Who was the most influential person of the 20th century

Who would you say?

 

After me, probably Mick Jagger, Noel Edmonds or Jock Stein.

 

In all honesty it has to be Adolf Hitler.

The mind still boggles as to how he managed to seduce an entire country before implementing his sick, warped ideas, and kicking off a war that cost the lives of over 70 million people.

In terms of influence, you don't get much more extreme than that.

 

I'd probably agree on Hitler actually. Changed the whole way we look at government and ideologies, even if the same mistakes can be made again.

 

Tim Berners-Lee.

 

Yep. Gandhi, Mandela, Che, Bill Gates and JFK would also be up there. I would go for whoever invented the internet. It's hard to imagine life today without it.

 

Yeah. It's not out of admiration for the man, far from it, but the impact he had on the world was staggering.

 

It has to be Adolf. A madman if ever there was one.

 

Karl Marx, IMO.

I know he wasn't alive in that time, but his ideas shaped the 20th century more than any other.

 

I knew what you meant. Plus the amazement at the horrors he perpetrated. The mistrust of power that followed has unsurprisingly given birth to many conspiracy theorist mentalities since too.

Adolf. Definitely.

 

Fergus McCann

 

You could also throw in the Cold War and all that went with it, the carve-up of Palestine and creation of Israel, the re-patriation of millions to the USA, Australia, and UK etc. as after-effects of WWII.

Utterly seismic.

 

Definetly,id have said Vladimir Lenin as well,Hitler is the most obvious choice for most people though-and with good reason.Without Marxs ideas and Lenin there would have been no Soviet Union which played such a major part in the world,there are still some Communist insurgencies today who wouldve taken inspiration from the Russian revolution .

 

Adolf Hitler must be aye

 

would have to agree with that also. how he managed it was unbeleivable. still a scum bag though.

 

How about this one: Gavrilo Princip.

This guy was the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand & that decision to pull the trigger changed the world and had more far reaching effects than you might first realize. WW1, the collapse of Imperial dynasties, revolution in Russia, the ridiculious Treaty of Versailles, the establishment of the flawed Wiemar Republic, which gave an opportunity for ultra right wing nationalists to take over in Germany, the Great Depression, WW2, the spread of Communism, the Cold War, and so much more...

All of this can be traced back to that day in Sarajevo in June, 1914 & an assassination carried out by Princip.

 

A decent shout but there's plenty of evidence to suggest that WWI would have happened regardless of the assassination of the Archduke.

 

The conditions were certainly there for WW1 well before this date, and even during the July crisis, cousins Wilhelm, Nicholas & George couldn't settle these matters in a civil fashion etc which could have averted it. However, the assassination was still the catalyst that set off the chain of events.

 

Austro-Hungarians planned WWI way before assassination, it's just unfortunate circumstances that made Princip scapegoat and #1 target of Western media who portrait him as direct cause of inevitable war. He just gave them alibi to start all the *.

Funny thing is, if Austro-Hungarians decided not to carry out their plans, Gavrilo Princip would've been celebrated as hero today. Thin line between I gues...

 

Definitely a contender.

Depends on how you look at 'influential', so I suppose anyone in politics or affecting politics will be on the list of top ones.

Very good shout there too Tassie.