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While I concur that assassination has no place in a functional democracy; if Hitler had been assassinated during WW2 it would have surely been chaotic for Germany. Therein lies the question: is chaos inherently worse than an actively unjust order?
Everyone in Hitler's orbit was just as hateful as he was. But in many cases, they were smarter and less insane. Killing Hitler could have easily made WW2 a lot worse for everyone. What if you assassinated Hitler only to cause the Nazis to win?
Maybe. Maybe it would have accelerated the decline of the third reich. It's impossible to know and fruitless to theorize about.
And irresponsible to use as a justification for future assassination attempts
Hey if we're putting words in people's mouths you're basically saying that you support Hitler
And you support the Nazis having a competent leader and winning world war 2
Yep, but they weren't going to win globally, though locally we'd likely have some of the following, depending on the point in time where the assassination happens:
German version of Hirohito, only it wasn't a monarchy, so likely the new dear leader would be a figurehead in a western puppet government, kinda similar to how it really happened, but without apologies, without reparations, without big trials and with formal and aesthetic preservation of the German Empire, and of course they'd be known for nice cartoons, cool language and really weird engineering (OK, this part happened irl, so nvm) ;
German version of Atatürk, with his NSDAP 2.0 rebranded (same as with Kemalists being slightly rebranded Young Turks), which is totally not NSDAP, and lots of stupid people would praise them for fixing the mistakes of previous incompetent and criminal leaders (including Holocaust, which was committed by a totally different party and totally different state, but still didn't happen, and if it happened, then they deserved it, and we'll do it again), ah, and of course the German Empire keeping Silesia, East Prussia, northern Schleswig and maybe even Austria, and continuing analogies, I'd expect Sudetes and Danzig and whatever too ;
Something similar to the "Fatherland" movie, not in the sense of Nazis winning, but in the sense of society and, again, crimes against humanity ;
Some peace without WWII starting or around early 1942, highly improbable seeing how eager they were to do it all, but - then maybe a very slow Mexican duel of a Cold War.
Ww2 would have ended very differently if, instead of invading Siberia/russia, they had instead elected to invade the Middle East.
The impetus, ostensibly, was to seize oil fields. The reality was that Hitler absolutely despised Stalin, so he broke the non aggression treaty. It was largely inevitable- Stalin hated him just as much as Hitler.
But, the problem was in terms of production of war material- specifically, fuel, oil, and rubber. They could have steam rolled most of the states in the Middle East with relative ease- they were largely armed with pre-WW1 castoffs.
(Now, keeping it would have been expensive, but that’s a different matter.)
You can play all the theoretical moral games you want. Political assassinations of leaders is madness.
But ethically better then war, or letting them harm the vulnerable
Bet the dickheads that shot Ferdinand thought the same.
Nobody believes they're on the wrong side of history. But after all, history is written by the victors.
Is that why WW1 is generally pretty unbiased? Nobody actually fucking won in that war. We must replicate this across all wars for reasons of historical posterity.
Turks in practice won. They lost parts of their empire they would be unable to control for long anyway. They murdered everyone they didn't like in the parts they liked and had their sovereignty over those recognized by "civilized" countries. And the world after that war made them useful for everyone else.
Japan, well, wasn't too happy with its share in the outcome of WWI, but clearly won.
Okay so we have two out how many countries. But fair point.
The dickhead that did it was so drunk that he probably thought he was shooting the FNAF robot.
You are not that naive to think it's his murder that caused WWI, yes? It's well known that all sides had been preparing for world war.
Serbia accepted all parts of the AH ultimatum, except for one, which was a complete violation of sovereignty.
There were no significant negotiations over this, because that ultimatum was not intended to be accepted.
Germany and Russia and France and Italy all mobilized without all these things we hear today about new red lines and negotiations and compromises in Ukraine and elsewhere. Humans have not changed, it's just that war was certain to happen. The archduke's murder was not, but it was very convenient since he was a rather peacemaking figure.
Nothing more immediately tempts me to dismiss a comment than one attempting to start with a passive insult. From a 1 day old account, none the less. I’ll ignore my better sense and plow on.
I guess I’ll also ignore the pages of articles pointing to it as the “immediate cause” of the war.
Guess I’ll not point out the all geopolitical tension you mentioned being be the “powder keg” that Ferdinand’s assassination ignited, either.
My comment was specific enough, go fuck yourself.
EDIT: Also using tired metaphors like "powder keg" in the context of WWI does the opposite of making your argument stronger. Argumentation is about logic, not about conforming to style. You might also want to lose that smug tone, it's equivalent to spending your opponent's goodwill on something unconnected to the subject. You might call the situation where everybody wants war a "powder keg", yes, but that doesn't really matter, war already was in the air for a few years before the assassination. In newspapers, in diplomacy, in preparations for their own grand victory by all big powers. Since Balkan wars (Ottomans losing trust in British world order), Bosnia and Herzegovina (South Slavs realizing they are food), Russo-Japanese war (ruining Russian friendship with Germany and Austria).
Why do I even bother trying and failing at being witty when the jokes write themselves.
It wasn't an insult. You're the person who sees any disagreement as a critique of their nonexistent intellectual authority, apparently.
Also I didn't miss any implications. FF's assassination couldn't by itself prepare troops and railroads for close war. That it was used as a formal cause means nothing. ~~In 1870 France declared war on Prussia with the formal reason of being insulted~~ (EDIT: this is false, they made some demands and such, dunno where I got this from). Tail doesn't wag the dog.
A sardonic, “you can’t be that silly” passes muster, and is semantics either way.
I caught your edit and I gotta ask, are you Serbian? I assumed you were just looking for an argument given the tone of your replies but the edit made me think otherwise. You surely can’t have interpreted my initial comments as blaming Serbia (or even Black Hand necessarily) for starting the war right? Because that is not what I was doing.
No, not Serbian, but I'm nervous about possible misinterpretations of such events, as today these may cause justifying "smaller" crimes to avoid some supposed bigger catastrophe. As that would happen right before WWII.
My first comment was just that there's usually no single cause of war, and if FF's murder and Serbia rejecting one part of the ultimatum were that, then the war would last for a few months after which everyone would apologize to each other and go lick their wounds.
False.
The IRA killed a lot of people some of them were politicians, and well the IRA was based. Ya gotta crack a couple of eggs to make an omelette and jack we're makibg the mother of all omelettes!