It is 1933...

[Nicole]

...knowing what you now know of Adolf Hitler, would you assassinate him?

[brian ross]

Assassinations tend to be rather messy affairs, "Nicole". All too often, innocent people get killed or hurt. With Hitler, there is the added problem - he is just a lucky bastard. He survived how many attempted Assassinations? 24 or more IIRC. Even a bomb placed next to him, didn't kill him. It wasn't killed because people didn't want to kill him, they just failed to kill him...

[Bobby]

People blame Hitler but if it wasn't him
it would have been some other maniac.

There was no way that Germany could take on:
England, USA & Russia.
It was destined to fail in the same way as WW1.

[Nicole]

Assassinations tend to be rather messy affairs, "Nicole". All too often, innocent people get killed or hurt. With Hitler, there is the added problem - he is just a lucky bastard. He survived how many attempted Assassinations? 24 or more IIRC. Even a bomb placed next to him, didn't kill him. It wasn't killed because people didn't want to kill him, they just failed to kill him...

That’s not my question Brian.

You’re a crackpot sniper returned to 1933 from 2019. You have a clear shot.

Knowing what he became responsible for, do you kill him?

[brian ross]

Assassinations tend to be rather messy affairs, "Nicole". All too often, innocent people get killed or hurt. With Hitler, there is the added problem - he is just a lucky bastard. He survived how many attempted Assassinations? 24 or more IIRC. Even a bomb placed next to him, didn't kill him. It wasn't killed because people didn't want to kill him, they just failed to kill him...

That’s not my question Brian.

You’re a crackpot sniper returned to 1933 from 2019. You have a clear shot.

Knowing what he became responsible for, do you kill him?

Most probably yes. However, Hitler is just one person. Germany would have found another Fuhrer easily enough. Would you prefer, say, Himmler? How about Heydrich? Both were nastier than Hitler (if that was possible). Hitler just rose to the top of the pile first and in the end, he was fairly easily, if messily dealt with. His addiction to drugs, his megalomania, his foolishness and his unwillingness to face reality all told against him. Now, if say, Heydrich had been in charge, things might have gotten a lot, lot, worse.

Stephen Fry one wrote an interesting novel about time travel and the Nazi regime. It was called Making History. He postulated that some scientist develops a means to transport objects through time. A young man gets him to transport a powerful contraceptive through time to a well at Hitler's father's place before he was born. He is never conceived or born. The boy goes to bed and wakes up to discover a completely different world. One where there are no Jews. He investigates and discovers that the man who rose to be Fuhrer had discovered about the water from the well where Hitler would have been born. He gets German scientists to synthesise the contraceptive and he has it given to all the Jews who have been herded into concentration camps. They all die out without any issue. The Germans have won WWII as well. He is now living in a Nazified Britain. He seeks out the scientist again and has himself transported back to Austria and destroys the well, allowing Hitler to be conceived. His supposition was that it was better to suffer the outrages of Hitler than see the Jews completely eliminated. Of course there is also a gay element in the novel, as in all of Fry's works but the ideas are well worth exploring. It is moderately well written as well.

[Nicole]

Firstly Brian, thank you for your answer. It does not contain the words racist, bigot, homophobe, islamophobe, xenophobe etc etc etc. nor the condescending tsk tsk and eye roll. Let’s see if we can maintain that, shall we.

So you appear to be saying that the conditions created in Germany post ww1 created the Nazi movement, and were it not for Hitler a far “nastier” fuhrer could have arisen doing more harm than even hitler. You back this premise by describing an interesting ficticious book you have read that is set on that very premise.

Have I got that right?

[Gordon]

Assassinations tend to be rather messy affairs, "Nicole". All too often, innocent people get killed or hurt. With Hitler, there is the added problem - he is just a lucky bastard. He survived how many attempted Assassinations? 24 or more IIRC. Even a bomb placed next to him, didn't kill him. It wasn't killed because people didn't want to kill him, they just failed to kill him...

That’s not my question Brian.

You’re a crackpot sniper returned to 1933 from 2019. You have a clear shot.

Knowing what he became responsible for, do you kill him?

Most probably yes. However, Hitler is just one person. Germany would have found another Fuhrer easily enough. Would you prefer, say, Himmler? How about Heydrich? Both were nastier than Hitler (if that was possible). Hitler just rose to the top of the pile first and in the end, he was fairly easily, if messily dealt with. His addiction to drugs, his megalomania, his foolishness and his unwillingness to face reality all told against him. Now, if say, Heydrich had been in charge, things might have gotten a lot, lot, worse.

Stephen Fry one wrote an interesting novel about time travel and the Nazi regime. It was called Making History. He postulated that some scientist develops a means to transport objects through time. A young man gets him to transport a powerful contraceptive through time to a well at Hitler's father's place before he was born. He is never conceived or born. The boy goes to bed and wakes up to discover a completely different world. One where there are no Jews. He investigates and discovers that the man who rose to be Fuhrer had discovered about the water from the well where Hitler would have been born. He gets German scientists to synthesise the contraceptive and he has it given to all the Jews who have been herded into concentration camps. They all die out without any issue. The Germans have won WWII as well. He is now living in a Nazified Britain. He seeks out the scientist again and has himself transported back to Austria and destroys the well, allowing Hitler to be conceived. His supposition was that it was better to suffer the outrages of Hitler than see the Jews completely eliminated. Of course there is also a gay element in the novel, as in all of Fry's works but the ideas are well worth exploring. It is moderately well written as well.

Nice we can have a moment of agreement Brian but rather than the far fetched Fry story, I'd say if a really competent leader was in charge of Germany , one who actually listened to the generals, they probably could have held onto a lot of the territory they occupied.

[brian ross]

Firstly Brian, thank you for your answer. It does not contain the words racist, bigot, homophobe, islamophobe, xenophobe etc etc etc. nor the condescending tsk tsk and eye roll. Let’s see if we can maintain that, shall we.

Certainly, as long as you refrain from making statements which are Racist/Islamophobic/Xenophobic/Bigoted/Homophobic/etc., "Nicole".

So you appear to be saying that the conditions created in Germany post ww1 created the Nazi movement, and were it not for Hitler a far “nastier” fuhrer could have arisen doing more harm than even hitler. You back this premise by describing an interesting ficticious book you have read that is set on that very premise.

Have I got that right?

More or less, "Nicole". I used the novel to illustrate the idea that Hitler was just a man. The Nazis were a movement. A movement created by the turmoil at the end of WWI and in the Weimar Republic's inability to apparently manage the economy of Germany. There was the danger that someone worse than Hitler might have arisen, if Hitler hadn't. What always amazed me about the Nazis was just how inefficient they actually were. Their society was closer to a medieval feudal one than a modern one. Advancement was undertaken through personal allegiance, rather than necessarily ability. Men with ability did manage to advance but only by committing themselves to one Nazi leader or another. Hitler was an emotional and personal wreck throughout most of his career. He relied heavily on drugs to keep going and was unwilling to countenance any reality other than the one that existed in his mind. When reality didn't match, he simply ignored it until the Russians came knocking on the Fuhrer bunker door...

[brian ross]

Assassinations tend to be rather messy affairs, "Nicole". All too often, innocent people get killed or hurt. With Hitler, there is the added problem - he is just a lucky bastard. He survived how many attempted Assassinations? 24 or more IIRC. Even a bomb placed next to him, didn't kill him. It wasn't killed because people didn't want to kill him, they just failed to kill him...

That’s not my question Brian.

You’re a crackpot sniper returned to 1933 from 2019. You have a clear shot.

Knowing what he became responsible for, do you kill him?

Most probably yes. However, Hitler is just one person. Germany would have found another Fuhrer easily enough. Would you prefer, say, Himmler? How about Heydrich? Both were nastier than Hitler (if that was possible). Hitler just rose to the top of the pile first and in the end, he was fairly easily, if messily dealt with. His addiction to drugs, his megalomania, his foolishness and his unwillingness to face reality all told against him. Now, if say, Heydrich had been in charge, things might have gotten a lot, lot, worse.

Stephen Fry one wrote an interesting novel about time travel and the Nazi regime. It was called Making History. He postulated that some scientist develops a means to transport objects through time. A young man gets him to transport a powerful contraceptive through time to a well at Hitler's father's place before he was born. He is never conceived or born. The boy goes to bed and wakes up to discover a completely different world. One where there are no Jews. He investigates and discovers that the man who rose to be Fuhrer had discovered about the water from the well where Hitler would have been born. He gets German scientists to synthesise the contraceptive and he has it given to all the Jews who have been herded into concentration camps. They all die out without any issue. The Germans have won WWII as well. He is now living in a Nazified Britain. He seeks out the scientist again and has himself transported back to Austria and destroys the well, allowing Hitler to be conceived. His supposition was that it was better to suffer the outrages of Hitler than see the Jews completely eliminated. Of course there is also a gay element in the novel, as in all of Fry's works but the ideas are well worth exploring. It is moderately well written as well.

Nice we can have a moment of agreement Brian but rather than the far fetched Fry story, I'd say if a really competent leader was in charge of Germany , one who actually listened to the generals, they probably could have held onto a lot of the territory they occupied.

Perhaps, competent leadership is only a small part of the story, Gordon. The Allies had competent leaders, political and military and the means to ensure that their effort wasn't haphazard, unlike the Germans. The Germans relied too heavily on personal allegiance. Their society was closer to a feudal one than a modern one, with competence taking a second place to loyalty.

The Allies also had the means to take that territory back, despite everything the Germans could do. They out produced the German economy about 3 to 1. They were able to develop long-range bombers that flew at altitudes that German and Japanese fighters found it extremely difficult to cope with. They had fighters that could fly from the UK to Eastern or Southern Europe to escort those bombers. They developed the Atomic bomb and that was the real game changer. If it had been developed before the end of the Nazi regime in Germany, there is little doubt that it wouldn't have been used on German cities just as it was used on Japanese cities. While materially, there is little difference between a thousand bomber raid and a small atomic bomb, what differs is that one bomber can carry it.

The Germans were unable to match the industrial and scientific effort of the Allies. Their atomic bomb programme was haphazard. It consisted of over thirty competing organisations, all attempting to develop a bomb and failing dismally because they refused to accept science which had been undertaken by Jews. The Allies had no such racial qualms and they were organised into one giant organisation - the Manhattan Project. The Germans led the world in aerodynamics and jet and rocket research but again, in a haphazard way, whereas the Allies had superior organisation and effort. The Germans lacked the mineral resources to make their jet engines last more than a few hours. Their rockets lacked the range to hit the UK from Germany and had to be launched from Holland to get across the North Sea. Their cruise missiles were a waste of time and money.

[Black Orchid]

Stephen Fry fiction?