Honestly yeah, of all the "this one event had really big, horrible, far-reaching consequences"s you could point to in the 20th century, the suppression of the Spartacist revolt in Germany is one of the most pivotal. If it had succeeded the USSR wouldn’t have been alone and the civil unrest that France and the UK faced in the following decade would have had more socialist successes behind them, to say nothing of the impact that removing the Nazis from the equation altogether would have had. It wouldn’t have been a clean or bloodless timeline by any means, obviously, but it would have been an important difference.

But my point is just, a real person with real influence and real power dying is very different from if that individual had simply not existed at all, because, well, while anyone could theoretically become that person, once someone is then their death damages the movement they’re a part of.

So tl;dr for any time travelers: don’t kill baby hitler, [parody] the headquarters of the NSDAP in the late 1920s instead; break the movement instead of imagining one person could create it from whole cloth. Or better yet give the KPD a fucking gundam or ten in 1918 so this is a moot point, cause if you’ve got time travel you better at least have some fucking gundams to spare.

Edit: actually just go find that asshole fish that crawled out of the primordial sea and roast its dumb ass, save us all this trouble from the get go. Great man theory might be bullshit but no one said anything about fish, so I’m blaming that slimy, wannabe-air-breathing motherfucker.