"Great Man Theory": Truly Great or Merely Mediocre?

[Valmond]

What if, the macedonian soldier #4, was an ancestor of Hitler, Benjaming Franklin, and, let's say Catherine the Great.
We get rid of Macedonian Soldier #4, what happens?
How huge an effect people have over long periods has very little to do with how big an effect they have within their lifetimes, or how noticeable they are to history.

 

[Nyvis]

'Finding basic tenets and critiques of capitalism' is not an adequate summation of Marx's historical impact. Marx was also a political figure whose actions shaped the left-wing politics of his day and afterwards and a literary figure whose specific ideas and rhetoric have their own important history apart from his basic critiques of capitalism.

For example, can you really say that the Bolsheviks, the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union would have developed in anything resembling a similar fashion if not for Marx?

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They could have, potentially? The Bolsheviks added a lot to what was previously Marxist understanding. Remember parties like the SPD were the hallmark of Marxist interpretation before that! The development that transformed Marxism from something some people in the democratic left tried to apply in western Europe to Leninism could have happened to any other strain of leftist, as it was rooted in the material conditions of Russia requiring a different approach.

A lot of the issues and transformations in the Russian left with the Bolsheviks came because of the specific conditions of a movement driven underground by the autocratic monarchy and operating basically like a secret society then being thrust into the public eye and forced to take the sole lead because of the lack of time for slower political development. Them being at odds with genuine expression of worker power was as much an expression of their habits as an underground party as an issue with their reading of Marx. Most of which came from less known thinkers reading him in between Das Kapital and Lenin anyway.

Things would definitely not be identical, but Marx didn't significantly change the conditions in which people lived. He put words on the thoughts those conditions inspired for sure, and someone else may not have done the same with them. But the idea that the man drive the history rather than just embodies it seems unsupported.

 

[VengfulBrakiopod]

That isn't to say the world would be exactly the same if Alexander the Great choked on a fishbone before he launched his campaigns. But history wouldn't be that different either. Which king claimed which bit of territory might shift around a bit, but the way people live will still be largely determined by their technological means and the resources they have available, which will also put limits on their capacity to organize. Intellectual traditions will develop without any great thinkers. (And probably really did to a greater degree than we imagine. Great philosophers were often credited with the work of their students.) If you need proof, look at all the devices and mathematical systems developed essentially simultaneously by different people, or the philosophical ideas that reemerge in various cultures.

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Changes in 'which king claimed which bit of territory' can cause hundreds of thousands of deaths or more, trigger long term shifts in an area's religious/cultural traditions, change what language even lower class people speak, transform patterns of urbanization (which impacts rural areas as well), and introduce new technologies faster and on a larger scale than otherwise, which can have transformative effects even in pre-modern societies.

As far as intellectual traditions go, I find it hard to believe that the philosophical and religious world of the Ancient Middle East would have been comparable absent the enhanced status of Greek speakers in the Hellenistic kingdoms. Philosophical ideas 'reemerging in various cultures' does not somehow guarantee the prominence (or existence, such traditions have often died out) of idealism no matter who rules where, no matter what thinker ceases to exist. Actually, the diversity of philosophical ideas in different cultures is the best argument against that theory.

In any case, your declaration that 'history would not be that different' without Alexander is only supportable through grand generalizations about the conditions of pre-modern life. I am not interested in debating the merits of Great Man Theory because, like you say, it has been rejected by modern academics. Nevertheless, your response to it should not go so far as to dismiss the real and disproportionate impact that Alexander's actions had on millions of people in his lifetime and afterward with an appeal to 'history being largely the same'.

I mean, there is no such thing as history, in the singular sense, no omniscient narrative that can dismiss any person as unimportant to its composition, even a person as unimportant as Alexander of Macedon.

 

[VengfulBrakiopod]

They could have, potentially? The Bolsheviks added a lot to what was previously Marxist understanding. Remember parties like the SPD were the hallmark of Marxist interpretation before that! The development that transformed Marxism from something some people in the democratic left tried to apply in western Europe to Leninism could have happened to any other strain of leftist, as it was rooted in the material conditions of Russia requiring a different approach.

A lot of the issues and transformations in the Russian left with the Bolsheviks came because of the specific conditions of a movement driven underground by the autocratic monarchy and operating basically like a secret society then being thrust into the public eye and forced to take the sole lead because of the lack of time for slower political development. Them being at odds with genuine expression of worker power was as much an expression of their habits as an underground party as an issue with their reading of Marx. Most of which came from less known thinkers reading him in between Das Kapital and Lenin anyway.

Things would definitely not be identical, but Marx didn't significantly change the conditions in which people lived. He put words on the thoughts those conditions inspired for sure, and someone else may not have done the same with them. But the idea that the man drive the history rather than just embodies it seems unsupported.

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That's a fair analysis, and I like many other people may have overestimated Marx's contribution as a person, giving undue regard to his disproportionate prominence as a symbol of socialist thought.

I do think that the point I was trying to make in that post still stands, which is that Marx's historical roles amount to more than 'finding basic tenets and critiques of capitalism'. I'm not trying to say that he is a Great Man; I find that argument tiresome and in this thread has basically been a tag-team takedown of a couple particular posters. But I feel as though some of the arguments people have made in response have gone too far in the direction of historical determinism.

That's all.

 

[Nyvis]

That's a fair analysis, and I like many other people may have overestimated Marx's contribution as a person, giving undue regard to his disproportionate prominence as a symbol of socialist thought.

I do think that the point I was trying to make in that post still stands, which is that Marx's historical roles amount to more than 'finding basic tenets and critiques of capitalism'. I'm not trying to say that he is a Great Man; I find that argument tiresome and in this thread has basically been a tag-team takedown of a couple particular posters. But I feel as though some of the arguments people have made in response have gone too far in the direction of historical determinism.

That's all.

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Oh sure, I can agree with that.

Historical materialism is about the evolution of large scale societal conditions and productive organization, after all, not people, nations, cultures and all the other things a few individuals can spearhead shifts on. So even the most committed anti-Great Man theory leaves a lot of room for individuals to have notable historical impact.

 

[Carrington]

The GM interpretation is more than just the idea that some lives mattered more.

It holds that fundamentally, history is driven by rare, unique individuals. Not just influenced by them, but caused to happen by them. The great man theory says there is no heliocentrism without Copernicus. No American revolution without Washington and Franklin. No Second World War with Hitler. No idealism without Plato.

It credits these people with directly motivating the great changes in history. And as someone pointed out above, it is only slimly plausible when we look at eras we lack significant records of. Because we can look and see the nuts and bolts material history that drives nations and ideologies and can recognize that they would persist if someone else rose to prominence.

That isn't to say the world would be exactly the same if Alexander the Great choked on a fishbone before he launched his campaigns. But history wouldn't be that different either. Which king claimed which bit of territory might shift around a bit, but the way people live will still be largely determined by their technological means and the resources they have available, which will also put limits on their capacity to organize. Intellectual traditions will develop without any great thinkers. (And probably really did to a greater degree than we imagine. Great philosophers were often credited with the work of their students.) If you need proof, look at all the devices and mathematical systems developed essentially simultaneously by different people, or the philosophical ideas that reemerge in various cultures.

That same combination of technology and resources will determine what needs to be distributed, how much excess there is, and how much leisure time people have. Which are the basic building blocks of how economies. Which are what trade networks, wars, and empires depend on. No emperor is able to create arable land or reduce the demand for agricultural labor. They can't influence broad demographic changes or alter geography. It's like Marx pointed out, people make history, but they don't get to choose the conditions under which they do so.

That's why it isn't just a difference in emphasis. @Terrabrand is talking about the real, complex, almost untraceable changes to the details of history that happen when any thing is changed. Nikkolas was talking about the whole flow of history changing because the people calling the shots were replaced.

If that sounds unfair, there is a reason the GMT hwas completely rejected by modern academics, and it didn't have anything to do with an erotic fixation on disestablishment.

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I think, that this is a rather important post that ideally should have come at the beginning of the discussion about the Great Man theory. Because it makes it clearer what the GM theory says and why it is criticized / discarded, instead of just referring to it or its criticism. Reading this thread, it felt like people arguing against the GM theory said that well known historical figures had no influence what so ever and could be replaced by literally anybody and nothing would have changed. And that felt like the criticism against GM theory went right past reasonable critique into an unreasonable polar opposite of it.
Before your post I was planning to write a post explaining, why I was in the middle between GM and the critique of it, using contemporary history to show why. I'll add most of it anyhow and explain why it was off base.

My prior understanding of the GM theory and the criticism that was offered here meant that I believed that a GM theorist would solely look at Donald Trump to explain current US politics, while the critics would look at basically everything but him, since he could have been replaced by anyone else, Jeb Bush for example, and nothing would have changed. Similarly they would believe that Trump and a random GOP voter from Alabama would have the same influence on history.
Both seem obviously wrong, since you can't understand the rise of (and continuing support for) Trump without looking at the societal and cultural changes before and during his presidency (radicalization of and through Fox New and certain Youtubers, economic problems etc.). And on the other hand, while Trump is a symptom of it, he is also a catalyst and furthering it, for example, by pulling fringe believes into the mainstream.
So given the societal context, a President(ial Candidate) like Trump was likely a certainty in the near future, but that doesn't mean that he himself isn't influential.

Now thanks to your post, unless I'm misreading it, I understand that I'm not between the theory camps, but rather solidly in the critical camp. Though I do believe, like @VengfulBrakiopod, that you are underestimating the influence "Great Man" can have. While they can't do things on their own, they can use existing power structures to influence the world in a way others couldn't, may that be through conquest, or by using and inflaming existing prejudices leading to persecution and genocide.

And to bring this aside closer to the thread topic: I believe that Youtubers/other influencers, especially feminist and lefties, should take care to not just use or refer to existing theories, but also explain them. Ideally in a concise and understandable way, either by giving the explanation in the beginning of the video, if it can be done in a minute or so, or by beginning the video by saying what theories will be used and linking to understandable explanation videos. Because otherwise, misunderstandings will happen a lot easier, especially if said theory has a not immediately obvious name, like "Toxic Masculinity". Obviously, people will still twist their meanings around, but it will allow for better interactions with people arguing in good faith.

 

[Absum]

Tbh I did at multiple points get the feeling that Nikkolas was using some different interpretation of the Great Man theory than (what I believe to be) the official one and I think people talked past each other a few times because of it, but his stance also wasn't very clear so idk.

 

[mesonoxian]

I mean, there is no such thing as history, in the singular sense, no omniscient narrative that can dismiss any person as unimportant to its composition, even a person as unimportant as Alexander of Macedon.

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That's my point. Yes, things would be different if Hitler died in his crib, but we'd still have had a Second World War. Given thousands of years for changes to amplify and damp out and who knows how different a world without some king or prince or general would be.

But where the GMT goes wrong is by suggesting history is "but the biography of great men." It doesn't just argue that things would be somewhat different without Alexander and Napoleon and Nero but that these people directed the course of history through sheer will and greatness and that absent them, it would be totally different. It completely neglects the degree to which people are limited by their conditions. Born to a different mother, Alexander with all his genius could be "Macedonian #4". People every bit as brilliant as Plato and Pythagoras died in sugar cane fields or lived their whole lives as hunter gatherers and haven't even got an intact skeleton left to history.

There are moments where something "great" is going to happen. Someone was going to president during the Second World War. Someone was going to be king of Macedonia when war was brewing with Persia. Someone was going to step into the power vacuum after the French Republic destabilized. The exact details of who steps into those roles makes a huge immediate difference, and they can have outsized knock on effects. But the fact they occupied those roles is just their good fortune. Let Einstein be born in 500 B.C. or Alexander in 1980 and it is highly unlikely we'd know a thing about them. But we'd know the names of whoever cracked relativity and whoever led Greece against the Persian empire.

A less competent general than Alexander might have lost the war. So might a more competent Persian general or an outbreak of typhus. Alexander isn't just a great strategist, then. He's a great strategist born as king into a kingdom with a powerful military, inheriting his fathers plans for war against Persia and the Greek resentment against same, whose opponent was vastly less competent and whose army wasn't decimated by disease. And if you change any one of these or a huge number of other elements, your Great Man suddenly starts looking a lot less historically significant.

 

[VengfulBrakiopod]

That's my point. Yes, things would be different if Hitler died in his crib, but we'd still have had a Second World War. Given thousands of years for changes to amplify and damp out and who knows how different a world without some king or prince or general would be.

But where the GMT goes wrong is by suggesting history is "but the biography of great men." It doesn't just argue that things would be somewhat different without Alexander and Napoleon and Nero but that these people directed the course of history through sheer will and greatness and that absent them, it would be totally different. It completely neglects the degree to which people are limited by their conditions. Born to a different mother, Alexander with all his genius could be "Macedonian #4". People every bit as brilliant as Plato and Pythagoras died in sugar cane fields or lived their whole lives as hunter gatherers and haven't even got an intact skeleton left to history.

There are moments where something "great" is going to happen. Someone was going to president during the Second World War. Someone was going to be king of Macedonia when war was brewing with Persia. Someone was going to step into the power vacuum after the French Republic destabilized. The exact details of who steps into those roles makes a huge immediate difference, and they can have outsized knock on effects. But the fact they occupied those roles is just their good fortune. Let Einstein be born in 500 B.C. or Alexander in 1980 and it is highly unlikely we'd know a thing about them. But we'd know the names of whoever cracked relativity and whoever led Greece against the Persian empire.

A less competent general than Alexander might have lost the war. So might a more competent Persian general or an outbreak of typhus. Alexander isn't just a great strategist, then. He's a great strategist born as king into a kingdom with a powerful military, inheriting his fathers plans for war against Persia and the Greek resentment against same, whose opponent was vastly less competent and whose army wasn't decimated by disease. And if you change any one of these or a huge number of other elements, your Great Man suddenly starts looking a lot less historically significant.

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A less 'competent' king than Alexander might never have gone to war with Persia at all, might have lost his throne and most of Macedon's subject territories too. His inheritance from Philip was not as unproblematic as you imply. War with Persia was not 'brewing' out of the ether, it wasn't some 'great thing' that would have happened regardless of contingencies. Not all 'great events' (whatever that means) are overdetermined.

In any case, I don't know why you replied to my post with takedown #27 of Great Man theory in this thread. If you're going to respond to my argument, please respond to my argument and not someone else's.

 

[mesonoxian]

A less 'competent' king than Alexander might never have gone to war with Persia at all, might have lost his throne and most of Macedon's subject territories too. His inheritance from Philip was not as unproblematic as you imply. War with Persia was not 'brewing' out of the ether, it wasn't some 'great thing' that would have happened regardless of contingencies. Not all 'great events' (whatever that means') are overdetermined.

In any case, I don't know why you replied to my post with takedown #27 of Great Man theory in this thread. If you're going to respond to my argument, please respond to my argument and not someone else's.

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Philip II had already drawn up plans for war with Persia over conquered Greek colonies. We have limited knowledge about the actual politics of the era, but given the history of conflict, it seems improbably the Greeks and Persians wouldn't clash again, and the Macedonians were in a good position to lead that coalition.

I responded without answering most of your argument because your argument isn't really relevant to the point I was trying to make. The theory people in this thread were objecting to wasn't anything as commonsensical as "influential people have influence", but the far more extreme claims of the Great Man school of thought which are thoroughly discredited for a good reason.

I think you are arguing against a position (that all historical figures are basically interchangeable) that nobody really believes or puts forward.

 

[VengfulBrakiopod]

Philip II had already drawn up plans for war with Persia over conquered Greek colonies. We have limited knowledge about the actual politics of the era, but given the history of conflict, it seems improbably the Greeks and Persians wouldn't clash again, and the Macedonians were in a good position to lead that coalition.

I responded without answering most of your argument because your argument isn't really relevant to the point I was trying to make. The theory people in this thread were objecting to wasn't anything as commonsensical as "influential people have influence", but the far more extreme claims of the Great Man school of thought which are thoroughly discredited for a good reason.

I think you are arguing against a position (that all historical figures are basically interchangeable) that nobody really believes or puts forward.

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It is very probable that the Greeks as a unified camp and the Persians would not have clashed again; the century of inter-Greek warfare before Alexander and Philip is adequate testament to that. Calling the League of Corinth a 'coalition' is a bit specious, and there is no reason to assume that the feuding city-states that constituted it would have attacked Persia absent the coercion of a greater power like Makedon (which hadn't been a greater power for long).

No one in this thread has made the extreme literal claim of interchangeability of all historical figures. However, plenty of people in this thread have made unjustified claims about the interchangeability of specific historical figures, including you. It is a pattern that annoys me, though I understand if the presence of Great Man theory in this thread annoys you more.

 

[Suzu]

People have been arguing about the Great Man Theory for six pages now, and I don't think this topic is in any way relevant to this thread at this point.

 

[Zimmerwald1915]

People have been arguing about the Great Man Theory for six pages now, and I don't think this topic is any way relevant for this thread at this point.

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On the other hand, the topic is worthwhile. Perhaps the last few pages could be split off into their own thread?

 

[Fourthspartan56]

People have been arguing about the Great Man Theory for six pages now, and I don't think this topic is any way relevant for this thread at this point.

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Well, technically that debate is over and now they're discussing how interchangeable famous historical figures are or aren't.

But considering that it is no more on topic then the previous Great Man discussion your point remains unchanged

 

[Suzu]

Well, technically that debate is over and now they're discussing how interchangeable famous historical figures are or aren't.

But considering that it is no more on topic then the previous Great Man discussion your point remains unchanged

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Great men are just a bunch of normal men in a trench-coat, trying to sneak into a history book. Now go bother some other threads, you history nerds.

 

[100thlurker]

discussion moved to war and peace

Great men are just a bunch of normal men in a trench-coat, trying to sneak into a history book. Now go bother some other threads, you history nerds.

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The forum said, "No Suzu, you are the history."

And then Suzu was a War & Peace thread.

 

[Suzu]

I will never live this down, and I hate everyone for allowing this to happen in the first place. I will personally steal all of you history nerds' lunch money and shove you into your lockers, and if you don't have lockers or lunch money, I will give them to you only to take them away for myself.

 

[The Laurent]

I will never live this down, and I hate everyone for allowing this to happen in the first place. I will personally steal all of you history nerds' lunch money and shove you into your lockers, and if you don't have lockers or lunch money, I will give them to you only to take them away for myself.

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Listen, the War and Peace subforum isn't Sufficiently Sexy, which doesn't even exist anymore.

 

[mesonoxian]

It is very probable that the Greeks as a unified camp and the Persians would not have clashed again; the century of inter-Greek warfare before Alexander and Philip is adequate testament to that. Calling the League of Corinth a 'coalition' is a bit specious, and there is no reason to assume that the feuding city-states that constituted it would have attacked Persia absent the coercion of a greater power like Makedon (which hadn't been a greater power for long).

No one in this thread has made the extreme literal claim of interchangeability of all historical figures. However, plenty of people in this thread have made unjustified claims about the interchangeability of specific historical figures, including you. It is a pattern that annoys me, though I understand if the presence of Great Man theory in this thread annoys you more.

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I disagree about further wars between Greeks and Persians, but that gets over into counterfactuals so I doubt we'll come to a firm conclusion on that.

It doesn't annoy me. It is just an obsolete mode of historical analysis. I actually really like reading that sort of history because it is a lot easier to adapt for gaming and writing than proper modern professional history.

I don't think I made any unreasonable claims. "Great men" are made by their circumstances. That doesn't mean they don't make a difference. But they don't have that opportunity to make a difference because of some intrinsic virtue, and the kinds of differences they can make can't change the broad geographic, demographic, and technological conditions that shape society on a macroscale.

 

[Vindictus]

I will never live this down, and I hate everyone for allowing this to happen in the first place.

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Congratulations on becoming a 「HISTORY NERD」 , Suzu

(one of us one of us one of us)

 

[linkhyrule5]

I don't think I made any unreasonable claims. "Great men" are made by their circumstances. That doesn't mean they don't make a difference. But they don't have that opportunity to make a difference because of some intrinsic virtue, and the kinds of differences they can make can't change the broad geographic, demographic, and technological conditions that shape society on a macroscale.

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Ennnh. I mean, I don't believe that "Great Men" can do what they do completely independent of background. But like, I would very much hesitate to say that being a Swiss patent office clerk with an amateur's interest in physics counts as being handed an opportunity -- or a self-taught random teenager from India at a time when colonialism was at its peak, for that matter.

More importantly, they totally can change the world. Einstein is probably the best example -- because sorry, as a physicist I will just shut down the idea that we would have anywhere near as good an understanding of relativity without him. GR is a shining, amazing example of terrifying insight, of a dedicated reductionist taking two anomalous data points and one-and-a-half axioms and just pulling the single most robust theory ever created to date out of his arse. That's not to say that GR wouldn't have been discovered without him -- it would've, we were getting there -- but that without him, we wouldn't have the... the clarity that comes with a theory being invented and described by a single person who understands it at its fundamental level. We would be in the same boat we were -- and still are -- in with quantum mechanics, chasing our own tails over "wave function collapse" because nobody could parse entanglement into parallel universes and haphazardly throwing modern physics at undergrads in some vague historical order. In a hundred years or two, all that will come out in the wash --

-- but the first hundred years after Einstein? Yeah I pretty much guarantee you that our ability to do things like make GPS and pull off space missions would have had severe dents put into them, because even if we can do the math, if we don't really understand what the math means we have to stumble into inventions and applications one at a time. GR now features into huge amounts of our daily lives -- and of course, there's the coincidence with WWII, the opportunity and the capability to make and use a nuclear bomb.


In the negative direction (and rather ironically considering who I was talking about first), would anyone other than Hitler really have pushed anti-Semitism as far as the Holocaust? Even by historical standards, the Holocaust is a horror of unprecedented scale. There was a lot of anti-Semitic sentiment -- a lot of institutionalized anti-Semitism, too, and only getting worse running up to WWII -- but if there hadn't been a single radical anti-Semitic leader, then even if you ascribe to the theory that the Holocaust was a case of runaway signaling between Hitler's subordinates, there wouldn't have been the strong drive down that slippery slope. WWII would've happened, but the Holocaust might not've -- and a post-WWII without the Holocaust is incredibly, spectacularly different on almost every level.



So like... yes, absolutely, people can't just invent entire cultural movements (at least not intentionally), nor complete technological revolutions -- but they totally can have literally revolutionary world-shaking effects, that are dependent on uniquely them. To use a metaphor, the famous names may just be the tip of a spear, reliant on the momentum of its thrust -- but man, if you screw with the tip even a little, both you and the guy you're trying to stab will notice .

 

[Vindictus]

In the negative direction (and rather ironically considering who I was talking about first), would anyone other than Hitler really have pushed anti-Semitism as far as the Holocaust?

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Wasn't Hitler inspired by the industrial-scale genocide committed by the US against it's indigenous populations? I'm pretty sure I've heard about that.

Whether he was or not, though, the fact that we've got other examples through history of people doing the same things is, IMO, a strike against the notion that this is something that only Hitler could have done.

 

[linkhyrule5]

Wasn't Hitler inspired by the industrial-scale genocide committed by the US against it's indigenous populations? I'm pretty sure I've heard about that.

Whether he was or not, though, the fact that we've got other examples through history of people doing the same things is, IMO, a strike against the notion that this is something that only Hitler could have done.

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I don't think there was, though. The US didn't commit industrialized genocide (as far as I know lol), they were just really huge assholes on a consistent long-term basis and kept moving people around and starving them in camps and whatnot. That sort of genocide happens all the time, sadly, and I totally acknowledge that.

But turning people into soap? Systematic, mass-produced death by gassing? Thaaaaaat's not so common. There is a real difference between lining up every X you can find and shooting them, and lining up every X you can find and systematically processing them like that. >.>

 

[The Laurent]

I don't think there was, though. The US didn't commit industrialized genocide (as far as I know lol), they were just really huge assholes on a consistent long-term basis and kept moving people around and starving them in camps and whatnot. That sort of genocide happens all the time, sadly, and I totally acknowledge that.

But turning people into soap? Systematic, mass-produced death by gassing? Thaaaaaat's not so common. There is a real difference between lining up every X you can find and shooting them, and lining up every X you can find and systematically processing them like that. >.>

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But large parts of the process didn't happen via the kind of gassing you're thinking about. There was a lot of old fashioned just lining people up and shooting them, and weird experiments that were somewhat successful in having a car and driving people around while gassing them to death, and--

Okay, I could keep on going, but it's all horrible, but that didn't all come from Hitler's fetid brain. The idea of killing all the Jews? Well, sorta-yes, but others had said and advocated for the same things.

My point is that what's unique about Nazi Germany's genocide, or at least relatively rare, can't be placed at Hitler's feet directly.

 

[Ms. Effy]

Wasn't Hitler inspired by the industrial-scale genocide committed by the US against it's indigenous populations? I'm pretty sure I've heard about that.

Whether he was or not, though, the fact that we've got other examples through history of people doing the same things is, IMO, a strike against the notion that this is something that only Hitler could have done.

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Hitler specifically said that Russians would be treated like "Red Indians". Thus, the causative relationship isn't between the Shoah and the destruction of American Indians, it was between the Hunger Plan/General Plan East and the destruction of American Indians.

That being said, Hitler did have an immediate historical model for the Shoah, the Armenian genocide, and the initial plans for the genocide of the Polish and Soviet Jewish populations as developed by the SS were to essentially streamline that genocide- intellectuals and leaders would be killed immediately, then able-bodied people, especially men, would be worked to death building roads and villages for German colonists, and the elderly, sickly, and young would be starved to death.

However, this does not resemble the Shoah as it actually occurred, and this is a good case to knock down both Great Man and vulgar materialist interpretations of history- the Holocaust as it actually happened was shaped by ad hoc material factors which caused it to take on an entirely different form from its initial envisioning, but at the same time it is very difficult to argue that the Holocaust had as a proximate cause anything but the fact that the German right ended up centered around Nazism and Nazism around Hitler and his personal allies, and those people in turn were antisemites among antisemites.