system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5:What is "the Great Man" theory?

I heard of it when topic was history but never understood why?
gpt
There's a lot of different ways to interpret history. They're all valid to different degrees and achieve different things, depending on what you want from history.

The Great Man theory of history is built around memorizing famous world leaders and people who drove movements. They would argue that Hitler is responsible for the Nazi state, and that Churchill played a tremendous role in defeating him. This style of history is very inspiring - people like to have heroes and villains, and they like to imagine themselves becoming heroes one day. Proponents argue that it helps to bring the lessons of history into sharp focus, making it easier to learn from them. It's also much more testable, since declarations or statements become the driving force of history.

Other theories of history would say that Germany wanted a Hitler at that time because of prevailing social and political values that were driven by complex social, economic, and cultural factors, and that Hitler was just in the right place at the right time. They say that someone else, maybe Goering or Rommel would have taken Hitler's role if he hadn't. Similarly, they'd say that Churchill became the leader of Britain because Britons wanted it that way, and that the national culture of defiance and standing for the establishment and world order lead to Britain's role in WW2, and the selection of a man who voiced those thoughts well. This interpretation of history is much more plausible, but less inspiring, and makes us feel like we can't really learn lessons from history or change the world. It adds a sense of inevitability to history, but ultimately that may be the correct view of things.

So, to look at it today: Is Donald Trump responsible for the rise of the far-right Tea Party movement in America and it's sudden conquest of the Republican Party? Or is he merely the symptom of that cultural movement, someone who happened to be saying what people wanted to hear? History is more memorable, more inspiring, and feels more under human control in the case of the former, but the latter does seem a bit more plausible, if hopeless.