Tahuti
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Then you might as well add Churchill too. He also returned from the politically dead quite a few times.
greatest modern political genius of all time
- Thread starter mightfire500
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Then you might as well add Churchill too. He also returned from the politically dead quite a few times.
Ajidica
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I decided against Churchill because I wouldn't classify him as a political genius. If I remember correctly, a lot of the 'day-to-day' administration during the war was handled by Labour during the Wartime Coalition and Churchill himself mainly dealt with keeping morale up and banking on his excellent relation with Roosevelt. He quickly found himself out of office after the war because:
a) The Tories didn't have a plan for post-war reconstruction besides returning to the interwar years that few working class people wanted to return to as it was characterized by persistent unemployment.
b) Some mind-boggling stupid comments in the lead up to the General Election, saying that if Labour got elected Britain would soon 'get their own Gestapo' or something similar. That would be a tactless comment now, let alone saying that right after WWII toward people you had worked with for the last seven years in wartime.
a) The Tories didn't have a plan for post-war reconstruction besides returning to the interwar years that few working class people wanted to return to as it was characterized by persistent unemployment.
b) Some mind-boggling stupid comments in the lead up to the General Election, saying that if Labour got elected Britain would soon 'get their own Gestapo' or something similar. That would be a tactless comment now, let alone saying that right after WWII toward people you had worked with for the last seven years in wartime.
Yes, any assessment of him as a politician has to take into account his utter bungling of the post-war election.
jackelgull
An aberration of nature
Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India.
As far as I'm concerned he's pretty close to being the greatest politician of the 20th century. He lead India, a poor not all that powerful nation, to become the leader of the non alignment movement which gave it a vastly important role on the world stage. He played on the divisions between America and Russia to get both countries to pour money into India. He managed to chart a socialist course for his country which has been followed by every major political party until now. And because he was the first prime minister and so successful at it as well as being principled, India didn't slip into dictatorship as many post colonial states have done. However, is bungling of Kashmir and relations with China keep me from completely endorsing him as the best poltician of the 20th century.
As far as I'm concerned he's pretty close to being the greatest politician of the 20th century. He lead India, a poor not all that powerful nation, to become the leader of the non alignment movement which gave it a vastly important role on the world stage. He played on the divisions between America and Russia to get both countries to pour money into India. He managed to chart a socialist course for his country which has been followed by every major political party until now. And because he was the first prime minister and so successful at it as well as being principled, India didn't slip into dictatorship as many post colonial states have done. However, is bungling of Kashmir and relations with China keep me from completely endorsing him as the best poltician of the 20th century.
Nehru also drank his own urine. That is literally the only description of him I found in a high school history textbook.
"After Gandhi's death, Jawaharlal Nehru became President of India. He was less flamboyant than his predecessor, though he did have a ritual of drinking a glass of his own urine every morning."
"After Gandhi's death, Jawaharlal Nehru became President of India. He was less flamboyant than his predecessor, though he did have a ritual of drinking a glass of his own urine every morning."
arya126
Squad Leader
I would say Eisenhower definitely deserves a mention, not because of anything he did as president, but because of the marvelous job he did at keeping the allies from each others throats during world war 2. He was more of a politician than a general according to the memoirs and historical sources I have read.
Charles de Gaulle was most certainly an able politician bordering on genius.
Hitler and Stalin both deserve mentions, despite how distateful the results of their actions were.
Deng Xiaoping is likely 'the' political genius of post war east asia.
And of course you cannot forget Bismarck who is arguable the biggest genius of all within the timespan.
Charles de Gaulle was most certainly an able politician bordering on genius.
Hitler and Stalin both deserve mentions, despite how distateful the results of their actions were.
Deng Xiaoping is likely 'the' political genius of post war east asia.
And of course you cannot forget Bismarck who is arguable the biggest genius of all within the timespan.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
In foreign and military affairs, arguably, but his domestic record was pretty mediocre. His attempts to marginalise Poles, Catholics and socialists lead to the galvinisation of those movements, contributing in the long term to the emergence of Zentrum and the SPD as the two largest parties in Germany and Poland as an independent state. The guy could play diplomatic chess at a master level, but he wasn't very particularly good at managing public opinion, which is really the essence of a "modern" politics.
Ajidica
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I thought Dachs had quite a few criticisms of him, mainly due to his supporters and historians writing off Bismarck's failures and stupid decisions as a result of bad subordinates or successors who 'just couldn't comprehend Bismarck's genius'.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
I haven't really studied Bismarck-as-diplomat, so I'll readily defer to Dachs on this. Unpicking Bismarck's career is as much a study in mythology as anything else!
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
It's getting that way, right enough. Goes on much longer we'll be like Talmudic scholars, every post a commentary on the ancient scriptures.
What's funny is that nobody gets more annoyed by this than Dachs himself.
What's funny is that nobody gets more annoyed by this than Dachs himself.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Ah, sure enough, everybody has their specialities, Dachs just happened to pick a few- WW1 and Classical Europe- that are big topics around here. He in turn deferred to Lord Baal on WW2, and everybody bows to Maseda on South-East Asia. Even us B-grade history buffs have our expertise, as you say, even if somewhat less glamorous ones; speaking for myself, I can just about keep ahead of the pack with colonial and revolutionary America, although admittedly not very far given that every American undergrad has taken at least five billion classes on that stuff even if their major is in, like, mechanical engineering.
schlaufuchs
Break My Heart
Yeah. Really this. The Schlieffen Plan was something that came up A TON on cfc and late 19th/early 20th century German political/military history just happened to be Dachs' big wheelhouse. That's what he was going to do in grad school last time I talked to him.
It's not like people come in with questions about Zwingli or Melancthon or the Peasants' War or the Schmalkaldic League or 15th century Italy or 16th century France all that often. :< Just annoying proclamations about the greatness of Elizabeth I
It was a bit of a catch-22 situation in the end... the most educated and intellectual historian left because there were so few educated and intellectual historians around that the place simply wasn't any fun. That said I think there's still enough people around to have a fairly high-level discussion on most topics, and easily enough to have an interesting and friendly one on just about anything.
Tahuti
Writing Deity
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Bismarck was actually pretty pragmatic when it came to domestic politics. You rightly point out that his stance towards the Poles was rather counterproductive, since they neither had numerical nor social power, though you have to take into perspective that Anti-Polonism was typical for Prussian rulers since Frederick the Great, and he arguably wasn't able to think away from that precedent. However, by spitting venom against Catholics, he secured the alliance with the national liberals when he needed them the most and reversed his stance on Catholics to corner the aforementioned as well as the Socialists. Also, his interpretation of the welfare state managed to placate Socialists for a while.
The problem was primarily that his successors were very meh, and then there was Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Unfortunately he didn't 'corner' the Catholics or the Socialists, that's precisely the problem - the Socialists dominated the Reichstag even during the war, with the Catholic Centre Party as usually the second largest. He may have tried (as far as possible) to do without democratic politics, but only because he utterly failed to influence them as he wanted.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Yeah, "pragmatic" doesn't mean "effective". Bismarck's legacy was two strong and well-organized opposition parties, Zentrum and the SPD, which continue to dominate German politics to this day; if he was anyone else, this would be regarded as an unqualified testament to his failure.
Bismarck's problem, and I suspect the reason that Tovergieter likes him, is that he didn't really understand modern popular politics. Elections were something that happened to other people, legislatures were obstacle to be navigated. He never bothered to build any sort of popular organisation that could survive in the pluralist world of Imperial and Weimar politics, so when popular nationalist organisations appeared, they tended to be dominated by the sort of raving anti-Semitic militarist who would cause so much trouble for Germany in the long-run.
Bismarck's problem, and I suspect the reason that Tovergieter likes him, is that he didn't really understand modern popular politics. Elections were something that happened to other people, legislatures were obstacle to be navigated. He never bothered to build any sort of popular organisation that could survive in the pluralist world of Imperial and Weimar politics, so when popular nationalist organisations appeared, they tended to be dominated by the sort of raving anti-Semitic militarist who would cause so much trouble for Germany in the long-run.
