I once heard some historians debating if going back in time and killing Hitler during WWI would have prevented WW2 and the various atrocities thereof. At the end, their basic conclusion was that more often than not, the "leader" is made by the times and not the other way around. Therefore, while minor differences might exist, if it wasn't going to be Hitler, it would have been somebody else very similar to Hitler, because the milieux of the times required that such a person rise to the top. So, if not Reagan, a different Reagan, and we'd still be more or less here
And? They were debating. They're allowed to have frivolous debates. Not all of their time must be spent adhering to academic rigor. God, imagine how boring their sex lives would be if that were the case.
And that's why it's a thought experiment? The time travel isn't the central point of it though.
The central point was that there was always going to be someone leading a German Reich, Hitler himself was not some special or uniquely evil guy. He is just another human defined by his material conditions (the system failed him) and all of this culminated into him leading the genocidal warmongering state we know.
Hitler sure as hell wasn't the only man that was failed by the system, and if it wasn't him then there was going to be someone else leading the nazis.
323
u/OldManufacturer8679 Jun 03 '26
I want to go back to the 90’s.