You Built A Time Machine, What Major Event Would You Go Back & Change?

[THUNDER HANDS]

If you could go back in time and warn people that something was going to happen, like the JFK assasination or 911 or something like that.

If you could go back to just one day and try to change one historical event, what would it be?

[enigami]

1. Remember the "Prime Directive " eh?

That being said. I think I would have stopped the Lincoln assassination. The consensus among historians is that the reconstruction and healing of the south would have been a lot more compassionate and much less vindictive.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

2. Is it one I could just change (?). Or would I have to *convince* people?

Convincing is different.

[THUNDER HANDS]

4. well, i guess you'd have a few days to convice people

bring an almanac, like in Back To The Future. :)

[Crazy Guggenheim]

8. Maybe to Kaiser Whilhem I (?) and The Versaille Treaty and

telling him to clean it up!

[RevCheesehead]

3. The day Poppy met Barbara.

[dolo amber]

5. No idea...but it's nice to see you're still alive

:hi:

[maveric]

6. The RFK assasination.

I personally think that Bobby would have made this a much better country than what it has turned out to be.

[MN ChimpH8R]

9. My thoughts exactly.

First thing I thought of. Nixon laid the foundation for the evil in the WH today.

[Meatwad]

7. I'd convince Reagan to continue acting.

Instead of entering politics. That way, our country wouldn't be so fucked up right now.

Or better yet, I'd go back and try to convince Paul Wellstone to not fly in that airplane.

[baldguy]

37. To be sure, give him an Oscar or two.

Then use Photoshop to make a few dozen pics of 'ol Ronnie taking it in the ass from Alger Hiss for J Edgar to oogle over.

[Wcross]

10. I would snuff Adolph Hitler before his rise to power. n/t

[rockymountaindem]

12. Me too.

[UncleSepp]

15. What if the party would have then been run by someone smarter?

That'd make a good movie plot. Time traveler goes back and assassinates Adolf Hitler before the Machtergreifung, causing an electoral backlash that puts the Nazi party in power with a greater majority. The party ends up being run with a martyred Fuehrer-Christfigure at the head and a coalition of party heads making the decisions, leading to better tactics and increased efficiency, and an eventual Nazi victory. Time traveler goes back to fix problem... lather, rinse, repeat :-P

Personally, I'd go back in time and tell Joseph Goebbels to go to Hollywood instead... or Broadway.

[AlienGirl]

18. That makes me think of "The Producers"

Good point, though--it's the ideas that needed to be combatted; killing individual Nazis might not have worked.

Tucker

[rockymountaindem]

20. Better tactics wouldn't have necessarily ensured a Nazi victory.

The fascists didn't have the better ideas. They won those elections, in my opinion, because of the charisma of Hitler alone. If Hitler were to have been killed, who would have taken his place? Goebbles? I doubt it. Goering might have done well, but then he was no smarter than Hitler, less charismatic and doped on morphine most of the time. Himmler would have been laughed out of town if he didn't have the SS behind him.

I guess my money would be on a dark horse candidate like Borman to lead the Nazis. However, they probably would have lost in '32 to the Communists if it weren't for Hitler. Don't forget that the communists were closing fast in the home stretch, and that was with most of their leaders (like Rosa Luxembourg) dead or in jail and with Nazi terror gangs roming the streets.

It's definately interesting to ponder, though.

[UncleSepp]

27. Don't forget Poland... um, the Communists... or something

*giggle* Just teasing. ;-) I'm in a goofy mood.

My opinion's different - they won those elections because a lot of people worked their butts off. But my opinions come from some weird places and they're worth exactly what you paid for them :-P

[rockymountaindem]

28. You reminded me of a creepy movie I saw one time

I was watching the History Channel a couple weeks ago, and they were playing this movie about one family and their life under the Nazis. They were just an ordinary family, and the story was mostly about them, not the Nazis themselves.

One of their sons became an SS officer, and spent a great deal of time at a cabaret where an old family friend was the MC. This character was played by Tony Randall, and he creeped me out a great deal. Mr. Cabaret (I don't remember his name) was some pale, skinny creep with a monocle and a fur cape. He was obviously a latent homosexual, but the Nazis left him alone because of his popularity.

At one of his shows he made the following statement...

"Somebody asked me if we could play the Polish national anthem. Does anyone know it? Anyone? No matter, it will be obsolete by Christmas, just like the Jews."

Cabaret dude made all kinds of creepy remarks like that all through the movie. :scared:

[Crazy Guggenheim]

32. I remember that movie. Later Randell started to make some

anti-Hitler remarks, which the Nazi's let go. But they killed him later on.

[rockymountaindem]

36. Yeah, I wish I could remember what it's called.

[fudge stripe cookays]

43. Is this it?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089279/

imdb RULES!
fsc

[rockymountaindem]

48. Yes

You should watch it if you ever get the chance.

[UncleSepp]

33. You might like Christopher Isherwood's writing

He wrote some wonderful stories set in Berlin in the early days, while the gay scene and cabaret life were still going. There's an aching kind of nostalgia to reading them, knowing how it will all come out in the end. It was Isherwood's writing in part, I believe, that inspired the musical "Cabaret".

Gosh, I hope I don't remind you of the creepy MC. :-D

[Dukkha]

34. hence the"prime directive" on Star Trek

Changing a moment in history can have infinite variables not accounted for and can be disastrous. There was an X-Files and Twilight Zone episode where tree wishes were granted which had very negative results. On TZ the guy became Hitler when he wanted to be a ruler who couldn't be voted out. Mulder wanted Peace on Earth and ended up being the last man on Earth.

[UrbScotty]

11. The 2000 election. (nt)

[TN al]

16. Yep...

...I was just scrolling down to see if anyone else had the same idea.

[XemaSab]

25. word....

I'd put the election over to Gore, then warn him about 9-11. :(

Is that 2 things?

[LynneSin]

26. I'll head back there too and help out

:D

[tedoll78]

38. The first thing I think of.

Warn Gore, stop 9-11, warn about everything that's happened between November 2000 and today.

The stolen election is where everything began to go sharply downhill for this planet. Everything has gone to shit ever since.

[Magrittes Pipe]

13. Nothing.

Fucking with the past has CONSEQUENCES.

[bonito]

23. Fucking with the present does to. n/t

[AlienGirl]

14. I'd use it to play practical jokes!

[UncleSepp]

17. Messages sent back in time...

Painted on a castle wall somewhere... "The Reichsfuehrer SS has folded my socks."

[AlienGirl]

19. LOL!

:rofl: Oh, that could stir up trouble!

A time machine, a Polaroid camera, and a bottle of tequila...:evilgrin:

Tucker

[henslee]

21. Geraldo Rivera's opening of Al Capones vault.

[xmas74]

22. I'd go back and convince myself not to date the guy w/

the mohawk when I was a teenager. Big mistake.

[CanuckAmok]

24. The assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand & his wife.

That single event triggered the First World War, and ultimately created the environment which facilitated Hitler's rise to power, the consolidation of global corporate influence, and the petro-ideological schism between Islam and the West.

The mind reels.

[DS1]

29. The British formation of Israel

:hide:

[CanuckAmok]

30. 3...2...1...

...

[DS1]

31. Which, in my mind, proves precisely what a big fuckup it was

if people aren't even allowed to discuss it.

[Catchawave]

35. Great Question.

I think I would have warned about initiating a Draft during Viet Nam. Ugh, another stupid war.

[chaska]

39. Just stop for a second - THEY KILLED 3 of our icons JFK, RFK and MLK.

I've been thinking about this for weeks now.

[TroubleMan]

40. I'd stop the fire that burned down The Great Library of Alexandria.

nt.

[Fox Mulder]

41. I'd take out Hitler before he rose to power.

That way, 6 million+ people wouldn't have died horrible deaths.

[ignatius 2]

42. The not so supreme court selection in December 2000 and none of

us would be living in this nightmare.

[Xipe Totec]

44. Sink the Pinta, Niña, and Santa Maria n/t

[LSK]

45. prevent Truman from becoming VP in 1944

Can you say "no cold war"?

[Nye Bevan]

46. I just read a book with a similar premise...

"Making History" by Stephen Fry

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1569471509/qid=1127356002/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-8765093-8777460?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

The protagonist (via a time travel machine) changes history so that Hitler was never born.

But the outcome is not what he hoped for.

[Arkana]

47. I'd go back to the party where Poppy met Bar

get him good and drunk, and have him pass out in a closet so he never meets her.

[NNadir]

49. The victory of Nicholas II in the 1905 revolution.

The world turns on small things. Many of the forces that would scar the twentieth century were set in motion by this small minded man.

Small minded men placed in positions of power at the wrong time in the wrong place can wreak havoc, as we are seeing 100 years after Nicholas II put down the rebellion.