Hitler---should he live?

Question

You travel in a time machine. You meet Adolf Hitler while he is still a young man who has harmed no one. My question is do you:
1-try to convince him to change his future behaviors (in whatever way you think you can)
or
2-put a bullet in his head before he can harm anyone?

This topic has been argued many times in classes. I'm curious to see what people here think.

Answer 1

If the past is changed, what motivation do you have to travel back in time? This is a paradox and cannot be resolved.

Answer 2

As a practical matter, one coversation is exceedingly unlikely to change the core beliefs of a person. Unless you could somehow make the conversation an extremely formative event in Hitler's life (and if you can figure out how more power to you) it's probably going to be necessary to pick option 2. Of course you can also debate the possibility that someone as evil as Hitler would have taken over Germany (fairly unlikely IMHO) or that you'd get some weird paradox from the time travel (your grandmother would have run off with someone other than your grandfather except for the fact that that person was shot in the Ardennes, etc...)

Answer 3

If it hadn't been Adolf Hitler it would have been somebody else. There were many things influencing the world situation at the time like:
- The rise of totalitarian leaders
- The tendency towards social engeneering
- Worldwide economic depression, the doubts about how good Capitalism was and the new alternative of Socialism
- Germany's need of national pride due to the treatment they received by the League of Nations after WWI

Answer 4

This is a very difficult answer... He would have to live. Although he killed most of my family, I feel that WWII would have still happened and that a different leader may still make decisions that Hitler did.

The world is a different place now than it was 70 years ago. One can argue that many of our advances since Hitler came to power have been sparked out of what his supporters did. Our goal of world peace tries to overshadow hate and oppression in all forms... our main rally point is that we do not want to repeat the horrors of the past whilst we work to a better future.

Answer 5

I'm sorry, but i would have to say 2. Because he killed OVER 6 MILLION people. That is totally wrong. Every time i watch movies about it in class i start crying because there are so many people that he tortured, even children! They died a long, hard death. Some people tell me that he was trying to make the world better. He was stupid to even think about that. That's one of the main reasons why we started WWII. I know some students in my class draws Nazi signs on their desks. It makes me sick. But the wierd thing is, that sign actually means peace. I didn't know that until someone told me a few months ago. But most people don't look at it like that.

I hope i helped. Bye!

Answer 6

Without a doubt I would not kill him. His killing of the jews, which was terrible completely changed life as we know it, if he had been killed, our world wouldn't have been the same. As well even if he had commited all those atrocities, and was dying, it would be my duty as a human being to help him, no matter how much I hated the guy. I'm brown too, so he wouldn't feel the same as me, but that doesn't matter. You don't refuse people's right to live no matter how much they have done to have it revoked, because you don't have the authority to take someone else's life. As well as the fact that you may not exist to kill him had he been killed, and you'd create a predestination paradox where you'd keep on being born over and over, with no memory of anything, and keep killing him, then being reborn. Either that or you'd create two divergent universes, which isn't good, and it wouldn't affect your reality in any way, just make a new reality.

Answer 7

Interesting set up. Since he has not done anything, the prudent man could not do anything. Nor should he.

The time traveler would change the face of the earth by killing him before the horrible fate that awaits the millions slaughtered. These people would then live and the world as we know it today would be different.

So, unfortunately, he should live to his fate.

Answer 8

Seeing as it's all hypothetical...

What if one of the six million people killed by Hitler would have turned in to something worse than Hitler had he lived, and killed 12 million Americans?

Answer 9

yes, cause if he didnot commit atrocities someone else would, atrocities are being commited everyday,but fox news does not show it, look up falon gong and how chinese are being tortured today for meditating, there are some grusome torture pictures online, hell we the us are violating the geneva conventions and torturing others, if you want to go back and time and prevent destruction at least make it something with more people who died, like kill Stalin, he killed so many more than hitler did and actually succeeded, in exterminating whole races,read gulag by anne applebaum

Answer 10

The right thing to do is number 1 or else you became like Hitler...
And there is something else I would like to say:there are not only 6 million Jews that he killed, there are lots of other,like gipsies and other nationalities that noone remembers...strange!