The Most Influential Person of the 20th Century

[Evo]

He started a huge race for technology. By the time WW2 started, the Germans were way ahead of everybody, and the world was playing catchup. By the end of the war, many things had been invented or further developed. Rocket technology came a very long way because of that war. So did nuclear technology. Even RADAR wasn't all that special until that war made it special. The turbine engine was also developed during WW2.
That war also changed the governments of many countries. Those rescued by the soviets became communist countries. Those rescued by the US, Britain, and whoever else became capitalist countries. The League of nations turned into the United Nations to become the start of world government, then the capitalist and communist countries started their own alliances of NATO and Warsaw Pact. That lead to the Cold War which was just another race for science.

Without Hitler indirectly starting the cold war, we probably wouldn't even have launched into space or landed on the moon.

So, you're saying Hitler is responsible for the creation of Spam and evaporated milk?

 

[Andre]

Now, surprisingly, nobody voted for the man who terminated the cold war single handedly, and ended up almost forgotten as shown here after three pages.

Michael "Gorbi" Gorbatschow

 

[ShawnD]

I don't buy that, you can't give all of that credit to Hitler.

Well then backtrack to how things would be if Hitler did not start something.
-WW2 does not start
-USSR does not setup the eastern bloc
-Cold War does not begin
-race for nuclear technology does not begin (but we would have found it eventually)
-race for space does not begin (this can only happen as a government project since there's basically no financial reason for a company to invest into this research)

 

[Hypnos]

Well then backtrack to how things would be if Hitler did not start something.
-WW2 does not start
-USSR does not setup the eastern bloc
-Cold War does not begin

That's hardly certain, since the Communist revolution pre-dated Hitler and Germany's post-WWI state was conducive to totalitarianism.

 

[ShawnD]

So, you're saying Hitler is responsible for the creation of Spam and evaporated milk?

Spam was invented by Americans in 1937, so no Hitler didn't do that. From what I can find, evaporated milk is from 1885, so that wasn't Hitler either.

 

[ShawnD]

That's hardly certain, since the Communist revolution pre-dated Hitler and Germany's post-WWI state was conducive to totalitarianism.

The entire reason the eastern bloc was created was because it was sort of a buffer zone against any future German attacks. The Cold War started because the Soviets felt their capitalist allies did not help them at all in WW2. Barborossa started in June 1941, but the capitalist allies on the west side didn't even start invading German controlled land until June 1944. When Germany was being pushed back on all sides, the Soviets entered Berlin in April 1945, 3 months before the capitalists got there in July.

Capitalists and communists never liked each other, but the seemingly weak support from the capitalist allies made the situation much worse, and heavily contributed to why the Cold War started. Before WW2, the Soviets did business with the capitalists in Europe; it was part of Stalin's industrialization project. That all stopped when WW2 ended and the Cold War began.

 

[Evo]

Spam was invented by Americans in 1937, so no Hitler didn't do that. From what I can find, evaporated milk is from 1885, so that wasn't Hitler either.

Ooop's I meant dry milk, not evaporated. Hey Hitler was in power in 1937. Without him, Spam would have died.

 

[Smurf]

Well then backtrack to how things would be if Hitler did not start something.
-WW2 does not start
-USSR does not setup the eastern bloc
-Cold War does not begin
-race for nuclear technology does not begin (but we would have found it eventually)
-race for space does not begin (this can only happen as a government project since there's basically no financial reason for a company to invest into this research)

I don't buy that. Hitler doesn't get full credit for world war 2, you could just as easily say the exact same for Georges Clemenceau and so many other people. How about Archduke Ferdinand? By that logic he's far more important than Hitler, neither of the world wars would've happened without him.

 

[ShawnD]

I don't buy that. Hitler doesn't get full credit for world war 2, you could just as easily say the exact same for Georges Clemenceau and so many other people. How about Archduke Ferdinand? By that logic he's far more important than Hitler, neither of the world wars would've happened without him.

Try to think of this in terms of who is doing what. When Ferdinand was killed, who actually did something? Ferdinand? No, all he did was die. The guy who did something was Gavrilo Princip.

Clemenceau would be the ideal guy to write a paper on, assuming this is a school project.

 

[Hypnos]

Possible future German aggression was a concern at Yalta that was solved partially by its devastation, and finally by dividing up its rebuilding. The question, then, is whether or not the East Bloc formed out of Soviet imperialist designs or as a response to mistrust towards the West. I would say neither: war created a socioeconomic vacuum that was filled readily by the occupying parties. The Cold War grew out of a direct collision of ideologies that pre-dated the war.

So, IMHO, Hitler can be credited with accelerating this process by assuring Germany's destruction.

 

[ComputerGeek]

Who do you believe is the most influential person of the 20th century? I am talking about on a global level. I am doing some research on this topic, and I find it rather difficult to select one.

Einstein will, I think, be one of the two or three people remembered by non-historians in 400 years. His theories have changed the world.

 

[ComputerGeek]

I think you'd have to give the credit to someone vital to the Communist movement.

Communism, the movement will probably be remembered, but no one involved in it. it is a detail that will have no long term impact on the future.

Communism will most likely be only remembered by historians and will not be in public school txts in 400 years.

 

[motai]

Communism will most likely be only remembered by historians and will not be in public school txts in 400 years.

It probably still will be in textbooks, after all Communism did have a great impact on the policies of many nations during the 20th century.

 

[ComputerGeek]

It probably still will be in textbooks, after all Communism did have a great impact on the policies of many nations during the 20th century.

I would say at best, it will be a foot note because it just is not important in the long term.

 

[fourier jr]

i'm still sticking with einstein for making television possible & truman for starting the cold war officially.

 

[ac_nex]

When it comes to most influencial, I would say its the person who has been mentioned most, either by media or at schools. I agree with matthyaouw that unfortunately, bad people are the most influentical, like say Hitler, terrorists, etc.

 

[loseyourname]

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. They invented the modern tech company and corporate culture, especially the open-door policies, company picnics and leadership building seminars. Plus HP was the company to popularize the computerized instrument panel and eventually the personal computer. They were also probably the first company to ever be built up from scratch by college buddies developing most of their own technology, a legacy continued by many industry pioneers since. I know the business world doesn't get credit for its influence the way the political world does, but I think it arguably has just as much of an impact. Heck, even Ray Kroc deserves serious consideration for this title. Not only did franchising revolutionize the way business expanded and allow for the modern phenomena of huge chains of retail outlets, but McDonald's has become synonymous with modern consumer culture and emblematic of westernization and globalization.

 

[loseyourname]

Also, don't let us forget Sigmund Freud. The man completely changed the way the human person looks at himself, even if he was mostly wrong. He had probably the greatest influence of any single person on the formation of popular culture in the 20th century.

 

[ShawnD]

Your argument for HP reminds me of Edward Deming, the inventor of Total Quality Management. The general idea was to monitor every step of the process along the way rather than just testing the end product. Things made using TCM are much higher quality than those made without.
Classic example is how Japanese cars very quickly became a threat to American car companies. The Japanese car companies adopted TCM before American companies did, and because of this, Japanese cars were much better than American cars for quite a while. Today, the difference between Japanese and US cars is arguable, but back in the 70s and 80s there was just no comparison.

 

[fourier jr]

that reminds me, who were the US supreme court judges who decided that corporations were legal persons? if that happened in the 20th century i would say that could possibly be the most influential event of the century, involving the most influential people.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I was going to say Joseph C. Gayetty, but he was a little early.

Edison?

 

[DaveC426913]

I'm with Hitler too.

While (for example) Freud advanced our knowledge and changed the way we think, he did not actually bring about the alteration of the course of civilization. If Freud magically never existed, I'm pretty sure most of the world would still have the same jobs and would still be alive or dead. If Hitler magically never existed, our world (and much of the things in it that many of us rely on that came directly or indirectly from the war) would be radically different. (Oh, and whole lineages would still be alive.)

 

[moose]

I would say Stalin or Truman... The cold war really influenced the last 50 years of the 20th century...

I don't think Hitler influenced the world that much over the years really...

EDIT: Ivan just mentioned Edison, and this is a good candidate too!

EDIT2: I guess the cold war is also because of communism, so...

EDIT3: If you look even further back in time, you can see that without some people, the world would be drastically different...

 

[Smurf]

I'm still rejecting Hitler. He was but one of several major players in every event he is credited with "influencing". As pointed out by ShawnD, Gavrilo Princip alone was more influencial than Hitler and he only lived a few days after WW1.

I'm sticking with Roosevelt. Or George Kennan (who died this year, btw).

 

[Smurf]

If Freud magically never existed, I'm pretty sure most of the world would still have the same jobs

Except for... you know... the millions upon millions of people who either are psychotherapists or who's lives had been sufficiently altered by one.

 

[laminatedevildoll]

Before this whole thread, I thought influential was meant to be something positive, but I guess that's a one-sided view of that concept. I guess the word 'influential' can be interpreted in any way... it is not limited to only positive influence.

I have noticed that Hitler was mentioned several times. I guess he did change people lives, but to say that 'Hitler was the most influential person of the 20th century' is sort of interesting. I guess mass executions really influence the world. Man, I still cannot believe what he did.

Anyway, I have compiled a list of all the names that were mentioned in this thread so far.

Hitler
Stalin
Friedrich Hayek
Keynes
Einstein
Al Gore
Mahatma Gandhi
Alfred Nobel
Hilbert
Einhold Aman
Rosa parks
Alan Turing
Harry Truman
Bohr
Schrödinger
Schottky
Shokley
Braittain
Bardeen
Kilby
Atalla
Bill Gates
Alexander Fleming
Charlie Chaplin
Tank Man
Nelson Mandela
Sun Yat Sen
Jesus
Lord Buddha
Tim Berners-Lee
Karl Marx
Lenin
Michael Jackson
Walt Disney
Wright Brothers
Marconi
Nikola Tesla
Michael "Gorbi" Gorbatschow
Georges Clemenceau
Archduke Ferdinand
Gavrilo Princip
Bill Hewlett
David Packard
Ray Kroc
Sigmund Freud
Edward Deming
Edison
Roosevelt
George Kennan

This is a really hard decision. I would appreciate if everyone would pick their top three candidates. So far, Einstein and Hitler (Good vs. Evil) are the most popular, I guess.

Thank you.

 

[moose]

Stalin did kill more people than Hitler, but whatever.

I think that the top three from that list are
-Edison
-Einstein
-Stalin
and if I had to have a fourth, it would be Bardeen

 

[Hypnos]

My top 3: Hayek, Einstein, Wright brothers

 

[Smurf]

Hayek is outclassed by Keynes easily.

My top three:
-Roosevelt
-Keynes
-George Kennan

 

[marlon]

Tim Berners-Lee, someone that had enormous impact on the very end of the 20th century and that would be interesting to write about. He invented the World Wide Web while working at Cern.

Auww, that hurts EVO.

You are forgetting the fact that Lee did NOT work alone on this. He collaborated with a Belgian guy who graduated from the same university i did.

Here is the proof http://robert.cailliau.free.fr/ByLetter/M/Me/Welcome.html

marlon, who likes promoting his own country

 

[marlon]

I don't buy that, you can't give all of that credit to Hitler.

and without Hitler, we would not have had the "Volkswagen"

marlon

 

[Andre]

And with all that climate change going on, you could expect me to nominate the inventor of the greenhouse gas effect, Svante Arrhenius who published at the turn of the 20th century.

And about Hitler, actually Emperor Hirohito of Japan covered at least as much area as Hitler and had the guts or stupidy to attack the US in Hawaï, changing the cause of the war. Why should he get less credit?

Actually choosing from that list should focus on the difference a single man made to change things and or if others were about to accomplish the same. For instance if it wasn't for Joseph Stalin, would the USSR really have turned into the "empire of evil", occupying a lot more territory a lot longer as Hitler ever did?

 

[ShawnD]

I guess mass executions really influence the world.

Mass killings are not as well remembered as you would like to think. Please read the following paragraph slowly. Read it twice if you need to.

The Japanese massacre of other Asian countries was just overwhelming. Upwards of 20 million people died. Japan is responsible for the largest mass rape in human history; over 700,000 women raped, 90% of them were killed afterwards (google for "jugun ianfu"). Japan's medical experiments on Chinese people dwarfed the ones done in the Nazi camps (google for "Shiro Ishii" or "unit 731"). People were dissected while they were still alive, without any kind of sedation. Japan was the only country in WW2 to use biological weapons on civilians; this included the bubonic plague, anthrax, and cholera. Japan was also the only country to use chemical weapons. Japan's PoW camps were much worse than Germany's camps. Germany's PoW camps had a death rate of less than 5%, whereas Japanese PoW camps had a death rate of 30% or higher.

In the end, which country was remembered more? Germany or Japan?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Before this whole thread, I thought influential was meant to be something positive, but I guess that's a one-sided view of that concept. I guess the word 'influential' can be interpreted in any way... it is not limited to only positive influence.

Yes, it turns out the term "most influential person" is open to so many interpretations that it becomes an improper question. You have to rephrase it entirely if you are seeking people's opinion of "positive" influence, and you'll find that you'll have to create even more parameters from there to clarify the original intent of the question, like what sorts of things constitute "positive" influences.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

How could Hitler have waged war without light bulbs to light the maps?