Current Events > Just read a book on WW2 and damn they didnt teach us shit

(+) Yeah! (+)

You trust the historians who have a good rep of going through primary data themselves

Foppe posted...

The winner writes the history books.

The losers write their own history books. For years after the end of WWI, the German Foreign Ministry waged an all-out, largely successful propaganda war against the Treaty of Versailles.

DanHaren4Ringz posted...

You trust the historians who have a good rep of going through primary data themselves

But in some cases the data itself is too taboo to question by the then current historians, and later historians dont dare to look at it because it would be a career suicide.

Foppe posted...

But in some cases the data itself is too taboo to question by the then current historians, and later historians dont dare to look at it because it would be a career suicide.

I'd point out that David Irving didn't lose his libel suit against Lipstadt & Penguin Books because he "dared to question" the primary sources, but because he was proved to be a manipulative, pro-Hitler disinformation specialist who frequently distorted the record through fabrication, selective quotation, misattribution and misrepresentation.

I mention this because I can't think of many topics which would invite "career suicide" for "taboo-breaking" modern historians other than challenging the consensus on Hitler's regime.

Never heard of him.

Foppe posted...

Never heard of him.

Then that's good news.

spikethedevil posted...

Does any US school teach much on Vietnam? I mean the US lost while being the bad guys and committing war crimes. Its like schools over here in the UK very much ignore the Empire and the horrible shit we did.

Sort of, mainly since the Vietnam War ties into presidential history in key ways a few times. So US History teachers emphasize parts of that war.

You basically described every war ever.

Foppe posted...

The winner writes the history books.

Go tell that to the Daughters of the Confederacy.

Japan got nuked so they get a pass for being psychotic monsters.

kuwab0 posted...

Japan got nuked so they get a pass for being psychotic monsters.

War crimes

vs

War crimes, Japan

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/d/dcd6c6a8.jpg

kuwab0 posted...

Japan got nuked so they get a pass for being psychotic monsters.

It is estimated, on the low end, that Japan killed over 3,000,000 civilians. With a high of 10,000,000 the average puts them just around holocaust numbers for purely civilian deaths.

Nah, Japan committing loads of rape and war crimes, and then denying it all, besides those deaths doesn't get to get off the hook because of the nukes. Shove off.

I was being sarcastic

kuwab0 posted...

I was being sarcastic

Ah, okay then.

ssjevot posted...

World War II is largely unique for the scale of warfare and atrocities. The types of things that occurred still happen. Cambodian genocide is a great example of this. 25% of the population killed, about 2 million people. This sounds staggering, but it's largely an isolated event.

In World War II Poland lost about 20% of it's population, 6 million people. China lost over 15 million people. The Soviets lost over 20 million. This makes it hard to contextualize all the wars and atrocities that have happened since then. Nothing has remotely approached that scale.

The Ukraine war has been raging for over a year and a half and total deaths are estimated at around 300,000 people. It's hard to really grasp the scope of what occurred.

Seeing the estimated casualties of the 21st century wars such as Tigray war being 600,000 at most and the Iraq war being at 1,033,000 at most, it could get worse. The War to End All Wars, later called World War I should have inspired humanity to prevent more wars. Or at least prevent from reaching the scale of the World Wars.

Sahel posted...

Seeing the estimated casualties of the 21st century wars such as Tigray war being 600,000 at most and the Iraq war being at 1,033,000 at most, it could get worse. The War to End All Wars, later called World War I should have inspired humanity to prevent more wars. Or at least prevent from reaching the scale of the World Wars.

The Second Congo War (1998-2003) caused the highest human losses of any conflict on the planet in the nearly 80 years since the end of World War II, with a rough estimate of 5.4 million deaths; but in western countries, it barely registers as even a blip on the radar of global history. "Oh, it was fought in Africa? It doesn't matter, then."

The First World War cast a long, dark shadow over the Second in ways that are still little appreciated.

Genocide. Massacres and summary executions of civilians. Murder and mistreatment of POWs. Strategic terror-bombing of cities. Police-state repression in occupied territories. Ruthless asset-stripping. Destruction of cultural treasures. Spiteful scorched-earth policies. Deportation and forcible relocation of populations. The overworking and starvation of civilians and POWs as slave labourers. Incarceration and brutalization of minority nationalities in concentration camps. The fomenting of jihadist terrorism.

Much of the above might sound like a litany of Axis transgressions in WWII but in fact, theyre crimes of the Central Powers during WWI. People who think WWI was the last of the "gentlemen's wars" haven't a clue. Instead, WWI was a shrieking klaxon that warned of the extremes of brutality to come within the next few years.

SomeLikeItHoth posted...

Yeah they did maybe your school sucked.

For real. My school took me to the museum of tolerance. Shit was wild.

HannibalBarca3 posted...

Not always. Consider the prominence of concepts like the "clean wehrmacht", the superior German Army and the orientalist depiction of the Soviet military as a numerous "Asiatic horde" throwing their men's life away for ww2 or the lost cause for the American Civil War. You also have examples like Herodotos of Halikarnassos whose city was part of the Greek coalition crushed by the Persians during the Ionian revolt or Thukydides the Athenian who wrote about the "Peloponnesian War" which saw Athens defeated by Sparta.

Also among the US far right there seems to be a "stab in the back" myth surrounding the Vietnam War, where they are convinced that the US "could've won" Vietnam if not for the treacherous liberals and hippies.

Corbenik posted...

For real. My school took me to the museum of tolerance. Shit was wild.

My teacher took us to the local Jewish museum and some idiot kid in our year asked the tour guide, "are you circumcised"? Pretty much all of us facepalmed.