[matkoniecz]

It is a bit funny when some historians describe "great man theory" as blatantly false, while warning that specific individuals are uniquely dangerous when commenting on ongoing politics.

If "great man theory" is 100% false and each person is 100% replaceable with no change for historical events, why complain so much that $POLITICIAN is uniquely dangerous?

(my opinion is that both individuals and trends matter, there are people that changed history, but power of geography/economy/technology is also great - for example, once nuclear weapons were discovered it had some consequences. And no individual can uninvent nuclear weapons.)

[Maken]

$POLITICIAN is just the visible face of a much larger movement, specially in democracy. But by being the public face,it also means that defeating $POLITICIAN is defeating his backing movement by proxy.

[matkoniecz]

Extreme version of "great man theory" denialism claims that it does not matter even who wins elections or rules.

[BurningFrog]

One man dictators like Mao, Stalin or Hitler have huge impacts on history depending on their personal idiosyncrasies. Had any of those three died young, history would have been substantially different.

Wars can also be decided my random misfortunes. If the 1941 winter was mild instead of extremely cold, Hitler might have defeated Stalin, and we'd have a very different world.

[rtkwe]

At the same time the environment of the times and place (encompassing the political sphere here as well) they rose to power also tends to select particular types of people to rule. I'm not a pure structuralist for sure, there's a lot of room for randomness and individual quirks in history for sure I think structure is a lot more powerful in science/tech since you can generally have a lot more people working away at a scientific problem than you can have running France for example. It's also waaay harder to study because you don't get the counterfactual of who would wind ruling post WW2 USSR if not Stalin.

> If the 1941 winter was mild instead of extremely cold, Hitler might have defeated Stalin, and we'd have a very different world.

That's actually less true than it might seem. Warmer winters can be worse for highly mechanized armies like the Wehrmacht, really any army but tanks and mud are not friends. That part of the world especially in the early 40s where many of the roads were unpaved turns into a giant sucking mud pit during warmer winters. It's bad enough it's bogged down modern armies miles south in Ukraine when the weather warms up from the winter freezes and the mud season sets in. On top of that they needed a lightning victory because their fuel situation was already pretty bad in 41, part of the reason for going East in the first place was to get oil for the war machine.

[potato3732842]

The fact that the particular example is technically untrue doesn't change the overall point though.

A slight change in weather and England could have been invaded by the Spanish Armada.

[rtkwe]

I'm not saying it does, just thought it was an interesting aside to talk about, Barbarossa was pretty flawed from the very beginning.

Also I don't think it's a great pro-Great Man nor anti-Structuralist argument. Structuralist don't believe it's deterministic generally and if history is so down to random chance then how important are the "Great Men"? It's basically a wash for either side imo.

[BurningFrog]

By "mild" I meant more that it's not so cold that tank engines can't start and tons of German soldiers freeze to death. Not that it matters for the bigger point.

FWIW, I asked Grok and it said that with better weather Germany might have taken Moscow, but they were probably (80%) doomed anyway because of several factors, including Hitler's incompetent military strategy.

If they had attacked in April instead, Grok gives it 50% chance that they defeat the Soviets before the winter and Lend-Lease equipment makes it hopeless.

I know, it's just a word predicting piece of mindless software...

Still, I stick by my main point. The Spanish Armada example is better than mine.