Most Important 20th Century Event/Person

Usefullidiot

Active member
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.
 
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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

8)
 
Cars were invetned in the nineteenth century though

Large scale production line manufacturing of affordable cars was first introduced by Ransom Olds in 1902 however ;)
 
Well if you want to get really really technical, they were invented 2 million years ago by a guy who sold one to Fred Flintstone. :)

What I mean is their mass production and 20th Cent. development and progress of the motor-car. :drink:

Now, I'm half expecting a post here or somewhere else from a guy named Gator who'll take my statement above as me claiming that I was alive 2 million years ago or that I really believe it.:???:
 
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

8)
Hehehe, actually Einstein lived on site and was under 24/7 military guard. I had a high school biology teacher who had spent 30 years in the US Army. He had pictures of Einstein and him as he accompanied him, at a distance, on a walk. He had some good stories about ol Albert being so lost in thought that he would have on mismatched shoes... or walking absent-mindedly towards going off site. A brilliant mind so occupied by the possible he was undisturbed by his immediate reality.

I hate cars. I would opt for a nice Morgan stud and a wagon for the family. No DUI's on horseback and no deaths in a collision between two riders except for the odd freak incident. A car accident killed the greatest general this country ever produced. Yup, I hate cars. Wanna stop global warming, ride a horse.
 
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.

Well I admit its probably not what you are looking for but there were also a huge number of scientific advances such as Alexander Flemming's discovery of penicillin which had a huge effect on the medical side of life through the century and the casualty/survival rate in WW2 in particular.
 
That gives me a good idea, possibly a paper on the little known Military Doctors and just general medical treatment during war. I find it amazing that this thread somehow turned into an environmental argument about cars...
 
That gives me a good idea, possibly a paper on the little known Military Doctors and just general medical treatment during war. I find it amazing that this thread somehow turned into an environmental argument about cars...

Even the technological developments in battlefield medicine/treatment throughout the century would be relatively interesting.
 
Ok theres been a change, the teacher has decided to broaden the subject choice. We are now aloud to choose any event or person in history at any point in time. If there are any new suggestions please do post.
 
Suggest from one teacher to another that your teacher plan his lessons more carefully so he only has to issue OPORDS one time.

Amatuers... :)
 
Stop criticizing my teachers, hes the most educated man in my school and teaches every social science course by himself. Hes got a lot of work to handle and only chose to expand the size of the project because some idiots were having trouble finding something to write within the 20th century.
 
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