this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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If Poland defeats Germany at the beginning of the war, then America never joins the fight. The country doesn't get swept up in a patriotic Nazi killing phase, and therefore public sentiment never views Nazis as cartoon baddies. The Klan is never stopped, the space race doesn't happen, man never lands on the moon, and Nixon converts America into a fascist dictatorship in the 1970s. Also, Star Trek is never made.
Discussions like this makes me wonder if the reason why time travelers can never kill Hitler...is because Hitler himself was a time traveler, and somehow the future determined he was a necessary evil at a particular point in time. Like...the original timeline was worse than Hitler.
In no way I am minimising and justifying the innumerable deaths, but Hitler wreaking havoc weakened European powers which forced them to give up their colonies. It was an opportunity for independence movements across the world. Granted European powers still tried to retain their colonies, but they could never re-establish their moral authority without being called hypocrites after rallying the world to fight for independence against fascism. European in-fighting was a boon for colonies.
It would leave a bad taste in one's mouth for saying this, but colonialism is arguably the bigger evil due to its longer legacy because it had been happening far longer than Nazis had been in existence, and long before the group came into existence. One may also argue that fascism is an evolution from colonialism. One of Hitler's motivation after all to conquer land was the fact that Western powers have their colonies. Germany did request for their ex-colonies in the Pacific to be returned from Australian administration but was of course rebuffed. And everyone knows Hitler openly admit drawing inspiration for genocide and euthanasia from the United States.
Additionally, without the Allied values of liberal democracy, there would not have been inspiration for the American civil rights movement to forward social justice and equality.
This is why I think it is such a Western-centric meme to try to kill baby Hitler. Without the war, it would not have opened the eyes of the West from hypocrisy and many of the things we take for granted today would not have been possible.