What if he thought he could wipe out Germany’s defeat at the hand of Britain, the US, and France during World War 1, or the Great War? What if he thought that could lead Germany to an even stronger position if only there had been no Paris Peace Treaty and no reparations heaped upon Germany? Not that Hitler was a classical scholar, but he did like to dabble in the past. He might have come upon the writings of a man named Pliny the Elder and his nephew, Pliny the Younger, and Pliny the Younger’s best friend, Tacitus. Pliny the Elder was a governor of Germania, or the province of Germany, headquartered in Trier, almost two thousand years before the time of Adolf Hitler. All three wrote histories of early Germany and talked about the big defeat at the hands of the Germans under Herman the German, or Arminius, in 9 AD. But all three were equally proud of the revenge upon the Germans wreaked by a Roman General named Germanicus in 14AD, only five years later, and talked about how wild the Germans were and how uncivilized they were compared to the Romans. They established a tradition that made Germany feel inferior that lasted to the days of HItler many centuries later.
What if it had occurred to Hitler that if he could eliminate those men he could change history? He might especially despise Pliny the Elder since he was the famous scientist and thinker who influenced the other two younger men who probably would never have existed without him. If he could change Germany’s self-image and the way the other European powers thought about Germany through the ages, he might be able to change positions with England and make Germany the leading power in the world just as he took up the reins of power in 1933.
The Nazis sponsored a lot of science. Why not a time travel project? If Hitler had kidnapped Einstein who theorized about time, matter, and energy, he might have been able to send Nazi agents back in time to the 70’s AD right about the time when Pliny the Elder was at his zenith. If he sent agents to murder him, as well as his nephew and his friend, the anti-German rhetoric would never have gotten started. It wouldn’t be passed on through the Middle Ages and Renaissance to the present time. And Germany would never have lost the First World War. Nor would there be a second. Germany would be unstoppable.
