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You are a time traveler thought experiment.


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Just for kicks, say in the future time travel backwards was possible. Let's forget about all the time paradoxes etc  for now.  You would travel back alone and with no artifacts from the future as they did in the Terminator movies. What would you try to change? What would you think the repercussions of that change would be? Others are of course free to respond to your thoughts on your repercussions and add repercussions you may not have though of. 

 

I hope this thread isn't too goofy for the Battlefront audience. :)

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13 minutes ago, RockinHarry said:

Killing Adolf in 1933 at the latest. Repercussions.....

Better still, buy his paintings, help him get the renown to craved, and he would use his prodigious powers to help humanity.

But, then Stalin would be free to attack Europe.  So, now we have to go back and do something to neutralize Stalin.  

And then...

Eventually, we go back to stop Alexander the Great or even earlier etc ad infinitum..

Edited by Erwin
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2 minutes ago, Billythegoat said:

Save Archduke Ferdinand

Keep on dreaming it was only the excuse they needed. They would have found a different excuse. Christianity imploded, Orthodox Christianity, Catholic Christianity, Protestant Christianity, Church of England thrown in decided not to turn the other cheek and 30 years later 80 million killed. Nationalism ruled it started with the La Marseillaise during the Napoleonic age and everybody followed suit. It reigns till the present day. 

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German troops were in retreat, a wounded German soldier entered Tandy's line of fire. “I took aim but couldn’t shoot a wounded man,” Tandey remembered, “so I let him go.” The German soldier nodded in thanks and disappeared. The theory is he spared Hitler's life. 

British soldier allegedly spares the life of an injured Adolf Hitler - HISTORY

 

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5 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Keep on dreaming it was only the excuse they needed. They would have found a different excuse. Christianity imploded, Orthodox Christianity, Catholic Christianity, Protestant Christianity, Church of England thrown in decided not to turn the other cheek and 30 years later 80 million killed. Nationalism ruled it started with the La Marseillaise during the Napoleonic age and everybody followed suit. It reigns till the present day. 

Well it was that or take JFK back with me and have him assassinate himself like in Red Dwarf 

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I think Hitler and Princip were just symptoms of their times - killing them would not have solved the underlying tensions that caused WW1 and WW2.

But maybe killing them would have delayed the world war for just enough time for the atomic bomb to have been invented, and this might have prevented the war or at least kept it more confined. Or just made it much shorter.

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1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

I think Hitler and Princip were just symptoms of their times - killing them would not have solved the underlying tensions that caused WW1 and WW2.

But maybe killing them would have delayed the world war for just enough time for the atomic bomb to have been invented, and this might have prevented the war or at least kept it more confined. Or just made it much shorter.

Interesting hypothetical, there. WW2 being started (and very quickly finished) with Nukes... Probably the Germans getting there first, if they didn't drive half their top theoretical physicists out, which they might not've done if the Nationalist fervour that took over in the absence of Hitler had had a different flavour. Would they have started by taking out Russia? More "Lebensraum" thattaway, though not as precious to the Nationalist mind, perhaps, as Alsace-Lorraine. Or would the UK/France have felt the need for pre-emption if they found out the heavy water plants were about to produce a different "Final Solution" to which they had no answer?

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1 hour ago, womble said:

Interesting hypothetical, there. WW2 being started (and very quickly finished) with Nukes... Probably the Germans getting there first, if they didn't drive half their top theoretical physicists out, which they might not've done if the Nationalist fervour that took over in the absence of Hitler had had a different flavour. Would they have started by taking out Russia? More "Lebensraum" thattaway, though not as precious to the Nationalist mind, perhaps, as Alsace-Lorraine. Or would the UK/France have felt the need for pre-emption if they found out the heavy water plants were about to produce a different "Final Solution" to which they had no answer?

 

Without Hitler, the Germans would have needed a similar type of 'strong leader' to subvert the peace treaty and industrialise and run a secret nuclear programme. I don't see how they could have built the bomb otherwise. But ok, we can imagine they'd had another Führer, just more focused on revenge against the French than on genocide and Lebensraum. He does many of the same things as Hitler did before the war, but with the aim of a more limited Greater Germany, possibly including (parts of) France and Poland, but not Russia.

Edited by Bulletpoint
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Rewriting history by Humans going back in time is a waste of thought. It should be focused on writing history and trying to impact our future.

I see way too many people sitting back and thinking we cannot impact the future. Right now there is all sorts or major issues as to where humanity is heading and far to little is being done by the majority of us to impact the course of where we are heading. Unless you think we are on a good course.  

I would much prefer to see future events from the present and try to prevent some of those evils over the ones we as mankind have managed to overcome in the past.

The next great sinister power will make Hitler and the Second World War look like school children as to what evils  mankind can do to one another. 

 

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9 minutes ago, slysniper said:

The next great sinister power will make Hitler and the Second World War look like school children as to what evils  mankind can do to one another. 

'Course they will. If the Good Guys can stand on the shoulders of the giants who went before, so can the Bad Guys stand on the shoulders of the Ogres. And I'll say no more to avoid straying too far into politics.

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3 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

I think Hitler and Princip were just symptoms of their times - killing them would not have solved the underlying tensions that caused WW1 and WW2.

Maybe...

However, it's hard to see who would have whipped up the nationalistic fervor and anti-semitic extremes that Hitler did.  No Hitler, no cronies like Himmler etc.

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1 hour ago, Erwin said:

Maybe...

However, it's hard to see who would have whipped up the nationalistic fervor and anti-semitic extremes that Hitler did.  No Hitler, no cronies like Himmler etc.

Someone would've. At least "enough" of that to get Europe into trouble comparable to what happened. There were people who could see what the harsh terms of Versailles would precipitate 20 years down the line, when that document was signed. The flavour of Nationalism might have been different, but the reason someone else didn't whip it up was because Hitler got there first.

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8 minutes ago, womble said:

Someone would've. At least "enough" of that to get Europe into trouble comparable to what happened. There were people who could see what the harsh terms of Versailles would precipitate 20 years down the line, when that document was signed. The flavour of Nationalism might have been different, but the reason someone else didn't whip it up was because Hitler got there first.

I agree. One thing I'm wondering about is whether Hitler HAD to be genocidal against Jews and other groups, using them as scapegoats in order to seize power, or if he could have "just" been extremely anti-bolschevist and rallied the Germans behind the perceived threat from the Soviet Union.

Edited by Bulletpoint
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1 hour ago, womble said:

the reason someone else didn't whip it up was because Hitler got there first.

... if there was someone else with that persona able to rally the people like Hitler, that person would have been a major player somehow.  My sense is that Hitler was a once in a generation phenomenon... and very very lucky to be at the right place at the right time and be correct in his well-considered gambles/directives for so many events (until he overplayed his hand and he wasn't).

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