Gavrilo Princip is the most important man who lived during the 20th century

Now on to my refutations and case. ===Deconstruction of Pro===Contention. That Princip Caused WW1. My opponent's case rests on the premise that the actions of Mr. Princip are what sparked WW1 and from there argues for the huge historical impact of the war as causally related to Princip's actions. I will not deny the immense impact of the first World War here as I feel like that would be a totally insurmountable task. Instead I will challenge my opponent's premise that it was Mr. Princip's actions alone which caused the war. Refutation A. Princip as a red herring. The assassination of Ferdinand did not by itself cause WW1. Numerous external forces and geopolitical facts of the day make a World War predictably inevitable given hindsight. The combination of mutual arms races on the part of the conflicting parties (France and Prussia for example), the growing sentiment of Slavic nationalism in opposition to Austro-Hungarian rule[1], bitter rivalries of countries in opposing mutual alliances (France and Prussia[2] again as an example), and various other forces allow historians to see with much certainty that Europe and the countries surrounding it were about ready to explode right around 1914. It could have been anything that set it off and so Mr. Princip's actions (though influential in relation to other causes) cannot be said to by itself contributed to anything which wasn't already inevitable. To show the way that red-herrings are used, looking at Bismarck's imperialism will help. Bismarck in an attempt to create a large German Empire on other previous occasions had baited others into war in order to secure more territory. In 1866, Bismarck lead a war against Austria in an attempt to gain a larger sphere of influence among their small German states. This is now known as the Austro-Prussian war and embodies the point I am making about the red-herring reasons for which imperialists of the time went to war. War was usually already decided upon, a tiny reason was simply needed in order to mobilize. In the case of the Austro-Prussian war, the war on the surface was caused by disagreement about administration of the Schleswig-Holstein territory, however, as the result caused a diminishing of Austrian power over the various German states and Bismarck used the victory and the war as pretext to dissolve the German Confederation and to annex various Austrian territories in a unification attempt. It would be inconceivable to argue that mismanagement of negotiations between the two countries had any real causal effect on the war coming to be. The war was determined already by a variety of forces which had much more causal force than mismanagement of negotiations and the same thing applies to the red herring of Gavrilo Princip. ===Con Case: Vladimir Lenin===Contention A. Contribution to Vanguardism. The main contribution of Lenin's thought to Marx's besides his focus on imperialism was Lenin's conception of a vanguard party or professional revolutionaries to stamp out bourgeoisie culture and anti-revolutionaries. This unique point of thought which Lenin originated in conjunction with Marxism had huge implications on both Stalinism and Maoism. Stalin used this theory to repress political enemies or dissidents[3] and Mao drew on this work with his concept of Cultural Revolution[4]. Since the concept of Marxist vanguardism was original to Lenin, the subsequent utilization of the concept by world leaders like Stalin and Mao (who's power exerted over billions) can be attributed to Lenin as having causal power over these developments. Contention B. Contribution to Imperialist analysis. Another contribution of Lenin to Marxism was the expansion of Marx's prediction of capitalism becoming a global system wherein developed countries exploit underdeveloped ones for resources. Lenin argued that by exploiting these underdeveloped countries of resources, the industrialist countries would be able to use that to raise the standard of living for the proletariat in their countries and thus perpetuate false consciousness[5]. Not only does this have huge implications on why Marxist revolutions took place in mostly underdeveloped countries with developed ones having the most opposition, but the analysis has been drawn upon by other Marxist revolutionaries who might have otherwise been turned off to Marxism based on the seeming empirical falsification of Marx's theory of history. Lenin's though also affected not only the indigenous movements, but brought to light the problems of economic imperialism to the forefront of modern political discourse by non-Communists. The dangers of economic exploitation are not fused into the popular consciousness and can be traced right back to Lenin. ===Sources===[1] . http://en.allexperts.com...[2] . http://en.wikipedia.org...[3] . http://en.wikipedia.org...[4] . http://en.wikipedia.org...[5] Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Lenin, Vladimir. (1917). -Available online here: . http://www.marxists.org...