What if You Went Back in Time and Killed Hitler's Grandfather?

It is so easy to lose track of time. We measure time, regulate it, chop it up into bite sized bits and then charge for it but if we turn our backs on it for a second it gets away from us completely. I'm currently in my second, or possibly third, day of a four day weekend and I'm finding it hard to make any distinction finer than day and night. Normally I use my job to measure time. Up at six thirty, at work by about eight fifteen and then the various tasks I perform and even the lunchbreak help me carve up my day into useful segments. At least this is what I claim during performance reviews. Without work to force me out of bed at a certain time I tend to lose track of it completely. The only other time management device I possess is the television and frequently there is no reason to turn it on.

Humans spend an inordinate amount of time (hee hee) trying to control time which is silly as time is the one thing that will get away from us no matter what we do. I suspect that this is one of the causes for the popularity of time travel as a basis for science fiction stories. Pretty much everyone has some incident in their life that they would like to revisit and do differently. It never seems to occur to them that since they're the same person in the same situation access to a time machine probably won't stop them from screwing it up all over again. This is before we get onto the entire popping back in time and drowning baby Hitler in the bath business which is another favourite delusion.

I suspect that at least part of Hitler's issues stem from the fact that he was pursued by a murderous gang of time travellers for most of his life. Guys there is no point in trying to kill baby Adolf, history tells us you failed. If you're a certain type of science fiction writer (or god forbid a scientist) then you'll pass by the opportunity to meet famous people throughout history (and sell their autographs later for a fortune) and go straight into the other plotline for time travel. The old "if you kill your grandfather before he meets your grandmother then what happens to you?" Well hopefully you'll be arrested for murder and executed you psychotic bastard. That's the trouble with time travel, if you follow it to its logical conclusion it winds up disappearing up its own arse. The answer is simple, your very presence proves that you didn't kill your grandfather. You killed some other poor bastard before using your access to high technology to flee justice.

The entire concept that history can be reshaped through the actions of time travellers is ridiculous. Note I said reshaped, not shaped. It is entirely possible that half the famous characters from history were actually time travellers who popped back for a quick look and got caught up in events. Why not? It's no less plausible than a good deal of the history we're expected to swallow now. However changing things is not likely to be possible. At this point people generally start rabbiting on about free will and determinism and to them I say "shut up, this is my blog". Simply possessing free will is not sufficient to enable you to change history. I possess free will but I doubt if I would be capable of assassinating the president of the United States for example. Hi to all the guys at the NSA who have suddenly started reading this by the way. It probably wouldn't be any easier for time travellers.

We know Hitler wasn't drowned at the age of three, we don't know that some time traveller didn't pop into the bunker in 1945 and blow his head off. When you travel in time unless you have no knowledge of history whatsoever you can sometimes know the results of your actions, but nothing more. You can't change history although I suspect it is possible to become part of it. The other worry is that mucking about with the timeline might unravel the universe to which I respond; if the universe was that fragile it has probably already happened and we haven't noticed so what's the big problem?

Episodes of Doctor Who not withstanding I would suspect that once the initial thrill wore off any society that developed time travel probably wouldn't bother too much. There might be a certain amount of money to be made in temporal tourism and no doubt some history students would pop back for a quick birds eye view of their subject material but that would be about it. The only useful application for time travel I can think of is for historians to travel back and see exactly how much they got wrong. Once time travel is invented I suspect that pretty much every history book in existence is going to have to be substantially rewritten. How about that that? Time travel will change history after all.