If you could go back in history...

[North Defese]

No matter what you do in the past, it will result in Nazi victory.
Squash a bug? Nazi Victory! Kill Hitler? Nazi victory! Defeat the Nazi's? Nazi victory!

[The Tofu Islands]

No matter what you do in the past, it will result in Nazi victory.
Squash a bug? Nazi Victory! Kill Hitler? Nazi victory! Defeat the Nazi's? Nazi victory!

I'm pretty sure my suggestion wouldn't result in a Nazi victory...

[North Defese]

To rip tv tropes,

"If you were given the power to travel through time and Set Right What Once Went Wrong, what would you do to prevent the atrocities of the past? Well, for many, the answer is obvious: kill Adolf Hitler. This would prevent World War II, the Holocaust, and their myriad side-effects... right?

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work that way. Trying to kill Hitler just plain doesn't work.

First of all, it's almost impossible to kill the man in the first place (trying to track down an obscure Austrian failed painter before he's risen to power usually proves futile, trying to get through his security after he's risen to power usually proves impossible, and trying to get close enough to commit assassination and get away undetectably during his rise to power... well, you get the point). Second, even if you do manage to kill him, the universe will often "undo" it somehow. Third, even if you do take down Hitler, something even worse will appear in his place; an even smarter and crueler leader who ''wins'' the war for the Axis, or an individual killed in battle who grows up to terrorize the world. If someone actually does stop Hitler, they'll almost always have to "undo" it to prevent this.

It appears to be a cosmic law that something bad has to go down in the period between 1930 and 1946-47. Perhaps it's how World War II defined the 20th century; the technological advances, the political foundations, and the example of man's inhumanity to man at its absolute worst that changed whole societies' perception of evil is ever present with us today. To imagine a world without it is to change everything.

Considering the millions of lives lost in WWII, it does make some sense that the world would be a very different place if Hitler had never risen to power. For example, maybe Stalin really wanted to invade the USA, but the Soviet army was so severely weakened after the war that he couldn't. In that case, if The War had never happened, Stalin might have been able to make this dream come true (or, more extremely maybe the White Russians could have rejoined and beaten the communists back and re-established the Tsardom, establishing Michael Alexandrovich... *rambling continues*). Or maybe nuclear weapons would have been invented in peacetime, and without the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to terrify the world, some naive world leaders would have started a nuclear war without understanding its true destructive potential. There's no telling if a world without WWII would have turned out better or worse than the world we live in today. And the simple act of killing Hitler may have widely different effects on history depending on the precise time and manner of his death.

Note that this does not apply to aliens/demons or evil time travelers who are allied with Hitler; time travelers should feel free to stop them. Other than that, Time Travel is as useless for solving problems as Reed Richards, if it doesn't in fact do the opposite and create a spiraling Butterfly Of Doom effect as part of a Fantastic Aesop.

Of course, it doesn't seem to dawn on anyone to, say, kill Gavrilo Princip, the guy who shot Archduke Ferdinand and started the First World War, instead — though even that might well have been only a stopgap; the tangled web of Great Power alliances and colonial hostilities that laid the groundwork for the Great War was so delicate that it would almost certainly have been triggered by something in that time period, whether the Archduke had survived or not. (In fact, it very nearly blew up several times before that point, although none of them are well remembered.) It might be much easier and more efficient just to go all the way back to the 19th century and kill Bismarck, the Prussian chancellor who unified Germany and started building that house-of-cards treaty network in the first place... but everyone is just so short-sighted they want to kill Hitler. Stop it: all it's doing is making him feel smug!

In a broader sense, this trope can apply to any historical event so significant or critical that attempting to tamper with it via time travel of any kind, even for noble goals, generally either causes more trouble than it's worth or is foredoomed to have no effect.

Conversely, however, Godwins Law Of Time Travel tells us that it's exceedingly easy for time travellers to make the Nazis' history of conquest worse than it already was in our Real Life timeline. If you're a time traveller, and your story involves the Nazi Germany regime in any way, be prepared to suffer from the angst that comes from a bad case of Nice Job Breaking It Hero."

[Rejistania]

No matter what you do in the past, it will result in Nazi victory.
Squash a bug? Nazi Victory! Kill Hitler? Nazi victory! Defeat the Nazi's? Nazi victory!

And Nazi victory means more Autobahnen and that I could play NationStates in my native language

[Altergo]

Give the Ancient Egyptains gun powder? I don't really know why. Maybe it's because their women could divorce, own property, and a few other rights. Sure, they seem backwards today. But that's only because they didn't force furries to go underground. Deep, deep underground. Wonder why there's so much furry porno? It's because mainstream society made the furries go that far underground for so long.

Or I'd let Germany conquer the Soviets in World War II. They'd still lose to the Brits (including their colonies and Canada. Canada's always been UK jr., with the exception of France jr. in the middle of the country), Americans, various resistance movements, etc., but at least Stalin would be out of the way.

I'd probably go for the former scenerio. Mostly because it leaves the world a less creepy place.

Without USSR we would've lost the war

[Farnhamia]

I don't know about preventing catastrophes - too many consequences to try to calculate - but I would take video equipment and get film of

- Demosthenes' speeches against Philip of Macedon
- Cicero's 1st speech against Cataline
- all of the trial of Socrates
- a travelogue of Judaea in about 33 CE, just, you know, to see what was going on
- battles like Marathon, Thermopylai, Pylos, Issus, etc
- maybe interview some Roman emperors
- film Michelangelo at work on that ceiling or something

stuff like that

[Osgarna]

What about a square with round edges?

Nice try. That would be a rounded near-square. You might call it a round square, but its not one.

In the sense that I admit that it may be possible to add two to two and end up with five, since I cannot positively prove that it cannot ever happen.

For sufficiently large values of two it is possible

Whatever.

[Hoyteca]

Give the Ancient Egyptains gun powder? I don't really know why. Maybe it's because their women could divorce, own property, and a few other rights. Sure, they seem backwards today. But that's only because they didn't force furries to go underground. Deep, deep underground. Wonder why there's so much furry porno? It's because mainstream society made the furries go that far underground for so long.

Or I'd let Germany conquer the Soviets in World War II. They'd still lose to the Brits (including their colonies and Canada. Canada's always been UK jr., with the exception of France jr. in the middle of the country), Americans, various resistance movements, etc., but at least Stalin would be out of the way.

I'd probably go for the former scenerio. Mostly because it leaves the world a less creepy place.

Without USSR we would've lost the war

A weakened victor is still weakened. Haven't you ever heard of a "Pyrrhic Victory"? The nazis would still lose to the allies. After all, I never mentioned keeping America and Britain out of the war. They'll just have an easier time marching into Germany because Germany invested too much into the Eastern Front.

[JuNii]

I would buy IBM and Microsoft at IPO...

[Vampire Knight Zero]

I would alter things to make me supreme overlord of the Earth. Though that was my plan all along.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

I would alter things to make me supreme overlord of the Earth. Though that was my plan all along.

But it didn't work.

[Vampire Knight Zero]

I would alter things to make me supreme overlord of the Earth. Though that was my plan all along.

But it didn't work.

Curses! *tears up plans and goes back to scheming*

[Kim Jong-ilia]

Kill Karl Haushofer, the guy responsible for the whole WW2 and Nazism mess. He was responsible for Hitler becoming the leader of the Nazi Party and write part of Mein Kampf.

[Deschenek]

If I was stupid I would kill Gavrilo Princip but since I understand that this would cause a bunch of universe destroying paradoxes due too watching reruns of Star Trek:the Next Generaton and I would inevitably destroy the universe itself which would be a paradox in itself thus creating a grand crunch/ big bang effect restarting the universe until I inevitably do it again do to the same conditions creating an effect similar to a perpetual movement machine

[Ostronopolis]

I would go back to the Roman Times, during their high point of the entire empire, bring a working Tank with full gas, some extra gas, and bring full armament, bring an M-60 with it, also bring some flash lights and go to the Imperial Palace, wave the flashlight in front of the Emperor, demand he declare me ruler. And if he accepts, great, if not then I shoot him and a few Roman soldiers to assert my dominance, then declare myself ruler, use my authoritarian powers to conquer even further than the Romans did using the rifles I'll allow them to make, then after conquering all of Europe and most of Russia, Asia and the Middle East, have them start building a Galleon, then arrive in America, declare America the new capitol, make the world better by installing 21st century style education systems, then I would use my powers to make everyone begin building revolutionary new buildings, and rule my empire for as long as I lived, then before dying declare a democracy, a constitution and new military structure. Henceforth turning me into the greatest person ever............. bow to me now.

[Abdju]

Now that the library at Alexandria has been mentioned, I thought of something else. I would go back in time and figure out who the fucking Sea Peoples were. It's so annoying to be learning about history and see X civilization -> Y Civilization -> SEA PEOPLES D:< -> Z Civilization

They were the predecessors of the Dee People

Must admit, though, I'd like to see that one settled once and for all.

[Kim Jong-ilia]

Now that the library at Alexandria has been mentioned, I thought of something else. I would go back in time and figure out who the fucking Sea Peoples were. It's so annoying to be learning about history and see X civilization -> Y Civilization -> SEA PEOPLES D:< -> Z Civilization

They were the predecessors of the Dee People

Must admit, though, I'd like to see that one settled once and for all.

I have always wondered who these Sea People's were. I maintain that they were Trojans or were related to them in some way.

[Farnhamia]

I would go back to the Roman Times, during their high point of the entire empire, bring a working Tank with full gas, some extra gas, and bring full armament, bring an M-60 with it, also bring some flash lights and go to the Imperial Palace, wave the flashlight in front of the Emperor, demand he declare me ruler. And if he accepts, great, if not then I shoot him and a few Roman soldiers to assert my dom ...

And die under the swords of the Roman soldiers you weren't quick enough to kill.

[South Lorenya]

What about a square with round edges?

Nice try. That would be a rounded near-square. You might call it a round square, but its not one.

Grab two lattitudes on a sphere (say 1 degree north and 1 degree south) and two longitudes (say 1 degrees east and 1 degree west). Adjust so the four distances between adjacent corners are the same. It'll be a square on most maps (such as every map that uses the mercator projection), yet due to the earth's curvature the edges are round as well.

And if that's STILL not enough, take a single point (aka a 0-dimensional object). It's a degenerate square AND a degenerate circle AND a degenerate cube AND a degenerate klein bottle AND a degenerate model of the Hagia Sophia AND...

[Vespertilia]

Risottia has a point. While he's protecting the Library, I'd go for Spanish Mexico and use some nice gadgetry to impersonate God or some saint, and tell that one bishop that I'd be angry if he burned all these pagan books.

[Osgarna]

What about a square with round edges?

Nice try. That would be a rounded near-square. You might call it a round square, but its not one.

Grab two lattitudes on a sphere (say 1 degree north and 1 degree south) and two longitudes (say 1 degrees east and 1 degree west). Adjust so the four distances between adjacent corners are the same. It'll be a square on most maps (such as every map that uses the mercator projection), yet due to the earth's curvature the edges are round as well.

I suppose that works, despite being rather a stretch, but that's not the spirit of the example. In my other posts, I said a "circular square."

[Altergo]

Now that the library at Alexandria has been mentioned, I thought of something else. I would go back in time and figure out who the fucking Sea Peoples were. It's so annoying to be learning about history and see X civilization -> Y Civilization -> SEA PEOPLES D:< -> Z Civilization

They were the predecessors of the Dee People

Must admit, though, I'd like to see that one settled once and for all.

The Sea peoples were from Santorini (Aka: the real Atlantis) and Crete. Case closed

[Isle de Beaulieu]

I'd stop myself from slapping my sister.
Or admitting to the police that I slapped her, which would give them probable cause to arrest me.

Just one month after having turned 18, I ended up having to pay $400 in fines and $100 for a lawyer/other misc fees, take anger management, and risk having 5th degree domestic assault on my record (which is a misdemeanor in Minnesota, but still a very serious charge with many restrictions).

Now I have disorderly conduct on my record and have to go through immigration every time I go to Canada (which is about every 4 months). I also no longer talk to my sister (who is only 1.5 years younger) or wish her happy birthday or anything, and doubt that I will any time in the future.

Maybe it's selfish, but that's what I'd change.

[Hayteria]

If you could go back in history what event or catastrophe (personal or not) would you try to prevent from happening, and why this event?

I wouldn't. You never know what effect a change in the past would have had on the present until you try, and by then it might be too late.

Remember that story about someone who goes back in time to stop someone from dying in an accident, and as a result someone else dies in some plane crash or something? I forget what the story was called, but who else here has heard of it?

[Cameroi]

if i COULD "go back in history" i doubt very much i would want to. other then for a visit. to ride a number of narrow gauge and interurban railways whose demise preceded my birth.

but i would love to have foiled the time lord responsible for the rise of "rome".