International Association of Time Travelers: Members’ Forum
Subforum: Europe – Twentieth Century – Second World War
Page 263
11/15/2104
At 14:52:28, FreedomFighter69 wrote:
Reporting my first temporal excursion since joining IATT: have just returned from 1936 Berlin, having taken the place of one of Leni Riefenstahl’s cameramen and assassinated Adolf Hitler during the opening of the Olympic Games. Let a free world rejoice!
At 14:57:44, SilverFox316 wrote:
Back from 1936 Berlin; incapacitated FreedomFighter69 before he could pull his little stunt. Freedomfighter69, as you are a new member, please read IATT Bulletin 1147 regarding the killing of Hitler before your next excursion. Failure to do so may result in your expulsion per Bylaw 223.
At 18:06:59, BigChill wrote:
Take it easy on the kid, SilverFox316; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. I did. It always gets fixed within a few minutes, what’s the harm?
At 18:33:10, SilverFox316 wrote:
Easy for you to say, BigChill, since to my recollection you’ve never volunteered to go back and fix it. You think I’ve got nothing better to do?
11/16/2104
At 10:15:44, JudgeDoom wrote:
Good news! I just left a French battlefield in October 1916, where I shot dead a young Bavarian Army messenger named Adolf Hitler! Not bad for my first time, no? Sic semper tyrannis!
At 10:22:53, SilverFox316 wrote:
Back from 1916 France I come, having at the last possible second prevented Hitler’s early demise at the hands of JudgeDoom and, incredibly, restrained myself from shooting JudgeDoom and sparing us all years of correcting his misguided antics. READ BULLETIN 1147, PEOPLE!
At 15:41:18, BarracksRoomLawyer wrote:
Point of order: issues related to Hitler’s service in the Bavarian Army ought to go in the World War I forum.
11/21/2104
At 02:21:30, SneakyPete wrote:
Vienna, 1907: after numerous attempts, have infiltrated the Academy of Fine Arts and facilitated Adolf Hitler’s admission to that institution. Goodbye, Hitler the dictator; hello, Hitler the modestly successful landscape artist! Brought back a few of his paintings as well, any buyers?
At 02:29:17, SilverFox316 wrote:
All right; that’s it. Having just returned from 1907 Vienna where I secured the expulsion of Hitler from the Academy by means of an elaborate prank involving the Prefect, a goat, and a substantial quantity of olive oil, I now turn my attention to our newer brethren, who, despite rules to the contrary, seem to have no intention of reading Bulletin 1147 (nor its Addendum, Alternate Means of Subverting the Hitlerian Destiny, and here I’m looking at you, SneakyPete). Permit me to sum it up and save you the trouble: no Hitler means no Third Reich, no World War II, no rocketry programs, no electronics, no computers, no time travel. Get the picture?
At 02:29:49, SilverFox316 wrote:
PS to SneakyPete: your Hitler paintings aren’t worth anything, schmuck, since you probably brought them directly here from 1907, which means the paint’s still fresh. Freaking n00b.
At 07:55:03, BarracksRoomLawyer wrote:
Amen, SilverFox316. Although, point of order, issues relating to early 1900s Vienna should really go in that forum, not here. This has been a recurring problem on this forum.
11/26/2104
At 18:26:18, Jason440953 wrote:
SilverFox316, you seem to know a lot about the rules; what are your thoughts on traveling to, say, Braunau, Austria, in 1875 and killing Alois Hitler before he has a chance to father Adolf? Mind you, I’m asking out of curiosity alone, since I already went and did it.
At 18:42:55, SilverFox316 wrote:
Jason440953, see Bylaw 7, which states that all IATT rulings regarding historical persons apply to ancestors as well. I post this for the benefit of others, as I already made this clear to young Jason in person as I was dragging him back from 1875 by his hair. Got that? No ancestors. (Though if anyone were to go back to, say, Moline, Illinois, in, say, 2080 or so, and intercede to prevent Jason440953’s conception, I could be persuaded to look the other way.)
At 21:19:17, BarracksRoomLawyer wrote:
Point of order: discussions of nineteenth–century Austria and twenty–first–century Illinois should be confined to their respective forums.
12/01/2104
At 15:56:41, AsianAvenger wrote:
FreedomFighter69, JudgeDoom, SneakyPete, Jason440953, you’re nothing but a pack of racists. Let the light of righteousness shine upon your squalid little viper’s nest!
At 16:40:17, BigTom44 wrote:
Well, here we frickin’ go.
At 16:58:42, FreedomFighter69 wrote:
Racist? For killing Hitler? WTF?
At 17:12:52, SaucyAussie wrote:
AsianAvenger, you’re not rehashing that whole Nagasaki issue again, are you? We just got everyone calmed down from last time.
At 17:22:37, LadyJustice wrote:
I’m with SaucyAussie. AsianAvenger, you’re making even less sense than usual. What gives?
At 18:56:09, AsianAvenger wrote:
What gives is everyone’s repeated insistence on a course of action which, even if successful, would only save a few million Europeans. It would be no more trouble to travel to Fuyuanshui, China, in 1814 and kill Hong Xiuquan, thus preventing the Taiping Rebellion of the mid–nineteenth century and saving fifty million lives in the process. But, hey, what are fifty million yellow devils more or less, right, guys? We’ve got Poles and Frenchmen to worry about.
At 19:01:38, LadyJustice wrote:
Well, what’s stopping you from killing him, AsianAvenger?
At 19:11:43, AsianAvenger wrote:
Only to have SilverFox316 undo my work? What’s the point?
At 19:59:23, SilverFox316 wrote:
Actually, it seems like a pretty good idea to me, AsianAvenger. No complications that I can see.
At 20:07:25, Big Chill wrote:
Go for it, man.
At 20:11:31, AsianAvenger wrote:
Very well. I shall return in mere moments, the savior of millions!
At 20:14:17, LadyJustice wrote:
Just checked the timeline; congrats on your success, AsianAvenger!
12/02/2104
At 10:52:53, LadyJustice wrote:
AsianAvenger?
At 11:41:40, SilverFox316 wrote:
AsianAvenger, we need your report, buddy.
At 17:15:32, SilverFox316 wrote:
Okay, apparently AsianAvenger was descended from Hong Xiuquan. Any volunteers to go back and stop him from negating his own existence?
12/10/2104
At 09:14:44, SilverFox316 wrote:
Anyone?
At 09:47:13, BarracksRoomLawyer wrote:
Point of order: this discussion belongs in the Qing Dynasty forum. We’re adults; can we keep sight of what’s important around here?
Wikihistory copyright © 2007 Desmond Warzel
This story originally appeared on Abyss & Apex
Loved this story.
I see in order to kill hitler I’m gonna have to kill silverfox316 first.
This is one of my favorite stories online. When I saw the previews for ‘Let’s Kill Hitler”, I was hoping that someone from the IATT was going to pop in to enforce Bulletin 1147.
This is probably exactly what it is like to work at a time travel agency. Geeze this was funny.
Decent story, manages to put a somewhat different rhetorical spin on the usual cliche. Comes across as Stross-lite, but for the length involved not bad. Not that great, either, though. Goes into the rather asine utilitarian justificaiton (no tech growth without global war!) but for SF about World War Two the history isn’t as bad as the norm, or even as the heavily lauded (Hi, Connie Willis!).
Stopping in before I head back to the ’04 to report that Bryan Rasmussen has been incapacitated. Nice try, but I’ve got more practice. Someone should go let him out of my great-grandmother’s basement before she realizes he’s there and enacts some “historical justice” of her own.
@@@@@ 6 SilverFox316
I aint no time traveler. I aint even got a watch. I’m just a crazy artist but I do got a question. If Killing Hitler = No Time Travel then how do you go back and fix things after each person kills him? Is this what you time travelers call a pair-of-docs?
Great story, thanx for making it available!
Thanks, all.
@Raskolnikov:
“Goes into the rather asine utilitarian justificaiton (no tech growth without global war!)”
Maybe it’s asinine, maybe not, but nowhere do I say that SilverFox316 is correct. The character’s mistakes are not necessarily the author’s.
@Ludon:
“If Killing Hitler = No Time Travel then how do you go back and fix things after each person kills him?”
These time machines operate on a combination of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure rules (time spent in the past equals time elapsed in the future, aka The Clock In San Dimas Is Always Running) and Back to the Future rules (changes take time to become permanent; i.e. they have until the “photograph” fades to undo them). The latter rule addresses Ludon’s question.
I’m not saying my time travel makes complete sense, just that it doesn’t make much less sense than anyone else’s time travel. (Or I might just invoke Rule of Funny, and point out that this story isn’t really about time travel anyway…)
So what’s to stop a time travelling newb from going back to quietly kill Hitler without getting on the internet and crowing about it afterwards?
Yeah, I couldn’t type that with a straight face. Forget I asked.
Hey, Desmond, I’m so glad you’re reading this thread! I love this story. I have always loved this story. Just last week I was telling my friends about this story at dinner, and then emailed them a link, and three of them loved it and one tweeted it on.
You’ve got a great handle on message boards, and actually AsianAvenger does have a point. And the pathos! What’s nice is, now that the streams have crossed, there’s a decent chance that we can send someone/convince someone who can go back to save AA. Unless the time-y wimey stuff doesn’t work that way, though judging by the timeline, looks like he’s probably ok.
Anyway, yours is a story I touch back on every year or so. Thanks!
If anyone isn’t aware of this trope it’s wildly amusing :)
@5. Raskolnikov
YMMV. I thought Blackout/All Clear was effing amazing.
@12windfish113, great link. Very funny trope commentary.
Liked the WWI reference as well. Stopping WWI might’ve stopped Hitler but only if they managed to off the ostrich.
Kato
Desmond – great to see this at Tor.com. You know we enjoy your writing and sense of humor, as in Wrestling with Alienation!
Well, at least we got Leoned the Terrible. He’s gone, erased, never happened, all we got was a tiny Franco-Prussian war in 1870 instead of the second thirty-years religious war.
Very entertaining to engage in the immpossible paradoxes, but it’s all still nonsense:
BACK TO THE NOW – Why time travel is not possible
[/b] Forget even getting to the array of unworkable paradoxes if you were to visit the past or future, there is no such thing as the past, future or any related potential to visit or interact with. By the most accurate accounting of the phenomena known as our conscious life experience, reality is only witnessed by us as individuals [i]alone and not collectively as any universally observed form of influence we’re all being controlled by or through. We are each alone and uniquely different in how we see reality or passing time around us constantly. No such ‘universal mind’ or so documented universal account of passing time exists now, in the past or future that runs continuously, like a movie, potentially over and over again. The fact we’re all interacting with the same earthly plane of existence is somewhat deceptive in this context and in large part inadvertently serves to lend the idea that time travel can have a potential point of arrival in the past or future.
Recorded historical events, as representing the complete event from every aspect of how it was experienced by every individual who attended the event involves something that cannot be replicated or experienced in quite the same way again, even if the exact same series of actions could be observed again. Time travel is flat impossible because by definition passing time doesn’t exist as another removed or detached potential destination anyway. History or the future exists strictly on record, in our memories or in our plans and dreams in our minds alone, and not as some potential real world breakthrough we can physically experience in life. It’s amazing how much energy and financial commitment from some very bright minds is being wasted on fervently attempting to find some way to make time travel in this sense a reality or proving it’s possible. I’m scarcely trying to rain on innovation, but how so many who are so very smart can appear to be so oblivious of what ought be amongst the most elementary observations of basic reality that we all experience 24/7/365 is beyond me. Just as we always hear, life is only in the progressing moment right now, and at no other time.
Desmond @9:
True.
Someday I’ll stop having humor-triggered cataplexy every time I re-read this story — but not yet.
The moderator thanks you.
delightful.
@@@@@ #9 : “this story isn’t really about time travel anyway”
Can we please keep this discussion open for time travel related comments, then? There really is an appropriate place for these things, you know.
Okay, so I know I’m wee bit late on getting to this story, but shit, this is funny. Desmond, well played. Thanks for the laugh. I’m headed to six months from now when we meet at a random gas station in Illinois. I want to make sure I get the picture of our handshake.
“What gives is everyone’s repeated insistence on a course of action which, even if successful, would only save a few million Europeans.”
?40 million is “a few”?
PS Desmond I love that you invoked tvtropes.com
Obvious conclusion: SilverFox316 is a Boy From Brazil.
Do you know of any German translation of this great stuff? If there isn’t one, I’d love to do it.
The problem with killing Hitler is…
A) (Redacted)
B) Hitler’s micromanagement of weapons development lost the war.
If left to the generals, surface to air missiles and jet interceptors would have been in place before the Allied bombing raids.
C) A compently run German war effort might prolong the War In Europe past August 6th, 1945.
Hello Little Boy, goodbye Berlin.
Since I’m assuming this isn’t intended as an accurate treatise on the ramifications of time travel but rather an entertaining piece of, I don’t know, SATIRE, all I have to say is well played, sir. Well played.
Seriously, I’ve been re-reading this post at least once a year since the first time, and it’s still funny. Thank you, Desmond.
I laughed.
@AsianAvenger: Do you even know how important Taiping Rebellion was? No Taiping Rebellion, no other revolution, no modern China! which…would probably save more lives and also save the culture by preventing the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution in a weird, roundabout way. XD
What you need to do is post a false claim of having done something such that, when SilverFox316 goes to “undo” it, he’ll indirectly prevent the election of Woodrow Wilson.
Brilliant work – even the comments look like they are part of the story.
I would have ended the piece with “Hello, my name is Adolf and I’m a painter by profession…”
I run the blog humanitysdarkerside.com. Am I allowed to copy this story onto my blog with its credits and stuff – as above.
Who is SteveR (i found Steven RHAN on the ‘net) and what is he quoting? In his comment, above, he starts “[i]BACK TO THE NOW…” which looks a lot like a quote to me. But all of my searches online for the words that follow reference back to this short story (which i love – Thank you Desmond WARZEL!). So, unless he’s been erased in history :), could someone please tell me where that quote is from?
Thank you. (Since there doesn’t seem to be a way to contact people directly, please write to edenw(@@@@@)gal3.com directly.)
Author here again…
@khdreamer: Interesting, and a reminder that nobody in the story is necessarily correct, and that it’s mostly guesswork and value judgments.
@Lise Almenningen: Kindly don’t.
@Timelord2067: That brings forth another angle I hadn’t thought of: that somebody might try kidnapping Hitler and bringing him forward…
*Deleted* Sorry.
@12. windfish113 (and @13. KatoCrossesTheCourtyard): The link to “this trope” takes me to ptitlekz83hawz
which is not a trope. What did you mean?
I keep forwarding this to my friends. (I also adored “The Blue Celeb.”)
Mr. Warzel, you are an amazing writer, and I can’t wait to buy your collection of short stories in a year or two.
Fiona Kelleghan
Miami, Florida
@fiona:
Thanks; you’re very kind. Not exactly fielding a whole lot of offers vis-a-vis the collection issue, but I suppose nothing’s stopping me from sticking something up on Amazon (nothing except laziness and lack of motivation, anyway). Perhaps one day…
So my attempt to go back and prevent this story from being written, got reverted by that meddling SilverFox316.
That settles it. I’m going back in time to kill the guy who invented time travel.
BACK TO THE NOW is clearly a made up quote, or a quote from something that no longer exists.
What its saying, incidentally, is pre-Einstein thinking. It was a very common view of time previously.So that might put a date to its origins.
Post Einstein (and experiments to vary his work) we know that time is a dimension like space – it most certainly doesn’t “just exist” in records. We have done experiments on planes, clocks that precisely go out of sync as if they experience less time passing relative to another stationary clock. Now, you cant experience a difference in temporal “length” (duration) without that length existing. It would be like saying cars going down a infinitely short road can reach the end at different times.
None of that means time-travel necessarily can work mind you, it merely means any history-altering to prevent its invention happens post-relativity.
(excellent little story,btw)
Awesome story, Desmond. I’m one of those people who rereads it every now and then to relive the lulz. Pay no attention to the pedants who want to debate the “laws” of time travel. Good luck with your short story collection!
I loved this story. It was a great riff on the consequences of Time Travel.
This is a wonderful, creative, and humorous piece of flash fiction.
My only complaint is that it’s a little too grammatically polished which detracts from the forum format. Spend more than five minutes browsing any forum (or even the comments here) and you’ll see that grammatical mistakes are commonplace.
Still, a very cool story though.
Well…
Occasionally I re-read this story… and posting the link to my facebook account :P
And yes, it’s 2016 :)
Why does the first comment #46 postdate the second one, with no comment #45? I’d still like to know what trope was referred to in @12.
@Woodwizard
Hint: In comment #12, ‘this trope’ is a [very subtly colored] hyperlink.
Maz
@Woodwizard
This is the corrected link for the trope mentioned in comment #12.
maz
HILARIOUS!
Sorry but more than ‘a few million Europeans’ died in the second world war. Official figures state around 60 million people died between the years of 1939 and 1945 including forces in the British commonwealth from African and Asian countries.
Just saying
@Yachtclub: You’re arguing with a fictional character. Just saying.
@mazoola Sweet, thanks! Didn’t expect someone to post that. :)
@desmond, please don’t listen to @Ransomjack. Why choose to inflict more unnecessary pain on this world?
@mazoola, thank you.
Oh God, I love this.
Re: Ransomjack’s complaint wrt “overly-hygienic” grammar and syntax. Mr. Jack, you’re neglecting to take into account the tremendous strides that can be made in autocorrect algorithms between 2016 and 2104.
But what if I wanna stop BOTH World wars by going back in time and eating Gavrilo Princip’s sandwich?
His sandwich?
Are you the one who sold the Black Hand cyanide that was decayed, so the pills weren’t fatal?
Just read the story! Loved it!
All this trouble could so easily be avoided and no-one need be murdered, if only we go back to the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and get the correct resolution and map of borders drawn up after the demise of Napoleon. No Franco-Prussian War, No Great War (I can’t believe all these references to “First World War” – suppose someone heard you call it that! We’re time-travellers!) and the lesser version of amalgamated Germany is less of a problem. The quantum-tachyon-emission technology still gets invented (in this case by by Indo-Polish inventor Rajesh Kopetski) – better than those inefficient Flux-Capacitors. A brighter future for all!
I gather the main inflection point involves a mild case of food poisoning in the fish served at a banquet at the Congress.
There of course difficulties – specifically the rise of the New Roman Hegemony c.1996 – but I feel other solutions can fix this.
Great story. I keep coming back every year or so, or when someone post something about killing Hitler on Facebook and I want to remind them to read FTB (The Fine Bulletin, of course).
Nine years later …
I still remember this story vividly and fondly.
I still (as of this morning) occasionally share the link to this story with friends on Facebook, etc., and it’s still getting laughs.
I think it qualifies as a genuine classic.
@Stevo Darkly It would qualify as a classic if this timeline were not about to come to an end.
http://www.donniedarko.org.uk/explanation/
I’m wondering if the last “this discussion belongs in the Qing Dynasty forum” is a horrible subtle trap — unlike all the other times BarracksRoomLawyer interjected, that thread doesn’t belong in that forum because of the the time AsianAvenger travelled back to — it belongs in there because without the Taiping Rebellion, things fell out such that the Qing Dynasty is still ruling China in 2104 and so everything about Chinese historical editing from 1644 onwards belongs in there now… oops!
I am 10 years late to the party but did anyone else wonder if Neal Stephenson read this before he wrote The Rise & Fall of DODO ?
Cool.
Great story. I keep coming back every year or so, or when someone post something about killing Hitler on Facebook and I want to remind them to read FTB (The Fine Bulletin, of course).
@Howard The real trick is to go back to around 840 and get rid of Lothair before he inherits from Louis. Then we get Charlemagne’s/Louis’s empire split into two sensible pieces rather than 2 sensible ones and one “WTF were you thinking?” thus saving us over 1000 years of fighting over that strip of land that both sides think belongs to them. (Because this would solve all fighting over that rather rich land, I’m sure.)
Such a good story. Brandon Sanderson mentioned it during his class on viewpoints. One of the best time travel stories I’ve ever read!
I loved this story. Snarky and funny and dark. I immediately knew about 20 people I wanted to recommend it to.