See topic. I’ve read quite a lot of WWII history but when I thought up this question I couldn’t think of anybody.
I’d put Eleanor Roosevelt near the top of the list.
She worked behind the scenes mostly but championed and advanced civil rights before it was on anyone’s political radar.
Clare Boothe Luce.
But there has to be. By saying “most” influential, even if Eva made Dolfie choose coffee over tea one day, you are constraining the question so that even that tiny thing would make her the “most” influential.
I would vote either Betty Grable or Hedy Lamarr. The former for giving our boys something to fight for, and the latter for frequency-hopping spread spectrum.
Clementine Churchill.
Without Winston Churchill’s leadership, Britain arguably wouldn’t have survived its darkest hour and successfully repelled the Nazi menace. But without his wife, Clementine, Churchill might never have become prime minister. By his own admission, the Second World War would have been “impossible without her”
How about the Queen Mother - Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother - Wikipedia whom Hitler is said to have called “the most dangerous woman in Europe.”
The Dragon Lady (Madame Chiang Kai-shek) in the early 1940s was regarded by some as “the most powerful woman on earth” and was very influential in gaining American support for her husband’s crooked dictatorship in China.
It could be argued that propping up Chiang’s regime instead of giving support to more effective fighters like Mao’s troops prolonged the war in Asia.
Betty Pack was an english spy who served in Washington DC who slept with a bunch of Vichy french diplomats and got useful intelligence which the Allies were able to use in the Mediterranean theater.
Marina Raskova was a pilot who convinced Stalin to organize three regiment of female pilots which fought with distinction.
While it may have made the conflict bloodier, I wouldn’t say it prolonged the war simply because logistics ensured the war would always have to go at a certain pace. Pre-war Japanese war games with a war starting in mid-1941 always had the war end in a complete Japanese loss in mid-1945 which is incredibly close to the real time table.
Assuming you’re not only looking for women who were among the good guys, Leni Riefenstahl has to be right up there.
According to the article that technology was not used in WWII.
Lyudmila Pavlichenko *directly *influenced at least 309 Germans. Influenced them right in the head (or other body part). That’s a lot less abstract.
Would **Tokyo ****Rose **merit a (dis)honorable mention?
Mention must be made of Jackie Cochran, creator of the WASP’s.
Betty Grable, inspiring tens of thousands of pieces of airplane nose art
She was influential…and in WWII.
Her influence was just not felt for a while!
Lise Meitner didn’t do much during WWII that was influential, but her prewar work definitely influenced the outcome of the war. She (along with Otto Hahn and others) were the first to discover and correctly explain nuclear fission induced by neutron bombardment. Without that work there would have been no Manhattan Project and no atomic bomb.
Wrong. “Mao’s policy was strict. Communist forces were not to fight the Japanese unless attacked.They were to conserve their strength for seizing territory from the Nationalists. Mao made it clear that Chiang Kai-shek was their ultimate opponent, their enemy number 1”. Anthony Beevor. “The Second World War”
Beevor also says the Chinese Communists and Japanese had secret agreements not to attack each other. The Second World War (book) - Wikipedia
Lamarr got the patent all right, but it was never developed for practical use until long after the war ended.
Yes, but Mae West got the life preserver named after her. The one that had two inflated sections that rested on the wearer’s chest.