New York Magazine asked its readers whether they’d kill baby Hitler if they could. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The New York Times Magazine polled readers on Friday about whether they would kill a baby Adolf Hitler if they could go back in time.

Forty-two percent answered in the affirmative, 30 percent in the negative and 28 percent said they were not sure.

The poll, which led to a “baby Hitler” Twitter trend on Friday, elicited mixed reactions. While some Twitter users criticized the magazine for posing such a question — one asked, “Where’s your self-respect?” — others took a more tongue-in-cheek approach. One commentator, for example, wrote: “Why is it necessary to kill Hitler as a baby? Could I wait until he was at least a teenager?”

A third proposed an alternative: “I would take Baby Hitler and raise him as my own, putting his powers to use for good instead of evil.”