Word: hitlers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Some people, looking at the first of these themes, sorrowfully insist that the choice has to be Hitler, Fuhrer of the fascist genocides and refugee floods that plagued the century. He wrought the Holocaust that redefined evil and the war that reordered the world...
Competing with him for such devilish distinction is Lenin, who snatched from obscurity the 19th century ideology of communism and devised the modern tools of totalitarian brutality. He begat not only Stalin and Mao but in some ways also Hitler, who was enchanted by the Soviets' terror tactics. Doesn't the presence of such evil--and the continued eruption of totalitarian brutality from Uganda to Kosovo--make a mockery of the rationalists' faith that progress makes civilizations more civilized? Isn't Hitler, alas, the person who most influenced and symbolized this most genocidal of centuries...
...early 1933, as Hitler was taking power, Einstein immigrated to the U.S., settling in Princeton as the world's first scientific supercelebrity. That year he help found a group to resettle refugees, the International Rescue Committee. Thus he became a symbol of another of the great themes of the century: how history was shaped by tides of immigrants, so many of them destined for greatness, who fled oppressive regimes for the freedom of democratic climes...
Other great leaders were part of this process. Winston Churchill stood up to Hitler even earlier than Roosevelt did, when it took far more courage. Harry Truman, a plainspoken man with gut instincts for what was right, forcefully began the struggle against Soviet expansionism, a challenge that Roosevelt was too sanguine about. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev helped choreograph the conclusion of that sorry empire's strut upon the stage. So too did Pope John Paul II, a Pole with a passion for both faith and freedom. And if you were to pick a hero who embodied America's contribution...
When Roosevelt took office at the beginning of 1933 (the same week that Hitler assumed emergency powers in Germany), unemployment in the U.S. had, in three years, jumped from 4 million to 12 million, at least a quarter of the work force. Fathers of hungry kids were trying to sell apples on the street. F.D.R.'s bold experiments ("Above all, try something") included many that failed, but he brought hope to millions and some lasting contributions to the nation's foundation: Social Security, minimum wages, insured bank deposits and the right to join unions. Henceforth the national government...