Who is the least appreciated figure of the 20th Century?

[Drunkrobot]

Who in your opinion simply isn't given their fair credit from the modern public, and has instead been vilified and tarnished, their good deeds forgotten and their mistakes emphasised?

Was Chamberlain a good domestic politician that was handed an impossible foreign policy issue, was McNamera a good SecDef that was saddled with America's worst war, and so forth.

 

[troosvelt_68]

How about Wendell Wilkie ?

The argument goes like this.

Had the GOP chosen a more isolationist candidate they could have pushed FDR to the right on the issues.

This could have threatened lend lease programs.

1940 was a crucial year to the survival of the UK.

Wilkie also helped lend a bipartisan feeling to the 1941 period by working with FDR on issues.

There is a good book (5 days in Philadelphia) which argues he was an unsung hero of WW2

 

[Tom Colton]

General Arthur Percival gets a lot of flak for the Fall of Singapore, especially for his decision to surrender against a force he outnumbered 3-to-1 and at the end of their supply lines. His own situation wasn't exactly fantastic and he was constrained by a large number of political concerns in setting up his defenses (although a more forceful figure would have helped a lot), and he was prevented from launching pre-emptive strikes which might have blunted the Japanese offensive quite a fair bit.

I admit that's more "maligned" than "underappreciated", though.

 

[Driftless]

Depends on you measure appreciation too. Bill Slim, Keith Park, & Hugh Dowding probably have gotten more world-wide appreciation in hindsight and in the twenty-first century than they did in the time of their greatest service.

Or the code breakers of Bletchly Park, or do you hold this to an individual?

 

[packmanwiscy]

Steve Wozniak. Single-handedly built the Apple I and was the main force in building the Apple Company. Yet most people associate this with Steve Jobs and barely acknowledge him.

 

[Booster Gold]

Easy: LBJ by a country mile

LBJ not only got civil rights legislation passed in the teeth of opposition that makes Obama's look like cheerleading, but he also created Medicare and Medicaid. Just one of those achievements would've been epic. Not only does the credit for that go to Kennedy, who in reality got sweet FA done during his time in office, but he gets blamed for Vietnam which was Kennedy's baby.

Honorable mention goes to Nixon whose rapprochement with China helped to lift half a billion people out of abject poverty.

 

[GeographyDude]

How about that scientist who was one of the main people behind the green revolution,

Norm Borlaug is the proper spelling of his name.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Herbert Hoover's pre-presidential career.

 

[Karelian]

Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov and all the others who could have literally destroyed humanity with a push of a button during the Cold War, and who were in fact under strict orders to do so. And yet we all are alive because they had the courage to say no at a crucial moment.

 

[Meadow]

Worldwide? Impossible to say.

In my country? AndyC makes a good case for Keith Park, and I'm inclined to agree with him. Other contenders would be Stanley Baldwin, John Reith, Annie Kenney (serving also as a representative for all the Suffragettes who didn't go to finishing school), and of course Millicent Fawcett. The last of these is perhaps the one I feel strongest about.

 

[Orville_third]

Henry A. Wallace in two fields.
Politics: First VP to use his office beyond tie votes and waiting for the President to die. Highly influential Agriculture Secretary. Served as Commerce secretary after FDR dumped him. Helped organize the progressive movement in the USA. Ran on a political platform far ahead of its time.
Agriculture: One of the first to breed hybrid corn, revolutionizing corn yields. Bred chickens (ancestors of up to 1/6 the chickens on earth!), strawberries, gladiolas, and numerous other plants. Wall-known writer on agricultural topics.

 

[Grey Wolf]

Tesla?

Kesselring?

RFK?

Roy Hattersley?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

 

[Grey Wolf]

Honorable mention goes to Nixon whose rapprochement with China helped to lift half a billion people out of abject poverty.

I was inclined to put Nixon in my list, but felt like it might seem like I was banging a drum, and I do feel RFK is slipping badly in history these days

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

 

[Lindseyman]

Ramsay MacDonald who will be ever tarnished by the National Government but like Nick Clegg in 2010 was between the devil and the deep blue sea-damned if he did and damned if he didn't.

 

[FuroraCeltica]

How about Wendell Wilkie ?

The argument goes like this.

Had the GOP chosen a more isolationist candidate they could have pushed FDR to the right on the issues.

This could have threatened lend lease programs.

1940 was a crucial year to the survival of the UK.

Wilkie also helped lend a bipartisan feeling to the 1941 period by working with FDR on issues.

There is a good book (5 days in Philadelphia) which argues he was an unsung hero of WW2

Interesting stuff, never knew most of this

 

[Realpolitik]

Norman Bourlaug. John Bardeen too.

EDIT:

Oh, you said vilified, not unknown. Hm...

I think LBJ, Nixon, and Bush I are rather underappreciated as Presidents, albeit the last one wasn't vilified on the level that the first and especially the second were. Truman was, but might not be this anymore.

Nixon in particular is vilified to what I do consider unfair levels. He's not the best or even a remotely top level President, far from it, but I don't consider him to be on the same level of absolute fail as Pierce, Buchanan, Carter, or Bush II. In terms of actual policy and policy proposals, foreign especially but even domestic, this was not a failed administration.

But it's popular discourse that pisses me off, the sheer lack of intellectual rigor in studying him. Just look at the story of "the plan to murder Jack Anderson." What other President would people believe the word of G. Gordon Liddy on, with nobody questioning the story? If it makes him look bad, they'll do it. MSNBC *still* won't admit that he didn't order the Watergate break in. It's just gratuitous, especially considering the last 15 years of what has happened with our government. The papers remained silent through all those abuses, tepid in their criticism at best, and still pat themselves on the back on Watergate and let us know that "Nixon was worse than we thought. Be thankful we got him." It's sickening. That was 40 years ago. Get over yourselves, we have far bigger issues.

 

[benjamin]

Barry Goldwater. Vilified by the Left but a great politician who fought ceaselessly for personal liberty.

 

[Meadow]

Ramsay MacDonald who will be ever tarnished by the National Government but like Nick Clegg in 2010 was between the devil and the deep blue sea-damned if he did and damned if he didn't.

While he's certainly a case of 'a reviled figure with a far more nuanced story when you look at the facts', I can't believe anyone would seriously argue he's Britain's - or the world's - most important but underappreciated figure of the 20th century.

 

[JRH1234]

Barry Goldwater. Vilified by the Left but a great politician who fought ceaselessly for personal liberty.

Unless you count African-Americans living under Jim Crow. Goldwater didn't support individual rights as much as he supported state's rights.

 

[Realpolitik]

I was inclined to put Nixon in my list, but felt like it might seem like I was banging a drum, and I do feel RFK is slipping badly in history these days

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

LBJ too. I was so happy to see Obama at the LBJ library. It finally means he is getting the respect he so desperately deserves, especially considering what is happening with Civil Rights in the USA. Johnson is a figure we need to look at. I would give ANYTHING for him to have 10 minutes to lay into Congress from the dead. Johnson treatment time...

I don't know, we are coming up on the half century anniversary, and the media is gearing up for it. Perhaps on this board, but for society as whole... and I'm saying this as someone rather aligned with RFK in terms of personal ideology, actually. The RFK as a proto-hippie myth annoys me.