We know Genghis Khan was the most ferocious leader of all time (past GQ OP). Sir Winston Churchill was probably the greatest the wartime leader of all time. Which leader is or was the biggest patsy of all time?
[sub]This thread’ll be moved to IMHO in no time, I’d imagine.[/sub]
Wow, there are so many kings and queens and such in history that clearly weren’t ready for the job that it’s hard to choose! But off the top of my head, I’d go with Czar Nicholas II. His father had shielded him from any kind of leadership responsibilities, which turned out to be disastrous when he died unexpectedly and Nicholas ascended to the throne. Further, Nicholas’ son’s hemophilia left him vulnerable to manipulation by the monk Rasputin.
there’ve been too many puppet regimes to give an answer about which was the worst.
Just, please, no one bring up Neville Chamberlain. That’s just too much of a hot button issue, in terms of our emotional involvement with WWII and Nazi Germany.
Jeez, and I was gonna bring up Neville Chamberlain :(. Who does “our” refer to? Honduras? 
I thought a patsy was someone who was set up to take the blame for what others did.
General Questions is for questions with factual answers. IMHO is for opinions and polls.
Off to IMHO.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
patsy
n : a person who is gullible and easy to take advantage of [syn:
chump, fool, gull, mark, fall guy, sucker, schlemiel,
shlemiel, soft touch, mug]
Yet, an OP about the most brutal person in history, remained on the GQ forum? What a joke …
… see Chamberlain, Neville 
Stalin. He was duped by German military intelligence (Admiral Canaris’ organization - not those prick at the Gestapo) into slaughtering his officer corps. Then he signed the non-agression pact with the Nazis, but, unlike them, ddn’t use it to buy time to prepare for the war. He shot his own spies for warning him of the imminent attack, wouldn’t let his remaining generals prepare a defense-in-depth position, and after the attack was launched, ordered the troops to stay in theri barracks while they watched the German planes drop bombs on them.
I’m sure someone with a greater knowledge of history can easily list plenty. I’ll say Romulus Augustulus, the last leader of the Roman Empire in the West. Not that Rome wouldn’t have fallen eventually, but young Augustulus didn’t do anything to defend Rome.
Chamberlain was no patsy. Munich was a good idea at the time (Hitler hated the terms, BTW), especially since the UK was in no position to take on Germany in a war. It bought time so they were in a stronger position when the war broke out. Even Churchill agreed that they needed the delay.
True, it wasn’t “peace in our time.” But it gave Britain a chance to build up their army, so it was politically smart.
I’d vote for Warren Harding. Nice guy, and no fool, but he was indecisive and depended on his friends, who looted the government.
On the world stage, the Emperor Maximillian of Mexico was pretty foolish.
There have been lots of patsies over time, but in my lifetime the biggest one by far is George W. Bush.
I agree, especially since so many of the side-stories of this chapter have an element of a dark comic opera:
Maximillian was the brother of the Emperor Franz Josef, who gave him an Austrian province in Italy to run. Bitten by the spirit of liberalism, Max almost inspired a revolt by the very people he was sent to govern. His brother called him back home and had to find something to do with him.
Franz Joseph and Louis Napoleon had recently concluded a war so bloody that a new red die was named in hornor of the battle of Magenta, but this this didn’t prevent Max from serving the French cause in the takeover in Mexico. “Well, at least he’s off our hands.”
This wasn’t a French conquest of Mexico, strickly speaking. The French sponsored a bunch of upper-class Mexicans who wanted to take over, and who used Max as liberal window-dressing. Max got to have his own army, for which he awarded fat, juciy contracts to the French. After the war, the Hapsburgs were stuck with the bill for thousands of pairs of traditional French red army trousers, so the Austrian army, otherwise clad in sensible pike grey, had to wear them up untill WWI.
Maximillian was a vain man, and he bribed his executioners to not shoot him in the face. They did anyway.
His wife Charlotte suffered a nervous breakdown trying to get the French to rescue him. She didn’t remain in a state of mental destruction, contraty to legend, buy lived on quietly for another 64 years. If someone were to make a comic opera about this story, they might borrow the device from the Hollywood movie “Juarez,” where Charlotte/Carlotta arrives in Mexico in a glowin bright dress, which greys ans the soty grows grimmer, until she’s a nutcase in black widows weeds at the end. Poor Charlotte - if anyone really deserved to suffer, it was her brother Leopold II “of the Belgians,” perhaps the most evil man in the time between Napoleon I and Hitler.
Thinking they would function better in the Mexican climate, the French paid Egypt for the use of several hundred Sudanese slave soldiers. They learned a few pointers on modern warfare and, after the war, they went home and used them to help overwhelm General Gordon and cut off his head.
Maximillians opponent, Benito Juarez, was more genuinely liberal. Socialists all over the world admired him. An Italian admirer named his son after him: Benito Mussolini.