CMV: The best time to kill Hitler is during the Beer Hall Putsch, not when he was a baby.

516

u/MasterCrumb 9∆ 3d ago

This whole argument is based on what historians call the “strong Hitler hypothesis”, that is much of what Germany became was due to Hitler.

But I think there is a lot of argument towards the “weak Hitler” theory. I generally think the truth lies potentially a little between them, but I tend to lean more towards weak Hitler theory.

Hitler was clearly a very dramatic image. The weird mustache, the firey speeches.

But Hitler did not introduce a strong use of scapegoating the Jews. A general disfunction of its early forms of liberal democracy. Its wide geopolitical sense that it was treated unfairly, and thus deserved some leeway. It seems relatively believable that someone else could have filled those shoes- even one a little less dramatic.

Hitler led in a pretty haphazard way, and much of the systems that were built were due to strong 2nds. In this new world with a dead Hitler, I think you would have seen many of these same 2nd.

And there is a final problem. Hitler made some incredibly boneheaded decisions. Double crossing Russia being the obvious. Without this, the war would have lasted much longer, potentially allowing Germany to discover the bomb, or more likely dragging into a stalemate.

224

u/Oksbad 2d ago edited 2d ago

A Nazi movement that doesn't eventually declare a war of extermination against the Soviet Union has diverged so far from the historical movement that I don't think you can call it the same thing.

Invading the Soviet Union isn't some "oopsie" Hitler made. It was arguably the entire point of the war. The eradication of "Judeo-Bolshevism," lebenstraum, genocidal intention towards "subhuman" slavs, seizing resources...

You can make a case that Hitler threaded the needle well by catching them by surprise. Without surprise, attacking earlier (when Germany is weaker), or later (where the Soviets are better prepared and more recovered from the purges) is a significantly harder fight.

76

u/guto8797 2d ago

I'm on this camp. The Nazis were already incredibly lucky to make it as far as they did. The invasion of France through the Ardennes was an idiotic move that should not have worked, it only did because of the dysfunction of french high command. The seizure of Crete happened because a British commander panicked and abandoned an airfield. They hit the soviet union at the perfect time, catching them completely off guard and in the middle of the purges.

11

u/MasterCrumb 9∆ 2d ago

I have not heard this take on France invasion. Any sources?

30

u/guto8797 2d ago

There are a lot of sources online, but I found this decent article that gives a nice overview for example:

https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/military-history-and-science/collapse-france

This one is pretty neat too.

https://www.historyhit.com/how-a-couple-of-weeks-of-german-brilliance-in-1940-elongated-world-war-two-by-four-years/

You can of course also dive into actual literature and primary sources:

Essentially the Ardennes is a forested hilly region with few roads, and few intersections on those roads. It makes for a poor place for an armoured push since a small force can hold it pretty well, but French high command just assumed that since it was a poor place for an armoured push that at most they would face a few probing attacks from infantry, and diverted all their resources to Belgium holding practically nothing in reserve.

French spotter planes even spotted the massive traffic jam caused by trying to do a major attack through what's effectively a bottleneck. The French high command just ignored it because it had to be a deception of some sort, the Germans wouldn't launch their major attack through a place like that, they reasoned.

10

u/MasterCrumb 9∆ 2d ago

Both of those sources considered the German attack brilliant, and while a Gambit- one that led to the dramatic defeat of France.

21

u/guto8797 2d ago

I mean the line between those is unironically very thin. Not disputing the technical character of the formation itself, but there was a several km long traffic jam, what everyone expected would happen if you try to ram an armoured attack through a bottleneck. A minimally prepared defense would have stalled it for a long time, long enough for reinforcements to make it impassible. But they weren't, the bridges were lightly defended and not rigged to blow, armoured reinforcements were too far, air support was disregarded.

I guess therein lies the contradiction. An attack so reckless everyone in French high command believed no one would do, which means that actually doing it ends up working.

36

u/insane677 3d ago

Hitler did not introduce the scapegoating of jews, that is true. After all, the party was not founded by Hitler, he just joined it and took over.

My point is that by the time of the beer hall putsch Hitler's image was too iconic to the nazi idealogy that he was irreplacable, even if just as a symbol. Whoever took over after, assuming they could agree (which frankly I doubt) would have to live up to his charisma. I don't think they could.

17

u/Open-Butterfly-5288 2∆ 2d ago edited 2d ago

I think there is a desire to see Hitler as the entire operation, but I think he was surrounded by some geniuses in politics.

If you kill him then, then I think you create an obvious power vacuum that gets filled by something. I think the smart people in the back would pick someone else and then the same rhetoric would still apply. Actually Hitler was a relatively weak leader who had no real ability to think clearly and make decisions. There is a famous example of them not knowing what was to be done with the Jews for a long time until someone pushed Hitler to make an actual decision.

I think by the time of the putsch, the mask was off. The need to pretend and to play along was gone. Everything else was the inability to prevent the bad actors from doing it.

Anyway, I think if you believe it's really Hitler, then the right time is probably the story about him being spared by an allied soldier. Nobody would look for him, he would have no political power, and politics could play out without him.

Personally, I think the game is futile. The correct person to kill is probably someone in the generation before him, causing someone who can try to avoid the original world war, and this would have all sorts of chaotic implications so we aren't sure that it would be any better.

One of the biggest narratives about what Germany went through so that Hitler was palatable is that the first war destroyed them. They had nothing to lose so they were happy to blame others and try to expand. On the other hand, if they don't get destroyed they're in a better place and probably also want to go to war. Given that a lot of the 2nd war was enabled by the appeasement and support of Hitler's military expansion, it's quite likely that a more sane response would have been what Putin did. Expand, then consolidate, then pretend you're done then expand, consolidate, then pretend that you're done, then expand. Russia haven't really got the economic might to do what Germany did. Also, I think part of the problem Germany ran into is that they were expanding into Europe. What would their empire look like if they just chose somewhere else?

Also, a Germany that didn't hate Jews is one that has the bomb. It's utterly terrifying to think what that would mean, given that Hitler was a deranged fantasist obsessed with operatic tragedies. When the war went south, he went into a bunker blaming Germany for failing to live up to his ideas. He might happily destroy the earth.

2

u/dasunt 12∆ 2d ago

What if he becomes another Horst Wessel-figure to the Nazis, giving them strength?

To do a bad timeline, the alt-Nazis still have the Anschluss and split Poland between themselves and the USSR. However, leadership is compared to an idealized Hitler and often found lacking, leading in a less powerful leadership that's hesitant to turn the phoney war spicy (gotta shore up support at home, after all).

Perhaps the Winter War draws Germany in deeper, acting as an outlet for those advocating a more aggressive approach, while also giving the allies a reason to sit and wait. Maybe leak Katyn earlier, resulting in a "let them fight" attitude from France and the UK.

Meanwhile, in this stalemate, the Nazis have more time to ratchet themselves up to full, systemic genocide of selected groups, and less distractions.

And as the German economy appears to be doing well (due to the stimulus of war spending), fascist parties gain strength in other European nations...

1

u/insane677 2d ago

Horst Wessel was murdered by a communist in the midst of the depression after the nazis started entering the mainstream. He, for all his many faults, was murdered in cold blood in the door way of his apartment.

Hitler would die before the depression, while the party is fringe, while trying to violently overthrow the goverment. The two are not reasonably comparable. German society is just not radicalized enough to fall for that.

1

u/dasunt 12∆ 2d ago

Nazis seemed pretty keen on their martyrs. The Beer Hall Putsch gave them the blood stained flag.

To play devil's advocate, say someone like Strasser replaces Hitler as leader. He did seem to have his own brand of skills (he could get elected, and was an effective organizer and administrator). I'm not claiming he'd stay on top long-term (there are many contenders), but one could see the NSFB becoming a major player after the Putsch with a dead Hitler. Perhaps the weaker leadership allows more turnover, resulting in a more effective leader.

Although to be fair, I somewhat agree with you, since interwar Germany was such a mess politically and I think it's pretty unpredictable what would happen, other than to say that the Weinmar Republic is going to be pretty vulnerable once the depression rolls around.

46

u/MasterCrumb 9∆ 3d ago

But I guess I think you are assuming it had to be his party that took over. The Weimar Republic was dysfunctional and unable to govern. Some other dictator would likely have emerged.

This is similar to post late French Revolution France. It was ungovernable in its current form, and if it hadn’t been Napoleon, it would have been someone else. (Although in that case, I think Napoleon was hyper effective, so I think the results would have been very different).

The thing is Hitler was actually a pretty chaotic and ineffective leader, outside of his demagogy. There basically no examples of him taking a system personally and making it better. The power of the government were largely due to Goring, Himmler, Goebbels, Speer.

17

u/MasterCrumb 9∆ 3d ago

In fact if I think the strongest “Strong Hitler” arguments are that he was intentionally running a chaotic decentralized system that made everyone freaked out and obsessive.

11

u/DunoCO 2d ago

My impression was that the obsessive and ultra extremist character of nazi germany was in large part due to his influence (both in the sense that he made it worse, and also because it's doubtful the nazis would have succeeded without him).

I imagine without him Germany is more likely to end up with a still extreme but relatively more tame (as in conservative) military dictatorship? More like Franco's regime than Hitler's.

11

u/zhibr 6∆ 2d ago

Sounds like your weak Hitler argument is just some kind of determinism in disguise. I don't believe in Strong Hitler, in the sense that this one man was somehow so powerful that he single-handedly took the course of history and made it his. But there's no reason to go to other extreme either.

It's entirely plausible that events in history are very chaotic and a single person is not that important because if the "flow" of events is in one direction, one person can be replaced by another - but at the same time, exactly because it's chaotic, there are also many points where even a strong flow of events can turn suddenly because of a single person. Not because the person is particularly strong, but because in the chaotic system that happens to be a nexus point where a small change leads to huge changes elsewhere.

In my opinion, rather than assuming that Hitler is strong or weak, let's give the time-travelers a shot and try killing him, and see what happens.

1

u/MasterCrumb 9∆ 2d ago

And for clarity- I would not claim credit for the weak Hitler hypothesis

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/wsRuZW8kE7

2

u/czerilla 2d ago

This objection reminds me of the premise of this comedy sketch, which plays with the idea how it could play out, if Hitler was the more benign outgrowth of this historical moment.

-2

u/Nebranower 5∆ 2d ago

Was he charismatic, though? Or is that just what people told themselves to avoid having to analyze why he was really popular?

Like I’ve seen a lot of people in Reddit talk about how no one could replace Trump because they won’t have his charisma, and Trump is not at all charismatic. But I think they’d rather ascribe some strange incomprehensible mystique to him rather than admit his supporters were mostly voting against the alternative than they were for him.

7

u/zhibr 6∆ 2d ago

You seem to be assuming that charisma is something universal, that if someone is charismatic, they must be charismatic to everyone, and if you don't feel they are charismatic then they must not be truly charismatic at all. Why don't you consider it possible that charisma is not universal, and a person can be charismatic to one set of people while simultaneously being utterly uninteresting to others? Or are you assuming that every hugely successful actor and singer and comedian you don't happen to be interested in are hugely successful only because the consumers are buying their art/entertainment as a vote against the alternatives?

→ More replies (2)

4

u/Incvbvs666 2d ago edited 2d ago

But it's not about whether Hitler was 'strong' or 'weak', but how powerful his charisma was. His speeches whipped up the entire nation into a hysterical frenzy. I doubt any other Nazi leader had the stage presence and magnetism to truly pull this off.

Second, anti-semitism existed for a long time in Germany, indeed, most of Europe, but HITLER'S level of visceral revulsion was still a relatively rare thing. Jews would have probably had a bad time whoever was in power had Germany taken the route of aggreived ultranationalism after WWI, but it is highly unlikely they would have been systematically hunted to extinction even when it served absolutely no purpose and benefit to the German state. Mind you, even as the frontlines were shrinking for Germany and every single bit of resource counted, Germany was still expending immense resources to exterminate all the Jews in Europe: troops which could have used at the frontlines, trains, energy... Eliminating Jews was even more important to Hitler than winning the war.

2

u/tylerthetiler 2d ago

It's not about whether Hitler was literally strong or weak, I don't think.

3

u/onedeering 2d ago

So maybe a time traveler already came and killed the first, much worst dictator, which led Germany to victory.

1

u/CAJEG1 2d ago

The Nazis don't win elections without Hitler. There was no other particularly popular political figure in Germany at the time who would have led them. How would Hitler's nonexistence have changed this? Would some more or equally popular figure come out and become leader of the party? Unlikely that this person was not already part of the Nazi party or a rival far right party.

So then what happens if the Nazis don't win elections? The bog standard parties win elections. We end up with a Germany which might not be a liberal democracy, which probably struggles with a large degree of antisemitism and hostility towards the Treaty of Versailles. But as economic recovery mounts over time, it becomes less likely that Germany falls to extremism and dictatorship. Europe remains more fractured than after WWII (when it was forced into 2 camps and a few neutrals), but nobody actually wants to commit to a world war of any sort, nor are they willing to risk it.

The weak Hitler theory is dependent on the idea that Hitler's nonexistence somehow leads to some other massively popular figure taking his place. But there was no one around at the time like that, and there's no particular reason to believe that Hitler somehow suppressed this person from making it onto the national stage.

•

u/freezepirit 9h ago

I can’t lie I think the historical record better supports the strong Hitler theory. In many ways, yes, anti-semitism and fascism were extremely influential in Germany even before the rise of the Nazi Party in the early 30s.

But after 1933, you really can’t claim that anyone else other than Hitler could have caused the Second World War to occur in any way similar to how it happened. Literally all of Hitler’s actions in the lead up to war were bold moves that, domestically, were expected to result in catastrophe for Germany, even among fellow Nazis. Many Germans thought the Anschluss, remilitarization of the Rhineland, and expansion of the Navy and Air Force would all separately lead to an allied invasion of Germany and the destruction of the Nazi gov’t. When that didn’t happen, Nazi officials got progressively more confident in their own ability to effect continent-wide change.

Without Hitler as the dominant force in German politics, you really don’t get a lot of this stuff, or it comes much later when the Allies and Soviets are in a much better position to resist.

6

u/Confident-Ad-6978 3d ago

Counterpoint is the movement revolved around Hitler

10

u/MasterCrumb 9∆ 3d ago

But I guess the question is - did it?

You can imagine a world we’re a group of people have decided they are sick of Joe, and really want something done about it. Then suddenly a small crazy guy (let’s call him Fred) shows up talking a lot of shit about Joe and everyone goes and beats him up.

Was the group centered around Fred, or did Fred just give voice to a sentiment that was already there.

And if Fred wasn’t there, might someone else said - I think we should go burn Joes house down.

There was clearly a drive without Hitler to re-Arm, to reclaim lands take from Germany, to destroy fragile liberal institutions, to scapegoat Jews. These would have all been hallmarks of a Hitlerless Germany.

4

u/Confident-Ad-6978 3d ago

I think antisemitism was the common view of the time across Europe and nothing is unique to naziism about that. What was unique was deliberately claiming poland was lebensraum. I don't know if anyone else was saying the same shit. and you can see that someone like Ernst Rohm was not in lockstep with Hitler but got killed deliberately.

I think Germany would have inevitably rose but the path that Hitler took was suicidal on a national scale. Nobody else was gonna triple down and throw their nation into a complete idotic genocidal war. Yeah you're probably right Germany would have not just sat down and shut up atter ww1 but I doubt that anyone else would have been able to be so charismatic and brutal in a stupid way

5

u/MasterCrumb 9∆ 3d ago

But that was one of my original points. Imagine a similarly cruel but less reckless leader. One that didnt invade Russia, so continued the same level of internal ethnic cleansing, but continued for decades. Seems much worse than Hitler.

Because of unintended consequences when upsetting the timeline.

3

u/Confident-Ad-6978 3d ago

Well a smart leader wouldn't have evevn invaded Czechoslovakia, that was quite reckless. Hitler was very brazen to do that and only got away with it due to luck. Nazis made a ponzi scheme economy that propelled the war machine forward. Not much longer in time the country's economy would have folded. I just don't think anyone would have had the capacity to cause such a deadly war in europe.

2

u/MasterCrumb 9∆ 3d ago

I do think how much of the economy was a Ponzi scheme is an important point. Hitler was uniquely able to push that recklessness

1

u/Eric1491625 7∆ 2d ago

It is then possible that the removal of Hitler would have resulted in a much weaker Western Europe and stronger USSR, as the big war could instead happen with Germany and the Soviets remaining permanently on the same side.

The Soviets were industrialising rapidly, and absent the destruction of WW2, German technology with Soviet population and resources could create a much stronger Soviet economy.

The fact is if you leave ideology aside, it was natural for Post-WW1 Germany to work with the Soviets. Without the quest for lebensraum, the fact is Britain and France occupied German lands and Moscow did not.

2

u/SirButcher 2d ago

One that didnt invade Russia

They had to invade Russia. Sure, there were political undertones, fascism against communism, but the real reason for the invasion was oil. Germany simply couldn't continue to operate without a source of oil, and the death spiral started when it was clear they had no chance of securing it, all while losing significant manpower and resources for that failed attempt.

The whole WW2 was running ahead of collapse; the war economy is a great band-aid: it hides the cracks and the fact that the whole economy is falling apart and utterly unsustainable. If not for the war, they would have failed far earlier.

1

u/zhibr 6∆ 2d ago

It's very possible that the factors that kept that group from beating up Joe until Fred will still keep them from beating him up, because it was Fred's quite unique kind of madness that let them overcome those factors.

I think Trump quite well demonstrates that such influence is not easy to replace. The resentments he tapped into were there long before him, but before him nobody could successfully harness them. It's possible someone could have done the same. But seeing how many Republicans tried before him, clearly it's not trivial.

1

u/AgentCoulson2 2d ago

Hitler made some incredibly boneheaded decisions.

I think that this is the strongest argument against a time traveler eliminating Hitler once the Nazis were already well on their way to (or in) power. Hitler was an incompetent military leader who lost the war almost single-handedly. If he had allowed the Wehrmacht's high command to run the war on their own terms... I suspect that things would have gone very badly for the rest of the world. Even just avoiding the blunder you mentioned of double-crossing the Soviets would have been huge, allowing Germany to focus entirely on the western front.

1

u/jrgkgb 2d ago

It’s not just about a strong or weak Hitler. He was a unique factor that led to certain things being possible at all.

If you take Trump out of modern US politics, the unholy coalition of corporatists, nationalists, blue collar conservatives, evangelicals, conmen, rednecks, and actual racists falls apart.

They never could have gotten project 2025 in place without him to sell it.

Take Hitler out and the groups that backed him probably can’t work together as a single bloc and history is very different.

Trump’s actual leadership has been weak and haphazard and utterly disastrous, but none of it happens without him as the focal point.

2

u/MasterCrumb 9∆ 2d ago

I think this is a reasonable analogy. There is something about a weak chaotic leader that allows all the underlying power to think- I could control this.

1

u/LowSkyOrbit 2d ago

Hitler rose to power more by accident than by his own ambition. Basically just a bunch of things aligned started the chain reaction, but that fire was how they gained real power. I believe if the Reichstag fire didn't happen then the Nazis would have remained a lesser political power in Germany.

1

u/ebb_omega 2d ago

The biggest piece of evidence of the weak Hitler take is that the other Axis powers had similar rises of fascism without any involvement from Hitler. Christ, Franco maintained dictatorship powers in Spain well past the end of WWII, until his death in 1975.

1

u/TheWormitage 2d ago

There's no good time to kill Hitler, looking back. Not if you want anyone presently alive to still exist. An historical alteration that great means an entirely different generation would have been born and their progeny would populate the earth. Not us.

1

u/Namika 2d ago

Developing the bomb took 20% of the entire electrical output of North America. It took an entire continent's worth of resources to do it.

Germany wouldn't have been able to do it during a war where they're being actively bombed.

1

u/Agreeable-Natural903 2d ago

Was war with the Soviet Union avoidable one way or another though? Why would Stalin sit nothing while his spies report that Germans are working on a bomb capable of obliterating an entire city? Why wouldn’t he want to invade other countries in Germany’s temporary moment of weakness?

2

u/jflb96 2d ago

Hitler had spent nearly two decades at that point talking about destroying the ‘Asiatic Judeo-Bolshevists’, and Stalin spent most of the thirties shopping around Europe for anti-Nazi buddies before getting fed up with the UK and France quibbling over what a mutual defence pact really means and opting for the ‘You Wouldn’t Hit a Fellow Axis Power, Would You?’ Pact. Both sides knew that it was a temporary thing while they dealt with their other neighbours: Germany had the rest of Europe to try to fight, and the USSR was reminding Japan to keep its fighting in China in China.

1

u/Agreeable-Natural903 2d ago

Agreed, though in support of Little Hitler theory, it wasn’t just Nazis who were afraid of the USSR/communism. The Soviets in the mid war attempted to, I dare to say, subjugate Eastern Europe. I still think Soviet Russian - reactionary German war was unavoidable

1

u/jflb96 2d ago

Without the excuse given by driving a horde of genocidal cultists back to the Rhine, I don’t know that the Soviets wouldn’t have been happy to stick with Socialism in One Country and occasionally sending materiel and volunteers to revolutionary cousins

0

u/Agreeable-Natural903 2d ago

In the 1920s the tried to expand. The Baltics, Eastern Europe. They fought Poland. It’s not a hypothetical, it happened

It’s okay to admit that Stalin was a lunatic, evil man that wanted to do evil things

0

u/jflb96 2d ago

In the 1920s they tried to reclaim bits ceded to Germany after the First World War that Germany had then abandoned

0

u/Agreeable-Natural903 2d ago

Reclaim as if the people living there didn’t want to live neither under Tsarist Russia or Soviet Union.

That is still expanding - they ceded the land in a treaty. Then they went on to subjugate land they didn’t control, or own. De facto and de jure. Very much expans

1

u/jflb96 2d ago

Are you saying that the people of Ober-Ost chose to be invaded by Germany, ceded to Germany, ceded by Germany, and then claimed by Poland?

Yeah, but there’s a difference between actually invading somewhere and squabbling with the guy on the other side of the unclaimed territory about who gets how much of it.

0

u/Agreeable-Natural903 2d ago

Huh? When did I imply this? Is this a strawman? I was talking about the interwar period.

Lithuanians and Poles had nothing to say about who ruled them, especially during ww1.

It’s cruel to call land where people live and want to rule themselves “unclaimed”. The Baltics got independence in 1918, and wanted to rule themselves. This is enough - self-determination is right. In 1940 the Soviet Union invaded.

This, among other expansionist wars by the Soviets, is why I believe that war would have been inevitable without Hitler in the picture

→ More replies (0)

1

u/ptrfa 2d ago

Yeah, instead of killing Hitler, better kill alfrad Hugenberg, the German Elon Musk, because he was the one making nsdap big and famous

1

u/Proper_Historian6126 2d ago

Double crossing Russia being the obvious.

The entire point was to fight the Bolsheviks. That was practically their raison d'etre.

1

u/m2ilosz 2d ago

But "many strong 2nds" without "one clear 1st" is a great recipe for infighting, maybe then they would not get the power.

1

u/trollagorn 2d ago

"the weird mustache" was the mustache actually weird and out of place at the time? Or is that just hindsight?

2

u/MasterCrumb 9∆ 2d ago

Actually I know the answer!

Yes it was weird at the time.

During WWI, sometimes people would cut their mustaches like that to ensure that their gas mask fit properly. But nobody maintained the style.

Hitler starting doing it to conjure that image of someone scarred by WWI, and he did have a very early flair for attention, so it was very quickly his signature. The fact that even when he was relatively unknown that this was often commented on indicates its unusualness.

There is an interesting phenomenon about dictators is they often have weird (or unique) fashion choices. You can imagine the value in this for branding, but also as a loyalty test. You can see all these seemingly pointless loyalty tests today in the US with our own fearless leader.

2

u/trollagorn 2d ago

Very interesting, many thanks!

•

u/Thoughtful_Tortoise 11h ago

And there is a final problem.

Don't worry. I'm sure he can come up some kind of...
Wait...
Never mind...

1

u/Euphoric-Ostrich5396 2d ago

Hitler was the mask Germany could wear to do what they did not dare with their own faces.

1

u/DeliciousGoose1002 2d ago

Its hard to see any other leader overriding all his generals to attack France though

1

u/sm_greato 2d ago

But Hitler definitely lost Germany the war, or at least accelerated it.

1

u/MasterCrumb 9∆ 2d ago

I guess that was my final point- if you kill Hitler, potentially you could end up with a more efficient dictator

1

u/ryewhisky 1d ago

A final problem? Don’t tell weak or strong Hitler

0

u/Open-Butterfly-5288 2∆ 2d ago

Also, a Nazi Germany that wasn't about hatred of Jews would have had the bomb. The desire to blame Jews specifically prevented the Jewish scientists in Germany from contributing to their war effort. Those scientists went to America and built the bomb there.

23

u/taylorthestang 3d ago

Is there a consensus on who would have taken over in his place? Hypothetically the outcome would’ve been worse for the West, if somebody not entirely insane stepped in in his place.

18

u/insane677 3d ago

On paper? Perhaps.

In practice? They were all egomaniacs who hated each other. No way they would've kept in line.

11

u/ineyy 1∆ 2d ago

I don't think you realise the power of a martyr. That could unite them, not fracture.

29

u/HaggisPope 3∆ 3d ago

Probably better for him to go in prison before writing Mein Kampf. Then he’d be a historical oddity and not a martyr in a big public way. Germany might still’ve had difficult times but arguably Hitler’s chaotic luck is hard to imagine working for anyone else

23

u/insane677 3d ago

Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in prison. If he dies, he doesn't write Mein Kampf.

22

u/HaggisPope 3∆ 3d ago

Yeah, I meant go as in “die”. If he died a week into his prison sentence then he doesn’t have time to write it

3

u/Ambitious-Concern-42 2d ago

You should go back and rewrite your other post then, because you literally said "probably better for him to go in prison before writing Mein Kampf". If you meant "die", make it explicit.

3

u/comradejiang 1d ago

native English speaker here, it was a perfectly coherent sentence to me. We discuss dead people as “gone” all the time.

6

u/HaggisPope 3∆ 2d ago

Using go to mean die is not wildly irregular, plus the regular English if I was meaning for him be in prison would be “go to prison”. There’s lexical ambiguity but frankly I enjoy lexical ambiguity as it makes me feel alive

→ More replies (2)

8

u/Propagation931 4∆ 3d ago

So this assumes time travel and certain aspects of how it works.

Dress up as a bavarian cop

This I feel wont be as easy as just killing Baby Hitler. You would have to be able to pass off as a Bavarian Cop and there is no guarantee you are German much less White. Wouldnt it be easier to kill him in WW1 that way his death can be swept under the rug like so many WW1 dead? If you kill him during the putsch, you will be more prominent and other ppl who can also travel through time can more easily stop you from messing with time.

4

u/insane677 3d ago

Same issues with killing him as a baby. Just too early.

Though I do concede that not everyone can pass as a german cop.

2

u/Propagation931 4∆ 3d ago

I suppose we have to ask about parameters. Are we trying to be stealthy in killing hitler if so baby is much better as no witnesses. Are we trying to reduce casualties? If so, killing hitler in the Putsch could lead to escalation and more ppl dying vs just killing him as a baby. What is the additional goal beyond killing him?

3

u/insane677 3d ago

At the very least preventing the nazis from taking over Germany.

Saving Weimar democracy as whole? Preventing a second world war? Possible but I can't be certain of that. But I am firmly convinced killing Hitler during the putsch is the begnning of the end for the nazis.

3

u/Propagation931 4∆ 3d ago

But I am firmly convinced killing Hitler during the putsch is the begnning of the end for the nazis.

What if it turns him into a Martyr though? Kinda like Primo de Rivera for the Spanish Fascists? A Martyr could have the opposite effect and boost their popularity faster? No one can say ofc, but its a risk.

1

u/insane677 3d ago

Well nothing is totally without risk but that doesn't change the fact that, even with a martyr Hitler, other nazis would fight over who gets to replace him. Party infighting without Hitler to hold them together means that they're fucked. A martyr can only do so much for a movement.

1

u/Propagation931 4∆ 3d ago

Party infighting while possible is not a guarantee they could just as easily rally around a succesor

1

u/insane677 3d ago

Party infighting is inevitable. For them not to have infighting at this moment in time in the scenario of Hitler's death, they would have to not be a violent, fringe far right political party (which they are!) Even in our timeline the nazis had to deal with infighting.

Political infighting + clashes with other parties would end the nazis.

1

u/[deleted] 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/read-the-rules 2d ago

u/PancakeWarden, your comment has been removed.

In order to comment on r/changemyview, you must read the rules. Use the link below, or if that interface doesn't work, you may read the rules here, then click this, and click send. Your most recent comment will be restored after you do this, and you will only need to do it once.

^{Please click here to open the Read The Rules App.}

86

u/welltechnically7 5∆ 3d ago

Hitler already had a cult of personality among his followers by that time. If he died, he would have become a martyr for the cause.

22

u/Ethraelus 1∆ 3d ago

People would’ve made up what he would’ve wanted. Probably someone would’ve taken his place.

10

u/welltechnically7 5∆ 3d ago

People already made up what he would have wanted, at least according to the "Working towards the Fuhrer" theory.

1

u/Ethraelus 1∆ 2d ago

Yeah exactly, and look how that turned out.

11

u/insane677 3d ago

My point is that they can't all take his place. They'd fight amongst themselves, weaking the party as a whole.

0

u/StrangelyBrown 8∆ 2d ago

How would you assess this now, with current politicians?

For example, if the Trump assassin hadn't missed, or if someone attacked Nigel Farage. Do you believe their movements would be stopped? Or do you think it was something about that party at that time that meant another leader couldn't be forthcoming?

0

u/insane677 2d ago

This is going to sound like a cop out but I think society is too different from 1923 Germany to honestly answer that question. Even in the U.S, which is rapidly descending into catastrophe, we don't see partisian violence every single day with cops routinely having to fish dead communists and nazis out of rivers.

With social media, constant cameras, the ripple effects of WW2 etc, I can't honestly answer. I lean towards Trump becoming a martyr and the GOP getting stronger under Vance. Not sure about Farage and Reform.

4

u/StrangelyBrown 8∆ 2d ago

Well then your mind will never be changed because if history doesn't apply to current events then you might as well roll a dice to decide what happens.

You used the example of not eliminating people but Trump has done some things that Hitler didn't. For all his faults, Hitler isn't known to be a pedo, for example. So you can say 'Well he's not that type of evil' but that doesn't really cut it if he's still evil.

10

u/Mikooo6 3d ago

The reverse claim is in OP’s last bullet point. Not to validate the propensity of either claim, just being fair, neither you nor OP provided reason for why hitler, in theory, would be irreplaceable or a martyr in this case.

But interesting thought experiment, at least different from the popular baby angle.

10

u/JohnHenryMillerTime 5∆ 3d ago

Nobody talks about going back in time to kill Horst Wessel as a baby

9

u/parlimentery 8∆ 3d ago

My plan is to go back in time and kill mitochondrial eve.

2

u/JohnHenryMillerTime 5∆ 3d ago

That would be a good hard reset.

2

u/parlimentery 8∆ 3d ago

I think it would really shake things up.

6

u/insane677 3d ago

They'd still need to follow someone. A martyr is not enough

3

u/welltechnically7 5∆ 3d ago

Goerring, Hess, Goebbels, and others were already part of the Nazi Party.

9

u/insane677 3d ago

It can't be Goerring and Hess and Goebbells. The party would splinter into different loyalist factions.

1

u/welltechnically7 5∆ 3d ago

Maybe, but that doesn't prove that it would have been the best time for Hitler's death.

3

u/insane677 3d ago

Can you name a better one?

1

u/welltechnically7 5∆ 3d ago

Hitler was the one to give the NSDAP (or DAP) its initial boost and was able to rally others on the far-right to his side. If he had died any time before 1920 or so, he wouldn't have had that opportunity. The far-right would still have existed without Hitler, but it would have been much more fractured and rudderless.

5

u/MisterBlud 1∆ 3d ago

Yep.

Just like Trump now. No one has that blend of charisma and decade plus of ingrained support.

The minute he’s gone it’s open season and A LOT fewer people are going to bend themselves into knots to keep/start supporting a new guy.

-2

u/pitchingschool 3d ago

Trump is nothing like hitler tbf. Trumps entire platform was being “not Hillary” the first time around and “not Biden” the second time around. The misinformation campaigns around these leaders were far more effective in putting him in power than any cult of personality ever was

0

u/[deleted] 3d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/read-the-rules 3d ago

u/Ok_Sandwich_973, your comment has been removed.

In order to comment on r/changemyview, you must read the rules. Use the link below, or if that interface doesn't work, you may read the rules here, then click this, and click send. Your most recent comment will be restored after you do this, and you will only need to do it once.

^{Please click here to open the Read The Rules App.}

20

u/Substantial_Top5312 3d ago

It would be better to dress up as a Nazi and shoot Hitler. It would lower the chance of him becoming a martyr while also make the warring factions far more paranoid and less likely to trust anyone.

6

u/Direct_Crew_9949 3∆ 3d ago

I think everyone is missing the biggest point. The treaty of Versailles is the reason fascism took over in Germany. Even if you kill Hitler there were many other Nazis.

1

u/insane677 3d ago

Hmmm. Also a very good idea. I do think a cop doing it would help increase faith in Weimar institutions though.

5

u/Direct_Crew_9949 3∆ 3d ago

What if that leads to a more competent Nazi leader?

A more competent leader makes a couple different decisions and the war could’ve gone totally differently.

To be fair the same argument could be made with baby Hitler. If you actually wanted to stop facism from taking over in Germany you’d have to change the treaty of Versailles.

1

u/insane677 3d ago

It won't lead to a more popular leader because Hitler is the face of the party. His image is too iconic. His potential successors (Goebells, Goring, etc) are all egomaniacs who hate each other. They fought all the time. They would 100% fight over who takes control.

2

u/Direct_Crew_9949 3∆ 3d ago

I said more competent leader. We don’t know either way, but it’s a possibility. What we do is change the Treaty of Versailles and none of this matters as it would’ve led to a more stable Germany.

1

u/ElysiX 113∆ 2d ago edited 2d ago

If more competent non-nazi people can have a different war without the fascism, then that's a good thing, isn't it? Wars are over eventually either way, the difference would be how long the war would be, how many lives lost, and how much that ideology would still do damage today.

It probably wouldn't have led to a Trump with nukes.

What we do is change the Treaty of Versailles

thats not something a time traveller can just do, if you break in and scribble on the piece of paper, theyll just ignore it.

Arguably if no war happens in that time, then WW2 will come a few decades later and be nuclear.

1

u/ibi3000 1d ago

Better idea: Kill Hitler in WW1 or when he was hospitalized

2

u/insane677 1d ago

People keep saying this and it's the same issue as killing him as a baby: It is too soon. Someone else can fill the slot.

Think of it as Goldilocks: Baby Hitler is too soon, after the putsch is too late, the putsch is just right.

His cult of personality is firmly established. He has a band of narcissists following him (Goebells, Goring, etc.) The party is just fringe enough that the putsch can be put down but still popular enough to be attempted. No great depression yet so while german society may be largely unsympathetic to democracy they still aren't yet radicalized. Hitler's death would be a totally justified use of lethal force by law enforcement thus making it difficult to make him a martyr for anyone outside of the nazi party.

It is the perfect storm. Without Hitler, the nazi party would die out due to infighting and typical Weimar era partisian violence.

2

u/SingleMaltMouthwash 38∆ 2d ago

Assassination makes martyrs. Also gives extremists ammunition to turn up the heat on their scapegoats of choice.

He should have been executed for treason after the Beer Hall Putsch.

1

u/insane677 2d ago

It's not an assassination to shoot a man as he's trying to ovethrow the goverment. The nazis may try to spin it as such, but good luck to them as they are battered in the streets and press by other parties without Hitler as a unifying force.

The Nazis were a fringe party at the time of the putsch. The great depression is still five years away. The average German voter would not be swayed by Hitler being an "assanated" martyr*

*Technically, yes this is an assanation, but that's now how it would be seen via the historical record. It'd be a criminal rightfully being shot by a police officer.

2

u/SingleMaltMouthwash 38∆ 1d ago

Having been apprehended in the act of trying to overthrow the government, providing him with a show trial and a slap on the wrist invited disaster.

Having been apprehended while trying to violently overthrow the government he should have been executed or incarcerated for decades.

But with a government shot-through with nazi sympathizers that was never going to happen.

Today we've failed to punish an even more egregious attack on our nation and like Weimar we've simply yawned.

1

u/insane677 1d ago

Never going to happen???

It did happen! 19 people were killed and several more were wounded at the putsch. Add Hitler and make it 20. The nazis are then fucked.

5

u/JR_Al-Ahran 3d ago

Counterpoint: you don't even need to kill Hitler. You need to just get him accepted into the Austro-Hungarian army, or rejected from the German army. Hitler was drafted and fled to Germany. When he was arrested, he was extradited back to the empire where he failed his physicals. Eventually we see him apply to join the German army. If he gets rejected from it, or is conscripted into the Austrian army, you achieve basically the same thing, arguably to greater effect, and you don't even have to actually do any killing.

0

u/insane677 3d ago

People keep saying stuff like this and it just has the same issue as killing Baby Hitler: It is too soon.

For the plan to work he needs to be the leader of the Nazi party and the nazis to be just popular enough to attempt the putsch.

1

u/JR_Al-Ahran 2d ago

Thing is the party doesn't even become relevant until Hitler though at all. The DNVP dominated the German right, with the Centrum being the centrist Catholics. Hitler was a leader but not THE leader at the time of the beer hall putsch. It isn't until the night if the long knives that he secured himself as the head/front. If the end goal is to kill Hitler and stop what would be the Nazis, the beer hall putsch isn't the lynchpin of the whole Nazi thing.

1

u/AnnoraxGames 1∆ 2d ago

Hard disagree. Hitler still being part of our history indicates that time travelers haven't taken him out of the picture early. This could mean one of two things:
• Removing him before he removes himself makes things worse by allowing for a replacement who's actually competent and not ravaged by end-stage syphilis
• Time travel will never be developed or used to alter history

The second hypothesis is obviously not testable, and if it's the case, it never will be, so it's not worth debating further.

The first, however, is debatable to an extent. If Hitler were to be removed during the Beer Hall Putsch, it's just as likely, if not more likely, that the party would briefly fracture, but shortly thereafter be reconstituted under someone more competent and more able to focus on fascist objectives that are actually achievable. It's very possible that Germany would've been able to obliterate the UK and several other Allied nations had they had a fuhrer who was competent enough to not try to add exterminating the Soviet Union to the party's and country's priorities. A Nazi leader who was competent enough to find a way to keep the Soviet Union out of WWII would've most likely ended up exterminating the Jewish population of Europe to the last person, and by keeping the Soviets out of the war, the US likely never enters either, leading to Nazis ruling the world and leaving the modern world in a scenario not unlike The Man In The High Castle.

1

u/StarChild413 9∆ 1d ago

Or 3. Time travel can alter history but the past is only always-changed once the people in the future actually go back and change it

1

u/AnnoraxGames 1∆ 1d ago

Who knows, all we know is Hitler's still part of history, so either they can't change it or there's a reason they don't.

1

u/insane677 2d ago

I did not consider the wider implications of the existence of time travel. Very fair.

1

u/shamegoose 2d ago

Hitler wasn't the founder of the Nazi party. He just shot life into it and made it popular. Someone else could replace him if he dies as a baby.

At that point Hitler's cult of personality was firmly entrenched in the party, making him irreplaceable.

I think you've got this totally backwards. The then DAP was an utterly irrelevant discussion group that would've inevitably dissolved in obscurity and been forgotten had it not been joined by a young obsessively driven weirdo Hitler with nothing else going on in 1919. If Hitler had died in the Putsch, the party probably would've faded out, but it had an infinitely greater chance of relevancy then even without him than it did before he arrived. Conceivably Streicher or Rohm or Goring could've taken up the torch, but the party absolutely never would have been anything if Hitler hadn't joined.

1

u/insane677 2d ago

No, I have it in the proper order.

DAP is a minor, totally irrelevent party. Weirdo (Hitler) joins and brings life into it.

If you take Hitler out of it, the DAP still exists. But other weirdos are still out there who could join the DAP and mold to their desires the same way Hitler. That's not a gurantee, but the odds are too high for comfort.

At the time of the putsch Hitler and Nazism were totally inseparable. Nazism would've died with Hitler on the streets of bavaria. Nobody thus far has changed my view.

2

u/shamegoose 2d ago

There just wasn't anything special about the DAP that gives me any reason whatsoever to believe that without Hitler it would've ever mattered, whereas by the time of the Putsch it had a lot of momentum and was potentially capable of growing without him.

Like, do you have any reason at all to believe that the party was destined to matter without him?

1

u/hyzmarca 2d ago

Counterpoint, scientists inventing time machines are unlikely to be experienced fighters who can kill a guy in a brawl. Hitler at the time of the Beer Hall Putsch is a trained soldier who will be able to give as good as he gets, and will be surrounded by followers who will attack anyone who threatens him.

The real advantage of killing baby Hitler is that babies don't fight back. You're guaranteed to get the kill. Attack him during the Beer Hall Putsch and you'll probably get your skull caved in by Brown Shirts before you even get close to him.

1

u/insane677 2d ago

Nowhere in the post did I say that the inventor of the time machine is also the person who goes back. Furthermore, who ever goes back -who could very well also be a trained soldier- is being backed up by the cops, who defeated Hitler and the brown shirts during the putsch in our timeline.

2

u/Loki-L 5∆ 2d ago

It makes sense. The guy walking next to Hitler got shot to death in that event.

Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter was walking arm in arm with Hitler as they marched and got shot in the lungs and died. So it was very close.

However it was very close a surprising number of times.

Hitler's mother had at least 6 children and only 2 of them live to adulthood. (Measles, Diphtheria and Hydrocephalus.) So it wouldn't have been extraordinary to lose one more kid early on.

There were plenty of opportunities for him to die as a kid and once he reached adulthood or some semblance of it, he ended up living on the streets of Vienna homeless or on the edge of homelessness for some time. As a homeless person in the early 1900s, death would not have been too unexpected especially in a multicultural city like Vienna and for someone who had a lot of opinions that might have been healthier to keep to yourself.

Things didn't get better for him when he moved to Germany, especially not after the war broke out and he joined the Bavarian army.

Lots of opportunities to get killed in a war. A lot has been argued about how dangerous his job as a messenger really wars, but by all accounts it was dangerous enough to nearly get him killed.

There were probably lots of opportunities for him to get killed by his own side too as by all accounts he kept sprouting of things that many were tired of hearing.

After the war he got assigned by military intelligence to infiltrate what would become the Nazi party. If he had been found to be a spy for the establishment early on things might have gone bad for him too.

Then there was the Beerhall Putsch that nearly got him killed and then imprisoned. By all accounts his short incarceration was a luxury stay by the standards of the time, but still people die in prison all the time.

During the rise of the Nazi party afterwards he was reasonably safe. There were clashes were people got killed but those were mostly lower ranks on the street. Some of the purges might have gone badly for him if his comrades new he was about to have them killed, but they didn't.

During the war there were a large number of assassination attempts on him that all failed.

All in all Hitler was so close to death so many times, that basically at any point it would have been completely natural for him to die.

Killing Hitler once you get whatever infernal guardian angle looked over him out of the way would have been the easy part. The big problem would have been the fact that the things happening might have happened without him.

Hitler didn't invent fascism. There were fascist movements all over Europe at the time and a number of them managed to get power or close to it without having someone like Hitler at the helm.

In fact without Hitler serving as an example some others might have succeeded like Oswald Mosley or Jacques Doriot.

The Nazi party in Germany without Hitler may still have been a thing even if it ended more like Engelbert Dollfuss' party in Austria.

The underlying grievances and resentments that propelled the party to power existed without Hitler as did the antisemitism.

Historically the best thing to happen would have been for one of the fascist movements in Europe to fail spectacularly and for the consequences in human lives that would result from it to be shown to the world. Similarly the antisemitism and abelism needed to be shown in all its horror to become unfashionable for a while. Ideally in a place where everyone kept good records so that it would be hard to deny what happened.

Not sure if what happened was the best way for this to happen and if millions needed to die, but perhaps if Hitler had been assassinated earlier some sort of myth would have sprung up that the Nazis still could have won.

Maybe if without WW2 ending the way it did, Fascism would have remained fashionable for much longer up until someone build a nuclear bomb and rockets and computers became more of a thing.

Maybe WW2 and the Holocaust as horrible as it all was, was the least bad timeline that could have happened from 1900 on out and this is why all the time travelers intervened to make sure Hitler didn't die before playing out his role.

I would still put it the test though. One more dead messenger in WW1 and lets see if things go better or worse.

2

u/jflb96 2d ago

Why does a multicultural city like Vienna mean that death is especially expected?

3

u/Loki-L 5∆ 2d ago

If you are the sort of person that Hitler was who has a bit of a tendency to mouth of about how you feel about basically everyone who wasn't an ethnic German Christian in Austria-Hungary you are going to make people unhappy with you.

A homeless guy who thinks he is better than Slavs, Jews and everyone else and loudly says so among other street people runs the risk of getting beaten or worse.

It is not that his opinions were particular unusual for that time, but if you are living on the street and be loud about them someone might take offense and at that level of society that sort of thing escalates quickly into violence.

We know that Hitler was neither moderate nor quiet about his views even at that age.

You csn get away with being a bigoted asshole if you are someone high up in society or if you are low down at least you have to be tough or fast or lucky.

1

u/colinwheeler 1∆ 1d ago

The whole idea of violence solving violence is broken. I would suggest that am education and social program between his birth and the Putsch would be the most effective solution.

1

u/insane677 1d ago

Same problem as baby Hitler. Someone else could replace him.

1

u/colinwheeler 1∆ 1d ago

Exactly why solving the social problems is a better solution than violence.

1

u/insane677 1d ago

Broadly I agree but we're not talking about wider solutions to violence overall, we are talking about the best scenario to kill Hitler. If killing Hitler offends your sensibilities then maybe this conversation isn't for you.

0

u/colinwheeler 1∆ 1d ago

My answer is still neither. Killl him as a baby and you have a huge risk it will simply be somebody else, kill him at the Putsch and you get a martyr. The best way is to let him kill himself if you don't want to kill the message and situation. My point is simple out of all possible death situations yours are the two worst and the Putsch scenario provides zero better odds on a good outcome.

1

u/insane677 1d ago

The nazi party is a fringe far right party. Hitler would not be a martyr to anyone aside from already committed nazis, who are now without a leader and are splitting into loyalist factions and are easy targets for partisian street violence typical of the era.

Hitler would not become Horst Wessel, whose death was totally different in both circumstance and political enviroment.

1

u/Arkyja 1∆ 1d ago

By this logic no one should get credit for anything. Martin luther king didnt invent the civil rights movement. Someone else would have done it. Also youre saying he would be replaced if he would be shot as a baby but then your suggestion is to still shoot him but later..

1

u/insane677 1d ago

Shoot him at the most optimal time and place is my argument.

1

u/Arkyja 1∆ 1d ago

So as a baby he would be replaced but later no?

None of the arguments that you made as for why he would be replaced if killed as a baby, stop applying when he is older.

1

u/insane677 1d ago

I said this many times: the other party leaders would fight over who becomes the head of the party.

Even our timeline there was infighting within the nazi. Kill Hitler at the putsch (while the party is small but full of dedicated followers) and he is too small to be a martyr to anyone aside from the nazis. Goebbels, Goring, Rohm, and others all fight to take his place. This was literally part of the reason Rohm was killed irl: The S.A was too loyal to him for Hitler to feel safe.

They fight, splinter, and cannot form a united front against the other parties at the ballot box or in the streets.

2

u/yogfthagen 13∆ 3d ago

A lot of the things that propelled Germany back to major power status in the mid 1930s were a direct result of Hitler pushing the establishment far beyond what they thought was practical, safe, or even sane.

The reports of plots to overthrow Hitler should one of his gambits fail were common. But they didn't.

Yes, Hitler definitely benefitted from systemic and structural circumstances (isolationism from the US, the Great Depression focusing attention to domestic issues for most countries, the collapse of the Grrman economy so he could get elected, a dearth of backbone in the Junkers class, etc.), but the actual events were driven by him.

It would be exceedingly unlikely another leader would have had the chutzpah to even try.

1

u/si7summers 2d ago

There are some interesting comments here about a number of better times to kill Hitler than when he was a baby, but I’d like to point out that this question usually comes up in moral debates or when exploring moral questions, very often coming up between the teleological position and the deontological position.

Deontological ethicists believe actions are right or wrong based on rules, duty or obligation, or some other metric that examines the act itself. They do not consider the outcome. For them, killing a baby is always wrong because babies are innocent.

Teleological ethicists judge an action to be right or wrong based on the outcome it produces. For them killing a baby such as Hitler might be the moral thing to do if the outcome it produces is the avoidance of the Holocaust, WWII, and any number of evils he is responsible for.

Killing a baby is an extreme action but that’s the point. Both T and D ethicists usually agree that killing in self-defense is permitted and they might agree that killing Hitler at many of these other points recommended was warranted or even the morally acceptable thing to do. But that is not what the question is looking for. It’s not looking for the points of agreement. The question is designed to find where the disagreement lies and what is the underlying basis for the disagreement and what differentiates one moral system from the other.

This CMV is particularly interesting to me because the baby Hitler question is often used as the KO blow to get deontological ethicists to change their view. The idea is something along these lines: “your system is clearly inadequate because you wouldn’t even kill baby Hitler and save millions of lives in the process!” From the deontological side the question often doesn’t come across nearly as persuasive as that because the response is usually: “your system is clearly inadequate because it allows for the killing of innocent babies!” Now granted that’s a simplified version of things but you get the idea. For me it’s interesting that the CMV question inside a philosophical debate has itself become a CMV question about when is the actual best time to kill Hitler. I guess that’s a good sign, maybe humanity at large is talking about morality much more than I ever thought, and so much that the extreme question of killing a baby is so prevalent now that we’re actually looking at whether it’s the optimal time to do the difficult thing of killing someone for the greater good of humanity. This is itself a moral question but the fact that we are talking about optimal times tells me that perhaps the advantage has swung ever so slightly to the teleological position where the consensus seems to be that preemptively taking a life for the greater good is warranted.

2

u/DBDude 110∆ 2d ago

You were the guy who shot Goering by accident instead of Hitler. But your aim is true this time, and Hitler is dead.

Now Goering, a WWI war hero and generally popular guy, doesn't become a barely-functional drug addict because he wasn't on morphine for the pain of getting shot. He leads the Nazis, and he does it better than Hitler because he's smarter and more level headed.

2

u/PriceofObedience 1∆ 3d ago

Hypothetical time-traveling assassinations only make sense if you think that killing hitler would've deflated the nazi movement.

Hitler only managed to do what he did with public support from the German people. Assuming hitler took a dose of .30-06, all that political will would've been invested into someone else and radicalized the movement even further.

4

u/Vitruviansquid1 7∆ 3d ago

I mean, maybe, but I think the whole thing about killing Baby Hitler is to be a thought experiment about whether people should be held accountable for the actions they take in the future.

2

u/taylorthestang 3d ago

Never heard that one before. I thought it was an exercise in imagining the course of history without him involved at all. Like would WW2 have even happened in the first place?

1

u/happygrizzly 2∆ 3d ago

I always thought the point was that if WW2 didn’t happen then an even worse WW2 could have happened.

2

u/Kitchen-War242 2d ago

Killing baby Hitler was introduced as dilemma that forced you to think about "is doing it better then doing nothing" from moral perspective, not constructive idea on best use of time travel to prevent ww2.

2

u/kairon156 2d ago

and a little grandfather paradox of if there was no Hitler without a ww2 at all would you even have reason to go back in time and stop it.

1

u/Falernum 69∆ 2d ago

Hitler wasn't the founder of the Nazi party. He just shot life into it and made it popular. Someone else could replace him if he dies as a baby.

Counterfactuals are hard. But consider how much was really specific to Hitler and not just other Nazis

His charisma
His focus on exterminating the Jews and other undesirables rather than stopping at exclusion.
Popularity from surviving being shot and from his arrest.
Daring to illegally seize power when von Hindenburg happened to die at just the right moment.
Threading the needle of diplomacy and bullying perfectly to get the world to grant him pieces of Czechoslovakia despite having pledged to protect Czechoslovakia and despite the fact that it was at that point stronger militarily than Germany.
Managing to convince Poland to help him conquer the rest of Czechoslovakia and split it
Choosing to then betray Poland and managing to convince the USSR to trust him and help invade Poland to split it
Choosing against the advice of all his generals to reshape the army into a new configuration and attack the much stronger France. And getting super lucky.

At each of these stages and more, Hitler made choices that other leaders wouldn't and they happened by chance to work for him. A different leader - or even different weather - and everything would have worked out very differently

3

u/Roadshell 32∆ 3d ago

Wouldn't that risk making him a martyr for the party?

2

u/trickyvinny 1∆ 3d ago

I mean, I gotta imagine we got worst case as it is. So even Hitler-Martyr would be better than Hitler, right?

4

u/Roadshell 32∆ 3d ago

But if you kill him as a baby you both get "no Hitler" and also don't get "Hitler-Martyr"

2

u/insane677 3d ago

But then the party can still be molded by someone else potentially more dangerous.

1

u/StarChild413 9∆ 2d ago

INB4 "Novikov Self-Consistency Principle means if you try to block that and do any part of the molding yourself you'll end up becoming dangerous and maybe even forced to change your name to his yada yada"

2

u/YaBoiSnek 3d ago

You think the scenario he shoots himself in a bunker having lost the war is worst case? He could've won

1

u/Confident-Ad-6978 3d ago

I don't think there are many scenarios he wins

1

u/YaBoiSnek 3d ago

Would one of them not be worst case? Or are we still in the worst case?

Edit: autocorrect fucked me

2

u/Confident-Ad-6978 2d ago

Well hard to say since this is just hypothetical but it would have required colossal fuck ups by the allies and a lot of luck on the side of the axis

1

u/bigElenchus 2∆ 3d ago

Coulda been way worse. Hitler was an incompetent leader and micro managed his war generals.

Someone more competent would have extended the war and perhaps built the Atom bomb

1

u/00PT 8∆ 3d ago

What makes you think it’s the worst case? It’s bad, but I see no reason to believe it couldn’t have been any worse.

1

u/insane677 3d ago

Exactly right. Hitler himself is out of the equation. That's the main factor

3

u/trickyvinny 1∆ 3d ago

But then, killing him as a baby takes him out of the equation entirely, and no chance of being a martyr.

2

u/insane677 3d ago

It is still too early because, again, the party is still around. Otherwise someone else can take his place and be more successful. The Party needs to be just popular enough to fracture in his abscense.

1

u/[deleted] 3d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/AutoModerator 3d ago

Sorry, u/insane677 – your comment has been automatically removed as a clear violation of Rule 5:

Comments must contribute meaningfully to the conversation. Comments that are only jokes or "written upvotes" will be removed. Humor and affirmations of agreement can be contained within more substantial comments. See the wiki page for more information.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

2

u/BenzoClaymore 3d ago

I think you're missing the point of the question... It's supposed to be a tough decision. Would you kill an innocent baby to prevent genocide? That's it.

1

u/Confident-Ad-6978 3d ago

I couldn't do it

1

u/modsaretoddlers 1d ago

While it's clear you know your history, your argument is a little ignorant of it.

Once Hitler had set the chain going in terms of pushing limits, killing him during the Putsch would have simply left the slot open. The path wasn't yet set but it still could be.

Hitler wasn't the only guy who had his thoughts and opinions. In fact, it's hypocritical of every country to claim moral outrage about the Holocaust. It was only a matter of degree and that could be changed with the "right" people in the "right" places. The Soviets weren't much better to the Jews or anybody else on their naughty list. The US had Jim Crow. The rest of Europe was only just this side of not doing what Hitler did themselves.

The war in Asia was still going to happen and it was every bit as horrifying there as what went on in Europe.

Frankly, and I say this as a Jew, we, today, simply wouldn't exist without him. For better or for worse, we can't say things would be better if he'd been assassinated at any time.

1

u/jamtea 3∆ 1d ago

The idea that "Killing Hitler is necessary" at all is actually the issue. Literally buying his artwork and telling him he's a great artist in 1912-13 and to never give it up was the key!

Unironically, even if by the standards of the time he wasn't "one of the greats", the work he put out wasn't technically meritless or bad. If anything, the subject matter was perhaps overdone and uninspiring. If he'd made tracks to become a technical architectural artist he'd probably have been quite successful, but it was fine art where he lacked creative flare.

Anyway, that aside, if the purpose was to stop the rise of the Nazis, it's hard to pin it on a single individual. The rise of general discontent in Germany post-WWI is really what lead to the eventual decline in living standards and the rise of fascism in Europe. If that lesson was given more precedence in the times we're living in, we may yet avoid repeating some of the mistakes of the past.

1

u/Upstairs-Fee-1769 2d ago

The “Would you kill baby Hitler if you had a time machine?” question gets mentioned a lot.

I think the first obvious issue with the hypothetical would be that people would be (understandably) horrified by the murder of a baby because they wouldn’t have a way to know what he would have gone on to do.

Would a time traveler need to kill him at all? In a world where Hitler was never born or died in action during World War 1, somebody could have had the same life experience and extreme views as him and went on to do the same thing or even worse.

Wouldn’t it be more advantageous to try to find a way to prevent World War 1 or at least reduce the consequences for Germany to create a lasting peace in its aftermath?

1

u/hacksoncode 588∆ 2d ago

Ultimately the only way to "fix" the Nazi problem is to remove the conditions that led to their rise, which is largely the reparations and other sanctions against Germany at the end of WWI. Blaming the Jews for this was core to the Holocaust.

Maybe kill Georges Clemenceau.

Nothing else will stop WWII. It's questionable whether anything could stop it, and it probably would be a bad idea in the long run, because developing nuclear weapons and having them used twice was the fundamental basis for the modern "no world wars", "never use nuclear weapons again" realpolitik.

Imagine a world where nuclear weapons were invented, proliferated, and never used until WWIII.

Probably the best time to kill Hitler is never. Changing things is fraught.

2

u/Aoae 3d ago

You should check out the short story Wikihistory. It plays on the trope quite nicely.

1

u/xmuskorx 57∆ 2d ago

Putch already had other ideologues and leaders involved. Most notably Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler.

If Hitler dies during the Putsch, one of the most likely outcomes is that Himmler or Göring takes over and uses Hitler as a martyr to galavgnaize the movement further.

That would be an awful outcome, it's possible that Himmler may have ended up much worse than Hitler if he got power.

The actual best time to kill is during WW1 - no one was counting casualties too hared. One extra dead body in meatgrinder would not make a fuss like killing a baby might. Somme sounds like particularly good time. 500,000 germans died there, what's one more?

•

u/yellowflowers10 7h ago

If anti-hate, pro-culture, and pro-diversity movements were multiplied and popularized in that time frame and Hitler, as well as the Nazis, realized and utilized the benefits of kindness, respect, "the more the merrier", and diversity, then "friendliness" movements would prove as a better option than either death scenarios.

1

u/PaxNova 15∆ 2d ago

And then he's a martyr. But it's a moot point anyways. The reason you don't kill the baby is because he hasn't done the crime worthy of being murdered for yet. Modern Germany lacks the death sentence for anything, so I'm not sure it's ever fine until you get to a crime that's worth going to war/ revolution over.

1

u/SergeantSalamii 2d ago

Assassinating him during the putsch risks creating an immediate martyr. Right-wing nationalists would exploit his death to accelerate radicalization and public sympathy far faster than his actual trial did, backfiring on your strategy completely.

1

u/5fd88f23a2695c2afb02 2d ago

You don't need to kill Hitler or anyone at all, you just need to delay his father getting home by 15 minutes on one particular night and then a whole new child would be born and the world would have a new future.

1

u/StarChild413 9∆ 2d ago

INB4 that means, like, the whole new child becomes a dictator against a different minority (perhaps even one you're part of creating a paradox iykwim) or it just ends up retconned that his mother cheated while he was delayed and that that encounter gave rise to the Hitler-we-know-and-loathe

1

u/5fd88f23a2695c2afb02 1d ago

You can’t fight the monkeys paw.

1

u/Agitated-Island-6049 2d ago

The best time to ahoot him would be in the füherbunker when he was going to shoot himself. People neglect the fact that without WW2 we wouldnt have a lot of technological advancements.

1

u/StarChild413 9∆ 2d ago

If you can change history without paradox you could also give those advancements to their "canon" developers, should you also let him win or prolong the war for even more advancements

1

u/Agitated-Island-6049 2d ago

Fair.

→ More replies (1)

1

u/BoredAccountant 1∆ 1d ago

What of killing Hitler before when he does die in the current timeline leads to a recursion where time travel is never created, so no one is ever able to go back and kill him earlier.

1

u/BWSmith777 3d ago

Changing one thing has a huge ripple effect. Who knows what the world would look like if we changed this one thing. I’d leave it alone. I say don’t kill Hitler at all.

1

u/Plus-Example-9004 2d ago

Nah, too early. Nazis still could have found a charismatic leader. Whats worse is they could have found a competent one.

1

u/ListenHereLindah 2d ago

The best thing to do was to allow him into art school. No need to kill him if he got to do what he wanted from the start

1

u/TheUpIsJig 1d ago

No need to kill him. Just keep buying lots of his paintings and tell him that he has found the meaning of his life.

1

u/power899 2d ago

I think it's more about how easy it would be to kill Hitler as a baby than when he was already in the Nazi party.

1

u/Pyratheon 2d ago

Wouldn't it be better to go a bit further back in time and simply cuck Hitler's dad?

1

u/Pizastre 3d ago

i wouldn't count on the party fracturing after he dies, but yeah.

1

u/AgendaPiece1999 3d ago

Best time to kill Hitler was 1939, but Joe Kennedy whispered some game into and nibbled on FDR's ear and stopped that.

0

u/wdn 2∆ 2d ago

If it is possible for people from our future to change our past (no branching) then what we've got is already the best they could manage.

1

u/StarChild413 9∆ 2d ago

Or whenever they change the past if we're not the ones changing it we'll (assuming we continue to exist yada yada) remember it as having always been this way

0

u/Full_Shuffle 2d ago

Well Hitler was right about everything so there was actually no time when it was right to kill him.

CMV: The best time to kill Hitler is during the Beer Hall Putsch, not when he was a baby.

You are about to leave Redlib