Would you tell Hitler's mom to have an abortion?

[Ebowed]

Actually closer to 11 million.  He killed 6 million Jews, but then there are the Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, the handicapped, the homosexuals, and several other groups of people.

Catholics

I also left out Russian prisoners of war.  It was nothing personal, I just didn't feel like listing everything.  It's depressing.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Due to chaos theory if the Holocaust hadn't happened I wouldn't be born. Ignoring  that, the answer would be yes.

You are thinking of "Butterfly Effect" which is acctually the opposite of Chaos Theory.

Another wrong Republican

[Beet]

Ahem, I take issue is the idea that Hitler did not help Stalin make himself more powerful. The Soviet Union became a superpower only because of Hitler's massively stupid miscalculation in invading Russia and allowing the Russians to completely take over half of Europe, while at the same time winning over enough converts in the U.S. to steal nuclear technology. Before Hitler's invasion putting the Red Army into the ultimate crucible, the Russian army could not even defeat Finland, so destructive were Stalin's purges and the atmosphere of terror. After the war, communism became x3 more powerful than before.

By 1945, Stalin would have has a fomidable military machine that the other nations of Europe would have had a hard time matching.  The Japanese were already planning to invade the Soveit Union before their pact with Germany.  This would have had a similar effect on the Soveit Union as the Nazi invasion.  The only difference is that it would not have weaken the Soviet Union nearly as badly.  Stalin wanted to be the military power of Europe, of that there is no question.  Without the Nazis in place, he would have used his influence in the 30's and early 40's to trigger communist revolutions all over Eastern Europe.  A war with Japan would also have meant Soviet expansion into Manchuria and Korea and Stalin's support for a communist over throw of Chinese government, perhaps as early as 1943.

The problem with those speculations is that all of the predicted gains for Stalin actually DID materialize with the real Hitler.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

What was going on domestically in Germany had no effect on Stalin's purges or 5-year plans, if anything, they spurred them by further discrediting democracy. Actually according to this site it was the British and French who came to Finland's aid:

http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0212881/invfin.html

However it was already after Stalin had thrown in division after division into the fight. During Operation Barbarossa, the Russians were completely helpless at first and lost thousands of square miles because of their military incompetence with all of the top commanders purged and the rest afraid to concentrate their armor. By the battle of Kursk in 1943 they had completely learned modern warfare and were able to crush Germany, their unwitting but highly effective teachers. Then they proceeded to take over Eastern Europe, while meanwhile also gained in China. If Hitler had died in 1938 none of this would have likely happened, or could have been predicted.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Some of it was due to weapons, but not most. Though it is true that militarization helped Germany to recover from the Depression, the US military was still mostly untransformed up until December 1941.

[TheWildCard]

As much as I hate his guts I'd say no....

He was truly evil but Stalin was far from an angel. Two evil powers fighting each other made them both become weak and allowed the allies to eventually defeat nazism and after the cold war communism.

Also I don't know if I would be born in the new timeline which in theory would create a paradox, because in the new timeline I cannot tell Hitler's mother to abort him.

[12th Doctor]

Ahem, I take issue is the idea that Hitler did not help Stalin make himself more powerful. The Soviet Union became a superpower only because of Hitler's massively stupid miscalculation in invading Russia and allowing the Russians to completely take over half of Europe, while at the same time winning over enough converts in the U.S. to steal nuclear technology. Before Hitler's invasion putting the Red Army into the ultimate crucible, the Russian army could not even defeat Finland, so destructive were Stalin's purges and the atmosphere of terror. After the war, communism became x3 more powerful than before.

By 1945, Stalin would have has a fomidable military machine that the other nations of Europe would have had a hard time matching.  The Japanese were already planning to invade the Soveit Union before their pact with Germany.  This would have had a similar effect on the Soveit Union as the Nazi invasion.  The only difference is that it would not have weaken the Soviet Union nearly as badly.  Stalin wanted to be the military power of Europe, of that there is no question.  Without the Nazis in place, he would have used his influence in the 30's and early 40's to trigger communist revolutions all over Eastern Europe.  A war with Japan would also have meant Soviet expansion into Manchuria and Korea and Stalin's support for a communist over throw of Chinese government, perhaps as early as 1943.

The problem with those speculations is that all of the predicted gains for Stalin actually DID materialize with the real Hitler.

But his gains were blocked by a strong west.  There would have been nothing stopping him if there had been no Hitler.

Also, the fact that Stalin did not aquire these gains via popular soverignty in the real TL makes a huge difference.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

What was going on domestically in Germany had no effect on Stalin's purges or 5-year plans, if anything, they spurred them by further discrediting democracy. Actually according to this site it was the British and French who came to Finland's aid:

http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0212881/invfin.html

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Britian and France did not help nearly as much as the Nazis did.

What was happening in Germany made a big difference because it caused several countires to be pulled into the Nazi sphere of influence.  Also, important scientists and industrial leaders throughout Europe, esspecially Eastern Europe, chose to make good with Hitler, instead of Stalin.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Some of it was due to weapons, but not most. Though it is true that militarization helped Germany to recover from the Depression, the US military was still mostly untransformed up until December 1941.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The United States was manufacturing arms for all of the great powers.  It doesn't matter that the US was not really building up its own military (which acctually isn't true, we started rearmament in 1939), we were building arms and transporting our raw materials to the UK, France, Italy and even Germany itself.

P.S. Not only that, but the global market swelled.  A rising tide lifts all boats.  Obviously, you need to take an economics course if you don't see how more economic activity in Europe, even if not directly related to the US, helps the US.

[??????????]

J.J., how is Himmler more ruthless than Hitler? How is anyone?

\

Stalin was more ruthless then Hitler. He made Hitler look like a puppy dog.

[??????????]

Actually closer to 11 million.  He killed 6 million Jews, but then there are the Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, the handicapped, the homosexuals, and several other groups of people.

Catholics

I also left out Russian prisoners of war.  It was nothing personal, I just didn't feel like listing everything.  It's depressing.

Actually POWs were treated pretty decently compared to other groups in German camps. More Russians came out of German camps then Germans came out of Russian camps.

[Beet]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

None of the gains you described were blocked by anyone, they all actually came true. Sorry, what is TL?

[quiote]Britian and France did not help nearly as much as the Nazis did.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Show me where it says the Nazis helped? They had a non-aggression pact with Stalin during this time, and were collaborating in the invasion of Poland. Even without foreign help though, the Finns completely humiliated the 100 times larger Red Army.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I fail to see how this affected the purges or the 5-year plans.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I never said the US was not; however, military spending did not become one of the primary factors in economic performance until the end of 1941.

[12th Doctor]

I agree with angus. It would be her business. And as was said earlier in the thread, it could possibly lead to something much worse happening.

So if we have the oppurtunity to kill Osama, we should decline, because it could possibly lead to something much worse happening?

No, because, being in at the point at which time is acctually moving forward, we cannot possibly know what the consequences of such an act would be.  We can only progress foward.  With Hitler, we know what the alternatives and possibly pitfalls are.  It is the difference between being in the subway and standing atop the Empire State Building.

[12th Doctor]

Show me where it says the Nazis helped? They had a non-aggression pact with Stalin during this time, and were collaborating in the invasion of Poland. Even without foreign help though, the Finns completely humiliated the 100 times larger Red Army.

I don't really care about what your website says, I don't care what the website says.  The fact that the Nazis help the Finns is a well known fact, so well know that it has even been incorporated into video games like Panzer General II.  Also, the Finns were able to succeed because of the geograhpy of Finnland.  All of those rivers, lakes, mountains, fjords, forrests, etc., made it very difficult for the Soviets to fight against the Finns who were basically like the VietCong.  Last I checked, Most of Central Europe is nothing but a flat plain.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I fail to see how this affected the purges or the 5-year plans.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

It affected the progression of the Soviet Union.  They would have been in a much better state by 1941 without the Nazis.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I never said the US was not; however, military spending did not become one of the primary factors in economic performance until the end of 1941.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Not true at all.  The US was building ships, tanks, planes.  The idea that we were not was nothing but a myth that was presented after Pearl Harbor because it help with the myth that we had been caught of gaurd and "suprised".  The fact is that the Japanese attcked because they feared the new American build up that was taking place and hoped to cut the US off at the knees before we bacame too much for them to handle.

Not only that, but the global market swelled.  A rising tide lifts all boats.  Obviously, you need to take an economics course if you don't see how more economic activity in Europe, even if not directly related to the US, helps the US.

P.S.  German opperations in Finnland were convert, obviously.  Stalin didn't know about it.  The Germans were possing as Finns.  The Nazis also bought and produced French arms and German weapons that were modified to appear French and British.

[Beet]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Who are you going to believe, a computer game, for petes sakes, Panzer General III, or a real-life website talking about the real-life war, plus this quote from wikipedia implicating the Nazis in supporting the Soviet invasion of Finland?:

"Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had signed a mutual non-aggression pact, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, on August 23, 1939. The pact also included a secret clause allocating the countries of Eastern Europe between the two signatories. Finland was agreed to be in the Soviet "sphere of interest". The German attack on Poland, September 1st, was followed by a Soviet invasion from the east. In a few weeks they had divided the country between them. The countries in the neighbourhood realized their fate could be the same."

Civilization II says that the Legion is a Roman military unit but the Phalanx is not; that doesn't make it true. If "rivers, lakes, mountains, and fijords" are impenetrable to any major military, how do you explain the rapid Nazi takeover of Norway? Central and Southeastern Europe are not totally devoid of mountains either. In Vietnam the U.S. refused to fully attack North Vietnam out of fear of wider involvement and played a half-hearted defensive war; there were US troops fighting against millions of VietCong and NVA. Stalin sent 450,000 troops immediately (and tons more divisions later) to completely conquer Finland and were fought off by just 160,000 Finns.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Firstly, many intelligent Jewish scientists fled to the U.S. where they had more protection from persecution; Hitler hated communism and the would-be Nazi scientists had no reason to go to Stalin. The only effect Hitler had on the USSR before June 22 1941 was to help it begin to take over Eastern Europe in 1939-1941. Between June 1941 and May 1945, Hitler made the USSR a superpower.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Actually the US recovered more quickly than Britain or France, which took longer to go into depression in the first place; so if it was international forces, then the flows would be the other way around. But this was the nadir of international trade and hardly the way it is now. Economic forces were primarily domestic. So far you haven't said anything that actually contradicts what I said. I'm talking about the substantive economic forces here. Just building a few small ships or guns does not constitute a substantive affect on the macroeconomy.

[bullmoose88]

I think going into counterfactuals are important, but I think a really important question is, generally speaking, being missed.

Regardless of all the changes it would create...

would it be moral to tell Hitler's mother to have an abortion (knowing what we know) or for her to have one (in the hopes of preventing what will happen?)?

[The Duke]

I'm surprised no one has said this yet.

I would not tell her to abort, because I don't believe Hitler was inherently evil, or that anyone is inherently evil.  Instead, I'd tell her to raise her child in a more loving atmosphere that could have changed the course and nature of Adolf Hitler's life.

I believe people are a product of their circumstances in large part, and I don't think killing Hitler is necessarily the only way to stop the Holocaust because it was not inevitable that Hitler would become what he did.

[12th Doctor]

Who are you going to believe, a computer game, for petes sakes, Panzer General III, or a real-life website talking about the real-life war,

I was just using that as an example.  Clearly, I don't base my oppinion from a game, but that website is wrong for not mentioning a commonly known fact:

http://www.answers.com/topic/ryti-ribbentrop-agreement

http://www.kolumbus.fi/rastas/nyky/reasons_ww2.html

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Irrelivant what the treaty said.  What the Nazis did was support the Finns covertly.  At the same time, the Nazis were making plans to aquire all the other territory they had put into the "Soviet Sphere".

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Stalin had not devoted his full military resources to Finland.  He still kept troops on the German boarder and on the boarder with Japan.

The Nazis has such an easy time in Norway because their navy blocked off the coasts and the Norwiegian army was ill equiped and had almost no fighting tradition.  Also, the way that Hitler attacked (north along though the passes and along the major rail land road lines) was different from the way the Soviets attacked (west through the forrests and over the hills).

You must be logged in to read this quote.

If we are assuming no Hitler, then we are assuming no Nazi movement.  No offense, but you aren't a very imaginative person, are you?  Without a Hitler, there would be no "would-be Nazis" and no Nazism  and thus, many of those scientist would never have been compeled to hold beliefs that would have driven them away from the communists, indeed, many might have become communists due to the lack of a coherent anti-communist voice.  Thus, most of the scientists would have had no problem selling out to the highest bider, which would not have been a weak Germany.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Not true.  After the war, the Soviet Union was still far behind the US in over-all strength.  The Soviets did nto become a superpower until about 1950.  They still had to rebuild most of their country after all.

The Soviets ended up becoming a Superpower because of all of the technology that they were able to steal from the future NATO countries and the Germans.  I see nothing in an alternate timeline that would have changed any of this, except for the country would not have been smashed flat and economically devastated.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

A few small ships?  We are talking about massive fleets of transports and several air craft carriers and battleships, here, not ing tug boats.  These ships also need planes, ammunition, fuel... and this isn't even mentioning all of the tanks that were build... before 1941!  You clearly have no idea how massive this undertaking was, as early as 1936.

[12th Doctor]

I'm surprised no one has said this yet.

I would not tell her to abort, because I don't believe Hitler was inherently evil, or that anyone is inherently evil.  Instead, I'd tell her to raise her child in a more loving atmosphere that could have changed the course and nature of Adolf Hitler's life.

I believe people are a product of their circumstances in large part, and I don't think killing Hitler is necessarily the only way to stop the Holocaust because it was not inevitable that Hitler would become what he did.

I believe that I attempted to say something like that, but got side-tracked.  I agree with you, anyway.

I could use a little help here, too.

[The Duke]

Factor,

I'm quite sure that the Nazis aided the Finns.  It was geostrategically advantageous to Germany to have Finland defeat Russia in the Winter War.  Other nations however gave more aid, and more critical aid.  As to how Russia was beaten in the War, one reason is that they were poorly equipped for winter combat (surprisingly).

The Soviets were not as strong as the US until the 1950s.  The reason the Soviets were seen as so formidable is that they were physically part of Europe, and so had an inhgerent advantage over what became NATO.  The US, NATO's strongest member, is seperated from Europe by 4,000 miles of sea.  The USSR was seperated from central Germany, the main prospective battleground for WWIII by an overland route that was mostly flat plains.  It was this geographic advantage, not anything else, that put the USSR on parity with America in the early Cold War.

It is broadly accepted that the US recovered in large part because of war industry.  Not only did the US begin slowly ramping up its forces in the alte 1930s, but they profited immensely from selling material to the Europeans, who were building up much faster.  If you look at unemployment rates, for example, the fastest rate of decline pre-WWII in the US was between 1939 and 1941, indicating that job creation and wealth generation had more to do with war industry than with out peacetime policies.

[Beet]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

This treaty was signed in 1944, when it was already irrelevant, and its more of an obscurity than commonly known. Both of those sources distinguish between the Winter War and the Continuation War, the latter of which is irrelevant to our discussion. We are talking about the Winter War here which ended in March 1940 with Soviet defeat.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

All of these are assertions backed up by nothing but Panzer General III. The wikipedia article has a whole section on foreign aid for the Finns and it mentions Finnish aid by Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, expats from the U.S. and Canada (with level of specifity down to individual-level number of soliders contributed), though never more than few thousand or so, as well as a Franco-British plan to send up to 100,000 troops which never materialized, the only mention of the Nazis is that "Berlin and Stockholm pressured Helsinki to accept peace also on bad conditions." At this point in our discussion your prior assertion that the Nazis helped Finland beat off the Soviets is practically absurd (geostrategic reasons aside, still no evidence has been presented).

You must be logged in to read this quote.

On November 30, 1939, Stalin sent 23 full divisions, 250,000 of his best troops, against nine poorly equipped 11,000-man divisions, expecting a walkover. Fortunately for the Finns, Stalin had purged most of his regular army officers two years earlier and placed most of the responsibility for the army in the hands of political commissars. 80% of the Russian army command was lost during the purges of the 1930's. It took the Russians six months to reach a bloody stalemate and terrible humiliation. On one day alone, the Russians massed 600,000 men, artillery lined hub to hub and poured over 300,000 shells on the Mannerheim Line's Summa positions. In 1.6 miles of front there were 440 cannon pounding the Finns who replied with only 16. According to Khrushchev, 1.5 million men were sent to Finland and one million of them were killed. 1000 aircraft, 2300 tanks and armored cars and an enormous amount of other war materials were lost.

The Molotov cocktail, famed during WWII as a symbol of Russian resistance, actually was invented by the Finns during the Winter War. It was creation of the Finnish Liquor Board.

It turns out Stalin himself during the 1930s was the Soviet military's worst enemy until Ronald Reagan-- and Hitler it's greatest savior. Without Hitler's complicitly the Soviets never would have realized their failings and rebuilt their decimated military capacity.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

If I'm not imaginative enough, your proposition is all too imaginative. Soviet Russia was never that attractive. Besides, the Russians ended up stealing American nuclear technology after the war in real life.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Find me statistics that prove the increase in military spending from 1936-1940 was a significant percentage of the 1940 GNP and I'll reconsider.

Step back and look at the bigger picture. When Hitler took power in January 1933, the Soviet Union was an isolated, domestically terrifying and ideologically polarizing but internationally powerless nation. It was poor, repressive, and insular. It had no alliances and was ostracized by the League of Nations. Its military was about to undergo a total decimation at the top command, leaving it, the world's largest nation, completely unable to subdue even a relatively tiny, relatively unassisted Scandinavian country using over a million troops. Its leader was a disastrous military planner who foolishly staked Russian defenses on two "lines" which were overwhelmed by the Wehrmacht within eight weeks in the late summer/early autumn of 1941. Its environment was one of sheer political terror. Internationally, communism was losing and not making any gains in Europe or Asia.

When Hitler committed suicide in May 1945, the USSR probably had the world's largest and most powerful army. Though at the cost of 20 million lives, the Soviet regime had won its greatest victory that it could use to further its legimitmacy for decades. It had control of half of Europe, and communists were on the verge of victory after victory in Asia and the third world. It could draw on a critical cadre of communists and defectors in the United States, some of which gave it the technology to build th atom bomb. From 1945-50, all it needed to do was consolidate. The stage for the Cold War was set.

It is no surprise that communism, though first articulated in 1848, did not see serious implementation until the two great world wars of the 20th century-- World War I established the first communist state in Russia, World War II gave it control over a third of the globe. War sweeps away established governments and powers in a way that strike action and international socialist movements failed to do; it created the critical crisis that was a precursor to change. Without these two wars, communism could very likely have remained an academic theory forever. It seems that Hitler, who hated communism greatly, was clearly its greatest friend in the 20th century.

[The Duke]

One thing I'd add to my psot is that Factor said that the Germans had signed off on Soviet control of Finland.  However, the Germans also signed off on Soviet control of much of Eastern Europe, but we all know how that turned out.

The Nazis only kept deals that were advantageous to them.

I'd also disagree that the USSR had the world's most powerful military in 1945.  In their Navy and air forces, they were not even in the same ballpark as America (or Britain).  The Soviets never had the kind of massive strategic bombing capability America had, and America's immense naval power was enough to defeat the entire Japanese Navy and tip the balance against the once formidable German Navy.  In land forces, Russia was comparable, but even here superiority is disputed.

[opebo]

Yes, I would tell her to have an abortion if she felt like it, but then again that is what I would advise any pregnant woman.

[angus]

this was a very interesting thread.  I read Dead Zone, but haven't seen the movie.  Nice analogy.

To vote yes I suppose is the kneejerk German position.  No matter how much you think hitler shat upon you or your family, it pales in comparison to what he did to the German people, their history, their culture, their nation, and, indirectly, to their general masculinity and taste for war and blood.  Still, according to the popular American notion, you have not the right to tell anyone to get an abortion, excepting possibly the person you knock up.  And even that person, doesn't have to get one if she doesn't want one.  Nothing you can do about it.  You are powerless against the gods and their petty whims and fancies.  Live with it.

[Bono]

Without Hitler, the Great Depression would have dragged on in the US for quite a few more years, resulting in the possability for the rise of an "American Hitler" or a socialist regime.

You mean like FDR's?

[angus]

Stalin was more ruthless then Hitler. He made Hitler look like a puppy dog.

yes, but irrelevant to the thread.  It might also be noted that Hitler killed far more Russian civilians, just for the hell of it, than he killed gypsies or Jews or other less desirable elements of the Greater German Empire's population.  but that would be irrelevant as well.  My interpretation of the question is one of abortion, to test the convictions of the true anti-abortion crowd.  If you say no abortions, the you always say no abortions.  I think it is related, at least philosophically, to the Osama execution thread.  And was created by the same author.  I salute the question.  I agree with Ebowed on the Osama thread, as I am opposed in all cases to humans executing humans.  At this point a true Pro-Lifer will no doubt think to remind us of abortion as execution, and thus we have our little conundrum.  Back to where we all really started in this abortion debate, really.  Don't you think?  The difference, as I see it, is that enacting laws which require carrying a pregnancy to term violates the hard-won human right not to have to feel guilty about bringing an unwanted, unloved human child into an already overburdened world, whereas capital punishment removes an already-born, already-grown, and, in many cases, a formerly unloved, unwanted child from the world.  Fewer unwanted riff-raff children would, in the eyes of many respected sociologists, mean fewer capital court cases thirty years from now.

[??????????]

Well of course I would urge hitlers mother NOT to get an abortion. Hitler was guilty of no crime during the age of innocence, something all children are in until they reach the age of reason which is usually between 13-15 years of age.

[Jake]

J.J., how is Himmler more ruthless than Hitler? How is anyone?

Himmler was as ruthless and evil as Hitler was. He was every bit the anti-semite and mass murderer Himmler was (though people like Heydrich, Eichmann, and the other SS thugs were just as bad) and Himmler as Fuhrer instead of Hitler changes nothing in regards to the Holocaust.

[phk]

Well of course I would urge hitlers mother NOT to get an abortion. Hitler was guilty of no crime during the age of innocence, something all children are in until they reach the age of reason which is usually between 13-15 years of age.

But those that would most likely be aborted, would most likely be criminals in thier later years.