The problem I have with reducing events down to one person and their actions and opinions ignores the structural and procedural events that have built up to shape and enable their actions.

Gore may have fought harder to prevent war, but Congress was in favour of it at the time and others may have provided the rallying cry. Hitler may have been the figurehead for the Holocaust but it also required a huge body of thought and people willing to perpetuate it or at least not act against it.

Most of the time individuals don't act in isolation, no matter how powerful they are. Their actions are constrained and their worldviews shaped by what's going on around them.