School history lessons and propaganda

School history lessons and propaganda (Full Version)

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MariaB -> School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 11:43:14 AM)
I had an interesting conversation with a French woman recently about who defeated the Nazis in World War II. French school children are taught that it was very much the French who won the war and whilst they accept that there was a contribution from Western Allies and the Russians, it was a very small contribution. I was brought up in the UK. At school we were led to believe that we played a very major part in World War II. That we liberated France along with the French Resistance and the Americans and that the Soviet Union played very much a secondary role. There was never a mention about countries such as Norway who actually carried out the most successful act of sabotage that crippled the Nazis and disabled their ability to make nuclear weapons. I would be interested to hear what American children are taught in school about World War II?

UllrsIshtar -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 11:54:31 AM)
Lol, I'm Belgian, and we are taught that it was the collaboration between the English, Americans, and the French that mainly won the war. And that while the support of troops from smaller territories like Belgium, Norway and the Netherlands should not be underestimated, it was still the case that if any one of the 3 bigger countries would had been absent, all the other allies together could not have achieved victory.

OsideGirl -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 11:58:14 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: MariaB I had an interesting conversation with a French woman recently about who defeated the Nazis in World War II. French school children are taught that it was very much the French who won the war and whilst they accept that there was a contribution from Western Allies and the Russians, it was a very small contribution. I was brought up in the UK. At school we were led to believe that we played a very major part in World War II. That we liberated France along with the French Resistance and the Americans and that the Soviet Union played very much a secondary role. There was never a mention about countries such as Norway who actually carried out the most successful act of sabotage that crippled the Nazis and disabled their ability to make nuclear weapons. I would be interested to hear what American children are taught in school about World War II? We were taught that the French would be speaking German now, if it weren't for the US and UK.

Ninebelowzero -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 11:59:55 AM)
Errrr it would of at least been polite of thew French to have turned up to there own party. In the '60's Prez De gaulle chucked his toys out of the pram when the U.S Gov told him to get the hell out of Indochina (Vietnam to you chaps). He called the U.S ambassador to tell him face to face to get all U.S troops out of France, the ambassador replied drily 'Does that include all the dead ones?' De Gaulle's response was to remove all French troops from NATO while still remaining on the council. Says it all really.

JeffBC -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 12:03:11 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: OsideGirl We were talk that the French would be speaking German now, if it weren't for the US and UK. ROFL.. I was struggling with how to put it... yeah that. For the record I long ago gave up on the idea that anything taught in school was actually accurate when it comes to anything but the hard sciences. Especially history I see as a total fabrication start to finish that intersects with reality only loosely.

OsideGirl -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 12:14:48 PM)
Right now I think the most interesting propaganda is North Korea. They have video showing Kim Jong Il getting 7 holes in one, during one round of golf. They have news casts that say North Korea won the last World Cup and led the medal count at the recent Olympics.

Ninebelowzero -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 12:17:37 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: OsideGirl Right now I think the most interesting propaganda is North Korea. They have video showing Kim Jong Il getting 7 holes in one, during one round of golf. They have news casts that say North Korea won the last World Cup and led the medal count at the recent Olympics. The did didn't they?

LadyHibiscus -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 12:58:55 PM)
Hmmm...... I remember when I was in college the first time, writing degrees in history and anthropology. I asked one of the american history professors why we never discussed Vietnam with any depth, since we LIVED through it. Did we need to have all the participants dead in order to do a proper decontstruction? I was not popular with that professor. [;)] When I was in school we really didnt get into much past the Civil War and WWI. Those were such hobbyhorses that WWII was not that big a topic other than NAZIS ARE BAD. I was under the impression that if the Japanese had not bombed Pearl Harbor, we would never have really entered the war, and that we were in Europe in order to foster our own interests...

Aswad -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 1:11:27 PM)
Up here, the emphasis was on the UK and the USSR, with the US and France secondarily, and little mention of anyone else until one starts poking enough holes in it for the teachers to say "fuck it... I dunno... I'm just repeating what I learned in school myself.", and so I eventually arrived at the conclusion that Germany defeated Germany, with a lot of help from the UK, US, USSR and France (with the latter mostly being useful as a front, tying up enormous resources by actually resisting with some success). Me, I'm more curious about what Germans are taught about it. Incidentally, the importance of the heavy water sabotage is not uncontroversial, as making a nuclear bomb and deploying it in a successful manner is a complicated and involved puzzle. No one thing secures success by itself, and several things can cause a failure. We did bring something else to the table, though: logistics. Put the fourth largest fleet of ships around at the time to work transporting oil and parts for the US and the UK, with some one-in-ten seamen lost in the course of the war. Material and fuel probably had a higher impact than the heavy water. History is an interesting field. The school subject is an amusing fiction. In any nation. IWYW, — Aswad.

LadyHibiscus -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 1:14:02 PM)
All you need to do if you want to learn about school history is go to Pearl Harbor and watch the Japanese tourists crawling over the place snapping photos.

Aswad -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 1:20:27 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: OsideGirl We were taught that the French would be speaking German now, if it weren't for the US and UK. It is important to bear in mind that so would the US and UK, if not for the USSR and France. Worth taking a moment to picture the Führer on Fox. IWYW, — Aswad.

Phoenixpower -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 1:35:02 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad Me, I'm more curious about what Germans are taught about it. puts head in shame [&o] Now...being german and having spent 13 of my life at schools in Germany, I'm afraid but I can't really much tell about that, as I managed to pretty much miss out on the majority of that part. Cause over here we have 3 different types of school levels and I swapped around between them (which isn't common to do and even less common to do as much as I did) so when that topic started I was in a school which teaches on a higher level and for that school that topic was up to be taught later at some point...and once I changed back to the other sort of school they were pretty much finished with it...needless to say...history never catched my interest during that time...as for me it was just all muddled up.... now...these days I do want to read up about stuff more in depth....once I find the time for it....surely at some point next year [:)]

OsideGirl -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 1:41:26 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad quote: ORIGINAL: OsideGirl We were taught that the French would be speaking German now, if it weren't for the US and UK. It is important to bear in mind that so would the US and UK, if not for the USSR and France. Worth taking a moment to picture the Führer on Fox. IWYW, — Aswad. I didn't say it was right, I said it's what we were taught. I think for most of us we reach a certain age and realize that our governments don't always tell the citizens the absolute truth.

LadyHibiscus -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 1:50:48 PM)
It seems that it was a group project, really... [:)]

Rule -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 1:52:34 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: LadyHibiscus All you need to do if you want to learn about school history is go to Pearl Harbor and watch the Japanese tourists crawling over the place snapping photos. They are still occupying the territory? [:-]

Rule -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 1:59:52 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: OsideGirl I think for most of us we reach a certain age and realize that our governments don't always tell the citizens the absolute truth. Many of those who knew the truths, often Germans, were killed in battle during the last year of the war.

PeonForHer -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 2:12:04 PM)
FR My mother still has the primary school history book I used, in which it says that the early kings of England had beliefs in strange gods because they 'had not yet heard about Jesus'. Propaganda always works best if you can grab people when they're still very young, natch. As for WW2: yep, that was mainly won by the British (or the English, to be more specific; the English upper class, to be more even more specific) - so far as we were taught at school. Popular media, though, gave us a slightly different impression: many of the best-known war films in the UK were American. Also, films based on mainly British exploits during the war had American actors cast in them in order to be able to sell them better in the USA. The French Resistance was given a high profile in said films also; while the Norwegian Resistance's profile was boosted enormously in the film The Heroes of Telemark. The resistance movements of other countries were barely given a mention, as far as I recall. Most Eastern European countries were just the passive recipients of conquering by the Germans and, later, liberation by the USA or GB. The Russians, however, might just as well have been holiday for the entire 1930s and 40s - nobody wanted to credit them with anything at all other than being brutal commie animals.

LadyConstanze -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 2:14:18 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad Me, I'm more curious about what Germans are taught about it. Went to school in Germany and Switzerland, consensus is basically WW2 was won due to the US entering, but it was an effort of all the Allies with a polite nod to France for not doing too much to hinder the rest of the Allies... Later in university (Germany and Ireland) there were also quite a few documents how the rest of the Allies despised the French soldiers because when they freed them as POWs, they often preferred to not fight for their country again and wanted to just stay behind...

LadyHibiscus -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 2:14:31 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Rule quote: ORIGINAL: LadyHibiscus All you need to do if you want to learn about school history is go to Pearl Harbor and watch the Japanese tourists crawling over the place snapping photos. They are still occupying the territory? [:-] Spreading their monies all over it, anyway. At least before their economy floundered.

vincentML -> RE: School history lessons and propaganda (8/17/2012 2:19:08 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: OsideGirl quote: ORIGINAL: Aswad quote: ORIGINAL: OsideGirl We were taught that the French would be speaking German now, if it weren't for the US and UK. It is important to bear in mind that so would the US and UK, if not for the USSR and France. Worth taking a moment to picture the Führer on Fox. IWYW, — Aswad. I didn't say it was right, I said it's what we were taught. I think for most of us we reach a certain age and realize that our governments don't always tell the citizens the absolute truth. It sounds so conspiratorial when you pin faulty history lessons on "our governments." I went to school a long time ago and have learned more since by reading on my own. I agree that the lessons were faulty and slanted. But the government doen't select the history books. Actually, state governments and their divisions have a much greater influence than the Federal Government. So, maybe a mix of textbook selection, cautious publishers who wish to sell books, and teachers who fail to turn to other literature created a distorted orthodoxy. This is a fascinating topic and especially controversial when Biology books are selected. If you are interested you might have a look at Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al. I agree with Aswad that Hitler lead Germany into a suicide mission when they attacked Russia > Operation Barbarossa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_invasion_of_Russia Great topic. [:)]

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