What's the most astonishing example of a man coming from the bottom of society to the head of state

Abraham Lincoln's father was a poor, illiterate backwoods farmer.

Genghis Khan

or varying light levels

ulysses grant

Ivaylo of Bulgaria started off as a peasant and forced the nobility of his country to accept him as emperor.

What about that stable boy who became the emperor? Or was he something else? I don't remember it's been a while since I read anything about Byzantium.

What, Basil I?

Napoleon
From lowlife foreigner in 1793 to Emperor of Europe in 1810

Stalin, Hitler and all are impressive, but their period allowed a much greater social mobility than the late 18th century
No one was supposed to suddenly become a monarch back then

Yeah I suppose. Egalitarian meritocracy in early middle ages. Something a lot of people would consider impossible because of beliefs and morality of the people in that era. Class system and all. Similarly the history is full of simple women becoming queens. Or influential bastards.

From slave to Sultan. The levels of tri-dimensionnal chess he must have played to ascend all this way up... Dude would own everyone in Crusader Kings II.

Fucking this. His story is actually quite remarkable.

Learning about Stalin in History and yeah id say he did go from bottom of society to top

And Rasputin.

That shouldn't happen unless you literally have a board in the middle of your nose stopping light getting through one side.

Jesus Christ

Never forget: Basil I was able to go from peasant to Emperor because of his willingness to indulge in homosexual acts.

Emperor Michael took special notice of Basil during a "wrestling" match, and soon after, named him his bodyguard and 'companion of the bedchamber'.

It's not gay if you're a Greek. Ancient or medieval.

Probably pic related, honestly.

Although until the war most of his populace hated him.

Noo seriously? The cattle doesn't like their butcher?

Temujin/Ghengis Khan

I think Mongols are a meme empire, but for a guy who was a fatherless poor nomad on the steppes and became the most powerful man from the shores of Japan to the plains of Hungary, conquering empires that were far more advanced than he was, that takes skill.

Hitler butchered plenty of his population, and yet many of them liked him.

>rasputin
He was irrelevant for most of his life, spent a few years boning the empress and then was killed brutally. Not exactly a success story imo

Except Hitler terrorized a minority group in favor of a angry/apathetic majority. Stalin ordered the murder of millions of his own citizens out of spite and brutality. He sought power for himself. At least Shitler tried to improve German quality of life.

German Jews are still Germans lad.

Hitler killed large amounts of his own population due to spite and hatred.

Like I said, Hitler terrorized a minority. Stalin terrorized everyone

Who was he ?

Hitler was a PR master.

Still an illiterate peasant monk who just randomly showed up and became a powerful and influential figure with basically no stepping stones or a prior political career.

That's my point. Stalin's rise was more impressive, but his populace hated him for obvious reasons.

Despite ordering similar atrocities to Stalin, Hitler retained the support of most of his countrymen.

General for the U.S. during the Civil War

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_I#From_peasant_to_emperor

>honestly obama
>bottom of society
>obama
He's a fucking ivy league kid whose father practically ran a fucking country. Don't let the leftist memes fool you. The fucker has always been upper class, maybe upper middle class at his lowest point.

Oh really?

>A few military officers disgruntled by the fact that Hitler repeated the common strategic mistake of not doing a single intelligent thing
>Representative of the majority of the population

Toyotomi Hideyoshi went from being a servant and sandal-bearer of Oda Nobunaga to Imperial Regent of Japan

Diocletian rose from the son of a freedman to divine ruler of the Roman Empire.

And what is his story ?

>A few military officers
>More than 7,000 people were arrested and 4,980 were executed.

Thread music

youtube.com/watch?v=RubBzkZzpUA

Jesus, he is head of state in Poland.

Actually everyone loved Stalin.

He was most popular in the party and the state as a whole.

Hitler came from lower Middle class, with a father of reasonably high status respective of their hometown.

Men more powerful than him, such as Genghis Khan, have been to known to come from more dire upbringings.

Even Nobunaga himself went from just a member of the Oda clan to almost conquering Japan under his name, Ieyasu too

No they didn't, no he wasn't.

Liu Bang was a literal Hobo and a wanted criminal.

Ended up as founder of Han Dynasty China.

It's more like he was okay at first and then became starving-poor.

Genhiz Khan was born a prince.

Sure he had that traumatic childhood of being captured by a rival tribe, but when a Khan marries his daughter off to you without protest since you're a prince, you know you have something for you.

This guy, his story is pretty incredible, basically a poor boy to a president

>prince
That doesn't sound right. I don't remember the rank of his father, but when Gengis' father died his tribe left him, his mother and his brothers to fend for themselves - when his mother tried to stop the tribe leaving by shaming them (riding with her late husbands spirit banner around the tribe) they agreed to stay but once night came they left with all Gengis' familys animals - more or less leaving them to die. Hardly a way they would treat a prince.

Gengis' mother made do with the bad situation she was in, all alone with her young kids by foraging and eating rats and birds. Fast forward a few years, Gengis gets into a quarrel with his oldest half brother since he steals a fish (or bird I forgot) that Gengis caught, he gets pissed off but Gengis' mother sides with his half-brother since she will marry him one day (just like my NTR doujins) because he is the only option she has. Gengis gets pissed at this situation, and kills his half brother (his younger brother assists). All the other tribes in the region learn of this murder and try to hunt the family down. Fast forward again, Gengis spends a lot of time in captivity as a slave (forgot why) ... fast forward once more Gengis is free, and has got a fur coat which he gives to a local big shot who also happens to be his god-father of some sort. That big shot gives Gengis a band of fighters and from this connection he's now in a position to start building a legend.

your illiterate

bye rddit

literally Stalin

Did the Jews like Hitler? You should ask them.

First thing that came to my mind. I think there are some other Chinese examples, like Hong Xiuquan.

Hell yeah

What makes you think that?

Kind of different. The war was so clearly lost, but ideological insanity convinced the Nazi leadership to fight until the last man. The German populace didn't turn against Hitler, but instead a group of officers tried to end the horror show while they could still have some leverage to end the war.

>German Jews are still German
"No."

Napoleon's family were low ranking members of the Corsican aristocracy. Sure they were somewhat disgraced after the Corsican revolution but I wouldn't exactly describe them as lowlives.

Stalin didn't do that, though. He ordered the execution of horrific number of people (around 700,000), but this was due to his paranoid fear of exploitation within Soviet society.

"Stalin killed millions" is s Cold War era meme that has since been debunked pretty conclusively. The numbers used (15 million, 30 million, even 66 million according to Solzhenitsyn) are all entirely unsubstantiated, relying on extrapolation from census data. Instead of recognizing the now-accepted drop in Soviet birthrates as attributable to the new-found availability of birth control and women's entrance into the labor force, individuals such as Robert Conquest and Robert Service assumed tens of millions had been murdered. This methodology is sloppy and disingenuous.

Stalin only killed millions if you attribute to him all of the deaths by famine during the early 1930s. While the policy of grain acquisition contributed greatly to starvation, farmers only started perishing en masse once drought struck. The failure was mostly the result of provincial Ukrainian Party members trying to fill pre-drought grain quotas even as grain production declined, causing many to starve. Arguments that Stalin wanted Ukrainians to die is nationalist drivel and completely unsubstantiated.

Donald J. Trump. Started off with only a 1 million dollar loan from his dad, became a billionaire and the president of the USA.

A fuck up who managed to play the Unions strategic advantages against the South and actually extirpate rebel army groups rather than fighting set piece battles and withdrawing to nurse their booboos.

Goebbels was malnourished as a child and Goring had an eating problem.

The "birth control" that magically appeared between '33-'53? Right. Apologist. The number is somewhere around 50 million.

Stalin himself said that birth rates have increased under his rule.

He is right about birth rates. You can't argue with numbers.

>bastard son of royalty
>he and his younger brother made slave to Ottomans as a boy
>saw brother turn into a faggot
>comes back to his homeland to protect his people from further Ottoman invasion

>Communist shit hole experiences drought
>millions die

>America experiences drought
>millions don't die

Yeah not their fault at all.

> billions died in drought because of commies
> communism totally doesn't work!
> billions died in drought because of queen
> eh... monarchy is still legit, guys!

>Head of state
>Hong Xiuquan

It's a great story, but he never really gained enough power to be considered a head of state.

Someone even told me on this board that Ukraine is "prone to famines." Get this, the single most fertile region in Europe, prone to famines.

Obama was rich and famous. You want to talk presidents then talk Abe Lincoln.

shouldn't bill clinton be better?
worked his ass off and got that rhodes scholarship.

Honestly this, in recent terms anyway.

Still not Abe Lincoln

>German
>Jews

They were a race, not a religion

>lower middle class

Both his parents were dead at 15 you moron, his father at 13.

Basically, any soviet leader counts.

>Stalin only killed millions if you attribute to him all of the deaths by famine during the early 1930s. While the policy of grain acquisition contributed greatly to starvation, farmers only started perishing en masse once drought struck. The failure was mostly the result of provincial Ukrainian Party members trying to fill pre-drought grain quotas even as grain production declined, causing many to starve.

Yes, most people do include deaths by famine. Which happened under Stalin's watch, as a direct result of his policies. What, you think those grain quotas were voluntary?

After moving out from Corsica, they were very impoverished, and being basically foreigners didnt help
From the moment they arrived in mainland France in 1793 until Napoleon became a commissioned general in 1796, they lived in very shitty conditions

Napoopan. Becoming an emperor, even from low-level aristocracy is impressive

He wasn't *that* influential during the famines, actually. So it's more fault of the system here.

Did parakoimomenoi get kinky with the emperors? I assume they did, but was it a known, accepted thing with all the orthodoxy and shiet?

>Obama
>bottom of the society
Wait do you actually think Obama was some poor ghetto kid or are you just baiting?

Napoleon. The dude wasn't even French.

underrated kek

>So it's more fault of the system here.
The system Stalin ran, designed to achieve Soviet policies which were set by Stalin?

Yeah, that would be why people blame Stalin.

I'm not going to get into the genocide accusations, that's a whole other can of worms, but even without intention Stalin is most certainly at fault for the results of the Ukrainian famines. The grain redistribution policies, combined with Stalin's more directly vicious actions, did not make him the people's favorite at the time.

It's a rule rather than an oddity
Hitler was Austrian
Stalin was Georgian

I didn't see Andrew Jackson anywhere. He was a war orphan, his brother and mother both died by the time he was 13. He stood up to British officers as a child. He lived the crazy life in the back woods. He has an impressive military record. He became 7th US president.
Not bad considering where he started and the competition he faced

>Hitler repeated the common strategic mistake of not doing a single intelligent thing
Everytime