Curtis basically falls for the animistic fallacy: that all events are caused by conscious agents. This is the same pathway that leads to both religion and conspiracy theorists.
I have always thought Curtis' overall theme (or one of them) was of powerful people drawing their grand plans, but always ultimately having them thwarted by external circumstances out of their control.
Or something like that. Essentially his problem is mixing history with histrionics. He's not a documentarist, he's an entertainer. A music video director.
