The most important people of the 20th Century

yeah, Gagarin, Brave, skilled, well trained, but not 'important' in anything other than the history of spaceflight. And if you have Gagarin, why not Armstrong? he was the first human to set foot on another world, which is arguably even more important.
 
To paint Hitler other than an evil madman is an insult to the millions who perished on all sides and all civilians who died in the name of Racial puritry
 
Urwumpe said:
He did not start WW2 alone - there had been many more people involved. The demonification of Hitler is one of the worst things historicist ever did. Instead of really looking for the mechanics behind it, they just created a monster to blame. If you look really at the facts about Hitler, all that is left is a guy who was good at talking, an elite of power-hungry cultists, which hid behind him, and a whole mass of industrials, nobles and scientists, who pushed this group into power for their own motives - from fighting the communist fever at that time in favor of unleashed capitalism to plain restoration of monarchy and feudalism.
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Well, I'd say that's a fairly perfect statement of the "historical materialism" school of historiography. ... so 20th century ...
 
Mr Burch! How good to hear from you. What's in the Burchismo pipeline these days?
 
gimp1992 said:
To paint Hitler other than an evil madman is an insult to the millions who perished on all sides and all civilians who died in the name of Racial puritry
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You need to be really optimistic, to say that he was the only evil madman in Germany at that time. Or generally in the world at that time.

Just look at the people who formed the elite of the NSDAP.

Hitler was not more evil, as many other Germans at that time. It is even possible that Hitler got caught in a vicious circle around the violence against yews. He started it, and his followers escalated it, and the only option of stopping this escalation would have been his own end. So, it is really possible that Hitler was just pushed by the wave he started, trying to stay on top by being as fast as the most insane madmen pushing him. Of course he was mad to keep this going - but do you really think Hitler killed 6 million yews with his own hands?

You can say, the whole years from 1925 to 1945 had been the distillation of madness. They perfected it. They took the typical 30% idiots and xenophobic and unleashed them. as long as there had been a enemy for racial purity and nationalism, the wave was able to keep going.

gimp1992 said:
WW 2 started with the invasion of Poland in 1939.
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WW2 was already planned in 1925. Anybody who read Hitlers book, should have known what was going to happen. It was planned like that. Of course it was not his own plan - many people developed the plan he described in his manifest.

Poland was just the first country eastwards of Germany.
 
The thing about the 20th century was that it was the century of totalitarian states and total war. Hitler certainly wasn't the first evil dictator, and anti-semitism wasn't new, and the idea of forming an empire wasn't new either.

But in the 20th century these things all came together not just in Germany, but in Russia and many other nations as well, mostly driven by ideology and enabled by new technology, such as mass communications and radio and television.

Stalin killed more people than Hitler by far, but he didn't target one particular ethnic group and he was popular among New York "intellectuals" so he doesn't get demonized the way Hitler does. Moronic teenagers and 20-somethings walk around even today with Che Gueverra T-shirts, unaware of the monster whose image they bear. Pol Pot, Mao, Franco, Musselini, the list goes on and on.

Stupid ideology + naive people = lots and lots of dead people

lots of dead people + stupid intellectuals = demonization of individual dictators = overlooking the big picture: bad ideologies kill
 
When I think of the 20th century, the first thing that comes to mind is WAR. There sure was alot of it. But then I thought about it, and every century had war... The 20th century is unique because of it's being dominated by advances in science.

So, even though there have been thousands of great scientists, I've got to go with Albert Einstein as being the most influencial scientist of the 20th. As TIME magazine puts it: The touchstones of the era — the Bomb, the Big Bang, quantum physics and electronics — all bear his imprint.

I hate not being original either, but I also go with TIME's selection for the most influencial leader of the 20th century, as Franklin Roosevelt. Taking the US through the depression, then WWII, must not have been easy.
 
I don't worship at the alter of the sainted Roosevelt, so I'd leave him off the list. Although he is important, I suppose.
 
Don't forget Norman Borlaug. He's single-handedly fed a billion starving people and the spark point of the "Green Revolution" touting more efficient crop yields through a number of measures.
 
Ran across this gem today regarding the figures of the 20th century.

DiLorenzo likes to tear down false gods, Lincoln is his favorite, but he has citations and you need guys like this keep an even keel on your thinking. The book he is talking about sounds like it may be worth a look.
 
Poscik said:
Might be Dmitrij Iwanowicz Mendelejew too. He arranged elements in right order and he didn't know anything about elements.
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However, he wasn't twentieth century. ^_^
 
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