For all those who blindly criticize hiruzen
Are you aware that hiruzen remained hokage from his youth to his old age ?
through two great wars and surely a whole lot of things to manage during 50 years of reign.
the guy protected and educated konoha ninja for over 50 years
but obviously people remember the bad points like orochimaru or the genocide of the uchiha clan.
( knowing that for the uchiha, before obito's attack on kyubi, the uchiha lived well with konoha, it's only after kyubi that uchihas and konoha started to be suspicious of each other
and to avoid civil war and weaken the country in the face of other countries, tough measures had to be taken (knowing that this was clearly not hiruzen's priority, as he wanted to calm things down and talk things over).
so the real culprits is obito because konoha knew that only an uchiha could summon kyubi
people don't think, hiruzen stayed hokage much longer than all the other hokages before him and because kishimoto didn't show 99% of his time, we use the 1% to point the finger at orochimaru or the uchiha clan
if minato or anyone else had been hokage for 50 years, I'm sure there would have been plenty of problems, and I'm not sure he would have protected konoha like hiruzen did.
according to the raikage, konoha never lost a battle
it's so easy and ignorant to criticize a guy who ran a country for 50 years, when the same guy wanted to retire at the time of minato
he asked jiraiya several times to be hokage in his place, jiraiya refused and finally became minato and after his death, hiruzen was forced to take over the position
the guy is what the hokage title is all about, protecting the village for the very, very long term.
making a few mistakes, yes, but when you compare his longevity, there's no point in pointing the finger at bad thing like orochimaru or even comparing him to other hokages who have been hokage for a very short time.
it's 100 times harder to be the hokage of the most powerful village in konoha for 50 years.
i don't know if people realize how stupid they are for always pointing out the negative and ignoring that hiruzen spent more time of his life as hokage protector of konoha and of the new generation of ninja in a political context where the different countries of the world were nothing but tensions and wars.
just for that, we'd have to suspend judgment on his mistake regarding orochimaru.
hiruzen is the one who most represents the village of konoha, you have to stop reading by halves