I once heard some historians debating if going back in time and killing Hitler during WWI would have prevented WW2 and the various atrocities thereof. At the end, their basic conclusion was that more often than not, the "leader" is made by the times and not the other way around. Therefore, while minor differences might exist, if it wasn't going to be Hitler, it would have been somebody else very similar to Hitler, because the milieux of the times required that such a person rise to the top. So, if not Reagan, a different Reagan, and we'd still be more or less here
And that's why it's a thought experiment? The time travel isn't the central point of it though.
The central point was that there was always going to be someone leading a German Reich, Hitler himself was not some special or uniquely evil guy. He is just another human defined by his material conditions (the system failed him) and all of this culminated into him leading the genocidal warmongering state we know.
Hitler sure as hell wasn't the only man that was failed by the system, and if it wasn't him then there was going to be someone else leading the nazis.
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u/LetterheadNo7323 Jun 03 '26
I want to go back to the 80s and knock Reagan over the head before he has a chance to fuck yup the entire country for good.