If you could eliminate one person at any given time in the last century who would it

Mike

saturnV said:
Why wilson? He seems a like a straight shooter, wasn't his fault the versalles treaty was what it was , and I'm not sure any president could have change that fact
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Think of the positive butterflies if Wilson didn't bring the USA into WW1 on the Entente side. If the US had stayed completely neutral, the war would have ended in a bloody stalemate with all sides weakened. The world would have been better off if there had been no "stab in the back" myth in Germany that led Hitler to power, no dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires that led to a clusterfuck in the Middle East and rise of Islamism. The European powers would have been weakened leading to the loss of colonies earlier leading to a more stable and united Africa. The Communists would have still come to power in Russia but I think they would have collapsed peacefully without WW2 giving them a shot in the arm and be a threat during the Cold War.

WW1 had the greatest influence on the present world, and for the worse.
 

Ryan

Donor
Mike said:
Think of the positive butterflies if Wilson didn't bring the USA into WW1 on the Entente side. If the US had stayed completely neutral, the war would have ended in a bloody stalemate with all sides weakened. The world would have been better off if there had been no "stab in the back" myth in Germany that led Hitler to power, no dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires that led to a clusterfuck in the Middle East and rise of Islamism. The European powers would have been weakened leading to the loss of colonies earlier leading to a more stable and united Africa. The Communists would have still come to power in Russia but I think they would have collapsed peacefully without WW2 giving them a shot in the arm and be a threat during the Cold War.

WW1 had the greatest influence on the present world, and for the worse.
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I can understand your reasoning but wouldn't it be better to avoid ww1 altogether? and I believe the best way to so that would be to eliminate Wilhelm II.
also in the stalemate scenario you mention, I'm pretty sure that Austro-Hungary and the ottomans would have collapsed from any further fighting, if they hadn't already passed the point of no return by the time America joined in.
 

Amakan

Wilhelm II.

Though of course, there is nothing to say killing an otherwise "good" person might not result in a better world or killing an "evil" individual might result in some Hitler on steroids rising to power.
 
Simon

Simon

Leopold II of Belgium would be another good candidate. You're still going to get the Congo being taking over by one, or split between several, of the colonial powers so it won't be all sweetness and light but without him you'd probably save eight million odd lives and immeasurable suffering.
 

Mike

Ryan said:
I can understand your reasoning but wouldn't it be better to avoid ww1 altogether? and I believe the best way to so that would be to eliminate Wilhelm II.
also in the stalemate scenario you mention, I'm pretty sure that Austro-Hungary and the ottomans would have collapsed from any further fighting, if they hadn't already passed the point of no return by the time America joined in.
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Wilhelm II did not start the war alone. Everyone involved were to blame in various degrees. Britain, France, and Russia did not want a Germany that asserts itself on the world stage but had no problems being assertive themselves.

It was the harsh terms of the Versailles treaty that sealed the fate of the two empires; carving them up as spoils for the Allies. A bloody stalemate to the war would have been the best scenario for the world today. The weakened European powers would have been traumatized by the war, forcing them to work together instead of against each other and forming a European Union (like it happened after WW2). They would have been forced also to give up colonies earlier, before national territories could be defined, leading to a better Africa and Asia today.
 

DevonPasty

Fenrisúlfr said:
If we assume (and its a big if) that the butterflies resulting from killing one of the people who caused the majority of the bad things to happen in the 20th century were to be mostly good (more positive influences than negatives) that still doesn't deal with the fact that you run a serious risk of butterflying yourself out of existence. Even if you don't butterfly yourself out then you still create a dangerous time loop.

There are simply too many unknowns and dangerous possibilities for me to ever consider it as a action (if presented to me as a reality).

EDIT: There's also of course the moral aspect, who am I to play god with reality etc?
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This is precisely my thoughts. I wouldn't want to alter time YET, even within my own lifetime, because a single changed decision could alter my entire life. I never propose to my fiancee, I never end up getting my current job and as a result end up unemployed for 2 years or more...

Our lives are a very carefully balanced arrangement of plates. Shift 1 plate even a little and all the plates above it could shatter.

Needless to say, removing a person from history has FAR REACHING consequences and whilst I love hypothesizing alternative timelines I certainly wouldn't want to LIVE there.
 

The Yogi

I would also bump off Wilhelm II. Mind you, I don't think he was the most directly to blame for WW1 (if it can be pinned on one man, I'd say it's Nicholas II) but his entire political mindset made a great european war (if not necessarily The Great War) almost unavoidable. Without Wilhelm II ditching Bismarck's system of alliances and antagonizing Britain with his dreams of naval power, WW1 would have been averted. And from that original disaster stem an eff-ing cornucopia of evils.

Without Willy (his entire existence, not just his decisions in 1914), maybe we would have seen an isolated Austro-Serbian war in 1914, or at most (but unlikely) Germany and Austria-Hungary taking Russia apart undisturbed.
 

Richter von Manthofen

I would let Franz Josef II die on Jan 1st 1901 to give Franz Ferdinand a chance to reform the Double Monarchy. Just to see what COULD have been.

Secondaries

Churchill (;)) - that man really left his mark on the 20th century

Kerensky - should have made peace with the CPs instead of handing Russia to the Reds

George Lucas ;)
 

Mikestone8

Turquoise Blue said:
Heretic.

My choices are...

Warren G. Harding
Adolf Hitler
Mao Zedong
Calvin Coolidge
Franklin D. Roosevelt (internment camps and squashing Socialism's big chance)
Jorg Haider (keep the Freedom Party liberal!)
Ronald Reagan
Margaret Thatcher
Theodore Roosevelt
Woodrow Wilson
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A bit mystified by some of them.

Harding and Coolidge were a couple of political mediocrities, who would presumably just be replaced by other mediocrities, so that removing them changes nothing.

Removing Bryan might make some sense if you want the Democrats to remain the conservative party and the Republicans under TR to become the more progressive one. But since you don't like TR either I don't see what's in it for you.
 
Turquoise Blue

Turquoise Blue

Mikestone8 said:
A bit mystified by some of them.

Harding and Coolidge were a couple of political mediocrities, who would presumably just be replaced by other mediocrities, so that removing them changes nothing.

Removing Bryan might make some sense if you want the Democrats to remain the conservative party and the Republicans under TR to become the more progressive one. But since you don't like TR either I don't see what's in it for you.
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Coolidge and Harding was horrible. Better to remove them.

If the Republicans continued being the progressives, then they would be a business-friendly lefty party. Better a populist left than a business-friendly one.
 

Lost the game

Banned
My hope would be that removing Woodrow Wilson would also affect WWI enough to butterfly away Hitler, maybe Stalin, Mao, etc
 

Karelian

Nicholas II.
While a peaceful and tender soul, he was disastrously unqualified to serve as the autocrat of Russian empire and largely contributed to the outbreak of WW1 and the horrors that followed.
 

Drizzt

Empress Dowager Cixi

Obviously even with her out of the picture, there is no guarantee that her sons reform program will be successful or that he wont be ousted by some other reactionary. But at least there would be a chance. And if he did indeed manage to reform and save the Qing Empire, then given China's OTL fate, that would save more lives than the European death toll in both World Wars together.
 

Visigoethe

Leopold the Second
Osama Bin Laden
Mobutu Sese Seko
Kim Jong Ill
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Atleast Hitler/Stalin/Mao had some form of positive butterflies. These men ruined millions for almost no reason .
 

Tony

11-16

Let me add in 6 names in addition:
11. Sarah Palin - needless to explain
12. George Galloway - other than his batshit views, his denial of Tiananmen
13. Dennis Kucinich - not much better than Galloway, just a bit more sane
14. Chen Shui-bian - while i would have voted for him over Lien Chan in 2004, without his disastrous presidency, the Taiwanese people would not have to suffer 8 years of Ma Ying-jeou
15. Justin Bieber - for permanently polluting music
16. Zhou Yongkang - for his crimes against humanity, in particular regarding torture of dissidents and weiquan activists
 

MerryPrankster

Karelian said:
Nicholas II.
While a peaceful and tender soul, he was disastrously unqualified to serve as the autocrat of Russian empire and largely contributed to the outbreak of WW1 and the horrors that followed.
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About the peaceful and tender soul part, I never got the impression he was a truly mean person, but there is the matter of the pogroms he at the very least allowed to happen.
 
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