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It wasn't my argument originally, but I'd argue two things. 1) The divide between nation/leader is not a valuable one to make in-so-far as whether it was origi

It wasn't my argument originally, but I'd argue two things. 1) The divide between nation/leader is not a valuable one to make in-so-far as whether it was originally their idea or not, the nations were the ones doing the warring. I think it's dangerous to think of history as caused by individuals (despite the tendency of the textbooks to tend that way). Could the world have been different if Hitler was a better person? Sure. It also could have been different if the people were better too... 2) I can think of many counterexamples to people wanting local things. You might argue that there is a way to fit things like America's current trade war with China into the deep South's degree of fulfillment, but I'm not really interested in going down that hole. I'd rather just say that, as stated, I don't think it's a predictive model of the world.

magduf 7y ago
>Could the world have been different if Hitler was a better person? Sure. It also could have been different if the people were better too... If Hitler was a better person, he probably wouldn't have gotten into the position he did, and we'd all be invoking some other German's name as the ultimate bad-guy. However, it's also possible that the NSDAP would have picked some other fool as their leader, and that person would have been less competent, and they would have been much less successful in their war campaign, or perhaps not even have gained the power they did. But the ultimate reason Germany took the path they did is because of the way WWI turned out for them, and the horribly punitive measures they were forced to agree to by the English and French. The world would be very different now if the English and French hadn't been such assholes.