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"A Question I've been giving some thought to"

If you could go back in time to the day that Hitler was born and kill him, would you do it?

Damn you IB. It would have taken me an hour to type that lot which you casually tap out in five minutes. :-)

No, and why would anyone want to?

The possible ramifications of altering the future are absolutely impossible to judge.

Maybe as a result, we never mastered nuclear physics, or maybe someone else fed off popular unrest in Germany, only was as good a general as he was a politician, didn't invade russia, and instead pounded all of western europe before biding his time over Stalingrad etc.

Maybe we ended up developing nukes about the same time the germans and Japs did, and our missiles passed each other in the sky before encompassing the earth with thermo-nuclear devastation.

And anyway, why Hitler? Was he the worst person in history? Why not stop the americans slaughtering the natives, or stop the brits carving out an empire through slave labour? Why not prevent the development of voodoo rituals which have seen hundreds of thousands of people ritually sacrificed over the years in the name of "magic medicine".

Why not change history to locate and prevent the spread of aids?

There are a thousand ways that some people would have liked history to have been written differently. Personally, I don't think I'd change any of it. Humankind is a collective organism, ultimately acting through ingrained instincts that have been a part of our psychology as well as our physiology for hundreds of thousands of years. Before we had cities and television, mass media, forks and spoons, houses. Before we were even human, our fate as a species was decided by genetic structuring. We will carve our path to whatever that fate may be, and we will say that by doing so we are carving it of our own volition.

There is only one fate for the race of men, and any effort to veer from the one true path is little more than an exercise in futility.

Imagine that the only effect they are going to have is some horrible evil. No other. Its hypothetical of course.

No, it's a child, and even the slightest thing can change history.

So, therefore, no.

Ok, it depends what else you know about that person and any affect they may have on the world other than the destruction. It's really an impossible question unless it's related to any one example as there are so many factors to account for.

Damn, that was a boring answer!

Thatnks for understanding what i meant SHEEPY

Okay here is what I realy mean. If you knew that a newly born baby was going to grow up to become a very evil person killing millions of people. Could you justify killing that baby, even though it is innocent of any crime at that point?

1) I was up to 1 last night reading about Hitler and his 'acehivements' and I have an essay/exam to write in about 2 hours, so this topic made me scared.

2) No, simply because you're messing with history. I read a book where some guy did this and somebody else led the Nazis to victory.

3) It's still a baby/child you'd be killing

So no.

Probably not - because the chances are that you wouldn't exist creating a paradox that would boggle your mind!

*Re-runs the plot of Terminator and Terminator 2 in his head*

There are so many faces to this question..

1: No, Hitler was part of the 20th century, a lesson to us almost. It's not up to us to change history, even if we could. Although I'm sure the families of those who died would argue. However, I'm sure the war would still have happened, even if it wasn't under Hitler's regime.

2: Yes, he killed so many people that we must jump at the chance to avoid anything like that happening. Killing him would stop the war from happening, right? Not necessarily. Personally, I think it may have stalled the war, but Germany in those times didn't need Hitler to attempt 'world domination'. It just needed some hellishly deluded ideals.