this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2026
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Yeah this is the Hollywood version of time travel but in the real world that's not how things work.
Adolf Hitler didn't invent Nazism, any more than Donald Trump invented MAGA, they were just two individuals who were the right moment in history to take the opportunity, have they never existed someone else would have done it, possibly later on, but it would still happened.
Nazism for example came out of frustrations with the rest of Europe over the treaty of Versailles. If you want to prevent World War 2 it isn't enough to kill Hitler, you have to first prevent World War 1, in order to prevent World War 1 you really have to prevent all the stupid little wars that predated it. The number of people you would have to kill in order to prevent Nazis is enormous, probably in the thousands. It's not one easily removable Nexus point
No, someone else might have done it. There is literally no way to know.
We kind of do know though. Hitler latched onto a movement that already existed he didn't create it, the world is full of potential leaders they just need a cause. I'm so someone would have been found.
Fascism existed in Europe, but Hitler did invent the Nazi Party.
Regardless, no, we do not know. Why not just say it's likely or something? You're undermining your own argument.
No, that dude knows definitively. They went back in time and killed a different Nazi baby that tried to take over the world, and came back just to find out about this Hitler guy that everyone wants dead.
Though I do wonder what kind of cascading effects there would be to eliminating Mussolini from history.
Maybe we wouldn't have gotten the song Bella Ciao
You claim to know how time travel works in the real world?
Don't believe you until you show me your time machine.
There's only one solution to time travel paradoxes that resolves all of them, makes some kind of sense, and doesn't require generating an infinite number of additional versions of the universe - single coherent timeline. The universe as it is now is the sum total result of all time travel that will ever have happened to a point in time before the present. You can't go back in time and kill Hitler because you didn't, which means any attempt you might have made to do so clearly failed. Likewise for the grandfather paradox, if you go back in time to kill your grandfather, you already failed in your mission.
Awful views aside, one of the things I gave JKR credit for was doing a decent job of adopting this model of time travel in Prisoner of Azkaban. Then she threw that out the window for Cursed Child because she's terrible at any kind of world building consistency.
I know how history works. I don't need a time machine to know that a country in economic dire straits will find someone to blame. I just need to look at contemporary US politics. If you're ever in doubt start a war, preferably somewhere in poverty so you don't get your asses handed to you, inevitably miscalculate, and get said ass handed to you. Wait 20 years and then do the same thing all over again.
preventing ww1 is like preventing nuclear armament - you'd have to convince all the major powers to renegotiate all of their treaties and alliances and make them trust each other by being more vulnerable.
You couldn't do that today, let alone 120 years ago.
Considering that all the major nations upper classes where willing to send their young over the top to get a few inches of french soil I would say it would take a lot of talk to get them to calm down. Some countries where willing to go to war because they didn't want left out. It was also an age of honour and national glory so people are high off nationalism and the next fix is going out for a good fight.