It’s a question frequently asked.

“Knowing what you know now, if you had the chance to go back in time before Hitler came to power, would you shoot him?”

The frequent and expected answer is, “Hell yes!”

That’s a “What if” and I don’t know how I would answer it.

My answer would be complicated by the probability of my own consequent death. Would I sacrifice my life to save millions? Or would I, as the cliche would have it, “live to fight another day?”

Further complications intrude. We all remember Valkyrie, the attempt to blow up Hitler and his cabinet of advisors. The attempt failed, Hitler survived, and the heroic resistance lost their lives to no avail.

It reminds me of Martin Luther King III and his explanation of why he didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps and lead the marches. He explained, with painful relevance, that he didn’t have his father’s ready-made congregation of followers, that he would most likely have met the same fate without achieving the same result, and would have sacrificed his life for nothing further, that the problems still exist and the best thing he can do is to keep the fight going in ways where he can have an effect and achieve results, hence his focus on education and children as the next generation and the hope of the future. We discussed it at some length as I agreed with him and confessed my own dedication to the same cause in the same way.

So, maybe with Hitler, I might try to distract him, become his “friend” in non-threatening ways, and then influence his thinking.

Hitler liked his dog. I could befriend the dog, pet him, get him to like me and lick my hand.

With dog approval, I might be invited to dinner, sit at the table, join the conversation and steer it to agreeable directions.

Hitler liked to paint, and took pride in his artwork hanging around. You can always find something good to say about anything. I might praise his control of the brush, the delineation of the line, the suggestion of subtlety beneath the flat surface.

His needy ego so stroked might lead him to put his arm across my shoulder as he led me around the gallery in his domain. He might listen to me eagerly as I replayed to him his own words and showed him what apparently he already believed about art and the way it frees the spirit, the artist as rebel transcends the status quo, expands the possibilities of the human spirit wherever it exists in the freedom of self-realization and the blah blah blah.

I could be a trusted advisor and leaven his mind.

But reality intrudes. I don’t feel myself up to the job.

What if he figured out what I was doing to influence and humanize his thinking? What if his gang of advisors intervened, maybe dealt with me directly, neutralized me before I could achieve my intended result?

Then I might have died for nothing.

Or I might give in and decide the bullet is a surer method, and sign up for lessons at the firing range.

What action could I take that was worth the risk of my own life?

I love my life, and don’t want to squander it.

Decisions decisions.

In these extreme examples, do I see an image of my own life and its possibilities?

Do I want to devote myself to something without effect?

Which brings me back to the as yet unannounced reason for this ramble.

German. Hitler.

In college, UCR, I had a German class from a German professor, tall, lean, who embodied his love of the language.

He spoke the poetry more beautifully than I have ever heard it.

I tried to emulate him for the high school seniors I taught in world lit.

When he recited Hölderlin’s “Hälfte des Lebens,” he caressed the warm sound of the first half of life, then clipped it in the cold second half.

I belabored the point, wanting my students to see how a poet, with all of language and every word at his disposal, chooses not only the words that carry and convey implication, the intellectual resonance of what poetry can do beyond the literal, but those special poets with the full range of their art, create the sounds of a physical experience that matches and intensifies the intellectual and emotional content.

In the first half of life, the vowels are long, open, warm, the consonants understated, the physical response is the positive joy of youth opening to the bright future.

The second half of life begins with “Weh mir, wo nehm ich,” a contrast in meaning and the altered physical response. The vowels are short, cold, the consonants are harsh and clipped, the light of youth darkens in the approaching end.

The youthful Garden of Eden, the rich ripeness of golden pears and the blossoming beauty of roses, becomes the cold reality reduced to flat two dimensions. The lovely swans, a classic symbol of physical beauty, who dip their heads into the holy water like a sacrament (I could never give “heilignüchterne Wasser” the aural beauty my professor conveyed) become the lifeless weathervane clattering in the wind.

My students experienced poetry in ways they never imagined, beyond the foreign words in a foreign language, but pure sound, the essence of something that left them changed forever.

That’s what teaching does. That’s what it did to me.

I loved the language and the poetry. I’m ashamed that I succumbed to laziness and never learned it.

But the professor is with me still. His voice resonates in memory.

And now, the real reason for this speculative ramble, and we get back to Hitler.

Our professor shared some of his life with us. He showed us the famous photo of the famous Nürnberg Rally as Hitler orchestrated his rise to power and Leni Riefenstahl captured it on film.

“There,” he said, pointing to an indistinguishable dot in the mass of uniformed men, “That’s me.”

He wanted us to know, not to judge him, but to understand how a generation approximately our own age of young men was taken directly from school into the uniformed ranks. No options.

He was a gentle man with deep convictions, and he wanted us to feel the existence and the need for that something basic to humanity that persists beneath the vicissitudes of the rise and fall of Power.

He told us about how, riding on a train along the Rhein, he sat opposite two officers in their fancy uniforms of superior rank.

He looked out the window and pointed to the Lorelei rock, where the siren of heartless legend lured sailors to their death.

“Is that the famous rock where that woman in the poem by that famous poet, what’s his name…?”

“Yes yes,” they said eagerly. “The Lorelei. We all read the poem in school, we all loved it,” they started to quote it, “by our beloved poet Heine.”

“But,” said our professor, “Wasn’t he Jewish?”

The officers shuffled their feet nervously and looked away.