• Question: if you could go back in time and kill Hitler, would you ?

    Asked by Rasik_npl to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 4 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Yo Yehudi

      Yo Yehudi answered on 4 Nov 2017:

      Wow, this is a tricky question. I’m very much a pacifist who doesn’t believe that killing and violence is a good thing – but this is a double edged sword, because clearly Hitler managed to play on the emotions of many thousands of Germans to manipulate them into doing terrible things and killing millions. Maybe, if I could know for sure what the outcome would be like, I would. I’m glad this isn’t a decision I have to make, though.

    • Photo: Kerrianne Harrington

      Kerrianne Harrington answered on 5 Nov 2017:

      I definitely would not.

      I have visited several concentration camps and Anne Frank house, and all of them were incredibly upsetting to see in person, but I think very important to do so.

      It is easy to caricature Nazi Germany, as something that was obviously evil and blatantly wrong, and Hitler as a cartoon villain that could just be stopped, but the reality is that there is always a capacity for people to do horrible things. Not just Hitler. Someone else can do something terrible too.

      It is interesting to think about what our society and culture would be like now if Hitler never existed though.

    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      This really is a tough question, but overall I don’t think I would. On one level, I’m not sure I could kill anyone in cold blood, but on another level there’s no guarantee that killing Hitler would have stopped the Holocaust or WW2. Maybe someone even worse (?) would have taken his place? What if someone who was a better tactician had become Germany’s leader – perhaps they would have won the war! Also, you don’t necessarily have to kill people to stop them and their ideas – if I was sent back to that time, maybe I’d have tried to alert more people to what was going on…

    • Photo: Ed Bracey

      Ed Bracey answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      I agree with the other answers.
      I wouldn’t try to kill him, because I don’t agree with killing other human beings.
      In fact, I’d try to change the events that gave him the power he had.
      I’d probably start off trying to stop the London and American Stock Exchange crashes in 1929.
      These damaged the world economy, hitting Germany especially hard, leaving many Germans very poor.

      It may be slightly simplistic, because wars are created by lots and lots of different things. However, I think if people don’t have enough for themselves, it’s easier to manipulate them and make them turn against each other and blame them for the problems they’re suffering.
      Often when people do poorly, minorities get the blame, rather than the people that cause the real problems (usually rich old white men).

      It’s generally thought this is what happened in Germany in the 1930s and allowed Hitler to rise to power because people were sick of being poor.

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