Godwin's Law of Time Travel: Difference between revisions

{{quote|'''As the amount of time-traveling you do increases, the probability of Hitler winning World War II approaches one.'''}}

 

 

Talked to the wrong person? Nazi victory! Left technology back before the dinosaurs were wiped out? Nazi victory! [[Butterfly of Doom|Stepped on a bug]]? Nazi victory! Left a tap running? Nazi victory! [[Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act|Prevented a Nazi victory? Nazi victory]]!

 

 

The strangest thing about Time Travel is probably that a) the Nazis winning WWII is the most common accidental timeline shift and b) that will usually be the only change in the new timeline. It almost seems like Germany was ''supposed'' to win, and that history is [[Rubber Band History|trying to snap back to its original form.]] Perhaps Germany actually won, and a neo-ally traveled back in time to make sure the allies won by making Hitler depressed or convincing him to invade Russia or something.

** After ''[[52]]'', Earth-X is reborn as Earth-10. The Superman of Earth-10 is named Overman (literally, ''[[Bilingual Bonus|Übermensch]]'') and is rather upset that he came into his powers ''after'' the Nazis won; there's nothing for it but to turn the Nazi Empire into as much of a [[Utopia]] as he can make it.

* [[Marvel Universe]]: Hauptmann Englande was a version of Captain Britain from an alternate universe where the Nazis won WWII.

 

== Film ==

== Literature ==

* [[Ray Bradbury]]'s ''[[A Sound of Thunder]]'' has a time traveler stepping on a butterfly in the Mesozoic era cause a fascist dictator type to win an election. Not actual Nazis, though. But the dictator's name is Deutscher, which seems close enough, particularly for a story written in 1952.

** In the setting of Connie Willis's time travel stories, the danger of Nazis winning World War II is catastrophic, because in the backstory, the inventor of time travel was a descendant of Holocaust survivors, which would mean time travel would never exist in the first place. In ''[[Blackout]]''/''[[All Clear]]'', the protagonists spend a lot of time worrying that [[For Want of a Nail|whatever little thing they do]] will make the Nazis win.

* The book ''Making History'' features the protagonist sending a pill to cause male sterility back to the water supply of the village where Hitler would be born, erasing him from existence. Naturally, his absence during an incident in the trenches of the First World War results in the survival of a German soldier who would normally die, and he goes on to become a fascist, anti-Semitic dictator anyway—except he's smarter than Hitler, so he wins World War Two. The protagonist wakes up the next day and finds that he's in New Jersey rather than England, his grandparents having fled England in the face of a Nazi invasion. Major changes this has on the United States are that the anti-Communist paranoia during the Cold War is shifted against the Nazis, and that homosexuality is outlawed. This world also has much more advanced computing and electronics, for unknown reasons. There are a variety of other small differences mentioned.

* In the 1980 series ''[[Darkroom]]'', a man finds that he can send Morse-code messages to a ship during [[WWII]]. He tries to give the United States an edge by telling them information from history books — and the next day he opens the door to see a Nazi-parade, since Hitler had won and the Nazis now ruled the world.

* Parodied by ''[[The Whitest Kids U' Know]]''. Apparently, just resetting your internet history is enough for Nazi zeppelins and Nazi dinosaurs with laser eyes to appear.

 

== Radio ==

* In the ''[[Big Finish Doctor Who]]'' audio "Colditz", a minor character reveals that she's from Britian in the 1960s—controlled by the Nazis due to the Doctor's appearance in Colditz Castle. The line of causality ends up being quite confusing.

{{quote|The Doctor: ''"The German Reich!? Hahaha, I should have known. The oldest paradox in the book!"''}}

 

== Theater ==

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* In ''[[Command & Conquer]]'': Red Alert, Einstein creates a time machine so he can kill Hitler, but returns to find that World War II still happened, except this time it was the USSR that invaded Europe. It is referred to as the Great World War II in the manual and is said to have been many times more destructive than our World War II.

** Red Alert 3 takes this even further: just as the USSR is about to lose its second engagement with the European/American Allies, Soviet soldiers go back in time to kill ''Einstein''. When they come home they find that the USSR is winning! Hurray! Except now because the Allies and USSR were spending all their time bombing each other, neither of them saw the ''Japanese'' gaining power...

* The adventure game ''[[Time Gentlemen Please]]'' has this as the central plot. Of course, Hitler has an army of dinosaur clones. And it all started with a simple attempt to watch Magnum PI.

* In the ''[[Half Life]]'' mod trilogy "Timeline", rogue scientists from Black Mesa use the dimensional portal technology to affect time travel, then go back in time to help the Nazis conquer America by helping them complete their atomic bomb and Sanger AmerikaBomber projects. Gordon Freeman is enlisted to stop or revert this.

* According to ''[[Bug Martini]]'', this is one reason why [https://web.archive.org/web/20130516092215/http://www.bugcomic.com/comics/crummy-gift/ Time machines make crummy gifts].

* Parodied in ''[[Ansem Retort]]'' when Xemnas revealed that his manipulations in time moved the Nazi occult experiments from 1940 Germany to 1831 Rio de Janeiro. When Red XIII asked why they didn't just go to 1940 Germany in the first place, Xemnas realizes that he made his plan unnecessarily complicated.

 

== Web Original ==