Ethical paradox: Would You Kill Baby Hitler?

Post Reply New Topic

That is my fear. A lot of shows have shown the potentially horrifying effects of changing the past. I wouldn't want to fall into that trap.

No. I refer to Hitlers rise in popularity within the National Socialist Party was greatly due to Eckart's influence and funding.

Dietrich_Eckart

No. Each child is born pure and innocent. Abuse corrupted Hitler. His calling in life was to be an artist but his tyrannical father stopped him and his talent never developed. Hitler was traumatise just like all tyrants are. My father behaves like a tyrant he was traumatise. If you research it you will find that all psychopaths sociopaths were all traumatised. If he had been allowed to follow his life path in art he would never have turned out the way he did.

Yep. However, unlike fiction where I feel sorry for some sociopaths, I don't feel sorry for Hitler due to everything he did in his later life. As an artist, it's so sad seeing that he never got to develop his talent.

I'm a hardcore atheist.
Run fast, run far, run *very* fast.

A general question: Would you kill a baby stalin?

I hope the 'people', and I use the term lightly, who created the Versailles Treaty are rotting in hell.

We learned about it in GCSE History and I agree, it was WAY too harsh. Let them recover! Give them time! If you're going to demand payments make them more flexible. Also it was not ALL Germany's fault.

Had a communist gained leadership in Germany, in all probability, all of Europe would have come under the 'red heel of communist oppression', joining with Stalin's totalitarianism.
Would that have been more preferable?

Hmmm.
That would be an interesting scenario in the game of "Hearts of Iron".
Joining with the communists to conquer the entire world.
I like it!

I read somewhere that Hitler wasn't really interested in any particular ideology.
He was interested in personal power, no matter which path he took.

Agreed.
Most people, unfortunately, haven't the enlightenment to understand this.
They prefer a mindless sanctimony hit instead.

As I have said previously, psychopaths are born, but research suggests they need to be environmentally triggered to reach their full antisocial potential.

Sociopaths, on the other hand, are 'normal' people, with 'normal' neurology, who have been abused by society.

Oh yeah, forgot that distinction for a second there.

You mean valuing ethics and morals?

Why not pose that question to a jewish person if Germany adopting nazism had a silver lining

If I had a time machine, I wouldn't.

I would go to the battlefield & kill him there.

Or I would kill him as a vagrant.

There were plenty of times in his life that someone could've killed him where he was 1 innocent enough to have not killed someone but 2 still actually 'moral' just a racist bastard - ie hadn't killed anyone and 3 not powerful enough to win the fight.

I suppose the thing is, pinpointing when exactly that is.

Killing (actual) children and babies isn't ok when you're an adult.

Esp on the battlefield, he signed up to fight & risk death so him dying on the battlefield wouldn't have been a great loss. Germany lost the war anyway.

Also, hindsight is 20/20. Lots of people are racist. Esp back then. Lots of people want power. Lots of those people are bad but don't deserve to die. So if it was the war & I'd been born in the 19th century, I would only kill him out of a sense of national duty & being forced into it. Because I wouldn't know who he was & tbh realistically I'd probably have racist views myself, it was 'normal' back then.

Going back in time and killing Hitler has unknown consequences for the people living in that timeline. There were two great fictions created at the time was;
1. Hitler arose in-situ
2. Hitler was soley responsible for all the evils that took place

Both are wrong. Nazism predates Hitler. The philosophy behind was first promulgated in the US and spread to Europe, The inspiration behind concentration camps came from the use of such methods by the prevailing empires at the time including the British and Ottomans. White supremacy was widely believed across Europe and America as an intellectual science. Racial apartheid was learned from the US practice of Jim Crow which not only influenced the Nazis but also their kin in South Africa which created a system of apartheid that existed until the 1990s. Anti-semitism was culturally endemic in western Europe and in eastern Europe. All the necesary ingredients for the crimes committed were all there and did not require Hitler to be alive.

The second point relates to vicarious liability. Who is liable for the events of WWII? Hitler? the SS? what about the rest of the population. Are the German people ignorant of what was happening? what about the hundreds of thousands of French, Ukrainians, Balts. northern and eastern Europeans who enthusiastically engaged in the blood bath. There were thousands of these people who crept back into the wider population after the war and were hidden by family/community who pretended that they knew nothing (for example the Mengele family including his son Rolf made use of the money that Josef made during the war from Jewish slave labor to build an industry that uses the name as a logo. It is well known that the family profited from his membership in the Nazi party and used the money to hide him and send him by ship to South America). All these collaborators and benefactors after the war are equally guilty for aiding and abetting known war criminals because they profited from the war and shared the same beliefs.