
Time travellers: please don’t kill Adolf Hitler - ColinWright
http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/feb/21/time-travellers-kill-adolf-hitler
======
terhechte
There would actually be no need to kill anybody in order to prevent WW1 and
WW2 (at least as we know it) you'd simply need to tell a taxi driver to take a
different path, and all would be well:

"But Franz was not yet done putting his life in insane danger. Against the
advice of pretty much everyone, he insisted on going to the hospital to visit
the people who were injured by the grenade. The driver, unfortunately, had no
idea where the fuck he was going. They ended up crisscrossing hilariously
through the streets of Sarajevo, until they just randomly happened to pass a
cafe where, you guessed it, Gavrilo Princip was enjoying a post-failed-
assassination sandwich.

After the obligatory pause of dumbfounded luck, Princip grabbed his pistol and
turned the tide of history."

[http://www.cracked.com/article_17298_6-random-
coincidences-t...](http://www.cracked.com/article_17298_6-random-coincidences-
that-created-modern-world.html)

~~~
tga_d
While it smacks in the face of the joke I made elsewhere, altering the events
of that day probably wouldn't have had that much effect on the over-arching
tides of history. Pretty much everyone agrees that Europe was a proverbial
powder keg at the time, and that all sides (at least in and around Europe)
were itching for an excuse to go to war. This is a relatively popular subject
to study in history, in fact.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I)

While there is some argument to be made that the specific timing of the event
made subsequent happenings occur in the manner they did, I think most people
would say that what happened was going to happen anyway. Or at least, this is
what I recall from high school history class and my own limited research into
the subject.

Still though, it's fun to speculate - a sufficient delay in the causes of
revolution in Russia could have correspondingly delayed the backlash against
communism, Germany could very well have been the first country to undergo such
a revolution, the style of communism then being more akin to classical Marxism
than Lenin's, perhaps lessening Germany's role as an industrial powerhouse and
colonial ruler, mitigating the competitive tensions in Europe on that front
but increasing them on an economic one, or who knows what. Really it's all
just counterfactual conjecture, but like I said, it's fun.

~~~
jsnell
I don't think pretty much everyone agrees. I went on a WWI reading binge
earlier this year, and of the 4 books on the war written in this millennium,
none described a general European war as unavoidable. There had been major
crises in the previous few years that didn't lead to one. And while the trend
had been for increased polarization, there was good reason to believe that the
tide was turning.

France was a month away from getting a pacifist government that was looking to
patch things up with Germany (and would've had one by the time of crisis,
except for by a freak occurence in the form of the Caillaux affair). Russia
was losing their shot on Constantinople at the end of that summer, when the
Turkish Dreadnaughts would've been delivered. In Austria-Hungary Franz
Ferdinand was the main driver for peace, and the main warmonger (Conrad )was
about to be sacked. England was likely to detach itself from Russia when the
next round of treaty negotiations over Persia came up. Germans were convinced
that a war against Russia would be unwinnable in a couple of years.

So there's some reason to believe that the time window for a general European
war was fairly short, and it was only by bad luck that something sufficiently
serious happened in that window.

~~~
userulluipeste
As far as I know, some players of the (both) World War(s) were involved
because they got only later in the game for colonies. Actually that's exactly
what formed the Axis Power in the WW2 - countries constituted only later as
Germany and Italy, or Japan which only later got itself out of a stagnant
isolationist stance. No single event could have prevented the war(s).

------
Robin_Message
There's a great short story in the style of a forum about not killing Hitler –
[http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/08/wikihistory](http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/08/wikihistory)

------
mseebach
It's interesting - as WWII is increasingly distant, the collective memory of
it fades, and we begin to focus on the long term benefits from it that we
enjoy (the peace dividend), and not the immediate horrors of the war.

This article written 80 years from now? Time travellers: please don't kill
Osama bin Laden, the war on terror gave us drones and tons of great security
technology.

~~~
DanBC
We had drones before 911!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_unmanned_aerial_veh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_unmanned_aerial_vehicles)

> _The earliest recorded use of an unmanned aerial vehicle for warfighting
> occurred on August 22, 1849, when the Austrians attacked the Italian city of
> Venice with unmanned balloons loaded with explosives._

> _After World War I, three Standard E-1s were converted as drones.[6] The
> Larynx was an early cruise missile in the form of a small monoplane aircraft
> that could be launched from a warship and flown under autopilot; it was
> tested between 1927 and 1929 by the Royal Navy. The early successes of
> pilotless aircraft led to the development of radio controlled pilotless
> target aircraft in Britain and the US in the 1930s. In 1931, the British
> developed the Fairey "Queen" radio-controlled target from the Fairey IIIF
> floatplane, building a small batch of three, and in 1935 followed up this
> experiment by producing larger numbers of another RC target, the "DH.82B
> Queen Bee", derived from the De Havilland Tiger Moth biplane trainer.
> Through some convoluted path, the name of "Queen Bee" is said to have led to
> the use of the term "drone" for pilotless aircraft, particularly when they
> are radio-controlled.[7] However during this period the U.S. Navy,
> continuing work that reached back to 1917, was also experimenting with radio
> controlled aircraft. In 1936 the head of this research group used the term
> "drone" to describe radio controlled aerial targets.[8]_

etc. So current drones are just a refinement of earlier technology. If we
hadn't gone to war in Afghanistan we had Iraq to use this new technology. If
we hadn't gone to war in Iraq or Afghanistan we would have used drones over
NK, perhaps to drop media players loaded with sitcoms and soap operas and
music.

~~~
mseebach
And we had rockets before WWII! (They were invented by the chinese around 1000
years ago)

The big leap in technology still happened during, and mostly because of, the
requirements of war.

It's obviously too early to decide if drones is going to be the quintessential
example of peace dividend technology to come out of the war on terror, but
it's disingenuous to suggest there isn't going to be one (or several).

------
mcv
I've long suspected that despite its many horrors, WW2 actually resulted in
some very significant good: finally uniting an eternally warring Europe; civil
rights, equality, and racism and discrimination being considered really evil;
and it also marked the end of colonialism.

What many people fail to realize is that despite two of the most horrific wars
in history, the 20th century was actually the most peaceful century ever. WW2
was a very painful step, but I think its consequences were ultimately an
important step forward for mankind.

~~~
pavelludiq
History is weird that way. I recommend listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore
History series on the Mongols[1] where he talks about how historians often
justify unspeakable horrors because in hindsight there are a lot of benefits
to modern civilization. He balances it out by saying that the benefits don't
look so good if you have to ask the people who actually have to pay the bill.
Millions of Chinese, Muslims, Russians and Hungarians who actually had to pay
for the benefits of Genghis Khans conquest would probably not see it as a good
trade off to endure literally the end of the world.

He also talks about how sometime in the future, when the pain isn't as fresh
as it is now, some historian will write a book about all the benefits of
Hitlers regime, like they do for Caesar or Alexander(All butchers of similar
caliber). But thats pretty much impossible currently because you need the
historical distance from such hard topics.

[1]
[http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive](http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive)
It's caller "Wrath of the Khans" and is essentially an audio book, find a
couple of free evenings and listen to it if you can handle hours and hours of
horror. There are also a bunch of old episodes(only recent episodes are free)
on WW2 that are definitely worth the money. The most recent series is on WW1,
it's still unfinished, and in fact after many hours it's barely one month into
the war, you need an entire mini-audio book to set up the context for an audio
book on WW1, thats insane. Fans of history will become addicted to this
podcast. BE WARNED!

~~~
mcv
The Mongols are an example where I don't see nearly as much upside. I admit I
don't know much about their impact on China, but pre-Mongol Russia (Novgorod
and Kiev) were quite democratic and free. The Mongols moved the seat of power
to Moscow and installed authoritatian regimes, and Russia has always remained
very autocratic ever since.

But even without that, of course we shouldn't go about causing terrible evil
hoping some good will come of it. The Holocaust and everything Hitler did will
always be terrible. It was the response to this evil, and the memory of it,
that hopefully keeps driving us towards good for a long time to come. These
are the lessons of history that we need to learn: that it's everybody's duty
to ensure that this kind of evil can never happen again.

~~~
pavelludiq
The mongol conquest was almost certainly a net negative for humanity(Baghdad
recovered only in the 20th century as just one example). But the standard
argument is that suddenly you had chinese culture spread to the west somewhat.
Not to mention after all the killing was over, trade was more free and safe
for a while. If you had the Khans permission to travel in the empire, you
didn't have to worry too much about a random tribe looting your caravan.
Mongols were also very tolerant of other religions as long as you submitted to
their rule. Marco Polo probably wouldn't have made it to china without that
region being "passified". The same argument could be used in the case of
Alexander or Caesar or Napoleon. You could also say that the conquista was a
good thing for the American continents, but that would depend on who you ask.
This is a fairly complex topic well beyond my knowledge as a fan of history,
not to mention I touched on a subject thats very sensitive to a huge portion
of the population of the world. Most of us have ancestors who were conquered
and few of us view it as a good thing.

In summary, humans did horrible things to each other, and we survived and
endured, so now with the danger out of the way we can play these games, I
don't wish to continue though. I've probably stepped on a few land mines with
this comment already. The whole thread is a mine field. I wish everybody
pleasant evenings with history books/podcasts.

------
harywilke
Reminds me of this excellent short story on the kill Hitler time travel theme
told through wiki edits.

[http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/08/wikihistory](http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/08/wikihistory)

~~~
_puk
Completely tangential, but given all the recent online privacy debates, and
the likes of Steam sniffing dns caches etc I actually thought twice about
visiting tor.com (having never stumbled across it before).

For reference it's a Macmillan Sci-fi / comic site, not the Tor project, but
you all knew that right.

Great link btw.

------
spc476
One interesting theory I heard was the the US and Britain were trying to keep
Hitler alive, because he was his own worst enemy. Had he been killed off
during WWII, someone competent might have taken over and extended the war.

~~~
nolok
It's not a theory since the official documents on it have been declassified
nowadays, you can find the details on wikipedia, short version is they tried
to get him killed but after a couple of years they realized he was not a very
good military tactician yet still imposed his ideas/choices to the generals,
so having him alive was beneficial to the allies.

Unsurprisingly this is roughly at this point that German's generals plots to
kill him from inside started, although their reasons were more complicated.

------
tga_d
Forget killing Hitler to stop WWII, kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand to stop WWI!

Oh, wait...

------
tehwalrus
> _" Now that you’ve changed things, time travel wasn’t invented in your
> lifetime, so either you vanish and the whole thing is undone, or your time
> machine does."_

Can we please stop telling people that time travel will/can cause the object
in your hand to change in front of your eyes?

Objects in spacetime follow the path defined by the laws of physics. If you
brought an object from your timeline[1] it (and indeed you) will not change to
suit the new reality you're in. It will just be an object, like you, stranded
from another place, even if the return journey closes because of one of your
actions.

The first housecat in Australia just hangs out and eats _everything_ , it
doesn't start acting like a koala. (traveling in space and time are the same
thing, even though one is more restrictive in which way you can go.)

EDIT: There is another alternative, which is that there is only one causal
universe, and it is impossible to change things that happened in the past
(e.g. every time you try to kill Hitler you fail, and maybe make him tighten
up his security making it impossible for a local-time assassin to do their
job, all of which was reported in local documents that you already knew about,
or similar.)

[1] or universe, if you believe in multiple possible worlds.

~~~
icebraining
_There is another alternative, which is that there is only one causal
universe, and it is impossible to change things that happened in the past
(e.g. every time you try to kill Hitler you fail, and maybe make him tighten
up his security making it impossible for a local-time assassin to do their
job, all of which was reported in local documents that you already knew about,
or similar.)_

Clearly if changing the past is impossible, then traveling to the past it's
completely impossible, since your simple presence in a place is a change. It
makes no sense that the laws of physics would prevent you from killing Hitler
but not from changing the position of the air molecules around you,

~~~
tehwalrus
not at all. it just means you were _always_ there in the past, and any action
you took has already affected your own future.

------
JonnieCache
SMBC has dealt with this several times. Here's the most recent (and best) one:
[http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3266](http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3266)

------
fmdud
Reminds me of [http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3116](http://www.smbc-
comics.com/?id=3116)

~~~
mnw21cam
Or even better: [http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3266](http://www.smbc-
comics.com/?id=3266)

------
onion2k
The "what if someone worse took his place!" reason is a misnomer - if you have
the capability to go back and kill Hitler then you'd have the capability to go
back and kill someone else as well.

~~~
watwut
You would have to kill a lot of people. And you risk that some of them would
turn out to be more effective then Hitler.

~~~
maxerickson
One awful theory would be that Hitler was a time traveler (the awful part
being the assumption that he succeeded in making things less bad).

------
spingsprong
How about going back in time and changing Hitler's mind? I'm not sure what the
best way to go about it would be, but it'd probably be worth a try before you
kill somebody.

------
MatthiasP
I don't believe in single persons influence in history on a grand scale.

Gavrilo Princip was just one of many 'terrorists' that were supported by
Serbia and Russia to extend their influence into Bosnia. The situation was
about to explode there, no matter what.

Adolf Hitler was just one of millions of nationalsocialists and the popularity
of the Nazis was based on the treaty of Versailles and the huge social
injustices in 1930s Germany, not on his rhetoric skills. While he was the
reason for many strategic errors on the Eastern Front he was also the person
who gave the Blitzkrieg doctrine vs France the decisive support, while many of
the German generals opposed it. Germany could have never won the war against
the soviets, because the soviets would have always been able to relocate their
production and political centers further and further to the east.

The geopolitical situation at the beginning of the 20th century was this:
Germany and allies were big enough to threaten the rest of Europe, but not
strong enough to dominate them. So there was a long and painful process of
subduing Germany and this process is now known as WW1 and WW2.

PS.: If an actual historian finds flaws in my reasoning here i would be very
thankful if they take the time to point them out.

------
magicroundabout
I was waiting for a nod towards the Derek Parfit paradox: The idea that even
if avoiding WWII would have made for a better course of history from an
abstract utilitarian point of view -- a world with less suffering and more
pleasure -- it would be ethically problematic because virtually none of the
people who are actually alive today would exist in the alternate no-Hitler
scenario. People who actually exist are more valuable than people who only
potentially exist (it is difficult otherwise to explain the vast moral
difference between a couple deciding not to have a child and having a child
then painlessly killing her).

Unfortunately, this seems to justify everything since (especially if coupled
with chaos theory) we can prospectively say of the future that the set of
people won't be the same at time X -- say, a hundred years hence -- if we
don't go to war with Iran.

N.B. That this only form of justification can only work if you are not
planning to annihilate everyone on the planet.

------
jmnicolas
I liked the bit of humor at the end :

"Dean Burnett promises he is not a time-travelling Nazi. But then, he would
say that, wouldn’t he?"

------
blueskin_
Kill Hitler == no WW2 == no nuclear energy, no computers == no time travel ==
Hitler was never killed.

Time paradox.

~~~
yardie
> no nuclear energy, no computers

I guess guys like Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace just sat on their hands.

~~~
mcv
> I guess guys like Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace just sat on their hands.

Well no, but they didn't succeed either. For a world where they did, read some
steampunk literature.

~~~
blueskin_
Babbage might have, but only if he had several times the funding and lifespan
he did.

~~~
mcv
Might have but didn't, which is my point. WW2 increased the demand for
automated computing, which got computer development the funding it didn't have
100 years earlier.

------
hessenwolf
He did make eugenics unfashionable.

------
blindguardian
Let's say somenone goes back in time and kills Hittler, does it really change
our timeline events? Or it just creates an alternative timeline with
alternative versions of us and nothing really changes here?

~~~
informatimago
You're making the same mistake as those who talk about space travel usually
make: you're considering the people who stay behind!

This is irrelevant. The gains obtained from travel benefit the traveler, not
those who stay behind.

If you want to go into the galaxy, just put up a nuclear reactor in space, and
with the energy obtained, produce a permanent thrust, as small as it may be
(given the mass of your space ship including a whole nuclear reactor, and a
self contained biotope).

When you kee a permanent thrust, you reach relativistic speed soon enough, so
that a travel to the closests stars (or the planets detected around them), can
be done in a reasonable time, FOR THE TRAVELLER!

With an acceleration of about 1g, you can get to the closest star (4 light
years) in about one year.

Of course, for those who stay behind, time goes faster, and it'll be ten years
(plus four years for the light to get back) for them to learn that you've
reached your destination. But who cares about those losers who stayed behind?

Well, it's the same here. Who cares about those losers who didn't travel back
in time. Let's have them keep their lousy timeline! At least, the TIME
TRAVELLER gets to change his own future!

------
RafiqM
Life lessons from Command & Conquer: Red Alert.

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R6xCWcf_VU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R6xCWcf_VU)

------
_ak
Everybody kills Hitler on their first trip.

------
yeukhon
While I agree with the article, I think of time travel a bit differently these
days.

The old idea I have/had looks like this:

\- we are just one of the many (very likely infinite) possibility in this
universe

\- I believe time travel is a possibility, from a philosophical point of view.
I believe in moving forward, not backward.

Put it this way: If I didn't write this comment, your previous five seconds
would be reading something else. That's a different history of you and
definitely a different history of you and everyone else, even if they are not
on HN (you and me are part of each other's experience, even if we are
completely strangers, just think about the number of likes on a Youtube video,
we could have clicked that button on the same video without knowing the
existence of each other).

Think about a street performer. The performance was great, quite
inspirational. Everyone who passed by or stood there to watch the performance
have a different thought. A guy who just lost his job was going to commit
sucicde but the music and the performance cheered him up. A high school kid
who just got out of school thought the show added joy to his day. A mother
with a young child thought the show was an interesting entrainment and she
uploaded a video of the performance on FB later that night and many of her
friends echoed her afterward.

One event can make big impact on everyone. If you didn't dye your hair so
often your chance of getting blood cancer would be much lower and your family
wouldn't have to see you die a few years younger. The outcome would be very
different.

If we go back to the past, we will create a new past. From a programmer's
mouth, we will create a new object, totally distinct, occupy a different chunk
of memory. If "possibility" is a computer with unlimited RAM, that's the model
we will use.

    
    
      old_1930 = historyTable(1930_version_1234);
      old_current = historyTable(0xlolcat);
      new_1930_everyone = deepcopy(new_1930_everyone + old_current.me;
      new_1930 = new World(now_everyone);
      // new_1930.next = old_1930.next;
    
    

This construction makes sense. I copy myself and everyone in 1930. Because the
original past we came from didn't have "us" in it. We didn't exist in 1930s.
That is, adding an extra atom would mean a different 1930. This means whatever
happens next, even if it were just removing that single atom again, doing so
will affect everyone. How do you know that single atom didn't make the air
module accelerate faster because that atom was hit so much more often?

Note my construction doesn't say much about deleting. If the original "past"
object still exists in this unlimited RAM machine, can I delete it? Can I just
detach such node from the other linked list and delete from memory?

If only we performed a deepcopy on _old_current.me_. But remember, we will
remain to have a disconnection with reality. We will keep remembering about
friends we _used_ to have but no longer exists because when we do a deepcopy
we only copy the pointer to the other events in our memory. We can't locate
friend Alice and friend Bob in the new _past_ object anymore.

But if we don't do a deepcopy, we will not be able to delete ourselves. That
is, we can't delete the original world. People who lived in the _old_1930_
would continue to experience the old_1931, old_1932, etc.

 _B U T_ , we can't just attach nodes this way.

    
    
      new_1930_everyone = deepcopy(new_1930_everyone + old_current.me;
      new_1930 = new World(now_everyone);
    
    

If 2014/02/21 7:35:01 - 7:35:02 are the two moments I want to preserve in the
future, then we will have the following problem: the deepcopy of _me_ is NOT
compatible with the original me from 2014/02/21 7:35:01am AND 7:350:02AM.
Because by the time I do a pointer modification, the deeopcopy of me from that
new 1930 would have seen a real Hilter, killed a person for the first time.
This is true for everyone else who lived through 1930s and 2014 in both the
new and original world...

Me != me. Therefore, we cannot go back and simply change pointer and expect to
see good things. I might even carry a dust particle from 1930 into 2014.

Anyhow, what I am proposing doesn't really make sense. There are holes and I
am too tired to continue. This is what happen when I couldn't sleep for the
last 36 hours.

------
Einstalbert
If you insist.

