How would you kill Hitler?
The mission
You have been tasked with the mission to kill Hitler. The mission is mandatory and you cannot decline it. You have access to a state of the art time machine: a simple Casio wristwatch in which you enter the time, date and location where you wanna travel to. It can travel to any point in past Earth's history, and it is programmed to automatically and safely return you to the present time as soon as the mission is completed.
You have access to all weapons available to humankind in the present day, but you can only take what you can carry.
You also have access to technology that will make you look ethnically German complete with Nazi uniforms, and a perfectly functioning universal translator.
How this thread will work
I will try to come up with a negative outcome for every answer in jackass genie style. Others are welcome to do the same!
Your frivolous time vacations created constant changes to history which created multiple parallel universes with completely different time continuums. One of the time continuums figures out how to not only travel back in time but also how to traverse parallel universes. This, unfortunately, was a universe where Hitler not only survived, but thrived due to an inadvertent butterfly effect. You have now unleashed a highly futuristic third reich army on us all, whose first mission is to kill you before you get around to the whole Kill Hitler thing. Sieg Heil!
Hahahaha fair enough!
I was of course counting with the participants' desire to swiftly kill Hitler!
I don't believe in the Great Man theory of history, so I don't actually believe that killing Hitler would prevent the tragedies. That time in history would have produced a person like him, even if he himself never came to be.
That said, within the sphere of the exercise: Shoot him during WWI, when plenty of other people were getting shot. One additional bullet in the air would be utterly unremarkable, and one more dead soldier similarly so.
It might prevent, one cannot tell. But it's all in good fun!
Wars are messy, even for time-travelers. You correctly identified Adolf Hitler in the midst of battle, but only managed to shoot him in the leg before you were hit yourself. You sustain lifelong trauma and pain.
You spend your remaining years maintaining your German persona: the disguising equipment can function indefinitely without a hitch. As a "German national", you read how Adolf Hitler, now considered even more of a war hero for his feats in WWI, took hold of the Nazi Party and led the war effort in pretty much the same manner as it was without your intervention.
You die with the certainty that all your effort and suffering did not change history in any substantial way.
That's clever!
Killing Hitler during WW1 would have dramatically changed the course of history. I genuinely think that World War 2 would have been the class war that Karl Marx predicted, with the Soviet Union and Germany completely overunning Europe, then setting their sights upon Asia, America and Africa.
There are a few reasons I think this
Without Hitler's commanding leadership, presence and voice, the Nazi party would never have grown into the juggernaut it became. Without them, the Communist Party of Germany would have undoubtedly taken power during the 1930s. They were the third largest party in the Reichstag, had a paramilitary unit of their own (Antifa) and was under the leadership of Ernst Thälmann, a Stalinist who sought to overthrow the Weimar Republic.
Stalin's five-year plans during his reign as the USSR's leader were intended to rapidly industrialise and militarise the nation to prepare it for attack against outside invasion. However, Stalin took on an increasingly warmongering attitude, and I think he would have probably invaded Europe in the early to mid 1940s, probably starting with a similar pact with Germany where they invade and carve up Poland for themselves.
I doubt Britain and France would have invaded Germany had it fallen to Communism. None of the Triple Entente nations particularly wanted war and spent years attempting to appease Hitler. I think they would have tried to do the same with Thälmann and allowed him to enact similarly Stalinist five year plans to heavily industrialise and militarise Germany.
The United States became a lot more isolationist in the aftermath of WW1 and only got heavily involved in world politics after WW2. They didn't intervene when Hitler conquered almost all of Europe, so why would they intervene if Germany became Communist, or if a combined German/Russian force conquered Europe?
It's already known that Stalin worked to escalate tensions with Europe by providing economic and military support to (both Weimar and Nazi) Germany in defiance of sanctions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. This support would have undoubtedly intensified with a Communist ally.
EDIT: Another interesting point is that the Manhattan Project was largely spearheaded by refugees from Nazi Germany and other Fascist nations, including Albert Einstein. Without Germany falling to Fascism, I seriously doubt that the United States would have developed the nuclear bomb.
Now that would be an interesting alt-history. Maybe I should spin up HOI4 and try a communist Germany run.
Hitler nearly drowned in a river as a kid, and was only saved by the lucky observance of a priest who lept in to save him. Who knows what would have happened if somebody asked that priest for directions navigating the rural mountains, delaying him by 2 or 3 minutes, after which Hitler would be long since swept down the ice cold river.
I would have killed the priest. But that's just me.
Every story is better with a murder :P
Before I set out, I'm going to do some research. And it turns out that Adolf's mother was a maid hired by his father, Alois.
My first intention was to interrupt Adolf's parents on the night of his conception. However, on second thought, I've decided to make sure that young Klara stays away from Alois' household after Fanni dismisses her. Maybe I'll play matchmaker with her and some other eligible bachelor in town. Maybe I'll arrange for some gossip to get back to Alois about Klara, so he doesn't bring her back when Fanni gets sick. Maybe I'll find Klara another, better paying, job somewhere else. Maybe I'll talk to Alois and recommend a much
prettiermore industrious maid instead. Whatever: I'll make sure Klara doesn't go back to work for Alois.If they're not under the same roof, they won't have an affair, Klara won't get pregnant by Alois, he won't marry her, and they won't conceive young Adolf later on.
(In all honesty, I'd have a lot of trouble murdering another person. This is my pacifist solution: prevent his birth, rather than cause his death.)
You, sir, is a gentleman and a scholar. 75 million lives are saved. Some countries suffer with overpopulation, but the consequences are overwhelmingly positive.
Literal LOL!
After I posted my suggestion, I read your responses to some of the other suggestions. Your "jackass genie" really is a jackass. I was wondering how my suggestion would fail.
I literally laughed when I read your response.
Thanks. :)
The thing about jackass genie is that he must be logical. So, in theory, he must be beatable. But fictional characters rarely know how to beat him!
You successfully avoided Hitler even coming into existence.
America retains a meagre military strength of 227,000 soldiers, development of the nuclear bomb is delayed and the Great Depression grinds on for another decade. Russia develops the nuclear bomb first, and starts aggressively invading Europe and China. America develops the nuclear bomb faster than it can increase it's military strength, so the eventual world war two is primarily nuclear based. The devastating affect the nukes had on climate change turn countries who escaped the nukes into mad max style feudalistic societies.
It’s also possible to just raise him to be a better person - also a pacifistic solution!
That's a lot more difficult. I'd have to somehow infiltrate his family as something like a tutor, and be there for many years. Or I'd need to become a teacher at his school. There's a lot more chance of something going wrong, due to the longer timeframes required.
But it's good in theory.
I will travel back in time and manage to blend in with Hitler's henchmen until I get a good long moment alone with the little H. I show him this very webpage (having downloaded it of course, duh!). After first showering me in German spittle, he asks me to tell him more about what happens in World War 2. I show him wikipedia pages: The Nuremberg trials, the Eichman trial, the Dresden bombings, etc. This information gradually cracks the coldest and most unreachable fuse in his neural circuitry, making him quit Nazi life in full American-History-X-except-not-going-to-jail style. I also tell him that in order to return to my time, I will have to kill him as per the- now apparently unnecessarily strict - mission statement, to which he answers in a low and profound monklike register: "Do it", after which I do, shooting him in the neck, to which he gasps a hollow "Thank you."
I'm transported back to a world I barely recognize.
That's a beautiful story, but the genie has other ideas!
You are, of course, unable to make a dent in Hitler's predispositions. The guy sent millions of innocents to gas chambers. He's a narcissistic psychopath. You cannot appeal to his empathy because he has none. But little H. will never forget the valuable information you gave him.
He makes a note to evacuate Dresden at the start of the war, along with many historical buildings and works of art - a great feat of engineering.
He'll consider the defendants in the Nuremberg trials weak and pitiful, and will make sure to preventively remove them from the war effort. To Hitler's arrogant mind, that cannot happen to him, and your role in his young life will be interpreted as a mystical interference to guarantee Germany's destiny as ruler of the world. Hitler and his associates will also retroactively interpret details of the web pages you showed him into reliable predictions that will make the German army invincible, leading to his ultimate victory against the Allied Nations.
When you go back to the present, a young woman with an SS uniform approaches you. She smiles and speaks to you in German. You reply in the same language. You check your universal translator: to your surprise, it's turned off. You look at yourself, and you're using the same uniform.
Congratulations!
Have you done these sort of posts before? You're really good at this.
Thanks
I have not. But I have experience DMing RPGs[1], I'm a professional screenwriter (and film major) and a regular at /r/themonkeyspaw.
I also really like time travel fiction and WWII (as a subject, of course).
[1] My first idea was to run an RPG on Tildes! That would be significantly more complex, requiring Admin support for some custom stuff, so I decided I'll create a post to generate ideas on how to achieve that. But I won't do that anytime soon, because it will require a lot more work.
An RPG on Tildes sounds amazing, when it can happen.
I'll probably post an "announcement" next week, and I'll certainly need help. My initial idea was to make it virtually rules-free, but maybe just a bit of rules is ideal.
And it would have to be a collective effort, no way I can run it by my own.
Touche.
You have successfully killed Hitler and came back to the present. Your mission was entirely secret. The state of Israel no longer exists - it was never really necessary - but a multi-ethnic secret time-traveling community (which includes people of Jewish descent) welcomes you like a hero. You can now live a safe and comfortable life in the place of your choosing, but no one will ever know what you really did.
You see, there are very few pictures of Adolf Hitler as a child and none of him at 5-years-old. And there are, of course, Nazi time travelers guarding him and his family like hawks. You had to kill his entire class in order to make sure. You saved millions of lives but killed dozens of innocent children to achieve this goal. You know you did right but cannot forget the faces. You wake up every night with the screams. And the requirements of the mission prevent you from telling anyone about this, including psychotherapists.
Now you battle a heroin addiction and contemplate suicide. Congratulations!
This answer was successfully appealed.
The genie hears your appeal with a dismissive expression. Yawns loudly at your face, his breath smells like a thousand years.
"Okay, okay, settle down", he says. "I may be a jerk, but I am fair. While not explicitly prohibiting time-traveling Nazis, their existence would create enough legal shit to either cancel the entire experiment or occupy me for eternity. Because I'm not only a jackass but also a lazy genie, I, therefore, cancel time-traveling Nazis in all possible worlds." He gestures his hands with affectation. "Done!."
The Genie looks directly into @spit-evil-olive-tips eyes. "Are you happy? Now you only killed 5-year-old Hitler. You have much fewer nightmares and an alcohol problem instead of heroin. You'll be fine if you don't skip the AA meetings. Happy?". He now looks at @Algernon_Asimov: "And what about you?".
Yes, of course, you can argue. But don't forget: the genie is a jackass. The genie can introduce any sub-premise he wants as long as it is reasonable (this is like the fine print in a contract with the devil - something that existed but you were unable to realize). The only thing the jackass genie cannot do is to contradict a previously established premise.
The genie will carefully consider your case.
As a reminder: others can partake in the work of the genie.
In this case, I'm on the side of the wisher, rather than the genie. @spit-evil-olive-tips was very careful about identifying young Adolf, and killing only him. He doesn't have to go by pictures. He can listen to the children talk to each other, and find out which of them is called "Adolf".
And these Nazi time-travellers make everyone's attempts moot. They'll be hovering over every part of Hitler's life (and his parents' lives), and they'll stop every attempt to kill him (or prevent his birth). That's not just twisting the outcome of someone's actions, it's making the hypothetical scenario impossible in the first place. They've killed your thread, in place of Hitler.
You may consider each top comment as an independent narrative, though.
But yes, Nazi time travelers could make the entire thread moot if they were all-powerful and omniscient. OP was able to kill Hitler, after all. The world is "saved", he's just fucked up as a result hahahah
So this is a flawed and weak opposition, which allows for positive outcomes.
That said, I'll have to calmly read OP again to make a judgement.
Why does only this one narrative contain Nazi time-travellers? What was it about this particular scenario that triggered the arisal of these trans-temporal Nazis, when they didn't arise in any other scenario?
Regardless, the genie haven't made a decision yet. The spokesperson of the Genie is currently watching Joker on bluray.
Because the genie is a jackass!
You said the genie must be logical. Let us see that logic.
He is logical alright, but he is allowed to introduced any premise that does not contradict a previous one. That is the very nature of a jackass genie, he'll reveal hidden consequences of the desire that were impossible for the desirer to foresee. So yes, there is a logic to it, but it is a jackass logic. As I stated before, this is similar to a contract with the Devil: it is logical, but the fine print will fuck you!
Hitler's bedroom in the Führerbunker at 3pm 30th of April 1945 with a pistol.
You kill him and go back. The world is pretty much the same. Your boss looks angrily at you: "Whatta fuck? We were trying to kill him for a reason. You might as well have done nothing. Consider yourself fired, and good luck getting another job in this administration."
You go through the hallways holding your sad little box, while your colleagues turn their heads at your sight. You approach Brenda, the receptionist. Your best friend at the office. She extends her hand: "ID Card". "But Brenda...". "ID Card!", she says. "And fuck off."
So you do.
This makes me a renegade time assassin 😎
A disgraced Timecop, maybe?
I like this answer the most, honestly who knows what happens if we kill baby Hitler. Does someone worse take his place? Does this person end up winning WWII or possibly start a WWIII? There are too many variables to take into account and all in all, society right now is not too bad there's no guarantee that this alternate timeline will end up as a net positive for us.
That is why this is a mandatory mission. You are an operative, it is not your place to make conjectures.
You can, of course, disobey your orders. But everything has consequences
I'm just gaming the constraints of the thread by killing him 30 mins early but 30 mins after any witnesses had seen him in a way indistinguishable from his actual suicide.
I'd kill Hitler as in "Hitler, the idea he's come to represent." I dunno, play a Jewish man and be kind to him in youth so he'd have positive feelings towards Jews?
Fuck, I'm just trying to stay away from Inglorious Basterds-esque violence porn.
Ah, who am I kidding. I'll murder his whole family, up to-and including-second cousins. And I guess I'll poop on someone's remains, while I'm at it.
"Just kidding!", says the genie. Since you did not specify time or date, the genie sent you to the Reich Chancellery on its inauguration at 1936. And since you did not specify a weapon, the genie gave you a pool noodle. You arrive with a FLASH to the entire Nazi elite, including Heinrich Himmler and 30 well-armed SS officers. Regardless of your appearance, uniform and fluency in German, they promptly open fire at what is clearly a hostile invasion. Your flesh becomes mush after being shot 73 times. Nazi engineers are inspired by the pool noodles to improve the flotation of their boats. Apart from your horrific death, there are no changes in the outcome of the War.
I'm okay with this.
The Hero we deserve.
Hitler had a Jewish friend before he rose to leadership. He's also a narcissistic psychopath so any appeal to empathy is a waste of time.
You get a commendation when you come back, and the affectionate nickname Jew Bear, that you wear with pride.
Some people in the agency fear you, but that doesn't bother you at all. You are, by all definitions, a bad motherfucker.
Start a time travel league where people compete to kill Hitler in the most spectacular way and establish it as the sport of the future.
I'd watch that movie or Ricky Morty episode.
Ty, I remembered an old Writing Prompt that featured a similar idea, so I don't think I can take full credit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/4laf1r/wp_welcome_to_the_time_travelers_hitleroff/
Being a jackass myself, I take earth's largest nuclear weapon back to the dawn of mankind before we've even become homo sapeins and detonate it in the small but burgeoning population.
I'm not one to hate on humanity, but you've given me a task to complete and I mean to do it thoroughly.
Of course this is contingent on
I don't like being given mandatory assignments.
This is a breach of the rules since a nuclear weapon of this kind probably cannot be carried by a single human.
The Genie might be willing to give a pass to the remaining objections (no guarantees).
Also: one would be wise to not anticipate the Genie's objections, since this makes the Genie's work a lot easier.
I specifically researched nuclear weapons that can be carried. They exist, although probably not in the yeild range I was hoping for.
The Genie accepts this relevant information but would appreciate more details. Your case will be analyzed case shortly.
Munich, October 16, 1919. The Hofbräukeller is a popular restaurant for members of the short-lived Workers Party. The young Adolf Hitler draws the attention of the crowd. He talks about the unfairness of the Treaty of Versailles, and claims for a new and united German coalition that includes ALL German people. Suddenly, a flash in the back of the room. Someone looking like a German shoots a weird weapon at him. His crotch bleeds. People in the room starts laughing. Among them are some people of Jewish descent. Hitler will never forget this humiliation. And now he knows your face. What do you do?
Adolf Hitler only had one testicle (well, only one descended testicle). The old English war song, "Hitler has only got one ball", was correct in that regard.
You have successfully killed Hitler. After watching a speech by the young Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, the ruthless creator of the SS that managed to be more anti-semitic than Hitler itself, is greatly inspired. Methodic, controlled and eager to prove himself on the battlefield, Himmler seizes control of the Nazi Party and promptly invades Poland. His military prowess is fundamental to the ultimate Nazi victory.
When you go back to the present, a contemporary SS officer shoots you in the head.
Congratulations!
I'm curious: how would shooting a man's testicle kill him?
Didn't the Night of the Long Knives come really close to succeeding? And that was in, like, 1934
I don't think so:
Ah right, I thought it was in response to attempted assassinations, but that's correct
You are probably thinking of the 20 July plot.
Now is my turn!
For this comment, I obviously cannot play the genie. Anyone is free to take a shot, but I'm gonna go ahead and nominate @Algernon_Asimov for the role.
Warning
I'm a consequentialist. I do not intend to fail this mission and this is not for the faint of heart. I also have a flair for the gore. If you want an effective and ethically virtuous answer, here's one.
1. Preparation
Using a backpack, holsters, etc, I believe I could easily carry:
All weapons would be fully loaded and I would personally test each of them before deployment.
2. Execution
2.1. Adolf Hitler
I would set my Casio-Time-Machine to the city of Braunau am Inn, in Austria-Hungary, at 20 August 1888. I shotgun the door of the Hitler family and throw a flashbang inside, followed by a grenade. After the explosion, I enter the house, AR-15 in hand. I kill everyone in sight, including Hitler's mother, Klara. I make sure to put two shotgun bullets in her womb for safe measure.
If, for some reason, Hitler's fetus escapes, I still have 8 months of gestation to track Klara Hitler down.
If the mission succeeds, I immediately remove the Casio from my wrist and stash it under a rock near a lake. I flee the scene and seek for work on a farm far from that location. But my mission is not really over.
2.2. Heinrich Himmler
My second objective was not given by my superiors. I read enough time-travel stories to know that killing Hitler is never enough, so I'm going rogue to kill the second greatest threat to humankind: the dangerously methodical, Germanic fundamentalist and brilliant strategist Heinrich Himmler.
I live as a farmworker between 1888 and May of 1900, when I start preparing to take out fetus-Himmler. I travel to Munich, rent a room in a safe place and research public records for the family home of Joseph Gebhard Himmler and Anna Maria Himmler. I carefully stake out their house in preparation for the final attack, which happens in July of 1900 (when Himmler was a 1-month-old fetus) just like Part 1, with the exception that my main target is now Himler's mother, Anna Maria Himmler, and her fetus. I have no trouble following the plan, and put two shotgun bullets in the future Genocide.
I, again, flee the scene as fast as I can.
If I am caught, I can die in peace.
If I am able to escape, I go to the lake where I stashed the Casio and put it on my wrist. The machine, "knowing" that the mission is complete, sends me back to the present when/where I am received with honor.
3. Rationale
3.1. Why kill the fetus and not the mother, father or grandfather months or years before conception?
Philosophical concerns regarding what makes a person equal to itself. I think I understood when I read it but it's hard to explain. It was in Naming and Necessity, by Saul Kripke.
3.2. Why kill the entire family instead of just the "evil" fetus?
Operational concerns. If I had to preserve lives, I would be less efficient. I'm an operative with no backup.
3.3. Why also kill Himmler?
I have this pet theory that Himmler was significantly more capable than Hitler, and that killing Hitler might lead to Himmler taking charge and the Nazis winning the war. Many disagree with that opinion, saying that Himmler was quite crazy himself. I just think he was less crazy than Hitler when it came to command — and a lot more racist too.
Would you feel bad for killing lots of innocent people?
Absolutely. But I would save a lot more. I truly am a consequentialist.
What if you fail while killing a lot of innocent people? How would you feel?
I'd be willing to ruin my life if this meant increasing the probability of saving 75 million lives even by a small margin.
Well, this is awkward. I've been mostly away from the keyboard since you posted this, but I read it and had an idea about the consequences of your successful assassination. Now that I can sit down and devote time to writing it up, I see that @BullMaestro has written something very similar to what I was thinking, elsewhere in this thread.
I was also imagining that, without Hitler re-branding and re-invigorating the German Workers' Party, Germany turned communist. It would still have suffered the same economic effects of its defeat in World War I, and I imagined this would resolve itself in a communist revolution, similar to what happened in Russia.
And, with Germany a communist country, it would probably ally itself with communist Russia. And, like @BullMaestro, I think World War II would have resulted in this combination of powers overrunning mainland Europe. When Germany doesn't have to over-stretch itself by trying to invade a Russian enemy on an eastern front, and when its Russian ally can assist in a European war, all the focus is on the western, northern, and southern fronts, and Europe falls to communism.
The Cold War, such as it would be, would be between a communist Russo-Germano-Empire and a capitalist USA and the United Kingdom.
I really like this scenario because it is entirely plausible. The Nazi establishment had concrete reasons to fear a communist takeover, both before and during the war.
But given that the Allied Nations would most certainly lose without the Soviet Union, I must conclude that the Communist Coalition would emerge victorious from the conflict. There would be, therefore, no Cold War as we know it — just local counter-revolutionary movements that would be brutally suppressed.
Long live Arstotzka!
I’d pay off the maid who was his mother to not take the job at the house of Alois Hitler. Done.
That's cool ;)
I think once it got to the uniforms stage killing Hitler wouldn't have made much of a difference.
I would also kill Geobbels the propaganda guy. As a speaker Hitler was pretty captivating. But damned if the rest of the rally, the posters, and news pieces on him weren't the bigger lift.
Killing Goebells would be of little consequence if Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring were still alive...
I disagree. Sure Himmler and Goring were instrumental Nazis. But the early impact of Goebbels in growing and spreading Nazi-ism through intentional acts is hard to overstate. Hitler is certainly the main cheese and Himmler and Goring we important administrators.
But the assumption of "kill hitler stop nazis" implies that some singular figure could have at point been killed and thereby belayed the proliferation of Nazi-ism. You want to come in at some point before a critical mass would mean the Nazi party could self-sustain without movement leaders. Goebbels was the proliferate-er in chief. No Goebbels early in Nazi history no Nuremberg rallies, no/diminished public relations and propaganda genius, no/diminished media savvy etc.
I'm not a nazism scholar so you're right to challenge me. I just liked the angle that maybe the linchpin isn't Hitler.
I'm also not a nazism scholar, so my guess is as good as yours.
But, for what it's worth, Goebbels was almost as good as Hitler at public speaking.
Very true. To be clear, my point about Goebbels/Hitler comparison is that Goebbels was a Shrew background organizer whereas Hitler was more of a charismatic leader guy.
Excuse me the offtopic but another time travel thread? There's three actives in ~talk and it's all hypothetical time travel "what would you do" questions.
Wasn't tildes meant to have some degree of quality?
Yes, I got inspired. Similarity does not entail a lack of quality, and I don't think there's a rule against that. But feel free to not upvote, and also to not participate. And do report this thread if you think it is in violation of the rules and the philosophy of Tildes. You can also ignore it if you prefer.