Creating Good by Doing Evil

For John, BLUF:  There is no doubt that Adolf Hitler was a terrible person, responsible for tens of millions of deaths.  What would we do to stop him, knowing his evil path?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Why the Ethics of ‘Would You Kill Baby Hitler?’ Are More Important Than You Probably Think

Here is the sub-headline:

The 2002 Twilight Zone episode "Cradle of Darkness" toys with a simple question: can an evil act (murder) be justified if its consequences are sufficiently positive?

From Foundation for Economic Education, by Mr Jon Miltimore, 31 October 2022.

Here is the lede plus four:

Though it was well before my time, I always loved watching the original Twilight Zone series.  (In fact, I can still recite my favorite episodes, which include “The Shelter,” “The Hitchhiker,” “Living Doll,” and “A Game of Pool.”)

Later reboots of The Twilight Zone never impressed me as much, but the 2002 episode “Cradle of Darkness” is an exception.  Directed by Jean de Segonzac and written by Kamran Pasha, it stars Katherine Heigl as a young woman sent back in time to Austria in 1889 to rewrite history by killing Adolf Hitler when he’s just a baby, preventing (hopefully) the Holocaust and World War II.

The idea of sending someone back in time to change the future is a familiar one to sci-fi fans.  Movie buffs will recall the T-800 cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger) sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor to prevent her unborn son from leading the resistance that takes down Skynet in The Terminator.

The difference, of course, is that in “Cradle of Darkness” it’s the good guys who are trying to kill an innocent person to change the future.  Heigl’s character, who indicates she has (ahem) special DNA that allows only her to travel through time, reasons that the moral thing to do is to strangle the wretched little Nazi in his cradle.

“Adolf Hitler was responsible for the deaths of 60 million people. Fathers, mothers, children,” she says gravely, moments before she is whisked back in time to become Baby Hitler’s nanny.

There is the questioni of if in every world Adolf Hitler always turns out to be bad, or if our time traveller can, throuogh an act of kindness, change Mr Hitler's path.

More than that is the questiono of what does this do to the balance of world history.  Would a lack of a Chancellor Hitler mean that Chairman Joseph Stalin would expand his actions and kill his list and Hitler's also?  Would Spain go Communist in the 1930s, resulting in a large number of deaths?

Then there is the question of if doing evil to obtain good is ever justified?  The Writer takes that on, so read the whole thing.

Regards  —  Cliff