The New York Times magazine asks: "Dear Reader: Could You Kill a Baby Hitler?"

Forty-two per cent of the New York Times Magazine’s readers would kill a baby.

Yeah, that’s what they said. Not just any baby, though. Baby Hitler.

The mag posed the question to its readers and it’s proving a real head-scratcher.

“Dear Reader: Could You Kill a Baby Hitler?” was the actual question.

Now, the use of the word “could” implies that going back in time and murdering baby Adolf is actually a possibility, which at present, is not.

So I would prefer the question phrased, “Would you kill baby Hitler?”

So… would you?

Personally, I would probably go back, scoop up little Hitler, rename him Rainbow Moonchild and raise him among Buddhist monks far, far away from Germany.

Reliably, Twitter responded to the ridiculous question superbly.

And really, would killing baby Hitler have prevented the Holocaust and WWII? I mean, Hitler didn’t invent anti-Semitism.

Then again, if we’ve got the power to kill baby Hitler, then why not baby Goebbels? Or little Mengele? Or the infant Himmler?

You know what? I am starting to feel trolled by the New York Times Magazine.

The odd question had many other publications around the world concerned about the magazine’s mental health, or at least that of its prolific tweeter.

Whoever has hijacked its Twitter feed had only one response.

lol

— NYT Magazine (@NYTmag) October 23, 2015