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Of time travel and Hitler

HansMustermann

Penultimate Amazing
HansMustermann
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Mar 2, 2009
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Before I start, this is a purely SF / alt-history exercise. I'm not proposing in all seriousness that time travel is possible, nor that something like this has actually happened. So, you know, no need for this to go into the technology forum ;)

So, anyway, the general consensus seems to be that if you had a time travel machine, you should go kill Hitler. (Ignoring less obvious solutions such as pay for him to take more art lessons and find him a job drawing cartoons for Disney in America.) Meanwhile in Hollywood land, everyone who ever deliberately traveled in time to WW2 and did anything at all about the war, seems to have invariably given Hitler ramjet drives and disruptor cannons for his planes, or such.

But I'm thinking, what if RL were a branch where something entirely different has happened. Namely, it's not hard to notice that Hitler had the luck to avoid an amazing list of plots against him, by either having an explosive device moved, cancelling a speech early, disallowing aides to a conference at the last minute, or having a specific train car of new SS uniforms bombed so the guy who wanted to kill him didn't have to come model them any more. So what if the folks with time machines actually repeatedly SAVED Hitler from all those plots?

Why, especially knowing he'd lose anyway? Good question. The only thing that comes to mind is that history might have gotten even worse if someone did kill him, instead of letting Germany be decisively defeated.

Feel free to post your own scenarios as to how an alt history where Hitler dies at some specific point could turn out less fun than the one with him. Or really any other reason to save him.
 
For my own contribution, let's imagine a scenario where Hitler dies at some point in '39. E.g., either the Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski or the Georg Elser plots actually succeed.

At this point, he would probably be succeeded by Göring, who is the number 2 in the party at the moment and a popular fellow with the rich backers of NSDAP too. The SS isn't more than one regiment of bodyguards at this point, and even that only in name, as the actual bodyguards battalion is a Wehrmacht battalion led by Erwin Rommel. So Himmler has no real claim to power at this point. Even the Gestapo would probably switch allegiance to the new regime immediately, as Meier only was into it as the guy who executes orders without questions or hesitation, rather than any loyalty to Himmler. And the Wehrmacht would probably be fairly amenable to a war hero being the new leader.

Thing is, Göring is the one top-rank member of the NSDAP who's NOT for having a war and quickly. Now I'm not calling him a good guy or anything, but he's more or less a kleptocrat, who enjoys the good life at his large manor, and his collection of stolen artwork. He has more to lose than to gain from starting a bar brawl all over Europe.

So he'd probably stop. He definitely wouldn't attack the USSR. In fact, he'd probably listen to those who advise slowing down the rearmament and building up the economy.

Between the oil from the USSR and their slowly building up their hydrogenation plants, Germany would in fact have no real reason to go after the USSR, and could see a sharp industrial upswing if the insane policies are toned down.

At this point, France has mobilized about 1 in 8 adult males, and it's both driving their economy into the ground, AND creating massive dissent both in the newly drafted divisions and back at home. Especially the communists are agitating hard against the war, with slogans like "Why die for Danzig?" I would estimate that France can't keep at it more than a couple more years, before they have to either demobilize or crash and burn. I can imagine them eventually being amenable to a peace with Germany, if Germany doesn't attack them first.

Britain would probably hold on longer, but eventually it would still have the problem of no real way of getting at Germany, especially if Germany strengthens its ties to the USSR instead of attacking them. So I would imagine that come next elections, some form of agreement could be worked out.

Meanwhile Italy is sitting on a LOT of oil in North Africa, they just don't know it yet. So if Il Duce can stay sane for a couple more years -- which, I know, is a tall order for HIM -- there goes his own reason to go to war.

Japan would continue trading with the Dutch, if Germany doesn't take them out in '40, and get enough oil from them to make the American embargo hurt a lot less. It would probably just focus on gobbling up China and never get into a war with the USA and Britain.

The USSR would continue getting a LOT of industrial machinery and whatnot from Germany, who was their top customer all the way to Barbarossa. Without the setback caused by the war, Stalin can continue his accelerated industrialization, and it would probably end up an even more major world power than in the real history.

What I'm getting at is that in this world both communism and fascism are actually quite successful. The world never has the waking up moment of seeing what destruction the nazis caused, so it would probably be a successful model, and quite popular in the west in the first place anyway.

The world would probably end up divided between fascism and communism, is what I'm getting at.
 
So we avoid the destruction of the war, but don't get the regime change that comes after it.

The USA will still be the world's industrial powerhouse.

On balance, I think we end up better off in your alternative history.

(You didn't go too far into how things go in the Pacific, but I doubt that western powers will allow Japan free reign in China)
 
Well, my thinking is, basically, what COULD the USA do to Japan in that scenario?

The Dutch Indies were one of the major oil exporters in 1940, along with some other resources, and Japan was buying a lot of that. Then their BFF Hitler blitzes through the Netherlands, who put their resources then at UK's disposal. The Dutch Indies' resources start going to the UK, leaving Japan almost entirely dependent on teh USA for oil, and again for other resources too. Which leaves them up crap creek lacking a paddle when the USA embargoes them. And I mean, it's so bad that essentially they have a clock ticking until their navy runs dry and becomes useless. That's more or less the sequence of events that ends up with Japan HAVING to attack the allies in Asia to get any oil at all.

In an alternate history where Germany leaves the Netherlands alone, my thinking is that Japan can just ignore the USA embargo if they maintain good relations with the Dutch.

The only way for the USA to stop Japan in this scenario, is basically to declare war on Japan. Which I think the USA was still too isolationist to do any time soon, unless Japan declares war first.

And the UK and France would be in a sitzkrieg with Germany for the next couple of years. They wouldn't divert half their troops to start a war in the Pacific too.


That said, yes, I left the USA out of this scenario, because the USA would see no big change to its peace time economy. In fact, it would continue to see steady economic growth, and, yes, be a major economic power house.

My thinking about the USA is more like it might turn fascist in this scenario. Fascism was immensely popular among a lot of the rich before the war, especially if you don't get hung up on most not calling it that. In fact, a lot of the "crazy" ideas that Hitler went nuts with, weren't even his own, but imported from the USA. His eugenics ideas for example were actually quite mainstream in the USA long before Hitler jumped on that bandwagon. And his ideas about racial purity and protecting the ethnic state, well, look at all the laws against miscegenation that the USA were implementing against Asians. And not some old remnants, but NEW laws being passed to protect the racial purity. The world was actually becoming MORE racist.

I keep saying it, but basically Hitler didn't get to be unpopular for being a racist fascist twit, but rather the other way around. It took seeing what those ideas lead to, when taken to the logical conclusion to figure out that, you know, we don't like fascism after all.


But if you want to look at the American continent, the country which would get the kick in the balls in this scenario would be Canada. Canada's reaction to the Great Depression was the wrong one, and they kept having a jolly good depression until WW2 military spending kick-started their economy again. With that only happening at a much slower pace, they might enjoy another year or two of depression in this scenario.
 
The best reason I can think of is that without Hitler any major war is going to be postponed for years and Japan is unlikely to turn south if Britain and France aren't bogged down in Europe. Assuming that nuclear weapons are developed then without the salutary lesson of Hiroshima coming right at the end of WWII they might be used in large numbers by nations that see them as just big bombs.

Add to this the Japanese would continue their efforts to develop bio-weapons via Unit 731 and in an alt-history they might release something that exceeds the death toll caused by the Spanish Flu.
 
I've had this general type of idea too. Perhaps there is time travel and what we think of past events that should be changed: kill Hitler, save the Titanic, prevent the assassination of Lincoln, would be undoing what future time travelers had already done to make history better. Not having the Titanic sink would create something worse.

In thinking about it more there are some interesting twists. Of course a future time traveler would be interested in optimizing their own lives and time period, so the changes they might engineer in a shared past could easily be making our own time period worse - would they care? Perhaps it is useful in 2040 to have 99% of us die now in an epidemic.

Also then presumably there would be competing time travelers each interested in optimizing their own time period, or each having their own ideas about what would be optimal and how to manipulate the past to achieve their own goals. I can only imagine groups of competing time travelers flicking in and out of different time periods switching events back and forth and plotting ways of changing events subtly so that other time travelers might not clue in.

Endless science fiction has explored some of the latter ideas.
 
Just to digress from the time travel thing, watch the film "Max".
Adolf shown as a budding artist under the wing of a fellow WW1 vet and impresario and JEW.
One point in the movie Adolf finds his muse, he has an artistic breakthrough bu it enrages him, his hatred over whelms him and the rest is history.
Back to alt history, with heir Hitler out of the picture, WW2 probably would be "could be" one where Stalin is the pivot of the "AXIS".
 
I've said it before, but I doubt that Stalin would start a world war. Essentially he's too paranoid to secure his own position and not risk anything. Gambling it all on one big war is just not fitting his profile, IMHO.

If you want a WW2 that's started by the commies, as I've said in another thread, put Trotsky in power in your alternate history. That guy is a fanatical ideologue, and a fighter. He's gonna try to export the revolution all right, because that's his big ideological hard-on.

Fairly easy to handwave too. The guy IS a risk taker, and he only has to take the risk to show Lenin's political testament in the politburo, damaging as it is. But it's far more damaging to Stalin.


To keep in line with the theme of how alt histories could be worse, now THAT one is a huge kick in the pants for the world. Imagine this:

- fascism and even specifically nazism are fairly popular in the west
- Germany is, at the time, preaching about the supposedly evil jewish bolshevism trying to control or take over the world
- a jew bolshevik like Trotsky DOES start a world war

Can you see how that would boost fascism and specifically nazism immensely? Antisemitism would be completely mainstream within mere years in the west. And I mean, a lot more than it already was.
 
The Trotsky version of WWII, yeh I can see that.
We would have so joined the Nazis to fight against that.
What a horrid thought!
 
Time travel..

Go back to prevent WWI and it's reparations on Germany. Hitler would just be another forgotten name.

One bullet had to be stopped.
 
Without the war economy and the political, industrial and social changes that it precipitated, the US would be a different nation.

Along with losing accelerated advances in tech (that were also, BTW, exported worldwide) and massive corporate growth as war providers shifted to peacetime production, the biggest impact would be no GI Bill: no free education/vocational training; no small business loans; no low-cost mortgages.

The GI Bill had a massive impact on economic expansion. It fueled the housing boom, which accelerated the population shift from cities to suburbs, with thousands of small businesses opening to serve those suburbs. It created a huge pool of educated workers for growing corporations to draw from. By necessity, the transportation infrastructure was transformed from city-centric to inter-city and inter-state.

Historians and economists judge the G.I. Bill a major political and economic success—especially in contrast to the treatments of World War I veterans—and a major contribution to America's stock of human capital that encouraged long-term economic growth.
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There was also a little something called the baby boom.
 
HansMustermann said:
Feel free to post your own scenarios as to how an alt history where Hitler dies at some specific point could turn out less fun than the one with him. Or really any other reason to save him.
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The main reasons I can think of for a time-traveler to save Hitler are:

1. In order to stop other time travelers from killing him, altering the timeline and creating an unknown future; or

2. In the hope that saving him will protect the future so that the time traveler has a home to return to.

This assumes time is not a closed loop. If it is, it doesn't matter what the time-traveler does and free will has no meaning.

Now I've made myself depressed.
 
Loss Leader said:
The main reasons I can think of for a time-traveler to save Hitler are:

1. In order to stop other time travelers from killing him, altering the timeline and creating an unknown future; or

2. In the hope that saving him will protect the future so that the time traveler has a home to return to.

This assumes time is not a closed loop. If it is, it doesn't matter what the time-traveler does and free will has no meaning.

Now I've made myself depressed.
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At least you can comfort yourself by knowing that you really couldn't help it.

:D
 
Why is it always "go back in time and kill baby Hitler" and not "go back in time and raise baby Hitler to not be such a dick"?
 
I recently watched an old episode of QI where Stephen Fry proposed an interesting scenario: Late in the 20th century the rules regarding royal succession were changed so that the firstborn child (male or female) of the reigning monarch is next in line for the throne. If this rule had been in place in the late 19th century when Victoria died, her successor would have been Princess Alexandra. Alexandra died about a year after Victoria, in which case her son would have inherited the English throne. That son was Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany.

Would there have been WWI if Wilhelm was King of England?
Without WWI, would Hitler have turned out the way he did?
 
Brainache said:
Would there have been WWI if Wilhelm was King of England?
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From all accounts I've read, Wilhelm was deeply annoying, even by the standards of royalty and that particular family. If he were monarch of two countries they'd most likely go to war, probably after tossing a coin to see which country gets stuck with him.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Why is it always "go back in time and kill baby Hitler" and not "go back in time and raise baby Hitler to not be such a dick"?
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Presumably because raising children is hard work. It's easier to empty your barrel into someone, than to deal with the cuddling and talking afterw... err... wait, what were we talking about again?

*AHEM* More seriously, how do you know you'd do a better job of teaching any nazi to not be a dick than their parents did?

I mean, take for example Göring. He had a jewish godfather who provided for Hermann's parents, raised him at a castle, and let him enjoy hunting, fencing and so on. He may have had something to do with Hermann's just getting accepted into the airforce in WW1 instead of being punished, when he deserted his actual post and snuck into an aircraft unit pretending to be a newly assigned observer. (The army tends to be dicks about desertions and impersonating an officer and such;))

I mean, granted, he was boning Göring's mom, but still... you'd think young Hermann would learn that Jews can be generous, kind, and generally nice people.

The last thing you'd expect is for him to become an antisemite, but that's exactly what happened anyway.
 
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