I don't own The Time Machine.
Please let me know what you think.
The Evil of the Nazis.
When he had first seen the signs of the new war, the Time Traveller had accelerated into the future so then he could learn more about the war without getting involved; he had made that mistake the last time, and he had seen so much death and destruction as Europe went to war annihilating it. He had found enough books in future bookshops - he liked Waterstones, and when he checked the bank accounts he had set up from the proceeds of the things he had sold after he had returned after World War 1, the Time Traveller had studied the war he had only seen in the sky of his laboratory.
As he pored over the history books he found on the Second World War and its origins, the Time Traveller was becoming more and more convinced that he needed to do some work on the Time Machine so he could see the signs the future he'd originally debated about with his friends about a social utopia was not only poorly thought out for the future but looked increasingly bleak.
He only needed to see the black and white photographs showing the concentration camps and the Jews who were found by the soldiers who liberated them to see that.
The Time Traveller closed his eyes and looked away, trying and failing to exorcise the images from his mind, but failing.
What kind of people would do this to others?
It was just…unthinkable. Seeing those bodies who were more like skeletons wrapped in skin, showing signs of malnutrition and torture, some of them who were even innocent children, horrified the Time Traveller. He knew, especially after World War 1, that human beings had the potential for great evil, but after seeing what he had in the book the Time Traveller felt more disgust for the war he had seen. He had wrongly believed he had seen how bad things were when he had stopped the Time Machine in his laboratory in the 1940s, but the pictures in the book made him finally understand there was no way the human race would ever develop the utopia he and his friends had pictured. But what made it worse for the Time Traveller was when he read up on Adolf Hitler's rise to power.
The Time Traveller wasn't surprised by Hitler's military career, although he wasn't very high in the ranks. A lot of the Second World War and the foundations of the Nazi Party came from the so-called 'Great War.' Many other members of the Nazi Party were also involved in some manner with the Imperial German Armed forces.
As he read the history of the Nazis the Time Traveller wasn't sure what was worse, the fact Hitler gave the German people who were struggling after the war a number of people to blame, or the fact the rest of the world had made it unthinkably easy to bring about the creation of the Nazis in the first place by providing the environment Hitler thrived in. It didn't take the Time Traveller long to find out what the Treaty of Versailles had done to Germany. He had left the early 1900s as soon as he could following the set up of several bank accounts with the hope of generating the compound interest he would need to provide the money he would use for later use, but he had decided following the end of the World War 1 (the Time Traveller could not believe he was using the new name for the conflict, but given how there was nothing truly wonderful or inspiring about the damn war in the first place, he decided to let it rest) just to leave.
A part of him now regretted that decision.
He wished he could watch the unfolding of history there and then, watch as France and other European countries showed Germany and its people the damage caused by the war that they'd unleashed upon them. Maybe if he had then perhaps he could see things from his own perspective; he had come to the conclusion, especially as he had skimmed a few of the history books on World War 1 and a few others, especially books focused on his own time frame there were simply things he did not find accurate.
But beyond that, the Time Traveller could understand Hitler's desire to give the supporters he gained someone to blame; the German people were angry, resentful since they had virtually nothing left, but the Time Traveller remembered his time in the trenches where he had heard rumours and stories of some of the questionable decisions of the German military commanders; had Hitler believed they were simply too weak a choice for someone to turn the finger to? Somehow he had the feeling Hitler hadn't cared about them one way or another. No, he believed that due to the dictator's hate he was simply taking an opportunity to vent his spleen on the Jews, and anybody else whom he despised.
The rest of the Second World War was full of atrocities. When he learnt about the Blitz, the almost complete bombing of London through the air raids, the Time Traveller remembered the sight of those aircraft in the sky as they methodically bombed the city. One of the more worrying things about the war was the use of the rockets which had been launched from Europe and travelled to Britain before their fuel burnt out and they dropped like stones on the city, causing terrible devastation.
But the Time Traveller could not help but think more about the disgusting pictures of Auschwitz and the other concentration camps which were liberated.
The concentration and forced labour camps, the secret police's crimes and their suppression of anyone speaking out against the state, the bombings, the twisted scientific and medical experiments in the camps, showed a truly disturbing and horrifying picture of the Nazis, something so disgusting even the atrocities of Napoleon paled.