Should Hitler have been aborted/murdered/otherwise killed before his rise to power?

[Combat Ingrid]

Instead of looking at Hitler, let's follow the life of Tim. Tim was going to live his life as a good innocent man. However, this guy named Hitler was killed by some time travellers and Tim suddenly found his life going in the wrong direction. Before he knew it, he was a dictator killing millions of people.
Therefore, the time travellers had to go back once more and kill Tim too, before he could commit these crimes.
Before he died, Tim told the time travellers it was not fair because if they didn't kill Hitler, they wouldn't have to kill him either

[Mercator]

If we could go back in time and change history any way we like (without any annoying paradoxes and all that) why should we even bother killing Hitler? We could make sure he gets accepted as the artist he started out to be. We could change the entire historical situation in Germany so the NSDAP wouldn't ever rise to power etc.

If we would ever set out to prevent WWII it can be done without killing anyone... Well, not directly anyway. The world would change so profoundly there's no telling how the future would be changed as a result.

[Al B. Sure!]

isn't there an episode of star trek similiar to this? and didn't the death of Hitler cause ridiculous problems...

[Zero]

some baby boomer generation might object to killing hitler, because what if there wasnt a war and ur pop didnt meet ur ma?

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by JohnT


Yes, a swastika made of hammers and sickles. That's nice.

And that its a great troll, as you yourself just proved

[Ramo]

Convincing him not to go about killing commies and Jews and gypsies and so forth and not be a crazy fascist would be the best option, but I'm not sure if that's possible. Short of that, if I had a time machine and knew with a reasonable degree of certainty that Hitler would be responsible for millions of murders, etc., etc., I would advocate locking him up for a very long time. If that's impractical, yes, he should've been killed.

This is the basis of a criminal justice system, folks. That's why people are locked up - to prevent them from hurting others. Since we don't have a magical system of determining who would do so such things before they actually do it, as in Minority Report, etc., we use whether or not they've been found guilty of doing bad stuff to predict their future behavior, and act accordingly.

[Lonestar]

No! Don't meddle with Time!

[Q Classic]

my religion believes that all life is sacred, and thus should not be terminated.

that said, i wouldn't mind if someone else did the dirty work...

[Dis]

only if it could be proven what he was about to do. But it can't

brings up the plot point in the movie- Minority report though.

[sprucemoose3311]

If we go back in time to kill hitler , we would fail. It is impossible for us to succeed because we did succeed we would not know hitler would have been a psycho. if we had failed to killed him before he was a psycho he would then go on to lead germany. The fact we know he became the leader of germany means that any assassinantion attempts by timetravelers have or would fail.

another way to state it: we cannot know to assassinate hitler unless he succeeded in his tyrannical actions, therefore any past, present, and future attempts to kill hitler have or will fail.

thats my belief, a linear timeline going from point a to b. however if you believe in a branching timeline...

[Az]

spruce: time doesn't have to flow in the same direction. AFAIK "cause and effect" are not neccessary.

[Dis]

I believe in branching timelines. That is the only way to make things work.

Say you go back to kill your father. Well obviously if you succeed you would not be born and cannot kill your father. This is why using one time line doesn't work.

Branching timelines is the only plausible way to make time travel work- if it can ever work at all.

When you go back in time you automatically create a new time line. From then on out everything that can happen from then on out can be changed/influenced in some way.

What happens to the original time line? Well it never exists. But that doesn't change the fact that you are a human being in 1936 germany. You are there, and nothing can change that.

[Zero]

Originally posted by Dissident


What happens to the original time line? Well it never exists. But that doesn't change the fact that you are a human being in 1936 germany. You are there, and nothing can change that.

so ur saying that timeline doesnt branch but only goes foward.