Hitler was responsible for killing approximately 11 million people as part of his Final Solution (of which the Holocaust was a part). He is railed against as one of the most evil men in the history of the world, and rightly so. Anyone with any moral sense would agree that the world would have been a much better place had Hitler never been born. What if you had the ability to make that sentiment a reality?
Imagine for a moment that you discovered a way to travel through time, making it possible for you to ensure either that Hitler never be born, or that if born, he would not live long enough to rise to political power. Under what circumstances do you think it would be morally justified to kill to prevent the Final Solution (and for those who can’t get past the emotional problem of what it would be like to personally pull the trigger, assume that you could send someone else to perform the deed)?:
- It’s July 20, 1888, the day of Hitler’s conception. Is it morally permissible to kill his father prior to copulating with Mrs. Hitler so as to prevent Hitler’s conception?
- It’s February 20, 1889, and Mrs. Hitler is seven months pregnant with Hitler. Would it morally acceptable to kill er then?
- It’s February 20, 1889, and Mrs. Hitler is seven months pregnant with Hitler. Would it morally acceptable to shoot Mrs. Hitler in the womb in such a way that would spare her life, but ensure that it kills the unborn baby Hitler?
- It’s July 20, 1889, and Hitler is three months old. Would it be moral to kill baby Hitler?
- What if it was 1908 and Hitler is an adult? Would it be morally acceptable to kill him then, knowing what he would do in just a few more decades? (Assume that if you don’t kill him now, you’ll never have another chance to kill him once he starts his murderous rampage that leads to WWII and the Holocaust.)
Why or why not? Remember, the lives of 11 million people are on the line (not even including the millions who died in WWII trying to stop Hitler)! If you don’t kill baby Hitler or his mother, all those people will die.
And here’s a couple more alternatives to consider that assume Hitler has already risen to power and began killing innocent people. Would it be moral to kill Hitler in either of the following scenarios:
- It’s 1940, and Hitler has killed thousands of those who were infirm and elderly. Would it be morally acceptable to kill Hitler at this point?
- What if Hitler did not commit suicide, but lived to see the end of the war. Would it be morally acceptable to kill him after he had successfully killed 11 million people?
Why or why not?
I like this question because it reveals a lot about our moral theory. In some cases, it will even bring to our awareness the level of cognitive dissonance between the moral theory we subscribe to with our lips and the moral theory we subscribe to with our actions and desires. It also demonstrates how difficult it can be to separate emotion from reason in moral inquiries.
October 25, 2011 at 11:20 pm
You dont have to kill him, just let a nice jewish couple raise him.
LikeLiked by 1 person
October 26, 2011 at 12:10 am
I’m not sure if we can answer this question in a meaningful way since the scenario is so hypothetical. We would be facing all kinds of moral dilemmas if we could actually travel through time. But you are right, such thought experiments can teach us a lot about morality. Most of us would probably agree that killing Hitler would have been justified as it would have saved millions of lives. However, you are hinting at the underlying conflict between the greatest good for the greatest number of people and the intrinsic value of the individual by presenting us with various scenarios that make us want to question our intuition. I recently wrote about this dilemma on my blog. Feel free to check it out at http://truthandvalue.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/pondering-the-trolley-problem.
LikeLike
October 26, 2011 at 2:15 pm
Jason, Fantastic post. I’m inclined to say that perhaps if he was “enlightened” to the truth while young and was able to be shaped by his upbringing then perhaps he would not have turned out so evil. But then again, who is to say that a world without Hitler would not have brought millions closer to the clarity of the concept of good since Hitler’s existence further clarified the concept of evil? It’s a slippery slope…
LikeLike
October 27, 2011 at 2:03 am
If/since God decided to create Adolf Hitler in his mother’s womb at conception and then did nothing in His own righteous power to “kill and make alive”, (Deuteronomy 32:39) i.e. stop Hitler and save all those lives, then why would it be within our purview to do more than Him?
For me, at the end of the day, to presume that I have any righteous authority to end anyone’s life, no matter the potential for evil, even genocidal, megalomaniacal evil, is wrong.
PS. In my opinion, here’s a better hypothetical scenario, should the type of time travel you suggest be possible: Why not go back to the garden and stop Adam from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? One might make the claim that he was responsible for a spiritual genocide that exponentially exceeds any known genocide in human history.
LikeLike
October 27, 2011 at 2:09 am
Here’s a second thought:
Do we make the case that Hitler is the reason the USA became a Superpower? Or Emperor Hirohito for that matter?
Further, do we ever say Hitler is responsible (even indirectly) for the post-war baby boom? How many of us might not exist had WWII not occured?
So even as Adam committed us to all spiritual death, but also, as progenitor, was the vessel God used to bring us physical life, could we not argue that although Hitler brought about the terrible deaths of many, in some ways, he then also might be credited with the creation the lives of untold millions?
Just food for thought.
LikeLike
November 1, 2011 at 7:31 am
Would I kill baby Hitler? Rather than dodging the question and coming up with more hypothetical scenarios to make it work, I will just answer–no, I would not kill baby Adolf Hitler. But, what else could I do to eliminate the Adolf Hitler with which we are familiar?
If I were to kidnap the babe and raise him as my own in a Christian atmosphere, would he not turn out differently? I could teach him solid Christian values and save 11 million lives. That would be my route. Killing baby Hitler is not necessary.
LikeLike
November 9, 2011 at 4:45 pm
@Jesse. Funny!
@Tcs444. Yes, that is what I am doing. I think this question quickly shows whether one holds to a pragmatic moral system or a deontological moral system.
@thegenyblogger. You are highlighting how God has used this evil for good. He definitely has. But I think we can all agree that the world would have been a better place without the lesson. As for the scenario/question, assume that Hitler would be raised exactly the way he was raised, and the outcome would be inevitable: he would kill millions of people. What would you do if you had the chance to take baby Hitler out?
@Aaron. I don’t follow your logic. Are you saying that if God does not execute justice, we should not either? If so, then what about the many passages of Scripture that instructs man to execute judgment in God’s stead (including God’s command to men to execute people for certain crimes)? It seems to me that we have a moral obligation to exercise justice and judgment on the ungodly as God’s image-bearers.
As for Adam, yes, that would be another good thought experiment.
@Beaux. Sorry, you can’t change the scenario!
LikeLike
November 9, 2011 at 4:49 pm
Here is my take on the issue.
If one adopts a pragmatic or consequentialist view of morality, then surely killing baby Hitler is the morally right thing to do since the consequences of doing so are good. Killing one baby to save 12 million people seems like a no-brainer if consequences are the driving principle of your moral ethic. But if you adopt a deontological or virtue view of ethics, it’s not clear to me that it would be morally acceptable to kill baby Hitler. If killing innocent humans is intrinsically wrong regardless of the benefits, then it would be wrong to kill baby Hitler since baby Hitler has not committed any crimes worthy of death. He would not be guilty of murder and worthy of death himself until after he begins his murderous rampage against the infirm, the elderly, and the Jews. So for someone who subscribes to a deontological or virtue view of ethics (which is consistent with a Biblical view of ethics), they would have to conclude that it would be immoral to kill baby Hitler, but (at least possibly) morally acceptable to kill Fuhrer Hitler.
Personally, while I would not shed too many tears for baby Hitler had he been killed by someone with the prescience to know what he would do as an adult, I don’t think it would be moral, and I could not endorse it. While I think we need to take consequences into consideration as we determine our moral choices, consequences cannot make something that is wrong, right.
Jason
LikeLike
November 13, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Your definition of deontological morality is what I’m after. Baby Hitler couldn’t be judged/have justice executed upon Him prior to the crimes committed.
And since God, who actually did have the prescience you mentioned, to have killed him to stop the genocide but still didn’t indicates to me that it would be an immoral, unjust thing to do. Yes, Scripture indicates that humans can be instruments who bear the sword as God’s ministers, but they don’t bear the sword down on the necks a priori to any crimes committed.
Justice can only be administered properly post facto. And God is going to judge Hitler and serve justice on him eternally, after the genocide he committed and his suicide. So, if God operates in this way, we must, to follow His right ways, do the same, meaning it would be immoral to kill baby Hitler since God didn’t do so.
LikeLike
November 14, 2011 at 8:44 am
Jason, I agree with your assessment of this scenario.
In the same way, this is how we can apply the concept of sin when it comes to babies or children. Although the scripture says we are “shaped in iniquity” that does not mean we carry or have sinned by default as a baby. I don’t know at which age we start to be held accountable and lose our innocence, but I think we can be assured that those babies or young children that are taken from us are with the Lord.
So, hypothetically, if someone could have killed Hitler as a baby, he would have been saved !! How’s that for irony……………..
The moral of the story is leave time travel to Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock 🙂
Naz
LikeLike
November 15, 2011 at 9:47 am
Alternatively, one could pay the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna to allow him into art school, and young Adolf could live out his original lifelong dream as a painter, making his rise to political power unlikely.
LikeLike
November 15, 2011 at 5:38 pm
@Aaron, obviously I agree with your conclusion. I’m not so sure I agree with your reasoning that if God hasn’t acted, then neither should we. Given that reasoning, then we shouldn’t have used force to stop Hitler in WWII because God had not acted to stop him. Of course, I would argue that God did act to stop Hitler, using other human beings in the form of war.
@Naz, yes, Hitler would have been saved had someone killed him as a baby. And yet, it still would have been immoral to kill him, regardless of the fact that it would have had good temporal and eternal results.
@Beaux, yes, that could have averted the whole thing.
Jason
LikeLike
November 16, 2011 at 12:07 am
Jason, God may have acted in and through the governments/soldiers/etc, that eventually brought down Hitler’s germany (or in any other tyrannical regime throughout the world and history), and if so, obviously, the U.S. and its allies were the sword God used. But the justice served was still after the fact. That’s all I’m really trying to say. God didn’t have the U.S. or her allies pre-emptively attack Hitler before he was guilty of anything.
No matter how spiritual or even prophetic some in this world may be, we still aren’t capable of having thought-police who stop crimes before they’re committed. So for that reason, justice must always be administered, (it would appear, also by God) after the fact. So, killing a baby, Hitler or otherwise, based on the assumption of guilt before the actions that deserve justice is wrong. Even if prescience is present, because, God is omniscient, including perfect prescience, yet doesn’t, as far as we can tell through observable means, commonly stop anyone by use of physical, lethal force from doing evil. And if He won’t, how can we?
LikeLike
November 16, 2011 at 2:35 pm
I think I understand better what you are trying to say, Aaron, and I agree.
Jason
LikeLike
January 5, 2012 at 10:12 am
It looks like someone did have the choice to let Hitler die, and chose to save him. A four year old Hitler was saved from drowning by another boy.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082640/How-year-old-Adolf-Hitler-saved-certain-death–drowning-icy-river-rescued.html
Jason
LikeLike
January 26, 2012 at 11:44 am
yes
LikeLike
January 26, 2012 at 11:45 am
i would kill him because of all the suffring he caused he bum fluff
LikeLike
February 1, 2012 at 10:42 am
he looks soooooooooooo funny 🙂
LikeLike
February 1, 2012 at 10:50 am
I agree. I smile every time I look at it!
Jason
LikeLike
March 5, 2012 at 6:19 pm
okay, as much as i hate Hitler, that made me crack up so friggin hard lolz!!!!! and no, i wouldnt kill baby Hitler …. i would just know to let him into art school in the future x:
LikeLike
March 5, 2012 at 6:21 pm
ok, maybe i didnt explain what cracked me up clearly enough, i just thought the pic was funny, but everything that he did i dont think is funny.
LikeLike
March 7, 2012 at 5:27 pm
Yes, the pic is hilarious.
LikeLike
March 26, 2012 at 3:48 am
Sale RV…
[…]Would you kill baby Hitler? « Theo-sophical Ruminations[…]…
LikeLike
June 12, 2012 at 11:46 pm
No, I would swap baby Hitler with baby Churchill and see what happens. Maybe England would be the one who killed jews and Germany would try to stop us? Or maybe Churchill would become evil and Hitler a hero?
lol
LikeLike
June 30, 2012 at 7:39 am
I’d killed him!
LikeLike
July 8, 2012 at 10:15 pm
To kill Hitler is impossible to articulate looking back – for if you did kill him, he would not have killed and you would be the killer. You are then Him.
We can’t look at the means of evil, and compare it to the means of grace that brought about Hitler’s demise in the end. That sounds like the silly arguments Paul was fighting in Romans. Shall we do evil so that grace abounds.
So to say the good that came out of the Holocaust, gave the Holocaust purpose, is insulting to God’s grace, and to the Jews.
Dane
LikeLike
August 7, 2012 at 5:11 pm
If I could travel back in time to the day of his birth, I would have terminated him without any regards to the risk of my life had I been caught. , or to the pleas of the parents begging me not to do it. As immoral as it sounds, I would have had the comfort of knowing that I saved the lives of the millions which had yet to be born in the following century.
LikeLike
September 20, 2012 at 3:25 pm
This is just awesome, and no I wouldn’t kill him
LikeLike
November 5, 2012 at 7:09 am
There was a science fiction television show – I think it might have been The Outer Limits – that did an episode about a time traveler who was sent back in time to kill Hitler as a baby. She befriended the Hitler family and became baby Adolf’s nanny. One day, when she was alone with the infant, she took him to the river, tossed him in, and since she could not return to her own time, she also killed herself so she would not have to face the consequences of killing the baby. Adolf’s father discovered what had happened before his wife returned, and not wanting to upset her, he secured a baby boy (I can’t remember if he was kidnapped or adopted) and placed him in Adolf’s crib. His wife never knew the difference, and it was implied that the murder of the other baby had actually facilitated the upbringing of the man known to history as Adolf Hitler.
I think if it were possible to kill Hitler at any point before he rose to power, someone else would have taken his place. The reason Hitler was so persuasive was that Germany was at a point in its history when the people were willing to believe his propaganda. The depression had hit Germany hard, and since World War I, they had not been able to have their own military or engage in free trade. Their currency was absolutely worthless. Meanwhile, much of the Jewish population, which in Europe had thrived for centuries in the banking industry and as such had access to more resources, was not suffering in the same way. There was a large segment of the population that wanted to blame the Jews for their troubles. All they needed was a leader, and if it had not been Hitler, it would have been someone else.
On a side note, I think there is something Americans can learn from this. Our current economic slump is nothing compared to Germany’s post-Great War depression. However, in the midst of our recession, the Occupy Wall Street movement fueled hatred of corporate America. Just as Germany should have been blaming the rest of Europe for their crisis instead of the Jews, Americans should now be blaming the banking industry (and the government that bailed them out) for approving loans that clients had no means to repay. Instead, many have lumped the bankers in with all wealthy people – the “1%” – and have deemed individuals who had nothing to do with the crisis as evil simply because they have money. If America had fallen further, perhaps to the level of the Great Depression, would the Occupy people have turned into thousands of Robin Hoods? Would they have been willing to kill in order to redistribute wealth? If our government’s deficit were to rise to a level that the rest of the world no longer tolerated, and other nations demanded their loans be repaid immediately under threat of war, would Congress collapse? With no government to protect us and no money to buy food, how far would we be willing to go? Would we be willing to accept the offer of a Hitler-like leader? Would we institute Nazi-style socialism and build gas chambers? Would it stop with the wealthy, or would we also want to kill the old and disabled for being a burden to the system? What about relatives of the wealthy who have no wealth of their own? Hitler killed those of Jewish ancestry who did not practice Jewish traditions. Where do we draw that line?
LikeLike
December 9, 2012 at 7:08 am
let him have sex with a hot jewish women
LikeLike
December 15, 2012 at 10:13 am
A totally stupid question, in my opinion.
LikeLike
December 17, 2012 at 11:32 am
Leonardo, you are entitled to your opinion. I would only like to point out that moral philosophers engage in such questions all the time because they help us discover strengths and weaknesses in our moral theory.
Jason
LikeLike
December 20, 2012 at 8:25 pm
Personally, I would not have killed Hitler at any point in his life even if I had the opportunity. And it has nothing to do with morals. If someone were to alter the timeline of human history that dramatically there is no telling what may have happened. For all we know the world may be a far worse place than it is today…there may have been a nuclear war at some point between the US and USSR. There may be a worldwide Communist government. Germany may have won world war 2 with a more competent leader. As atrocious as the actions of the Nazis were, messing with history in such a way could have disastrous consequences. I hate to quote a movie but this is the same reason that Doc Brown told Marty in Back to the Future “you must not leave this house. you must not see anybody or talk to anybody. Anything you do could have serious repercussions on future events.”
I know you wanted this answered from a moral standpoint but in a way I think it would be greatly immoral to risk the future of all humanity to save some people. I know killing hitler may have greatly improved the world as we know it, but the risk would be too great to take if you ask me.
LikeLike
April 18, 2013 at 8:15 pm
what i cant stop thinking about is all the current offspring we have from the survivors of WW2. People that lost their whole family and had to start over. Or the killing of spouses. So remarrying. The dispersal of people that would not have otherwise been dispersed. They remarry and have offspring. So you would in effect undo these lives by killing hitler. They wouldnt be killed, but prevented from conception. Might be as many lives as were killed in the holocaust
LikeLike
May 13, 2013 at 6:03 pm
You know, I blame the parents, so I would have someone else raise him. IF it were possible to go back in time to where he was a baby, I wouldn’t kill him because I wouldn’t EVER want to harm a child. I feel bad saying that, but it’s true.
LikeLike
July 27, 2013 at 6:16 am
I would not Kill Hitler was Human like everyone else He wanted to be an Artist you could tell him to keep trying or when he risen to power like if I was his friend id reasoning with him. Then he would of been known as a great politician/Chancellor. And help his County out of the depression like he did in 1934 it was remarkable thing in the history of the world
LikeLike
July 29, 2013 at 6:49 pm
I would have murderd that miserable bastard I know as a baby you can’t tell he’d grow up to do those things but I’d happily
LikeLike
October 31, 2013 at 12:40 pm
I would never kill him, but I’d like to travel in time to meet him.
LikeLike
January 3, 2014 at 10:55 am
Can we be certain that there would have been no Nazi movement if Hitler had not been there to lead it?. If not, and if the movement had been led by somebody else, it may be that Germany (and Nazism) would have prevailed. Consider just a few of the serious tactical and strategic mistakes Hitler made:
Not slaughteirng the British and French forces at Dunkirk;
Abandoning the battle of Britain when the RAF was on its last legs;
Invading Russia and thereby drawing Stalin into the war and weakening his western front.
LikeLike
January 8, 2014 at 1:39 pm
So right
LikeLike
February 10, 2014 at 2:54 pm
It’s a paradox.
LikeLike
February 10, 2014 at 2:57 pm
Nein. I would not kil myself
LikeLike
March 23, 2014 at 1:33 pm
So you think that a baby can be evil ? or that any person can become evil depending on his education and his path in life ?
LikeLike
October 24, 2014 at 8:11 am
You guys are missing something though. What about all the people who existed because of world war II? All the people who left Europe and met other people and had babies with them. I would not have been born if not for WWII.
LikeLike
March 19, 2015 at 2:35 am
that picture is cute and funny but the situation is sad
LikeLike
August 16, 2015 at 6:26 pm
Absolutely not, I might send a hot fraulein back to suck on his little Vienna sausage though.
LikeLike
August 16, 2015 at 10:05 pm
If one could travel back in time I am sure one would also have developed the behavioral technology know-how to insert into the brain a stem cell compassion gene or remove the cancerous out-of-control irrational gene or whatever mode it will take, without having to kill somebody.
One day we will perform functions similar to the bee. When the swarm needs Queens, certain larvae start getting fed “Royal Jelly” and then the would be worker bee larvae transform into big buxom queen bees with muscles like elephant knee caps to re-populate the swarms while other worker bees start feeding Drone Jelly to other would-be-worker bees which then transform into Drone Service Studs to mate with the new emerging Queen Bees…..and then the worker bees feed the ordinary worker bee larvae with ordinary worker bee jelly and there you have the manipulation of the bee swarm that makes the bee swarm do what the Bee Swarm God dictates by a mechanism we call Instinct.
The male bee technically has only a mother, and no father and is the result of an unfertilized egg. A laying worker bee will exclusively produce totally unfertilized eggs, which develop into drones.
One day we’ll know how to control humanity in similar fashion. In the same way, hereditary disease, and all sorts of anomalies will be extracted out of the human experience. Medical intervention will keep everybody in check and death will be conquered.
As the root searches for water so man thirsts for knowledge.
LikeLike
October 6, 2015 at 1:37 am
Killing baby Joseph Stalin is more good.
LikeLike
October 6, 2015 at 8:16 am
Extinct:
The total number of noncombatants killed by the Germans—about 11 million—is roughly what we had thought. The total number of civilians killed by the Soviets, however, is considerably less than we had believed. We know now that the Germans killed more people than the Soviets did.
It turns out that, with the exception of the war years, a very large majority of people who entered the Gulag left alive. Judging from the Soviet records we now have, the number of people who died in the Gulag between 1933 and 1945, while both Stalin and Hitler were in power, was on the order of a million, perhaps a bit more. The total figure for the entire Stalinist period is likely between two million and three million. The Great Terror and other shooting actions killed no more than a million people, probably a bit less. The largest human catastrophe of Stalinism was the famine of 1930–1933, in which more than five million people starved.
Based solely on numbers Hitler tops Stalin in the number of civilian deaths.
LikeLike
October 26, 2015 at 7:30 am
[…] https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/would-you-kill-baby-hitler/ […]
LikeLike
July 28, 2018 at 8:38 am
BEST HACKERS ON THE DARKNET – http://456bosfo4pgtbrv3.onion – You must use TOR browser to access.
LikeLike
August 21, 2018 at 5:03 pm
I thought $300 was expensive for party poker account but I got it and stole all that fuckers sweet money. I had cashed out before he even know what hit him.$5633 Profit Easy as pie.
LikeLike
January 21, 2019 at 10:21 am
Hire a hacker here – http://oufkrhddoiik3xoy.onion best hackers I have found iphone hacked in 2 days. My bitch was cheating.
LikeLike
December 22, 2020 at 2:09 am
I agree with you
LikeLike
January 2, 2021 at 5:56 pm
I agree with you
LikeLike