Trio - 3 Human actions: Their Weight; Their Implications...

The  trio: A Tyrant; A Group of Scientists; A Towering  Artist-

One: Josef Stalin, as we know, ranked with Hitler as one of the 20th century's   great  despots. His particular form of paranoia was gargantuan and consuming; the result being his overwhelming fear, mostly baseless, of conspiracy at all levels. One of his constant fears was the danger of  Germany and Britain merging  in order to destroy the  Soviet system.
The results: His mistaken views of conspiracy led him to state, despite warnings  by a group of his generals, of an imminent attack by Germany - "Hitler will never attack me alone." His unfounded fears of conspiracy led him to a state of relative complacency, making it possible for Hitler to wreak havoc in Russia during the early phase of his invasion  on June 22, 1941.
Fortunately for the West, Stalin's refutation  of the possibilities of war in  that year prompted Hitler to make his ultimately fatal decision to occupy Mother Russia. So; ironically, Stalin's statement emanating from his titanic battles with ungrounded fears made it possible for Hitler to eventually lose a two-front war which he asserted he would never promulgate.
And so a new Dark Age was averted, insured by the paranoia of one of history's darkest figures.

Two: Shortly after Nazi Germany was defeated in May of 1945,  the scientists involved with the Manhattan Project, which was created  to  undergo a race with Nazi Germany in the quest for the atom bomb, took a vote to determine if the project to uncover the power of the atom should go on, now that  Germany had surrendered. Predictably, the vote was a resounding 'yes'.
What if the group had decided to cease the search for  atomic power?
Soviet Russia would have, it would seem, uncovered the secret first.
What would our present day be like?
The irrevocable need for  the scientist to consummate a search once begun is an elemental reality - for that, however horrific the power of the atom proved to be in  August  1945, over Japan,  was  the reason for that 'yes' vote.

Three:  Three  monosyllabic words uttered by Pablo Picasso, in Nazi-occupied Paris:
"No - you did."
Probably the most powerful statement made by an artist, in the 20th century.
The meaning? Its implication?
I invite you to visit my Nov.3, 2007 blog, which you can find on my archives list, available on this blog site.