[Serious] If Germans wished death upon Hitler as he was rising to power, would they have been in the wrong?
Okay, Godwin.
For me, and I recognize that it's just me, this fails on a pragmatic, legal, moral and philosophical basis:
- at that point he hadn't actually implemented any of his more odious ideas, and was merely a political rival;
- at that point he had not actually been charged with any crime, nor found guilty of any crime for which his death could have been justified, so this is basically implementing the death penalty with no due process;
- I'm anti-death penalty to begin with, so I don't think it's just for any human to take another's life with premediation. Convictions are only good when they're difficult to implement, so this is one such case;
- one would have to know why one is advocating for his death, but this sort of makes my point: if you're presumably killing him because he was wrong to commit genocide, that to me is potentially hypocritical.
Really, the only basis to justify killing him would be an alternate philosophical one; that is, regardless of the moral aspect, if you could take ONE life and in so doing save 50 to 60M*, then I guess it's math that has to be done. I can't in good conscience apply that to a current politician here, even Trump. The causation is not proximate enough.
* A rough approximation of the European theater deaths - military and civilian - from WWII, a war assumed to be largely started by Hitler for purposes of this discussion.