-Caveat Lector-
http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis.html
January 2, 2000
The century's greatest heroes
By ERIC MARGOLIS Contributing Foreign Editor One
hundred years ago, most people earnestly believed the dawning 20th century
would bring a golden age of technology-based prosperity, reason in human
conduct, an end to war and remarkable advancement of all mankind.
Instead of a golden era of humanism, the 20th century became the
bloodiest era in the past 1,000 years. To avoid repeating the crimes and
horrors of the century just past, we must study - and restudy - its political
heroes and villains. The heroes may not return, but the villains and their
malevolent thinking certainly will. Study history, as Santayana warned, or
relive it.
Konrad Adenauer - He took over leadership in 1949 of a ruined, defeated,
disgraced Germany, which was still under foreign occupation. In 14 years, the
Adenauer government organized the rebuilding of Germany from rubble, its
restoration to international respectability, and its re-emergence as a world
power. Dignified, stern and upright, Adenauer symbolized all that was good in
the old Germany.
Winston Churchill - A deeply flawed hero. A great war leader, historian, and
brilliant actor who brought out the pride and valour of Britons. But
Churchill, the century's most ardent imperialist and leader of Britain's
pro-war faction in two world wars, was so blinded by his hatred of Germany he
ended up destroying the British Empire and, with Franklin Roosevelt, handed
half of Europe over to Stalin's tyranny. Hitler, not Churchill, saved Britain
in 1940 by refusing to destroy the trapped British armies at Dunkirk and
declining to invade prostrate England - in the vain hope of an Anglo-German
alliance against the USSR.
Charles de Gaulle - A majestic figure of profound dignity, foresight, moral
energy, determination and style, he almost singlehandedly saved France from
the ignominy of defeat by Germany in 1940, rekindling the pride, elan and
power of his great nation. De Gaulle was the only Allied leader who understood
the Soviet threat. After the war, his embrace of old foe Germany laid the
foundation for today's united Europe. In spite of the spiteful mockery of his
Anglo-American allies, among the greatest of the great.
Deng Xioaping - He seized power in China after Mao's death in 1976 and ended
the dementia of the Cultur-al Revolution that killed two million people and
nearly destroyed China. In 20 years, Great Reformer Deng transformed China
from a vast, impoverished prison camp into a dynamic nation destined to become
a world power. Deng deftly dismantled communism and Mao's totalitarian system,
releasing the Chinese people's inherent energy and talent, and brought China
into the modern world. Under Deng, the income of Chinese jumped tenfold. Deng
laid the foundation for a future, more politically relaxed China that
resembles modern Singapore. History will hold Deng a greater revolutionary
than Mao Tse-tung.
Dwight Eisenhower - The best president of the 20th century and the finest
American. Eisenhower personified the admirable qualities of Americans: energy,
simplicity, forthrightness, confidence and decency. His years as president
marked the high point of good government and civic values - before
made-for-television politicians degraded and besmirched and cheapened the
presidency. I like Ike.
Mohandas Gandhi - The greatest Indian of the millennium. An inspirational
leader, both spiritual and temporal, he combined moral saintliness with
political cunning. Gandhi's crusades for non-violence, human rights, religious
tolerance and aiding for the helpless were beacons of light in the 20th
century's darkness - particularly since he did so on a vast subcontinent where
none of these qualities was known. Though Churchill dismissed Gandhi as "a
half-naked fakir," the Indian sage will likely be regarded by future
historians as the noblest and most important human being of the 20th century -
and, of course, the father of Indian independence.
Mikhail Gorbachev - A tragic yet admirable figure who did not understand
that communism was not an economic system, but one of mass control and
intimidation. Gorbachev's attempts to reform and modernize communism, and the
even more important rejection of class struggle and international revolution
by his foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, destroyed the Evil Empire that
was the Soviet Union. Gorbachev's refusal to use tanks to crush nationalist
uprisings in the USSR and Eastern Europe, and his withdrawal of Soviet forces
from Germany, saved the world from a war that could have easily gone nuclear.
Today, he is reviled by Russians. History, however, will view him as the man
who was too decent and humane to perpetuate the Soviet Empire.
David Ben Gurion - Modern patriarch of the Jewish people, he led his people
out of the wilderness of the Holocaust into the promised land of Israel.
Without Ben Gurion, a man of biblical majesty and enormous inner power, the
state of Israel may not have succeeded. Tragically, the price of the Jewish
homeland was the eviction of a million Palestinians from their ancestral
homeland, a problem which has yet to be resolved half a century later.
Pope John Paul II - Stalin once asked, sarcastically, "How many divisions
has the Pope?" The answer came three decades later in the form of Pope John
Paul II. This Polish warrior Pope helped raise the storm winds that finally
blew down the evil edifice of communism and freed the long-suffering peoples
of Eastern Europe who had been condemned by Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta
to Soviet totalitarian rule. A great warrior, a great humanist, he renewed the
vigour and teachings of the Catholic Church, and expelled the Marxist priests
who had infested it. If there ever was a true saint, it is John Paul II. The
greatest pope since the Renaissance.
Jean Juares - French humanitarian, thinker and martyr, his voice thundered
at the beginning of the century for the rights of the common man. His calls
for Franco-German brotherhood presage the European Union. Juares was
assassinated for opposing France's entry into World War I, the greatest
disaster of the century.
Imam Ruhollah Khomeini - A Shia cleric of enormous moral stature, he sparked
an historic revolution in Iran that overthrew the U.S.-run regime of the
vainglorious, thieving, hated shah, Reza Pahlavi, freeing Iran from 30 years
of western exploitation and inspiring Islamic revolutionaries from Morocco to
the Philippines. Khomeini showed that ideas and faith were more powerful than
police states.
Gamal Abdel Nasser - He electrified the entire Third World and personified
the struggle against British and French colonialism. Though he suffered
disastrous military defeats and economic failures, Nasser still managed to
instil a sense of pride and manhood in the demoralized Arab and Muslim world.
His strength, honesty, concern for his people and determination to restore
Egypt's long lost dignity, made Nasser a titan among Mideast leaders.
Egyptians still call him El Rais: The Boss.
Ronald Reagan - A simple man wise enough to know right from wrong in a
confusing, morally ambiguous world, Reagan, like Eisenhower, brimmed with
optimism and decency. Intellectuals and the media scoffed at him, but ordinary
Americans knew what a truly great and good man Reagan was. Against all advice,
Reagan challenged the Soviet Empire and defeated this scourge of mankind. His
impending death will break America's heart.
Margaret Thatcher - A grocer's daughter, she managed to overcome Britain's
poisonous class structure, restore the jejune Conservative party, and rescue
her nation from the swamp of socialism into which it was sinking fast. The
toughest politician in Britain, she and Ronald Reagan led the free world to
victory in the Cold War. Thatcher is the greatest woman of the century.
Theodore Roosevelt - A true man's president. Adventurer, outdoorsman,
explorer, Teddy Roosevelt captured the robust spirit of a young, dynamic
America and the wild west. When an American named Ian Pedicaris was kidnapped
by the Barbar chieftan El-Rasaouli, Teddy R. wired him, "Pedicaris alive, or
El-Rasaouli dead." A bully president and a memorable American.
Heinrich Himmler - A sadist and monster, Himmler made his SS organization
into an industrial-scale killing machine of Jews and other "inferior" races.
His racist brutality turned Ukraine and Western Russia against the Germans,
who had been welcomed as liberators from Stalin. Small-minded, arrogant and
efficient, he personified the worst in the German psyche.
Adolf Hitler - A frustrated artist who saw himself as the "Nordic Christ,"
and Germans as "the chosen people," Hitler was the almost inevitable result of
Germany's humiliation after World War I. An idealist, he was determined to
better mankind by purging the world of inferior races and peoples - and
smokers. Hitler's Reich murdered 12 million people, half of them Jews. If
Britain had the right to colonial rule over India and Egypt, Hitler asked, why
did Germany not have the right to rule Poland and Russia? In 1942, Hitler told
Mussolini, "My dearest wish would be to be able to wander about in Italy as an
unknown painter." Hitler rightly predicted the Soviet Union would become a
mortal peril to Europe and America.
Josef Stalin - Genghis Khan with tanks. An extraordinary monster, the
biggest mass murderer since the Mongols - perhaps the biggest in all history.
Everyone was Stalin's enemy. Power was everything. Stalin presided over the
murder of 40 million of his own people and the imprisonment of tens of
millions of Russians and East Europeans. The master terrorist of all time,
Stalin knew how to conjure fear and obedience on a mass scale. He repeatedly
outwitted the bumbling Roosevelt and Churchill and infiltrated their
governments with his agents. A despot whose name inspires fear and respect in
Russia to this day, he was the real victor of World War II in Europe.
Lazar Kaganovitch - Stalin called him "my Himmler." Kaganovitch personally
supervised the murder of 6-7 million Ukrainian peasants in the mid-1930s - a
decade before Hitler's crimes against humanity - and went on to organize the
mass murder of two million Muslims in the Caucasus and deportation of another
two million to Siberia. This work continues today as Russian forces complete
their Mongol-style destruction of tiny Chechnya.
Kim Il Sung - North Korea's communist despot, Kim began the Korean war that
killed over two million of his own people. He is noteworthy for creating,
along with Albania's Enver Hoxha, the most lunatic totalitarian regime on
Earth, turning North Koreans into brainwashed robots, an Orwellian monstrosity
that still persists.
Vladimir Lenin - Falsely portrayed by historical revisionists as the "good"
communist whose ideas were later corrupted, Lenin was, in fact, the father of
the system of Red Terror which resulted in the deaths of some 40 million
Soviet citizens from 1922-53. Stalin merely expanded on and perfected the
institutionalized repression created by the utterly ruthless, brilliant,
iron-willed Lenin who was determined to impose Marxism on the world. Life
meant nothing; the Communist party was everything, according to this perverted
genius. Lenin was the very worst of the many bloody-minded intellectuals who
brought untold suffering to this century.
Mao Tse-tung - Brilliant, determined, visionary, colourful, Mao defeated the
nationalists - and Japan - and unified China. Two million "landlords" were
shot. Mao woke China from centuries of sleep, and laid the basis for a modern
nation. But he created a grim, totalitarian police state that rivalled
Stalin's USSR. Mao's "reforms," so lauded by the CBC and western liberal
admirers, bankrupted China and led to the death of 30 million peasants. The
Cultural Revolution unleashed by the dying Mao killed another two million
people and saw China's greatest art treasures destroyed, the worst act of
cultural vandalism in modern history.
Mengistu Haile Mariam - The bloodiest of Africa's modern tyrants, in 1973
Mariam overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie and embarked on the communization of
Ethiopia under Soviet guidance. Farmers who resisted collectivization were
denied food and seeds: 1.5 million were starved to death while befuddled
Canada aided the Mengistu regime, even flying food to its troops. Hundreds of
thousands of Ethiopians were tortured and murdered. Today, mass murderer
Mengistu resides comfortably in exile in Tanzania while Chile's former leader,
Gen. Augusto Pinochet, is held by Britain on flimsy Spanish charges his
security forces killed 2,600 Marxist rebels and civilians.
Benito Mussolini - A strutting popinjay, a windbag, a buffoon from comic
opera, he made Italy look very silly. Though largely inoffensive in Europe,
the Duce's fascist legions used poison gas and concentration camps extensively
in Libya and Ethiopia. Mussolini was a great orator, a great dresser and made
the trains run on time - until Italy was bombed to smithereens by the Allies.
Still, Italians have managed to convince many people they were actually on the
Allied side during World War II. Though a very minor malefactor, Mussolini
proved even fools can be dangerous.
Pol Pot - A vicious teacher turned ideologue, he combined the worst of
Cambodian nationalism with Maoist ideology and dementia. Pot and his Khmer
Rouge sought to create a perfect agrarian society - led by the Communist party
- by killing anyone with an education. One million Cambodians were slaughtered
in the name of "agrarian reform."
Franklin Roosevelt - A clever, flamboyant American leader, he is idolized by
Democrats as the greatest president. But recent revelations from Soviet KGB
archives show FDR's administration was riddled with communist agents and
sympathizers who ended up virtually directing U.S. foreign policy during the
war. Roosevelt (and Churchill) prolonged the war and aided the Soviet advance
into Eastern Europe by refusing to negotiate a surrender with Germany. In
effect, Roosevelt defeated a lesser tyrant - Hitler - by allying himself to a
far greater criminal - Stalin - who had killed tens of millions of people
before 1939. At Yalta, Roosevelt and Churchill gave half of Europe to Stalin
in payment for defeating Hitler.
Woodrow Wilson - Named here not because he was an evil man, but because he
was a good man whose wrongheaded idealism helped create the greatest disaster
of the century: the end of World War I and its aftermath. Gulled by British
propaganda, Wilson foolishly sent American troops to fight on the Western
Front in 1917, thus giving victory to the Allies in a previously stalemated
war. Had U.S. troops stayed out of the conflict, the Allies and Central Powers
would have come to a negotiated peace settlement that punished no nation for a
war that began virtually by accident. This would very likely have prevented
the century's two worst scourges: the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the
rise of the Nazis in Germany. Instead, Wilson watched helplessly as Britain
and France ground Germany and the Central Powers into the dust and carved up
the empires of their defeated foes - leading directly to today's conflicts in
the Balkans and Middle East.
Papa Doc Duvalier - The consummate master of evil. A country doctor turned
despot, Francois Duvalier imposed a reign of terror over Haiti that was
exceptional for the supernatural fear he inflicted on his people. High priest
of Ongan (voodoo), and a ruthless dictator, Papa Doc was said to read people's
minds and turn the dead into zombies. The most frightening person this writer
has met.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Letters
to the editor should be sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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