18
19

May small badhistory posts thread (self.badhistory)

smileyman[M] が 投稿 - stickied post

Damn that's an unwieldy title.

This is a place to dump all the badhistory you run across that isn't worth doing a whole post about. I know there's only a week left in the month but that's a nice warm-up to June.

Rules for the small posts are slightly different.

1.) Don't link directly to the post/comment itself

2.) Please quote it though (or at least summarize it if it's a real life badhistory moment)

3.) As usual, no username callouts.

These rules may be adjusted for June.

全 16 件のコメント
並べ替え:
ベスト
トップ新着論争中古い順Q&A

[–]smileyman[S] 8ポイント9ポイント  (14子コメント)

I'll start us off with this user in /r/todayilearned

History is written by the victor, and the enemy always attacks first or makes war inevitable in the history books.

(Apparently he was defending the idea that the US was to blame for WWII.)

There are numerous examples of history being written by the losers. The most apparent example of this in US History is the Civil War, where the losers got to define the war for future generations.

We also have WWII, where the losers of both battles got to define at least partially what the cause of the war was about (e.g. Treaty of Versailles), as well as the myth of the clean Wehrmacht.

Going back several hundred years, some of the best sources we have on the battle of Agincourt are French sources.

This person later goes on to say:

I have a history degree actually. Maybe you should broaden your education beyond subreddits, so that you don't look foolish so often.

Too bad it appears they didn't learn anything from their degree.

[–]cobaltcigarettes234 2ポイント3ポイント  (2子コメント)

I remember my history professor saying that if anyone wanted proof that history isn't always written by the winners, that it was an Athenian who wrote the history of the Peloponnesian War.

[–]PearlClawFort Sumter was asking for it 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

That's a good one to remember, I'll keep that one in mind as an example.

[–]IoubduaTE 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

The thing about that one is that the Spartans were knocked out off the game not so long after their victory in the Peloponnesian war. In the Battle of Leuctra of 371 BC they lost and never got back, at the same time there was a Second Athenian Empire by 378 and Athens was an Aegean power before that. The Corinthian War against the Spartans was launched in 395 BC not even a decade of the end of the Peloponnesian War. Who won what exactly?

Sparta never really won the ultimate victory, Athens was never completely crushed by Sparta. The main reason that the story goes as it does is that Thucydides died when he did in 400 BC, not because the power struggle in Greece was concluded. If Sparta had been able to dominate the whole Greek sphere and call it its own, then they could have enforced their interpretation of history, but they never did.

[–]StoryWonkerAlaric sacked Rome because they had a Hot Topic 2ポイント3ポイント  (2子コメント)

the idea that the US was to blame for WWII

Wha? The US was the LAST major power to participate in WWII. Depending in who you are and how you measure, WWII had been going for five years by that point!

[–]krsj 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Many people blame the second world war on economic factors. I could see someone blaming the US for Germanys bad economy, they would almost certaintly be wrong but I could see someone making the argument. Maybe the argument would take a form similiar to "Hitlers rise was due to the terrible German economy caused by the hyper inflation needed to pay war reparations to Britain who needed so much money in order to repay the US for wartime loans, something something US caused the great depression which effected Germany as well". As I said, wrong but not impossible to arrive at.

[–]PearlClawFort Sumter was asking for it 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yeah, but the US was run by jews whose fault the whole thing was! (/s obviously).

[–]yoshiKUncultured savage since 476 AD 0ポイント1ポイント  (7子コメント)

We also have WWII, where the losers of both battles got to define at least partially what the cause of the war was about (e.g. Treaty of Versailles), as well as the myth of the clean Wehrmacht.

Do you have a source on the outbreak of WWII blamed on the Treaty of Versailles? Thing is, I have never heard that outside of English language publications.

[–]CaptainKorsos 1ポイント2ポイント  (6子コメント)

Me neither. I remember one guy saying "this isn't a peace this is an armistice for 20 years"

[–]PearlClawFort Sumter was asking for it 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

That was Ferdinand Foch, though he was of the opinion that the peace was too lenient to Germany, giving her the opportunity to recover and re-arm.

Ultimately the peace was the worst of both worlds, not punitive enough to genuinely remove the possibility of German militarism, while also humiliating Germany and giving her a reason to have grievance that undermined the legitimacy and prestige newly established democratic government.

[–]CaptainKorsos 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

I don't think the grievance is the most important part of why Weimar failed. I like to blame the economic crisis more. Not only were many people in a bad situation but many people again were not in a good situation. Like Goebbels said, butter makes a people fat. So make them fat and comfortable

[–]PearlClawFort Sumter was asking for it 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Oh it was definitely far from the only reason, it did however count as a huge strike against Weimar's legitimacy from the very start. Something that was only amplified by the economic crisis and the later deflation.

[–]CaptainKorsos 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I admit two things though: the first one is that I only studied this in high school (German school though, so that's pretty much all that's history class about) and I have big problems imagining how those people have felt. I mean, I am not patriotic. And if my country would be in a bad situation I don't know what I would blame it on but I assume that a peace treaty wouldn't be what I would choose. Then again, I have never witnessed war. Or Cold War. Or hunger or poverty. It really is hard to get into people's heads that are so so far away from me

[–]yoshiKUncultured savage since 476 AD 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Not sure if you are disagreeing, but the guy who said that, Foch, did most definitely win WWI. (Apart from that, 1919 seems a bit early to start the historical analysis of the causes of WWII.)

[–]CaptainKorsos 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

I am agreeing with you. I think

[–]nukefudgeAgent Miluch (Big Smithsonian) 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Can I do a "request" of sorts? I'm not a bad enough history dude to rescue the... uhm... truth?

Lindybeige posted something about salt, you see.