History Main / HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct

** [[http://www.viruscomix.com/page493.html Booth is not to be used to kill Hitler]][[hottip:*:No, not John Wilkes Booth, although that WOULD be interesting...]]

* In The RealTimeStrategy game ''War Front: Turning Point'', Hitler is assassinated very early in WWII. This, however, makes things ''worse'': under the even more effective leadership of his successor, the Nazis are able to occupy Great Britain. And when they are eventually defeated, things go ''haywire'': Russians take Germany's fall as the chance to advance into Western Europe, triggering a new conflict with the Allies.

* In ''JusticeLeague'', the immortal Vandal Savage sent a laptop containing current technology to himself, allowing him to depose Hitler, creating a present in which Savage rules the world under the Nazi banner. However, after the good guys beat him, Hitler was dethawed from [[HumanPopsicle cryogenic suspension]], putting WWII back on track.
** Mostly. [[http://jl.toonzone.net/episode12/episode12.htm According to Stan Berkowitz]], part of the reason Savage's Germany was winning was because Savage directed Germany's resources and manpower toward the war, rather than genocide. So when the Justice League defeated Savage, that resulted in a timeline where WWII was fought but [[NiceJobFixingItVillain the Holocaust was cut short or never happened at all]].
*** Following that... then Israel may not have been formed, greater populations of minorities, Roma etc. in Europe, and all the other implications of the Holocaust ''not'' happening. [[DidntSeeThatComing Huh.]]
**** Apparently to the Justice league, the holocaust and an unstable modern-world history full of war is preferable to a united humanity, under an immortal leader (reminiscent of another certain GodEmperor), free of wars and famine, and the ability to time-travel. Who knows, Savage might have had some pretty good things in store for mankind (such as thwarting alien invasions and a lot of space expansion.)
***** Try telling that to the Alternate!Batman who still lost his parents to Savage's enforcers instead of a mugger. Considering Savage's actions in the series (holding the world hostage with a KillSat, destabilizing the sun to cause a BadFuture), it's entirely possible that Savage's world conquest would have resulted in ''higher'' casualties than the Second World War.
***** Higher casualties during the second world war per se, but overall the whole "lack of famine and wars" should still be taken into account. Sure there would always be a few rebellious interlopers, even in the best of governments, but Savage was still a human at heart. I doubt the purpose of uniting the earth was to simply destroy humanity rather than bring it to greater heights.
***** Of course, in another episode, we find what happens if Savage ''is'' left to his own devices. A timelost Superman finds out that without him there, Vandal Savage reduced the world to a PostApocalyptic wasteland. He was ''sorry'' about it, but yeah... he ''is'' considered the bad guy for a reason.

*** When I was a kid early seventies watching a WW2 movie on TV, I asked my dad if anyone had ever tried to assassinate Hitler. He shrugged and said "no, but that would'a been a good idea." In high school in the late seventies, they said there was only one attempt ever to kill him (the "Valkyrie" plot), and it failed. By the time I got onto the internet in the nineties, they mentioned five. Now we're up to 42 attempts - and possibly more. When will you time travellers learn that this trope is engraved in stone?! STOP TRYING TO KILL HITLER! JUST STOP! [[note]][[DontExplainTheJoke The humor here is]] [[spoiler:that most of these 42 attempts, though known to historians, were considered trivial incidents and not known to the general public until the internet made these kind of obscure facts more easily available. But, to someone who grew up in earlier decades, the growth in the known number of incidents due to this does make it feel like time-travelers are at work.]][[/note]]

*** When I was a kid early seventies watching a WW2 movie on TV, I asked my dad if anyone had ever tried to assassinate Hitler. He shrugged and said "no, but that would'a been a good idea." In high school in the late seventies, they said there was only one attempt ever to kill him (the "Valkyrie" plot), and it failed. By the time I got onto the internet in the nineties, they mentioned five. Now we're up to 42 attempts - and possibly more. When will you time travellers learn that this trope is engraved in stone?! STOP TRYING TO KILL HITLER! JUST STOP! [[note]][[DontExplainTheJoke The humor here is]] [[spoiler]]that most of these 42 attempts, though known to historians, were considered trivial incidents and not known to the general public until the internet made these kind of obscure facts more easily available. But, to someone who grew up in earlier decades, the growth in the known number of incidents due to this does make it feel like time-travelers are at work.[[/spoiler]][[/note]]

*** When I was a kid early seventies watching a WW2 movie on TV, I asked my dad if anyone had ever tried to assassinate Hitler. He shrugged and said "no, but that would'a been a good idea." In high school in the late seventies, they said there was only one attempt ever to kill him (the "Valkyrie" plot), and it failed. By the time I got onto the internet in the nineties, they mentioned five. Now we're up to 42 attempts - and possibly more. When will you time travellers learn that this trope is engraved in stone?! STOP TRYING TO KILL HITLER! JUST STOP! [[note]]The humor here is that most of these 42 attempts, though known to historians, were considered trivial incidents and not known to the general public until the internet made these kind of obscure facts more easily available. But, to someone who grew up in earlier decades, the growth in the known number of incidents due to this does make it feel like time-travelers are at work.[[/note]]

*** When I was a kid early seventies watching a WW2 movie on TV, I asked my dad if anyone had ever tried to assassinate Hitler. He shrugged and said "no, but that would'a been a good idea." In high school in the late seventies, they said there was only one attempt ever to kill him (the "Valkyrie" plot), and it failed. By the time I got onto the internet in the nineties, they mentioned five. Now we're up to 42 attempts - and possibly more. When will you time travellers learn that this trope is engraved in stone?! STOP TRYING TO KILL HITLER! JUST STOP! [[note]]The humor here is that most of these 42 attempts, though known to historians, were considered trivial incidents and not known to the general public until the internet made these kind of obscure facts more easily available.[[/note]]

*** When I was a kid early seventies watching a WW2 movie on TV, I asked my dad if anyone had ever tried to assassinate Hitler. He shrugged and said "no, but that would'a been a good idea." In high school in the late seventies, they said there was only one attempt ever to kill him (the "Valkyrie" plot), and it failed. By the time I got onto the internet in the nineties, they mentioned five. Now we're up to 42 attempts - and possibly more. When will you time travellers learn that this trope is engraved in stone?! STOP TRYING TO KILL HITLER! JUST STOP!

*** When I was a kid early seventies watching a WW2 movie on TV, I asked my dad if anyone had ever tried to assassinate Hitler. He shrugged and said "no, but that would'a been a good idea." In high school in the seventies, they said there was only one attempt ever to kill him, and it failed. By the time I got onto the internet in the nineties, they mentioned five. Now we're up to 42 attempts - and possibly more. When will you time travellers learn that this trope is engraved in stone?! STOP TRYING TO KILL HITLER! JUST STOP!

And secondly, even if you do manage to kill him, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero something even worse]] [[NecessaryFail will appear in his place]]; an even smarter and crueler Führer who [[GodwinsLawOfTimeTravel wins the war for the Axis]], or an individual killed in battle instead grows up to terrorize the world, assuming JosefStalin [[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlertSeries doesn't take advantage of the fact that Germany isn't invading Russia in this new timeline and it's the]] SovietUnion [[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlertSeries that starts World War II this time]]. In addition, if it wasn't for Hitler's nightmarish slaughter of "undesirables" that took place under his leadership, the rest of the world wouldn't have experienced the sort of collective shock upon discovery of the Holocaust that spurred them into beginning the process of purging racist elements from their own nations. After all, the American Civil Rights movement, the end of colonial minority rule in places like India, and other rejections of systems of "racial superiority" only started to seriously take place ''after'' the Holocaust, because to do otherwise was to essentially agree with Hitler's beliefs, something that no sane person would even contemplate after 1945. If someone actually ''does'' stop Hitler, they'll almost always have to [[RubberBandHistory undo]] it to prevent this.

And secondly, even if you do manage to kill him, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero something even worse]] [[NecessaryFail will appear in his place]]; an even smarter and crueler Führer who [[GodwinsLawOfTimeTravel wins the war for the Axis]], or an individual killed in battle instead grows up to terrorize the world, assuming JosefStalin [[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert doesn't take advantage of the fact that Germany isn't invading Russia in this new timeline and it's the]] SovietUnion [[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert that starts World War II this time]]. In addition, if it wasn't for Hitler's nightmarish slaughter of "undesirables" that took place under his leadership, the rest of the world wouldn't have experienced the sort of collective shock upon discovery of the Holocaust that spurred them into beginning the process of purging racist elements from their own nations. After all, the American Civil Rights movement, the end of colonial minority rule in places like India, and other rejections of systems of "racial superiority" only started to seriously take place ''after'' the Holocaust, because to do otherwise was to essentially agree with Hitler's beliefs, something that no sane person would even contemplate after 1945. If someone actually ''does'' stop Hitler, they'll almost always have to [[RubberBandHistory undo]] it to prevent this.

And secondly, even if you do manage to kill him, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero something even worse]] [[NecessaryFail will appear in his place]]; an even smarter and crueler Führer who [[GodwinsLawOfTimeTravel wins the war for the Axis]], or an individual killed in battle instead grows up to terrorize the world, assuming JosefStalin doesn't take advantage of the fact that Germany isn't invading Russia in this new timeline and it's the SovietUnion that starts World War II this time. In addition, if it wasn't for Hitler's nightmarish slaughter of "undesirables" that took place under his leadership, the rest of the world wouldn't have experienced the sort of collective shock upon discovery of the Holocaust that spurred them into beginning the process of purging racist elements from their own nations. After all, the American Civil Rights movement, the end of colonial minority rule in places like India, and other rejections of systems of "racial superiority" only started to seriously take place ''after'' the Holocaust, because to do otherwise was to essentially agree with Hitler's beliefs, something that no sane person would even contemplate after 1945. If someone actually ''does'' stop Hitler, they'll almost always have to [[RubberBandHistory undo]] it to prevent this.

* In AlastairReynolds' novel ''Century Rain'', WorldWarII is, in fact averted (although not by killing Hitler, he lives till old age) but the result is a negative one, as it effectively halts the progress of science and technology at pre-1940s levels. 'course, it happens in a separate world, not our world[[spoiler:, created as some kind of museum to protect human past. And IIRC, technology may have been artificially halted to prevent rockets from banging on the roof.]]. Effective. Most great leaps in technology pre-Internet was done in, or for, war.

* Discussed in DavidCronenberg's movie version of ''TheDeadZone'', when [[ChristopherWalken Johnny]] is debating assassinating a politician that he [[PsychicPowers knows is pure evil]], and asks for advice from his friend Dr. Weizak.

* Explained in [[http://www.viruscomix.com/page382.html this]] ''Webcomic/Subnormality''.

* Played with by ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'' when [[http://xkcd.com/1063/ Black Hat Guy goes and kills Hitler]]... in 1945 in the bunker, while the Red Army is storming the city and Hitler is just about to commit suicide. Played straight from the perspective of the person who persuaded him to do it, since it was a reasonable assumption that he'd know to do it ''before'' World War 2. Black Hat guy was right after all when he said they should have used the time machine to do something fun, instead of wasting their only chance at time travel in a futile attempt to satisfy the other's person's "obsession with this Hitler guy."

** It also helped that as time went by Hitler became more and more mentally unbalanced and made more bad decisions and acting erratically. Partially the allies where afraid Hitler may be replaced with someone far more competent.

::''If you time-travel into the past and then try to kill [[AdolfHitler Hitler]], it won't work as intended. It may even backfire.''

In short, it appears to be a cosmic law that ''something'' bad has to go down in the period between 1930 and 1946. 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. It may also be that Hitler, for all that he's considered the pinnacle of modern evil, is still a creature of his time and place; killing one man who did evil doesn't get rid of the circumstances and structure that put him in the position to do evil in the first place.

* Referenced in ''{{Homestuck}}'' when Jake meets Meenah, who in another lifetime went on to become an evil empress and then traveled to this universe, took over earth, flooded it, and [[ApocalypseHow wiped out almost all of humanity.]] Jake reasons that this basically makes her fish-Hitler, and therefore that, since everyone knows that if you travel back in time and meet Hitler you must kill him, he should immediately beat her up. Except, of course, he hasn't gone back in time, and Meenah isn't even really the same person as the Condesce anyway, so all he achieves is beating up an innocent person while their friends freak out around them.

* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' plays with this in Megamorphs 3: ''Elfangor's Secret'', but ultimately averts it, because by the time they get to World War 2, history is already so screwed up that killing Hitler won't matter-he's just a jeep driver in that world. So when Rachel wants to kill him, some of the others are telling her it's no big deal, while Cassie doesn't see how they can kill Hitler in this world just because he's Hitler, given that he didn't do any of the things he did in the regular world. But Tobias "accidentally" kills him a few minutes later.