Would You Kill Baby Hitler?

The real baby Hitler.

Killing baby Hitler is a test of ones ethics. Jeb Bush stupidly choose to answer this hypothetical, he said he would butcher a toddler he though might grow up to commit genocide.

A Man of His Times
There are thousands of psychopaths walking around all the time. Some of them make great CEOs (Al Dunlap) while others turn to a career in law enforcement or become Vice-President. The best way to keep Hitler from killing would have been to prevent World War I from ever happening.

Deprive Hitler of the economic devastation and social angst that Germany suffered following the Versailles Treaty and little Adolph might have spent his life wandering the streets of Vienna content with killing the occasional stray dog.

His Replacement Could Have Been Worse

Okay, we killed baby Hitler but didn't change the cauldron of post-war Germany that cultivated him. The German Socialist Worker's Party existed before Hitler joined. It was already nationalist and antisemitic and had all of the philosophies Hitler later embraced. Any number of future members like Ernst Rohm, who organized the SA into a force of two million thugs, or Heinrich Himmler might have risen to leadership in the absence of Hitler and done a much better job of it.

Both were far better organizers than Hitler. When British Intelligence proposed assassinating Hitler in 1944, Churchill canceled the project because Hitler's battlefield decisions were so incredibly stupid it was decided he was an asset to the Allied military cause.

Karmic Disaster

Not real baby Hitler.

You've considered the options. You know it probably won't make a difference and if it does it might just make things worse. You've decided, the hell with it, you are going to smother baby Hitler in his crib.

You've decided to kill someone whose greatest crime, at that point in his life, is being fussy about going to sleep. For a pro-life advocate, like Bush, you've committed a horrific sin.

For a pro-choice person like me who believe life begins when you draw your first breath, killing a baby on spec is an ultimate evil. It is the sort of thing someone gripped with schizophrenic delusions might do.

So, Jeb, just saying, you are one sick son of a bitch.

Postscript
But I would have assassinated him in 1933 and not thought twice about it even if that meant I'd have to go back and assassinate a half dozen other German leaders that followed him.And it probably still won't have made a significant difference