That was when she began to laugh. Wildly, hysterically. She started to laugh and did not stop laughing. She was still laughing when it got to her.
April 27, 2018
Raising Baby Hitler
The New York Times Magazine discovered, by polling its readers, that 42 percent of them would kill Baby Hitler. That just goes to show what New York Times Magazine readers know.
I HAVE OFTEN FELT THAT most of historical Hitler’s difficulty stems from a life spent constantly fending off assassination attempts from the future, an effort that doubtless left him paranoid and exhausted. Do I have proof for this? Well, no, obviously, but it seems right, doesn’t it?
Frankly I think if you are going to go back in time and interact with Baby Hitler, you should not kill him. You should try to raise him right. Here’s how.
1889
You get out of the time machine and tip the driver. It is April 20 and you are in Braunau am Inn, Austria (yes, Austria! Hitler was Austrian, Mozart was German, as Germany is always reminding us). You are in the Hitler nursery. There is baby Adolf cooing to himself in a lacy outfit. “Yes,” you think to yourself. “This is doable.”
You pick up Baby Hitler and rock him soothingly back and forth.
A man and woman (his parents, you assume) rush in and start yelling excitedly at you in German. You had forgotten about them. Also, you do not speak German. When you accepted this mission you forgot to take this into account. You put down Baby Hitler, who is now crying something awful, and begin to gesture. “Achtung!” you say. “Achtung!” (You don’t know any German at all and you are not sure of what achtung means, other than that it was a U2 album title.) “Ein!” you yell. “Zwei, drei! Quatre! Cinq!”
Mr. and Mrs. Hitler are now more concerned than upset. Mrs. Hitler picks up little Adolf and soothes him. You try the time-honored American method of speaking English loudly and slowly in the hope that suddenly people in a foreign country will miraculously understand you.
“Mr. and Mrs. Hitler,” you say, slowly, “I would like to take this baby and raise it for you. You see, your son here grows up to become the worst dictator in history, responsible for mass genocide, but I—” (well, this sounds really stupid now that you’re saying it out loud, but I suppose you’re stuck) “—feel that I will be able to do a better job raising him than you did.”
Mr. and Mrs. Hitler speak excitedly to one another and you assume that they are saying something along the lines of “Come into my house and say a thing like that! You really think it’s my parenting that did it? I’ll have you know I’m going to have two more children who will not grow up to be world dictators!”
You see your opening, grab little Hitler, and make a break for it.
The next eighteen years are the most stressful of your life.
AGE: ONE
Baby Hitler is teething and it is driving you up the wall. Does it still count as traveling back in time heroically to kill Hitler if you do it because it is 3:00 a.m. and Baby Hitler has awakened you from your first sound sleep in weeks? He’s still probably going to be a genocidal maniac, even if you have been playing him a special record called Music Definitely Not by Wagner to put him to sleep every night.
AGE: TWO
Baby Hitler is now Toddler Hitler. The only thing worse than the terrible twos is knowing that the toddler currently dragging you through the terrible twos is Adolf Hitler. Tiny Adolf manages to eat a knob off one of the cabinets. He smiles knowingly at you as he does it. You become very upset and take away his Soffee Giraffe, which you brought from the future because everyone associated with it said that it was the One Toy Guaranteed Not to Screw Up Your Baby in Any Way.
Toddler Hitler throws a tantrum that reminds you of the worst excesses of his speaking style later. “Adolf,” you tell him, sternly, putting him into his I LOVE GREAT BRITAIN, AND I WOULD NEVER ATTEMPT AN AIR CAMPAIGN AGAINST IT lion pajama onesie, “if you carry on like that, no one is going to listen to you or take you seriously.”
AGE: FOUR
You drop Young Hitler off at kindergarten. You put apple juice in his lunchbox and make sure all his snacks are kosher so he can share if he makes friends. You hope he makes friends. His early childhood felt interminable but now it seems like it’s gone in the blink of an eye. He is wearing his favorite sweater with a giraffe on it.
AGE: FIVE
Young Hitler brings home a drawing he has made. “That is a beautiful drawing,” you tell him. “Unless my telling you that this is a beautiful drawing will make you believe that you are a great artist and then later you will be rejected from art school and it will warp your psyche, in which case, no, it is not a beautiful drawing.”
“Thank you?” Young Hitler says, uncertainly.
AGE: SIX
Hitler makes a friend, Kyle. You ask him what he wants to do after school and he raises his hand and shouts “SEE KYLE!” and you faint dead away.
AGE: EIGHT
Hitler says he needs a bigger bedroom because he requires more “living space.” “WHERE DID YOU LEARN A THING LIKE THAT?” you ask, panicked. “THAT IS A COMPLETELY ERRONEOUS IDEA.” You try to send him to his time-out spot but then panic that you are associating territorial restrictions with punishment. Instead, you announce that you are going to read Nietzsche to him. (“Nietzsche is always a punishment,” you say, “not something people voluntarily read.”)
AGE: NINE
Hitler drinks chocolate milk and it lands in an unfortunate
