Twenty who mattered (Part I)

Some friends and I have a tendency to make lists of the "best" things--the best movies, the best NFL quarterbacks, the best World War II novels, and so on, so we can argue about who or what belongs on them and why.

Along such lines, we recently ratcheted up the stakes in an effort to identify the most important political figures of the past century or so; the 20 leaders who most dramatically influenced the course of history, for good or ill.

After some back and forth (particularly with respect to the second, forthcoming 10), we came up with the following, in order of significance:

(1) Adolf Hitler. Perhaps no other figure did so much to cause a great event as Hitler did to cause World War II, which just happened to be the worst war in human history. The Holocaust also remains the human experience's most appalling, because so industrially methodical, exercise in genocide.

He remains the personification of evil in the modern age.

(2) Woodrow Wilson. The defining event of the 20th century, out of which so many of its tragedies flowed, including World War II, was the Great War. And it was Wilson who decisively decided its outcome by bringing his country belatedly into it in 1917.

Wilson essentially formulated an entire school of thought in diplomacy ("Wilsonian idealism") out of which would come the principle of ethnic self-determination, the misbegotten League of Nations, and today's profoundly influential "democratic peace theory." He also did more here at home to expand the powers of the executive branch than any previous president and was the most important (pre-Franklin Roosevelt) purveyor of "progressivism."

(3) Vladimir Lenin. Lenin substantially modified Karl Marx's theoretical framework to produce the hybrid ideology of Marxism-Leninism; that is, communism as we came to (so unfortunately) know it. His most important contribution was the concept of the "vanguard party," which would seize power in Russia with the Bolshevik Revolution and thereby ignite 74 years of Cold War with the capitalist world.

Lenin was the original revolutionary-cum-political gangster and the model for those who would thereafter come to power through the barrel of a gun rather than the ballot box.

(4) Franklin Roosevelt. FDR laid down the first installment of what would become the American welfare state with his New Deal programs during the Great Depression. By turning America into the "arsenal of democracy" he also ultimately did more than any other leader to thwart the Axis powers in World War II.

(5) Winston Churchill. Churchill was an influential, often dominant figure in British politics for over five decades, and would lead his nation (and much of the world) through its darkest hours, when it stood virtually alone in the face of Hitler's "fortress Europa."

To paraphrase Churchill himself, seldom in history has so much been owed by so many to just one remarkably brave man.

(6) Joseph Stalin: It was Stalin's Red Army that clawed the innards out of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.

Alas, it was also Stalin who created the first totalitarian state after consolidating his hold on power inside Russia following Lenin's death. Stalin dominated international communism to a degree greater than any other leader of any ideological movement, and gave the world its profoundly ugly image of communism in practice as opposed to theory.

(7) Ronald Reagan--if Stalin dominated global communism, it was Ronald Reagan who almost certainly, in the end game of the Cold War, did more than anyone else to defeat it. He also rejuvenated and made respectable American conservatism, becoming to the political right what FDR has long been to the political left.

(8) Mao Zedong--Mao created, through two decades of civil war, the People's Republic of China in 1949. He then, through the madness of his Great Leap Forward and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, turned his creation upside down and directly or indirectly killed an estimated 50 million-60 million of his countrymen, surpassing even Hitler and Stalin as the greatest mass murderer in history.

By leading a communist movement based on the peasantry to victory in the countryside (in complete violation of the ideas of Marx and Lenin, which identified the proletariat as the revolutionary class), Mao also developed the template for guerrilla warfare and "wars of national liberation" in the third world.

(9) Mahatma Gandhi--It was Gandhi who did the most to secure the independence of India, the world's second most populous country, from Great Britain in the key anti-colonial struggle of the post-World War II era. In the process, he established a model of civil disobedience that has been embraced by the leaders of many other struggles for freedom since then.

(10) Deng Xiaoping--Deng might be known as the "butcher of Tiananmen" but he nonetheless saved China after the carnage and craziness of Mao by implementing market economic reforms that have now produced unprecedented rates of growth for more than 30 years.

Because of Deng, China has the largest middle class of any country in the world (and still growing by the week). No other leader in history oversaw such a massive improvement in standard of living and quality of life for so many people in such a short time.

------------v------------

Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

Editorial on 10/12/2015

Upcoming Events