from here: start with Spain, Italy, and Portugal. None of them had Hitler; they were all just as evil. (It is lucky for the world that of these four countries led by equally evil regimes, only Germany had the economic and thus military might to cause continent-wide terror. The others were either promptly defeated in battle like Italy or too weak to cause more than terrible local loss of life like Spain and Portugal.)

Possibly - possibly not certainly - the Nazi regime would have been less terrible without its most charismatic leader. Most likely not though: the examples we have of other similar regimes provide no cause for confidence. And possibly it would have been even worse: under Hitler the Nazis enjoyed overwhelming majority support right up until a few months before the end of the war, remember: if they had been unpopular with their own people as early as, say, 1942 who can guess what horrible things they would have done to remain in power? Well, Mussolini could guess for one example. Salazar for another. Franco for a third.

And worst of all, what if the not-Hitler Nazi leader was a bit milder, a bit less insane, not quite the megalomaniac Hitler was? Remember how very, very reluctant England and France were to oppose the Nazis? It took years before the appeasement policy of leaders like Chamberlin was reluctantly abandoned. Even then, it took another two years and the horrors of Pearl Harbor before the Americans got involved. A tiny bit less aggression from the Nazis, a little more patience, and appeasement could have lasted forever - and in that case the Nazi regime would in all likelihood be still in force today. Franco's fascist regime lasted until 1975, remember, and Salazar's until 1974, and both of these were in fairly poor countries compared to mighty Germany.

Most of all, only an especially power-mad maniac (i.e. Hitler) could have been so stupid as to invade the friendly Soviet Union in 1941. Almost anyone else would have seen the lunacy of that mad-dog policy. And it was the Soviet Union - far, far more than any other country - which defeated the Nazis. It was the Soviet Union which had the will to endure tens of millions of casualties, to fight the Nazis not matter what the cost, and win. The Nazis used four times as many troops and guns and aircraft against the Soviets as they did against France, the British Commonwealth, and the USA combined and the Soviets were still the first to march into Berlin and end the war.

Without Hitler's stupidity, we could not have won the war. We could not even have come close. Without Hitler, it is entirely possible, even likely, that the Nazis would still be in power in Europe today.

Don't touch that baby! He probably saved your arse!

[David]

While there would certainly have been fascism without Hitler, is it fair to say that he played a key role in the development of the uniquely German anti-semitic national socialism? That he had enthusiastic acolytes is unquestionable, but would they have pursued Jews as doggedly without Mein Kampf ?

You're much better versed in history than I am; do you think there would have been a Holocaust without Hitler? I honestly have no idea.

[Wokko]

I'd rather not risk Stalin streaming his tanks into Paris. The world was lucky to have two almost equal opposing evils in the 1940s, better to not take out either of them.

[3.14159]

[David]

A small sacrifice to pay for saving millions of people from horrible deaths, though (based on the hypothetical that getting rid of Hitler would have prevented the Holocaust and possibly WW2)?

[Wokko]

World War 2 would've been UK/France/USA (Weimar Germany would've been steamrolled by the USSR) vs USSR instead. You then have Japan to think about too; would the Western Allies have courted Imperial Japan to attack Russia from the East? Too many variables even in the absence of Tannin's scenario where Nazi Germany still exists under a more competent leader to say that Hitler's non existence would lead to a 'greater good'.

Here's an example of Stalin's genocides:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

While not 'genocide', the Soviet Union killed of a whole 'class', imagine the middle class massacres that could've happened in Western Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization

Hitler was a lightweight compared to the early USSR.

[HAL]

of a whole 'class' imagine the middle class massacres that could've happened in Western Europe was killed?

[stui magpie]

No for me.

Start with everything Tannin said and then go on from there.

Going back in time and changing things could have serious unintended ramifications. Firstly you'd skew the timeline off into an alternate one where the present as you know it doesn't exist. Everything we have and know now would be up for grabs going back over 100 years.

Millions of lives MAY be saved, but more millions may be lost. There's no way of knowing what the consequences could be.

Ever heard of the butterfly effect? Magnify that big time.


The past is the past. It's happened. If you see Marty and the Doc firing up the delorean, let the tires down.

[Morrigu]

Depends on how much and how loudly he cries!

[think positive]

Ehahahaha winner!

[Jezza]

It's going slightly off-topic from the question that David has posed but I always wonder had the events of Versailles in 1919 been different this may have actually prevented Hitler from attaining so much power and influence in Germany in the first place.

Much of the problems that Germany experienced during the hyperinflation period in Weimar Germany and later the depression period which began to coincide with the rise of fascism was allegedly traced back to this treaty according to Hitler which he used as a platform to garner support from the general populace in Germany.

That's not to say that Hitler didn't have radical views as it was but the meeting certainly gave him the perfect platform to espouse his beliefs and later enforce them throughout Germany where many citizens were disillusioned especially after the Great Depression that impacted Germany severely.

[5150]

Only if killing baby Adolf did not alter the time line until after 1930. I don't want anything to take away our four premierships.

Maybe not kill baby Adolf (I'm sure he would have been a cute kid in his specs...) maybe kidnap him in his teens and ship him to NZ. If he become good at music or cricket, we could claim him as Aussie Adolf.

Everybody wins...