this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2024
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That I will get behind 100%. Absolutely. I think there's quite a lot to be done within a legal framework to make him face some consequences at least, as long as it's not a total kangaroo court. Which a lot of these seem to have been, what with the oligarchy and corruption and whatnot.
No, they didn't. We could talk all night about how some Germans would have insisted at the end of the war that they didn't know shit about the death-camps or any killings for that matter. Would I have believed any? I doubt it. Would I have been so certain of knowing that they weren't actually lying to me, that I could have taken it upon myself to serve justice on them? I don't think so, no.
It's easy to say that in hindsight, if you had the chance to stop the genocide of tens of millions of people by killing one creepy little Austrian dude who never did any good in his life, you would. But say for the sake of the argument that you right now get a weird time-machine just appear in front of, ready to take you to Braunau am Inn on April 20th, 1889. It also has several gadgets for you to use, rendering you functionally invincible and extremely powerful (so you can do whatever you fucking like without anyone being able to stop you, but not like God levels of power.)
Would you murder that baby Hitler? It's easy to say "yes" if you don't think about it all, but then at least history would change massively. Probably for the better, but perhaps not. As cold as it is, war did bring many advancements as well. Would you even be born, or would a paradox wipe you out if you tried changing anything? Without getting too deep into metaphysics, my point here is that you wouldn't have absolute certainty about what would happen. Perhaps the best thing for humanity would be for you to try and influence Hitler (and/or history in general) more than just straight up murdering a baby?
The point is that you wouldn't have the certainty, so it would be much harder to actually decide what to do, despite us now and here knowing that Hitler was mega-fucking evil and we would want to have been able to prevent the genocides of the 20th century.
A few videos that I thought of while writing this: Killing Hans Sprechter
And this Baby Hitler | DEADPOOL 2 Extended Scene | Ryan Reynolds
But yeah, that's just the absolutes. People don't function in absolutes. I think you make a valid point about some people sort of giving up a bit too much when people should be actually riling up and looking for what can be done about the Trump presidency, legally. But yeah, definitely throw the book, not Molotov cocktails.
We don't need their word for it... they recorded everything they did. They initially did not intend on systemic genocide they ended up doing. That doesn't mean that didn't intend on not doing other atrocities. It's much like people don't intend on torturing and abusing prisoners after being sentenced, but they often look the other way when the guards do it.
if one had the power to do so, one wouldn't need to murder anyone. simply changing the variables that led young Hitler down the road. Preventing his service in WW1 alone would had completely changed the course of history. Or giving him painting lessons so he wouldn't been kicked out of art school.
But thats not really the argument here... we're staring at 1932 Hitler.
My point is individual Germans. If an individual German said "oh we didn't know about the camps", you might believe them. Maybe. Perhaps a kid, at least? But if you liberated a camp in their city, probably not, since it was in their city.
It doesn't matter what they knew. They knew something horrible was happening and wanted to ignore it, which is almost as bad as being directly part of it.
Well doing that would also require for you to know what exactly led to that. It's probably not as simple as you or Family Guy made it out to be. But yeah, so then essentially choosing to remain there to try and make Hitler a better person. Like at the least, preventing his service would mean that you'd either have to disable him in some way or convince him to become a deserter, since they weren't enlisting but were conscripted. Or you'd have to know enough about art to make Hitler a better artist. And as far as paintings go, I don't think I have the same level of skill he did.
Oh yeah 1932 Hitler you'd just shoot in the face. But even then, you wouldn't be able to know for certain that that would only have good effects. Perhaps if we lived in 1950's Europe, it would be quite a lot clearer and less risky, but due to the whole butterfly effect thing, (and this is getting more into the metaphysical than political) you wouldn't even know if you'd exist in the world that would happen. Or perhaps it's a oneway timemachine, and then that worry wouldn't exist. It just really depends on which movie we use for the time-travel rules, really, lol.
If we dial it back from time machines and shooting Hitler in the face to just agreeing to punch fascists in the present?
you're talking about 1940 germans. I'm talking about 1932 Germans. years before shit went to hell.