If you could go back in time

[Jim in Anchorage]

No personal stuff like I never would have married that B word. I mean world changing actions. If I could go back to 1935 and assassinate Hitler think of the immense amount of suffering that would have been prevented.

[LeviF]

No personal stuff like I never would have married that B word. I mean world changing actions. If I could go back to 1935 and assassinate Hitler think of the immense amount of suffering that would have been prevented.

Reminds me of a twilight zone episode. A woman goes back in time to kill Hitler as a baby. She successfully poses as a housekeeper or something and kidnaps the baby Adolf. She then jumps into some body of water, drowning herself and the baby. However, the nanny convinces a homeless woman to give her baby boy to her, and successfully passes that baby off as Adolf Hitler. However, that baby is mentally unstable, and grows up to be the Hitler we know. So, by killing the real Adolf Hitler, this time-traveler fulfills history.

 

If I could prevent one thing, it would probably be WWI. Not sure how I would go about stopping it, there were a number of indirect causes involved. Preventing WWI would prevent WWII, probably the Holocaust, the Cold War, etc.

 

There would have to be some negative consequences of altering any major event in history, which makes this a tricky question.

[Mark Vader]

This is a very deep subject to get into. I'll have to think seriously about this one.

[Steely Dan]

No personal stuff like I never would have married that B word. I mean world changing actions. If I could go back to 1935 and assassinate Hitler think of the immense amount of suffering that would have been prevented.

 

You never know if killing Hitler would've given rise to someone worse.

 

I get the question and killing Hitler would be pretty much everyone's answer so I'll have to go in a different direction. I'd stop Carter from allowing the Shah to come to America.

[Jim in Anchorage]

You never know if killing Hitler would've given rise to someone worse.

 

I get the question and killing Hitler would be pretty much everyone's answer so I'll have to go in a different direction. I'd stop Carter from allowing the Shah to come to America.

Yeah but I posted it so I got to pick Hitler. Why the Shah?

[Steely Dan]

Yeah but I posted it so I got to pick Hitler. Why the Shah?

 

IIRC, it really pissed of the Iranians and IMO made strained relations with Iran an awful lot worse and that led to the taking of the American hostages. I think without that our relations with Iran may be a little better.

[Jim in Anchorage]

IIRC, it really pissed of the Iranians and IMO made strained relations with Iran an awful lot worse and that led to the taking of the American hostages. I think without that our relations with Iran may be a little better.

I doubt it mattered since it was well known that we where propping up the Shah anyway. Iran is a country that always seems to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown; I don't think a single act by the US is responsible for that.

[el Tigre]

I'd go back to 2006 and take Haloti Ngata instead of Donte Whitner.

[Steely Dan]

I doubt it mattered since it was well known that we where propping up the Shah anyway. Iran is a country that always seems to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown; I don't think a single act by the US is responsible for that.

 

I agree, but it seems like that's the straw that broke the camel's back. I think that led to the taking of hostages. JMO

[Britbillsfan]

I agree, but it seems like that's the straw that broke the camel's back. I think that led to the taking of hostages. JMO

The real reason many Iranians do not like us (the West) is the scheme by Churchill, Eisenhower and Kermit Roosevelt to replace a democratically elected, polpular leader with a real piece of work who for a large part of WWII was a prisoner because of his pro-Nazi views and black-marketeering.

 

Most Iranians would that conspiracy as the reason they soured on the west (and the US in particular, we were already somewhat unpopular). Without that there would probably never would have been an Islamic revolution in Iran and a lot of the subsequent problems would have been avoided.

 

As for what I would do in history? I have no idea. There are so many evil people in history that bumping off a few dozen will still leave an awful lot of evil to go around. Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pal Pot, Tojo, Marx, Genghis Khan, Attila, a few of the choicest Roman Emperors, a few British (and other) kings, a president or two, numerous 'holy' men and generals. The list is far too extensive.

 

If I had to go for one I would go for Stalin. He hung around longer, was just as evil as Hitler and killed more people (a pretty astounding feat).

[/dev/null]

I'd go back to 2006 and take Haloti Ngata instead of Donte Whitner.

I'd go back to the mid 90s with a highlight (or lowlight) reel of the Bills of the last decade and a half and highlights of the Colts of the same period.

 

Then I'd beg Ralph not to fire Polian

[Beerball]

I would prevent Steely from registering at TBD. Monumental is the only word that comes to mind.

[DC Tom]

As for what I would do in history? I have no idea. There are so many evil people in history that bumping off a few dozen will still leave an awful lot of evil to go around. Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pal Pot, Tojo, Marx, Genghis Khan, Attila, a few of the choicest Roman Emperors, a few British (and other) kings, a president or two, numerous 'holy' men and generals. The list is far too extensive.

 

A lot of them wouldn't make much of a difference, though...or knocking them off could actually be worse. Kill Hitler, for example, and you either end up with a Stalinist Germany and France (if you get him early), or accomplish not much of anything (if you get him late, when German nationalism and rearmament was already on the upswing).

 

If I had to go for one I would go for Stalin. He hung around longer, was just as evil as Hitler and killed more people (a pretty astounding feat).

 

But there's about a 10M overlap in death count between Stalin and Hitler, don't forget. That whole Eastern Front bloodbath thing.

 

And the problem with the thinking of "I'd go back and kill one guy, and save lots of lives" is that it doesn't necessarily work that way. Historical events are less the actions of individual, powerful men than they are the culmination of social and economic forces (even if Hitler doesn't exist, the Catholic Center and Social Democrats are progressively marginalized in Germany in favor of the extremist communists and nationalists. You kill Stalin, and you're too late - the Russian Revolution is already successful, and there's plenty of other brutal !@#$s waiting to take over when Lenin dies.) And in cases where history IS written by a single person, eliminating that person and history can have unintended long-term consequences (e.g., Kill Genghis Khan, and the Mongols never unite and build their empire...and trade routes between China and Europe are never opened, the Italian Renaissance never starts, and Europe remains a socio-economic backwater and the Islamic world the intellectual and economic center of the world for several hundred more years.)

 

 

If I had to choose, though...from recent history, I'd prevent Mahatma Ghandi's assassination. As the one person who could bridge the gap between Pakistan and India on their independene and creation, had he lived a few more years and been able to promote better relations between the two countries, we'd have a much different and probably better world.

[Fan in San Diego]

I'd kill Mohammed and Jesus. Then we wouldn't have warring religions.

[mead107]

I would make sure the Unicorn got on the boat.

[Fan in San Diego]

I would make sure the Unicorn got on the boat.

 

There wasn't any unicorns around when Gilgamesh was loading his supplies.

[loyal2dagame]

If I could prevent one thing, it would probably be WWI. Not sure how I would go about stopping it, there were a number of indirect causes involved. Preventing WWI would prevent WWII, probably the Holocaust, the Cold War, etc.

 

There would have to be some negative consequences of altering any major event in history, which makes this a tricky question.

 

WWI and WWII are what likely established the USA as a world power, both militarily and financially, so i wouldnt change those.

 

i might however do away with vietnam and all US conflicts in the middle east

 

i'd also prevent slavery in the USA

[PastaJoe]

I'd kill Mohammed and Jesus. Then we wouldn't have warring religions.

 

Mohammed would have been treated as a martyr and the religion would still have flourished. And sombody already beat you to Jesus, so that wouldn't make a difference.

 

If there was no WWII, the U.S. would never had become, or would have delayed in becoming, the economic and military superpower we became. An alternative would have been to go along with Patton and integrate the regular German army into pushing back the Russians out of Eastern Europe, which could have prevented the Cold War and proxy wars we were involved in after. But would the cost of more soldier's lives been worth it? Or at the very least have a healthy and strong FDR who could have forced a better deal with Stalin.

 

How about protecting John Kennedy so he was never assassinated. I would have liked to have seen how events turned out if he had continued as president.

[tennesseeboy]

Hitler? Stalin? Jesus? Come on let's make the change that would most benefit the world through the ages:

 

Scott Norwood makes the field against the Giants that leads us to four Superbowl rings!!!

 

Ohhhhh....could the universe get better than that?

[The Plastic Cup]

I'd go back to January 8, 2000 and tell the Bills kick coverage team to stay in their darn lanes!