To be completely honest, I don't know how to reply to this thread, without inflaming passions. I am not trying to say that there is no such things as heroism; what I am trying to say is that we learn about great heroes from newspapers and military reports. Both sources have other than truth objectives - providing subscribers with something interesting to read for the former, and motivation of masses for the latter.
Obviously, a lot of actions are described accurately. On the other hand, why Patton is a genius commander, while everytime Hitler's military record is described, it is all about his mistakes in 1943-45? Why Einstein and Hawking are super-celebrities in the world of science, while Heisenberg, Walter Kohn or Lorentz are barely known to the mass public ? What is so great about artists like Ansel Adams or Pollack ? The answer, in my opinion, is simple - some heroes are better suited for mass consumption. To some extent they got lucky, they just happened to be what masses needed - does not mean that they were not outstanding or even ingineous. But there are dozens of others who are quite capable of holding their own place in history, who are unknown.
Obviously there are many cases, when individuals or governments exploit this property of our society in order to advance their own agenda. Ariel, how about the famous recipient of Congressional Gold Medal, who held "multiple advanced degrees from Sorbonne and Humboldt" - I heard they still can't find a single one of them
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