Given a chance would you kill baby Hitler?

[Anomalocaris]

From 1939 to early 1943, the most important element German military successes against enemies of comparable or superior strengths can almost all be pinned down to the ability to get inside the enemy's OODA loop.

Most importantly, they could keep up the charade of basically repeating the Schlieffen-Plan. Noone on the allied side expected them to to break through the ardennes. They considered them impassable for tanks and didn't take into account the work the German pioneers did. Nonetheless, veterans spoke about the biggest traffic jam in history and air raids could have done away with the German deployment easily.

It was not a charade until about March, 1940. Circumstances really conspired to force geman hands and made them adopt a better plan than the one they preferred and was wedded to.

[abaris]

It was not a charade until about March, 1940.  Circumstances really conspired to force geman hands and made them adopt a better plan than the one they preferred and was wedded to.

And so it was a charade, since the Manstein plan took that into account. It worked - obviously.

[ReptilianPeon]

I think Adolf Hitler was a product of his time. In times of strife, there is a tendency to attack "the other" and killing baby Adolf may have made little difference. Someone else would have taken Hitler's place, for better, or for worse. That person might not have decided to attack the Soviet Union when Hitler did (thus not opening the war in two fronts) and may have allowed Germany to attain and atomic bomb and may have convinced Japan to attack the Soviet mainland. So many variables. And these worse things may all be in addition to a Holocaust.

[Edwardo Piet]

Post #173

Pssst: Me thinks Aractus doth protest to much.

Post #174 directly underneath:

So are we killing him or not?

To be honest I think that's taking it just a tad too far... I mean Aractus does get on my tits sometimes but that's just a bit much, there shall be no murdering he- oh wait you meant baby Hitler. Oh... I knew that.

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Actually I really did know that

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[Neo-Scholastic]

I think the whole question revolves around what rules apply for the hypothetical time travel. Is the butterfly effect in play or does the timeline have some kind of inertia? What happens to the previous timeline?

[Aractus]

One man's war is another man's terror, apparently. I'm certainly not justifying any of them when I point out that classing war as terrorism in order to rescue a weak point is pretty silly.

That's not what I have done. I never said all wars are acts of terrorism. I didn't list the USA's involvement in WWI or WWII as international terrorism now did I?

I gave you a bunch of examples which are textbook terrorism. That is: violence to achieve political goals.

In addition to terrorism the USA is also guilty of war crimes, and other international crimes. Australia is guilty of some international crimes as well, particularly the 1951 Refugee Convention. But we are not a terrorist State, nor is China, nor is most of Europe.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

I think the whole question revolves around what rules apply for the hypothetical time travel. Is the butterfly effect in play or does the timeline have some kind of inertia? What happens to the previous timeline?

It seems that time travel could only work by sending things into the future instead of the past.  If you sent stuff into the past you would always get the result where you sent stuff into the past to correct the problem caused by sending stuff back into the past the first time.  

For instance, suppose you went back into the past to kill Hitler.  It should be obvious that whatever you did didn't work because you had to go back into the past to kill him again.  Besides, if you were able to do such a thing then chances are you and countless millions of people wouldn't have  existed.  

Everything we have right now, including our very lives, we owe to Hitler's existence.  Therefore it would be a tragedy for all of us if he had been killed as a baby.

[robvalue]

As an experiment, I just went back in time and kicked baby Hitler in the head.

Has anything changed? Oh wait. We wouldn't know if it had.

[Edwardo Piet]

I think the whole question revolves around what rules apply for the hypothetical time travel. Is the butterfly effect in play or does the timeline have some kind of inertia? What happens to the previous timeline?

Well it involves 3 things:

1. What laws of hypothetical time travel are we talking about.

2. Regardless of those laws would Hitler not being around actually prevent the war or would someone just as bad take his place and the war be equally horrific?

3. Regardless of whether a baby shall grow up to be Hitler, is it ever really right to kill a baby?

My answer to 1: It's pointless to speculate.

My answer to 2: I'm not sure, I'm pretty sure shit is going to be bad either way, but it's not worth killing an innocent person (I.e. a baby) even if Hitler being killed as baby would have prevented the war happening or being as bad.

My answer to 3: No it's never justified. If it's a choice between a painful death and a painless death obviously the latter is preferable but a baby dying in pain isn't worth it regardless of how many others dying in pain may be saved. It's too complicated to aggregate the utilitarian ethics of the matter and it would be playing God to do so. The kind of world I want to live in is not one where people go around killing people on a whim because they think it will save many others. That is not a civilized and just society and that is not moral, ethical, or wise.

[robvalue]

The rules of time travel are that it's incoherent nonsense. I've never even heard it defined in such a way that isn't a load of hooey.