GERMANY: Enlightening Glimpse

• Share

Who, asked the poll, was the greatest statesman in all history? As the German weekly, Der Spiegel (literally The Mirror), totted up the returns last week, they provided an enlightening glimpse into that enigma, the collective German mind. Though they may have been chastened, the Germans had lost none of their admiration for strong men. Top place (with 3,937 out of 8,500 votes) went to Germany's first Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who once bragged that the great problems of history are solved by blood & iron. Next, with 773 votes, came Winston Churchill, who had helped to break up Bismarck's Reich with blood & sweat.

But for the real meat of the poll, solemn re-educators of the Germans had to look farther down, where the republic's appeasing Gustav Stresemann, with 580 votes, just nosed out Adolf Hitler, who got 513. The Germans apparently did not think much of the U.S.'s greats. Washington and Lincoln barely won honorable mention, and the late President Roosevelt got only 109 votes—63 less than Stalin, and just enough to tie him for ninth place with France's 17th Century Cardinal Richelieu.

The bottom of the list, in which Der Spiegel's readers went farther afield, was equally interesting. Stalin placed fifth with 172 votes, just ahead of Talleyrand and Metternich. Others who made the all-star list: Mohandas K. Gandhi (with 103 votes), Frederick the Great (55), Disraeli (43), Lenin and Caesar (33), Francisco Franco (24), Marx (11), and Truman (7). Clement Attlee got one vote—three less than Jesus Christ.