I have been assigned a large history paper due in a few months and I would like to ask for your suggestions on what my subject should be. It has to be about an important historical event or person in the 20th century. It does not have to be a military event but I would much rather write it on one. So if anyone has any suggestions on a person or event that defined military history in the 20th century please respond to this and add a website or book I could use for research.

The obvious ones are:

Events

• Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union
• Stalingrad possibly the most bitterly fought battle of the 20th century
• Munich and appeasement (or not depending on your view)
• Killing of Archduke Ferdinand, sparking the outbreak of WW1
• Verdun,
• Somme,
• Paschendale
• Chinese Cultural Revolution
• Russian Bolshevik Revolution

Less obvious but more directly relevant to the present day are:

British Mandates or influence over

• Palestine,
• Mesopotamia
• India

and the events leading to independent states those areas.

Persons

• Stalin,
• Hitler
• Churchill was highly influential well before and after Hitler and Stalin's period. An astonishing career whatever you think of him.
• Gandhi
• Mao

You may get more marks for the less obvious ones.

Yea thats what I'm going for something less known and something we might not have covered in class yet. One of my own idea's is what would happen if Hitler died early in the war.

Usefullidiot

You need to establish what is acceptable for submission. Hitler dying early the war is interesting speculation, but it's a hyperthetical scenerio not a historic event.

Thats precisely why I'm not using my own idea cause it never happened. Its still what I wrote above, an event or person of the 20th century.

May I suggest for 20th Century event, the invention of the motorcar and all vehicles that evolved from the first models. It's incredible how that one machine / invention has influenced our daily lives and been part of nearly every event since - in war and peace.

For 20th Century person - because he initiated WWII - Adolf Hitler made probably the biggest impact. Here you have one man who's decisions, ambitions and evil affected tens of millions of people the consequences of which affected up to a billion people - nations and culture changed as a result of WWII. Life, politics, economies, status of women, religion, races, many nations and individual families were never the same because of and after WWII.

Just to echo some of the other suggestions and add my own..

Events

• Pearl Harbour
• Barbarossa or more specifically..
  • Operation Typhoon, the assault on Moscow in the winter of 1941, IMO the real turning point of WW2 and a pivotal point in human history.
• Assasination of Archduke Ferdinand
• The creation of Israel in 1948

People

• Adolf Hitler
• Josef Stalin
• FDR
• Robert Oppenheimer

Some suggestions I have

Events

Creation of Israel
Israel's bombing of Iraq's Nuclear Facilities
Somalian Conflict (Show's the inability of the UN to act)

The unleashing of the power of the atom. Bar none it has had a greater influence on the events of every nation and citizen thereof in the 20th century. Ending WWII, the Cold War, its threatened use in Korea, North Korea, Iraq, Israel, Iran, the failed former Soviet states... all of these things lose their import without nuclear power/energy/weapons. And it was one item that Einstein himself in later years wished he could have somehow undone.

But Bulldogg, how did Einstein, Szilard, Oppenheimer, General Groves, et al, all get to work to do their atomic studies and experiments before and during the Manhatten Project?

BY CAR