"No. No, and it's nothing to do with abhorring child death.
Children are selfish, whining, smelling, self-soiling, infinitely needy little
shells of humanity. I guarantee the child Adolf Hitler would not woo me with
his cuteness or tiny mustache. I'd leave Hitler alive because I know we can
beat him. He takes his advantages and commits his atrocities, but eventually he
mismanages his militaries, undervalues the Americas, and shoots himself in
despair. It is only briefly tempting to throttle the infant Hitler and prevent
a Third Reich, a second World War, and the invention of the word
"genocide." But the Europe you leave without Hitler is still a Europe bitterly anti-Semitic, economically ravaged, and
endlessly bellicose. Looking at the child playing and finger-painting, you are
forced to realize he does not take advantage of history. He was an agent. World
War I hasn't even happened yet and you think you'll leave the world a sunnier
place. I fear that a more cunning person or politic will fill the Adolf
Hitler-shaped void in history. The replacement will come from the same
underground discontent, and the same well of hatemongering crackpots who would
slaughter and unify. What you're
gambling upon isn't even that they'd seize power. It's that they won't have
more progressive military plans, that they won't capitalize on the nuclear bomb
before the U.S.,
and that they won't start the Final Solution earlier. You are gambling that
what replaces this child will be something we defeat. As much as I grieve for
what he grows up to set in motion, I can't trust the motion to tend itself."
Halfway through this I was vehemently opposed to what your character is saying. I was thinking, no, I would kill a Hitler child because of all the lives that one act would save. Then I continued reading and was drawn in by the argument. I considered it for a few moments but then still realized that getting rid of HItler while the getting was good, was good.
ReplyDeleteIn my mind it boils down to the Devil we know vs. the one we don't. As you point out, when we discuss changing events in the past, we open up an infinite amount of better - or worse - possibilities and outcomes. Instead of killing the child Hitler, perhaps one could make sure that he was accepted into an art program instead (I believe he was rejected) - and then he might have channeled all of his energy into painting.
ReplyDeleteThought-provoking piece. Well done.
ReplyDeleteWho knows what killing the enfant Hitler would bring. No, I am with you, leave him alive. Perhaps not for the same reasons, but he survives just the same. Sadly.
ReplyDeleteYou know in an alterntive universe Adolf could have been a greenie - just a thought.
ReplyDelete