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All histories of wars that are still in living memory or close are going to be grossly distorted because people want to hear stories that pander to their own em

All histories of wars that are still in living memory or close are going to be grossly distorted because people want to hear stories that pander to their own emotions. As a prime example, historians are often legally (and certainly professionally) forbidden from freely studying some aspects of WWII in case the come to conclusions that are still politically sensitive. I'm talking here about the Nazi concentration camps. This is a research no-go-zone where only the officially sanctioned results are allowed to be published and people can go to prison in many European countries for making false or unpopular claims about 80 year old history. Then there's the opposite problem in Japan where the official and popular history paints them as the good guys and hides from their killing 10's of millions of Chinese. Americans fall for this too and feel bad about the nuclear bombing of Japan, despite the enormous good it did to the whole of south-east Asia.

pekk 11y ago
Holocaust denialism does not constitute "research."
- baddox 11y ago
  Denying any claim, however small, about the Holocaust is not "Holocaust denial" in the sense you're using the term.
  - pekk 11y ago
    Neither is it true that "any claim, however small, about the Holocaust" is "a research no-go-zone where only the officially sanctioned results are allowed to be published and people can go to prison in many European countries for making false or unpopular claims"
    - baddox 11y ago
      I did not claim and do not believe that those two claims are equivalent.
    - Asbostos 11y ago
      The German law says so. Perhaps they don't enforce it much but it's still the law: " Whosoever publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or downplays an act committed under the rule of National Socialism of the kind indicated in section 6 (1) of the Code of International Criminal Law, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace shall be liable to imprisonment not exceeding five years or a fine." [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#... ]
greatergoodguy 11y ago
I find irony in how you criticize Japan for painting themselves as the good guys. And in the very next sentence, you paint Americans as the good guys. You are proof that people want to hear stories that pander to their emotions.
- hugh4 11y ago
  Unless, of course, there actually were good guys and bad guys in that war. As far as real-world wars go, within the constraints of the real world where nobody is ever purely good or purely evil, World War 2 is about as close as we're ever going to get to a good guys vs bad guys war.
- Asbostos 11y ago
  Sure, my idea of good guys and bad guys might be wrong. And so might the idea that Nazis were bad guys and allies were good guys. This is the same concept that we choose the history we want to believe, myself included. You could even make the argument that the allies should not have resisted the Nazi invasions of Europe/Russia because the cost in lives ended up greater than what might have happened if they'd easily taken control. Though we can't know that "what if" scenario, we can at least try not to fool ourselves too much by assuming it would be unimaginable worse forever.
vacri 11y ago
I know that Nazi imagery has been banned in Germany, but I've not heard of professional historians being legally bound to avoid research into the topic of concentration camps, on threat of imprisonment no less. Do you have a source for this? Edit: Have hit comment limit, so replying to AC__ here I've been through all the sections in your link, and a total of 3 people have seen prison time. The only one that could be called a professional historian would be James Keegstra, who wasn't convicted on holocaust denial per se, but due to violating hate-speech laws by teaching his high school history class: "During class, he would describe Jews as a people of profound evil who had "created the Holocaust to gain sympathy.". Keegstra was convicted in Canada. Ernst Zündel was convicted in Canada and Germany under hate speech laws. Having had a look at his website, it's about politicking his views, not history. But he's been in and out of court for decades on hate speech violations. David Irving could theoretically be called a professional historian, if it wasn't proven that he used known fabricated documents as source - during the libel case he brought against someone else. Irving was convicted in Austria. None of the above are professional or dispassionate historians taking the topic seriously. All of them are politicking.
- littletimmy 11y ago
  It is more that such a historian would be immediately shunned and made into a "hack". That puts a limit on how far you can go, regardless of whether or not there's a "legal bound".
- AC__ 11y ago
  There have been a number of individuals charged around the world, as well as various academics blacklisted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial#History_and_development_of_Holocaust_denial_after_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial#History_and_d...
  - avn2109 11y ago
    I dislike that this is getting downvoted. While the claim is certainly debatable, the comment itself is civil, grammatical, links to a non-crank source which is indisputably relevant to the claim, and appears to be made in good faith.
baddox 11y ago
> Americans fall for this too and feel bad about the nuclear bombing of Japan, despite the enormous good it did to the whole of south-east Asia. That's definitely a claim I would need to see substantial evidence for. The traditional defenses of the nuclear bombings that I have heard could not be more unconvincing.
- latch 11y ago
  I found your last sentence hard to parse. Are you saying that all of the justifications you've heard for the bombing were absolutely unconvincing? I have strong feelings both ways, but I find it hard to deny that it probably saved a lot of allied lives. It doesn't mean that it was the "right" choice, but I don't see how it can be possibly dismissed (put yourself in Truman's shoes).
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    > I find it hard to deny that it probably saved a lot of allied lives. That's true if the Japanese would have fought a land invasion tooth and nail for every inch of ground, civilians charging at GIs with kitchen knives, etc, etc. That's what the Western propaganda of the time predicted; East Asians in general and the Japanese in particular were broadly understood as hive-mind insects yearning to sacrifice their lives and families for the glory of the nation. The reality is considerably more doubtful, especially now that we know about the government factions that were desperately eager to surrender even before the A-bombs fell. And even if we discount that, there's no excuses made for why the nuclear show of force had to be targeted against civilians, nor why the second bomb was dropped only three days later.
    - latch 11y ago
      Humm...we might have to agree to disagree. For me, there's a fuzzy line where enough time has passed that actions need to be judged based on what was known, or should have been known, at the time. The question for me isn't: Did it actually save lives. The question for me is: Did Truman and Churchill really believe they were saving millions of lives (and, was that a reasonable belief). Which really comes down to: do you believe Truman and Churchill? My parent said (if I understood correctly) that all the justifications he or she has heard "could not be more unconvincing." That you and I are now talking about how many lives did it really save?, does not change the fact that saving American ( / allied ) lives, is not a wholly unjustifiable (or incomprehensible) thing for a US President to consider. Maybe I was just put off my his or her hyperbole.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
bsder 11y ago
> Americans fall for this too and feel bad about the nuclear bombing of Japan, despite the enormous good it did to the whole of south-east Asia. We may feel bad with access to the information we have now, but, in interviews with people from that time, it's not so clear cut. First, very few people really understood what a nuclear bomb was or could do. We're used to instantaneous communication. I seriously doubt we even had pictures in the US of Hiroshima before the Nagasaki bomb dropped. Second, the US suffered terrible casualties in trying to retake Japanese islands before the bombs. Any effort to avoid that was welcome. Third, people in the US were VERY tired of war. Anything which could bring that to a close sooner would be welcomed. Fourth, the average person in both the US and Japan had no idea what the leaders were talking about or knew. There are lots of What-If's? for not dropping the atomic bombs. However, there are just as many the other direction. One could just as easily point out that the hardline faction in Japan might have attempted a coup without the example of the devastation that the bombs caused and that it was the bombs that allowed the emperor to surrender.
- vacri 11y ago
  Another angle is that in hindsight, it was probably a good thing that nuclear weapons were first used in their infancy. Fast forward a decade or two to the depths of the cold war - a lack of knowledge about the actual effects of bombs on cities might have made a larger exchange between the superpowers more likely.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  > One could just as easily point out that the hardline faction in Japan might have attempted a coup without the example of the devastation that the bombs caused and that it was the bombs that allowed the emperor to surrender. The hardline faction attempted a coup even with the example of the bombs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Attempted_military_coup_d.27.C3.A9tat_.28August_12.E2.80.9315.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Attempted_m...

pekk 11y ago

Holocaust denialism does not constitute "research."

baddox 11y ago
Denying any claim, however small, about the Holocaust is not "Holocaust denial" in the sense you're using the term.
- pekk 11y ago
  Neither is it true that "any claim, however small, about the Holocaust" is "a research no-go-zone where only the officially sanctioned results are allowed to be published and people can go to prison in many European countries for making false or unpopular claims"
  - baddox 11y ago
    I did not claim and do not believe that those two claims are equivalent.
  - Asbostos 11y ago
    The German law says so. Perhaps they don't enforce it much but it's still the law: " Whosoever publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or downplays an act committed under the rule of National Socialism of the kind indicated in section 6 (1) of the Code of International Criminal Law, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace shall be liable to imprisonment not exceeding five years or a fine." [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#... ]

greatergoodguy 11y ago

I find irony in how you criticize Japan for painting themselves as the good guys. And in the very next sentence, you paint Americans as the good guys. You are proof that people want to hear stories that pander to their emotions.

hugh4 11y ago
Unless, of course, there actually were good guys and bad guys in that war. As far as real-world wars go, within the constraints of the real world where nobody is ever purely good or purely evil, World War 2 is about as close as we're ever going to get to a good guys vs bad guys war.
Asbostos 11y ago
Sure, my idea of good guys and bad guys might be wrong. And so might the idea that Nazis were bad guys and allies were good guys. This is the same concept that we choose the history we want to believe, myself included. You could even make the argument that the allies should not have resisted the Nazi invasions of Europe/Russia because the cost in lives ended up greater than what might have happened if they'd easily taken control. Though we can't know that "what if" scenario, we can at least try not to fool ourselves too much by assuming it would be unimaginable worse forever.

vacri 11y ago

I know that Nazi imagery has been banned in Germany, but I've not heard of professional historians being legally bound to avoid research into the topic of concentration camps, on threat of imprisonment no less. Do you have a source for this? Edit: Have hit comment limit, so replying to AC__ here I've been through all the sections in your link, and a total of 3 people have seen prison time. The only one that could be called a professional historian would be James Keegstra, who wasn't convicted on holocaust denial per se, but due to violating hate-speech laws by teaching his high school history class: "During class, he would describe Jews as a people of profound evil who had "created the Holocaust to gain sympathy.". Keegstra was convicted in Canada. Ernst Zündel was convicted in Canada and Germany under hate speech laws. Having had a look at his website, it's about politicking his views, not history. But he's been in and out of court for decades on hate speech violations. David Irving could theoretically be called a professional historian, if it wasn't proven that he used known fabricated documents as source - during the libel case he brought against someone else. Irving was convicted in Austria. None of the above are professional or dispassionate historians taking the topic seriously. All of them are politicking.

littletimmy 11y ago
It is more that such a historian would be immediately shunned and made into a "hack". That puts a limit on how far you can go, regardless of whether or not there's a "legal bound".
AC__ 11y ago
There have been a number of individuals charged around the world, as well as various academics blacklisted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial#History_and_development_of_Holocaust_denial_after_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial#History_and_d...
- avn2109 11y ago
  I dislike that this is getting downvoted. While the claim is certainly debatable, the comment itself is civil, grammatical, links to a non-crank source which is indisputably relevant to the claim, and appears to be made in good faith.

baddox 11y ago

> Americans fall for this too and feel bad about the nuclear bombing of Japan, despite the enormous good it did to the whole of south-east Asia. That's definitely a claim I would need to see substantial evidence for. The traditional defenses of the nuclear bombings that I have heard could not be more unconvincing.

latch 11y ago
I found your last sentence hard to parse. Are you saying that all of the justifications you've heard for the bombing were absolutely unconvincing? I have strong feelings both ways, but I find it hard to deny that it probably saved a lot of allied lives. It doesn't mean that it was the "right" choice, but I don't see how it can be possibly dismissed (put yourself in Truman's shoes).
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  > I find it hard to deny that it probably saved a lot of allied lives. That's true if the Japanese would have fought a land invasion tooth and nail for every inch of ground, civilians charging at GIs with kitchen knives, etc, etc. That's what the Western propaganda of the time predicted; East Asians in general and the Japanese in particular were broadly understood as hive-mind insects yearning to sacrifice their lives and families for the glory of the nation. The reality is considerably more doubtful, especially now that we know about the government factions that were desperately eager to surrender even before the A-bombs fell. And even if we discount that, there's no excuses made for why the nuclear show of force had to be targeted against civilians, nor why the second bomb was dropped only three days later.
  - latch 11y ago
    Humm...we might have to agree to disagree. For me, there's a fuzzy line where enough time has passed that actions need to be judged based on what was known, or should have been known, at the time. The question for me isn't: Did it actually save lives. The question for me is: Did Truman and Churchill really believe they were saving millions of lives (and, was that a reasonable belief). Which really comes down to: do you believe Truman and Churchill? My parent said (if I understood correctly) that all the justifications he or she has heard "could not be more unconvincing." That you and I are now talking about how many lives did it really save?, does not change the fact that saving American ( / allied ) lives, is not a wholly unjustifiable (or incomprehensible) thing for a US President to consider. Maybe I was just put off my his or her hyperbole.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

bsder 11y ago

> Americans fall for this too and feel bad about the nuclear bombing of Japan, despite the enormous good it did to the whole of south-east Asia. We may feel bad with access to the information we have now, but, in interviews with people from that time, it's not so clear cut. First, very few people really understood what a nuclear bomb was or could do. We're used to instantaneous communication. I seriously doubt we even had pictures in the US of Hiroshima before the Nagasaki bomb dropped. Second, the US suffered terrible casualties in trying to retake Japanese islands before the bombs. Any effort to avoid that was welcome. Third, people in the US were VERY tired of war. Anything which could bring that to a close sooner would be welcomed. Fourth, the average person in both the US and Japan had no idea what the leaders were talking about or knew. There are lots of What-If's? for not dropping the atomic bombs. However, there are just as many the other direction. One could just as easily point out that the hardline faction in Japan might have attempted a coup without the example of the devastation that the bombs caused and that it was the bombs that allowed the emperor to surrender.

vacri 11y ago
Another angle is that in hindsight, it was probably a good thing that nuclear weapons were first used in their infancy. Fast forward a decade or two to the depths of the cold war - a lack of knowledge about the actual effects of bombs on cities might have made a larger exchange between the superpowers more likely.
AnimalMuppet 11y ago
> One could just as easily point out that the hardline faction in Japan might have attempted a coup without the example of the devastation that the bombs caused and that it was the bombs that allowed the emperor to surrender. The hardline faction attempted a coup even with the example of the bombs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Attempted_military_coup_d.27.C3.A9tat_.28August_12.E2.80.9315.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Attempted_m...