A Moral Dilemma

If you are a person that self-describes him or herself as Pro-Life...

...if you had the chance to have a time machine and abort Hitler, would you?

Answers and explanations would be nice, including those that have strongly expressed their value in "human life" on these boards.

What a well thought question (that is, of course, if you didn't get it from a chain mail or something :p )

Anyway, I would not stop Hitler, and as a matter of fact, I would make sure he did all the things he did without changing anything.
Because of Hitler, we have gotten almost modern standards of evil and genocide, and therefore by him, I think we learned about what we should not do, and I think that because of the consequences he brought with his acts, humanity will, I hope, understand the importance of not having any Hitlers again.

People may be thinking if 40 million deaths were necessary for learning this lesson. And yes, this was a costly lesson, I know, and had it not been Hitler, then I'm sure it would have been someone else. Although the war was relatively modern, I'm sure that if a Hitler existed in these times, then things would be far worse and if a war of such magnitude occured, then humanity would be doomed. Better to have a Hitler before than now, I think.

Certainly a worthy argument based on logic that is more based on the off-personal level than that of the close-personal stage.

Thing is, if Hitler had calm down on the lack of self-esteem that was showned in his attempt to conquer Area X and Area Z...in today's time....

Even if the entire Judean race was destroyed in the area of Germania that Hitler ruled, the United Nations would do nothing, save for maybe a sanction here and there. Even the United States probably wouldn't care to react against, save for maybe some token "resistence" put forth at the U.N. in response to domestic Jewish lobbying. That is assuming that the country didn't serve a threat against American international interests.

Remember, the "Western powers" themselves actually made a total effort to turn their heads away to what was happening in Rwanda in 1994, and now with Sudan. Now Kuwait being invaded by Saudia Arabia, the U.N. did act against it...but not because of how wrong it was. No, it was because of the problems posed by the invading nutjob that was Saddam Hussein that could cause some heavy problems with the oil producing fields, and which many figures of the Bush Sr. administration did admit it.

Again, considering how the governments of France and the United Kingdom tried their best to avoid conflict with the Nazi German regime....Maybe M/C has a point. Perhaps we were lucky for that gruesome world war to occur before we as a human species were able to make use of weapons with a nuclear capability.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there was no United Nations Organization by Hitler's time. The United Nations was a post-war organization, if I recall correctly.
The League of Nations was the peacekeeping body by Hitler's days, and they were considerably weak since they didn't have armies and they were not backed up by the US or the USSR. They were headed by the former world powers of France and Britain, who were not as powerful as Germany, the US or the USSR. They could only apply sanctions and they had some humiliating failures with the Manchurian and Abyssinian Crises.

As to the sanctions that would have been applied to the Nazis: I think the sanctions would have been harder had the entire race had been annihilated, as it would have taken longer and more atrocities would have been commited. The Nuremberg trials, I think, dealt with the Nazis in a fair enough way. Having said that, I don't think you can blame the Germans as a whole for the atrocities of few. They were desperate after the Treaty of Versailles and Hitler lead them out of that desperation, and that is why he was a god-like figure to them.

As to your other point, I have always believed that people should look after their own businesses, and if a country has problems too difficult to solve, then instead of asking for help to the UN or the US, I think the country should try even harder to solve the problem by itself. It is more practical, I think, but again, I am biased since I am an active anti-unitedstatesman. The United States or any other developed nation, for me, should not act at all when another country finds itself in trouble. It is simply not their place. However, if you disagree with me then please don't reply to this last statement because I don't want to deviate this thread and turn it into a debate.

M/C makes some very good points. Would I abort him? No. Why? Because it's not the child but it's enviorment and the things that are taught and instilled in the child's brain througout life.

If I could go back in time, I'd let those admissions people at the Vienna Art Institute know to accept Hitler as an artist. That could have really changed history for the better.

The Doc

Where do I begin?

What "lessons" did mankind learn from Hitler about the importance of not having any more genocidal dictators?

Certainly we've had enough of them since Hitler.

And if there is ever another Hitler, as modern as WW II was the actions of a modern-day Adolf will make those of the original pale by comparison, given the fact that mass muder can be carried out so much more efficiently these days.

Now, as far as the pro-lifers go, it's easy to make an argument for aborting a Hitler fetus. In fact, I'll take the liberty of making it for them.

There is no "moral dilemma" here.

One of the principal anti-abortion arguments is that the fetus is innocent, right?

Well, if we go back in time, we know that the Hitler fetus certainly is not innocent, and, in fact, aborting it would be a form of self defense: The killing of a murderer before he has the chance to kill.....the saving of innocent lives at the expense of a guilty one.

Even the anti-death penalty folks can buy into that one.

With respect to the original poster, the question is unfocused. If you had a time machine, there would be less bloody ways to avert Hitler's rise to power, like going back to 1918 and settling a more favourable Versailles treaty for Germany.

Removing Hitler would not work... as anyone who has played Command and Conquer: Red Alert will testify!

You know, Hitler wished to become an artist. He prepared eagerly to enter the academy, and they say his paintings showed considerable talent, but the commission found some faults there and decided against him... vith one voice.
That's how a single examinator's decision changed the world...