Historical figures whose private judgments remain elusive

Which historical figure would you choose for a two-hour conversation, and what would you discuss?

Choices include Nobunaga on tactical myths, Lee and Ramsay on unrecorded wartime judgments, MacArthur on the Philippines, and Togo on Japan's army-navy balance.

Dragon would ask Oda Nobunaga about his intentions and whether tactics later credited to him were genuinely his innovations. Dan chooses Willis Lee, Reginald Henderson, or Bertram Ramsay to recover thoughts that their surviving records and absent memoirs leave unclear. Other choices include MacArthur's decisions on 8 December 1941 and during the retreat to Bataan, Yamamoto's thinking, and the personalities of Patton and Eisenhower. Claims about Patton require care because hostile colleagues and later memoirs influenced his reputation. Clarke would also ask Henry IV of France whether Paris was worth a mass and Togo Heihachiro why he accepted parity between Japan's army and navy. These imagined interviews focus on motives and contemporary judgment that later outcomes cannot establish by themselves.