In some respects, Oliver Cromwell was similar to George Washington. Both men were landed aristocrats, who knew next to nothing of conducting a war, and who had to learn everything the hard way, by doing. Both had lots of 'warts and blemishes'; and neither man wished to be a "king" afterwards.

It is one of those cases where the more you know, the less likely you are to think the question answerable. Most people on both sides who think they do, are often using false information based on the widespread propaganda that all wars generate. And you also have to remember that times and people change, the man who in his dotage led a harsh despotic rule, was not no doubt the same man who N. Bonaparte thought the greatest military commander of all time.

I have even heard so called serious historians try to belittle him by saying things like, 'he won all his victories from a position of numerical advantage'. Only if you ignore at least three battles, false facts, and anyway should it not be part of a talented commanders duty to insure a numerical advantage.

And of course the intention and the outcome is not the same either, in many ways the Civil War came too early for a republican revolution, and the Restoration, was perhaps bound to happen. Who knows that if the truly evil rule of the Stuarts had continued another century, the reaction could well have meant that the UK would now be a true republic. In many ways it was impossible for people in the seventeenth century to rise above their, religious based mindset, there was no science to speak of, and the religious views were the only ones they had to work with.

And the same applies in some ways, to the people who say that the civil war in general affected nothing and that it was irrelevant to wider history, because they miss a point. Which is that negative effects can be as important as positive ones. After two decades plus of religious conflict, which was still unresolved, the big looser was not the crown or the parliament, but faith. People were exhausted and had become cynical about religion, and the old witch and heretic burning absolute faith was in decline because of it. Could therefore the new age of the enlightenment, Newton, Wren, Boyle and the birth of science, not to mention the industrial revolution which followed, have happened in that old world of absolute belief ?

Hard to ignore -- his massacre of Irish soldiers who had surrendered. Otherwise, my limited understanding is that he came to dominate the English Parliament much as a king would anyway, didn't arrange for any balance of parties/factions, and when he died after only a few years as the Any-Title-But-King the Parliament immediately looked to his (very much less popular) son to continue -- which inevitably resulted in a return to the kingly line with a vengeance (especially against all equalitarians) and even stricter than before.

Well I'm sure even Hitler was kind to er cats? Cromwell was a revolutionary, fighting against the excesses of the ruling class. If only he had been a humanist and inclusive of rights of all people. Bit of a blow (literally) if you were Catholic. I only know bare bones. Where are the English when you need them?