4 ms·

>Those who rule do not have the time to write about it. History written by the losers... because those who rule cannot write about it? I think this article is

>Those who rule do not have the time to write about it. History written by the losers... because those who rule cannot write about it? I think this article is interesting, but the underlying premise of the article really bothers me. I can think of several glaring examples of manipulation of history that we are guilty of in America today, despite how we feel about ourselves being "free" and generally too good for that. Here are some glaring examples off the top of my head: My observations have been that most people in America believe Japan just attacked Pearl Harbor for no good reason. This story is told in the hollywood movie Pearl Harbor. In the movie, there were just kids playing, good people BBQ'ing, and beach volleyball and then these evil bastards just attacked for no reason. They don't know who Perry was or what we did to Japan before this happened. I have also heard people say, time and time again, that they believe the atomic bomb "saved lives," so the argument in my high school textbook goes, "more people died in the fire bombings than the atomic bombings." This is perhaps the most outrageous manipulation of history. They don't know American generals were begging to not use the bomb, or to at least not use on a civilian target. They have no idea of the history, of Japan's confusion, of our unwillingness to compromise despite they were saying they would surrender. President Dwight Eisenhower said: "the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." Another quote from a US General: "The war would have been over in two weeks. . . . The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all." However, conveniently most Americans now don't believe the atomic bombs were crimes against humanity, nor that the fire bombings of Tokyo were, either! The US General who oversaw the fire bombings of Tokyo himself said they were a war crime. I think most Americans know that Germany committed horrible mass murder against races of people, but not that their economy was destroyed by through financial schemes (even Keynes, mainstream macroecon's hero, told of this). It takes very strong character to be able to stand up and say that you made a mistake, and make good on it and make sure it doesn't happen again. I think one of the best ways this will never happen is just erase those mistakes from history, and declaring history written by the losers would be a good way to argue for that.

marcoperaza 10y ago
The Japanese were so ready to surrender that they waited for the SECOND atomic bomb. /s You are somewhat right, in that there was internal turmoil in the Japanese regime that may have led to a surrender without the nuclear attacks. But the United States did not know that. The behavior of Japanese forces and command during the rest of the war gave us every reason to believe that they were going to fight a fanatical battle to the death. You have to judge people by the information they had at the time that they made the decision.
- flukus 10y ago
  The Japanese surrendered because they lost Manchuria, not from the nuclear bombs.
  - wallace_f 10y ago
    This is true. Hirohito started looking for a way out that would allow him to at least make a deal to not be ousted as emperor of Japan, but he ideally wanted to broker deal with Russia.
- wallace_f 10y ago
  >The Japanese were so ready to surrender that they waited for the SECOND atomic bomb. /s This is an expression of ignorance on your part, and you're slapping all those innocent victims in the face with your own opinion of what you think happened. The Japanese already offered conditions of surrender, and we didn't accept it. Give me an example of another Nation State that has ever surrendered under the terms we imposed on Japan. Germany, Italy, no other country had this imposed on them. Given our history of deplorable treatment towards the Japanese, what would you do? Everyone knew the Japanese were ready to surrender. It was a political decision: >General George C. Marshall quietly defended the decision, but for the most part he is on record as repeatedly saying that it was not a military decision, but rather a political one. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-reason-america-used-nuclear-weapons-against-japan-it-was-not-to-end-the-war-or-save-lives/5308192 http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-reason-america-used-nu... >The Japanese were so ready to surrender that they waited for the SECOND atomic bomb. /s This is an especially god damn arrogant comment. Information does not travel as quickly as it does today: the bombings happened 2 1/2 days apart, please consider what you would do in their shoes before you pass judgment. What would you think if someone told you something that the modern world thought impossible? Read here: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-reason-america-used-nuclear-weapons-against-japan-it-was-not-to-end-the-war-or-save-lives/5308192 http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-reason-america-used-nu... Also, Google the Mokusatsu Incident. Even if you were right about anything, that would not do anything to explain why murdering millions of innocent civilians by fire bombing and nuclear bombing urban civilian population centers was a good idea.
dudul 10y ago
And you're not even talking about the bombing on civilians in France and Germany. A despicable strategy to try to get Germans to revolt against their own government. Or the hundreds of rapes that were reported in Normandy after the D-day. Agree with your post. WWII is a text-book example of History re-written by the winner. Most people today thinks the US enter the war to put an end to the holocaust, while at that time, nobody knew this was going on.
- rat87 10y ago
  The leaders and many civilians on the ground knew what was going on. The US didn't fight WW2 to end the Holocaust but they did fight because they saw Nazi Germany as evil and didn't want it as the super strong ruler of continental Europe.
xenadu02 10y ago
> They don't know who Perry was or what we did to Japan before this happened. This was taught in history when I was a boy; regardless Japan was a western ally up to and including WW1. It was Japan's aggressive expansionism that led to conflict with the USA (The greater east Asia co-prosperity sphere, an ironic name if ever there was one). The direct action leading to war was the US oil embargo against Japan. At the time the US was the primary oil producer so cutting off supply essentially guaranteed the Japanese war machine would be unable to continue conquest. The underlying premise of the strike was not to defeat the USA; Japanese leaders knew that was impossible. The goal was to consolidate their position before the USA could respond then sue for peace. > I have also heard people say, time and time again, that they believe the atomic bomb "saved lives," ... They don't know American generals were begging to not use the bomb, or to at least not use on a civilian target. That was some of the scientists involved in the project, not the military. > They have no idea of the history, of Japan's confusion, of our unwillingness to compromise despite they were saying they would surrender. When the Emperor broke the stalemate in favor of surrender he recorded his famous address to the Japanese people to be broadcast later. A faction of nationalist soldiers broke into the Royal Household and attempted to seize the recording to prevent it from being broadcast. When that failed they attempted to seize the radio station before the coup was put down. I would be very careful about arm-chair general-ing 80 years after the fact. As the recent election as proven: sometimes events take strange and unexpected turns. No one knows what would have happened absent the bombs. Maybe the Emperor votes the other way. Maybe a lot more of the military joins the coup. Or maybe Japan surrenders regardless. No one has any clue, not even the people involved. > I think most Americans know that Germany committed horrible mass murder against races of people, but not that their economy was destroyed by through financial schemes (even Keynes, mainstream macroecon's hero, told of this). This was also addressed as part of history class here in the USA. In fact we discussed it as a class and came to the conclusion that you only had two options: kill everyone or remove some of the leadership help your enemy rebuild. Trying to punish Germany with crippling reparations was known to be a bad idea at the time, but was pursued because leaders in the UK and France couldn't face up to their own part in causing the war and wanted to be able to say they got <i>something</i> for all the dead. The same attitude nearly derailed West Germany after WW2. Some idiots in the US Treasury department came over and started tearing down factories with an aim toward converting Germany into an "agrarian society". Smarter people relatively quickly realized how stupid that was and rolled out the Marshall plan instead. > It takes very strong character to be able to stand up and say that you made a mistake, and make good on it and make sure it doesn't happen again. I think one of the best ways this will never happen is just erase those mistakes from history, and declaring history written by the losers would be a good way to argue for that. If you want to talk about something in US history that is actually hand-waved away talk about post Civil War reconstruction. The Confederate leaders should have been hanged. The war was about slavery, period. The Articles of Secession explicitly call out that the confederate states are seceding because of slavery... so why does the myth of "state's rights" persist? Because we never punished the leaders and they white-washed history. In fact you could say that one element of Germany launching WW2 was the same thing: Ludendorff spent his time claiming Germany wasn't really defeated, they were all stabbed in the back and it was all the new democratically-elected government's fault. Emperor Wilhelm ceded power to Reichstag right before the shit hit the fan. It was nonsense - they were in an unwinnable position and knew it. Ludendorff tried to play the Europeans by appealing to US President Woodrow Wilson. He knew the US was on the rise and controlled the purse strings and thought he could brow-beat Wilson into accepting a more favorable peace. When Wilson told him to get stuffed he knew he was fucked. So if anything there are two cases where letting the losers write a history has proven to have disastrous consequences. That also sets the stage for the Allies attitude in WW2: There was zero chance for the Axis powers to set any terms. The Allies intended to make absolutely certain that no one could ever claim the Axis weren't really defeated, or they were stabbed in the back, or other such nonsense.
bryanrasmussen 10y ago
Your examples are all examples of history being written by the winners, which is the normal description of who writes history and which this article is a nice bit of contrarian argument against. Probably it's more like history is written to support the view of the winners ( a party, social group, or culture), by the losers (individuals) within that view. Or maybe it's a statistical spread with a certain percentage of history written by winners and others by losers. Or maybe it is written by both winners and losers, and the writings of the ultimate winners are those that come down to us.
rat87 10y ago
There is introspection and there is revisionism. > My observations have been that most people in America believe Japan just attacked Pearl Harbor for no good reason. This story is told in the hollywood movie Pearl Harbor. In the movie, there were just kids playing, good people BBQ'ing, and beach volleyball and then these evil bastards just attacked for no reason. They don't know who Perry was or what we did to Japan before this happened. Admiral Perry engaged in a bit of light imperialism. Japan was luckily able to understand the threat facing it from the west and resisted heavy imperialism by modernizing. Unfortunately it modeled itself after some of the worst of Western imperialism and decided to go conquer territory. Just because the west was hypocritical doesn't make Japan good or right. Also more importantly Pearl Harbor wasn't revenge, it was a strategic preemptive strike hoping to keep US out of the war while Japan engaged in bloody imperialism over european/american imperial possessions. It failed. The whole total war thing (mass bombing) was ugly and arguably a war crime but nukes weren't worse then other bombs. And it's a myth that Japan was willing to surrender at best they were considering negotiating for surrender under conditions (including not demilitarizing, keeping substantial colonies, self punishment of war criminals in addition to keeping the emperor). Even after 2 nukes some argue it was the addition of the soviet invasion of manchuria that got them to surrender, barely. > I think most Americans know that Germany committed horrible mass murder against races of people, but not that their economy was destroyed by through financial schemes (even Keynes, mainstream macroecon's hero, told of this). https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4hneeq/was_the_versaille_treaty_effective_and_realistic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4hneeq/was_t... I understand the treaty conditions that were imposed were harsh but the weren't just for punishment, they were intended to help prevent another war. Many people including American President Woodrow Wilson thought the conditions were too harsh. Others thought they were too soft. Either way history showed that the treaty failed to prevent another war. The conditions weren't harsher then Germany imposed on France in the French-Prussian war or on the soviet union in WW1. And a good deal of blame for the economy lies on the German government that purposefully tanked the economy trying to get out of the treaty. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/39wikd/to_what_extent_is_the_treaty_of_versailles_cause/cs76wdm/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/39wikd/to_wh... > The only way the Treaty of Versailles actually contributed to the downfall of the Weimar Republic is because the Germans used it as a scapegoat, not because it actually was particularly punitive. > The "Deutsches Reich" (which was the real name of the Weimar Republic) was particularly incensed by three key factors: firstly, the so-called "stab in the back," where it seemed that a nearly triumphant Germany utterly collapsed in a matter of months, ostensibly by speculators (particularly Jews), the idea of German responsibility for the war, which (despite being true) was heavily resented by the average German: and lastly, the rise of Poland out of former German territories. Never mind that the population of those territories was primarily Polish, that the Germans had gone out of their way to antagonize the Poles (in the case of Silesia and Posen), and that the Germans had resurrected the Polish state in the first place (as part of Brest-Litvosk). > These factors, combined with the arms limitations, meant that a large section of the population, primarily former soldiers and nobility, became extremely reactionary. This was not helped by attempted communist uprisings that were put down brutally by both German troops and paramilitary forces known as Freikorps. Incidentally, the forced disarmament of Germany was a massive boon to the government budget, so any excuse that Germany could not afford the reparations payments (which had already been diluted to a third of the face amount by the Entente powers prior to the signing) is ludicrous. > These factors led to the German government attempting to sabotage their own economy to renegotiate the reparations. During the period known as Weimar hyperinflation, rather than do something sane like raise taxes or cut spending, the German government chose to print marks and use the marks to buy gold for reparations, thus rapidly inflating the currency and destroying the economy. This coincided with a refusal to properly pay the reparations, prompting French and Belgian troops to move into the industrial Ruhr region to force Germany to satisfy payment. But in response, Germany declared a general strike that further crippled the German economy but in return made the Franco-Belgian occupation unprofitable (and also started another communist uprising). In effect, Germany decided to be the petulant little child that whines that he's hungry and throws his food on the floor because he wants ice cream. > This did cause the Entente to further renegotiate Germany's reparations, in what became known at the Dawes Plan. And the reactionaries were still upset about it, considering the deal to be treason. Germany still did not consistently make its reparation payments, albeit with slightly more regularity.

marcoperaza 10y ago

The Japanese were so ready to surrender that they waited for the SECOND atomic bomb. /s You are somewhat right, in that there was internal turmoil in the Japanese regime that may have led to a surrender without the nuclear attacks. But the United States did not know that. The behavior of Japanese forces and command during the rest of the war gave us every reason to believe that they were going to fight a fanatical battle to the death. You have to judge people by the information they had at the time that they made the decision.

flukus 10y ago
The Japanese surrendered because they lost Manchuria, not from the nuclear bombs.
- wallace_f 10y ago
  This is true. Hirohito started looking for a way out that would allow him to at least make a deal to not be ousted as emperor of Japan, but he ideally wanted to broker deal with Russia.
wallace_f 10y ago
>The Japanese were so ready to surrender that they waited for the SECOND atomic bomb. /s This is an expression of ignorance on your part, and you're slapping all those innocent victims in the face with your own opinion of what you think happened. The Japanese already offered conditions of surrender, and we didn't accept it. Give me an example of another Nation State that has ever surrendered under the terms we imposed on Japan. Germany, Italy, no other country had this imposed on them. Given our history of deplorable treatment towards the Japanese, what would you do? Everyone knew the Japanese were ready to surrender. It was a political decision: >General George C. Marshall quietly defended the decision, but for the most part he is on record as repeatedly saying that it was not a military decision, but rather a political one. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-reason-america-used-nuclear-weapons-against-japan-it-was-not-to-end-the-war-or-save-lives/5308192 http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-reason-america-used-nu... >The Japanese were so ready to surrender that they waited for the SECOND atomic bomb. /s This is an especially god damn arrogant comment. Information does not travel as quickly as it does today: the bombings happened 2 1/2 days apart, please consider what you would do in their shoes before you pass judgment. What would you think if someone told you something that the modern world thought impossible? Read here: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-reason-america-used-nuclear-weapons-against-japan-it-was-not-to-end-the-war-or-save-lives/5308192 http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-reason-america-used-nu... Also, Google the Mokusatsu Incident. Even if you were right about anything, that would not do anything to explain why murdering millions of innocent civilians by fire bombing and nuclear bombing urban civilian population centers was a good idea.

dudul 10y ago

And you're not even talking about the bombing on civilians in France and Germany. A despicable strategy to try to get Germans to revolt against their own government. Or the hundreds of rapes that were reported in Normandy after the D-day. Agree with your post. WWII is a text-book example of History re-written by the winner. Most people today thinks the US enter the war to put an end to the holocaust, while at that time, nobody knew this was going on.

rat87 10y ago
The leaders and many civilians on the ground knew what was going on. The US didn't fight WW2 to end the Holocaust but they did fight because they saw Nazi Germany as evil and didn't want it as the super strong ruler of continental Europe.

xenadu02 10y ago

> They don't know who Perry was or what we did to Japan before this happened. This was taught in history when I was a boy; regardless Japan was a western ally up to and including WW1. It was Japan's aggressive expansionism that led to conflict with the USA (The greater east Asia co-prosperity sphere, an ironic name if ever there was one). The direct action leading to war was the US oil embargo against Japan. At the time the US was the primary oil producer so cutting off supply essentially guaranteed the Japanese war machine would be unable to continue conquest. The underlying premise of the strike was not to defeat the USA; Japanese leaders knew that was impossible. The goal was to consolidate their position before the USA could respond then sue for peace. > I have also heard people say, time and time again, that they believe the atomic bomb "saved lives," ... They don't know American generals were begging to not use the bomb, or to at least not use on a civilian target. That was some of the scientists involved in the project, not the military. > They have no idea of the history, of Japan's confusion, of our unwillingness to compromise despite they were saying they would surrender. When the Emperor broke the stalemate in favor of surrender he recorded his famous address to the Japanese people to be broadcast later. A faction of nationalist soldiers broke into the Royal Household and attempted to seize the recording to prevent it from being broadcast. When that failed they attempted to seize the radio station before the coup was put down. I would be very careful about arm-chair general-ing 80 years after the fact. As the recent election as proven: sometimes events take strange and unexpected turns. No one knows what would have happened absent the bombs. Maybe the Emperor votes the other way. Maybe a lot more of the military joins the coup. Or maybe Japan surrenders regardless. No one has any clue, not even the people involved. > I think most Americans know that Germany committed horrible mass murder against races of people, but not that their economy was destroyed by through financial schemes (even Keynes, mainstream macroecon's hero, told of this). This was also addressed as part of history class here in the USA. In fact we discussed it as a class and came to the conclusion that you only had two options: kill everyone or remove some of the leadership help your enemy rebuild. Trying to punish Germany with crippling reparations was known to be a bad idea at the time, but was pursued because leaders in the UK and France couldn't face up to their own part in causing the war and wanted to be able to say they got <i>something</i> for all the dead. The same attitude nearly derailed West Germany after WW2. Some idiots in the US Treasury department came over and started tearing down factories with an aim toward converting Germany into an "agrarian society". Smarter people relatively quickly realized how stupid that was and rolled out the Marshall plan instead. > It takes very strong character to be able to stand up and say that you made a mistake, and make good on it and make sure it doesn't happen again. I think one of the best ways this will never happen is just erase those mistakes from history, and declaring history written by the losers would be a good way to argue for that. If you want to talk about something in US history that is actually hand-waved away talk about post Civil War reconstruction. The Confederate leaders should have been hanged. The war was about slavery, period. The Articles of Secession explicitly call out that the confederate states are seceding because of slavery... so why does the myth of "state's rights" persist? Because we never punished the leaders and they white-washed history. In fact you could say that one element of Germany launching WW2 was the same thing: Ludendorff spent his time claiming Germany wasn't really defeated, they were all stabbed in the back and it was all the new democratically-elected government's fault. Emperor Wilhelm ceded power to Reichstag right before the shit hit the fan. It was nonsense - they were in an unwinnable position and knew it. Ludendorff tried to play the Europeans by appealing to US President Woodrow Wilson. He knew the US was on the rise and controlled the purse strings and thought he could brow-beat Wilson into accepting a more favorable peace. When Wilson told him to get stuffed he knew he was fucked. So if anything there are two cases where letting the losers write a history has proven to have disastrous consequences. That also sets the stage for the Allies attitude in WW2: There was zero chance for the Axis powers to set any terms. The Allies intended to make absolutely certain that no one could ever claim the Axis weren't really defeated, or they were stabbed in the back, or other such nonsense.

bryanrasmussen 10y ago

Your examples are all examples of history being written by the winners, which is the normal description of who writes history and which this article is a nice bit of contrarian argument against. Probably it's more like history is written to support the view of the winners ( a party, social group, or culture), by the losers (individuals) within that view. Or maybe it's a statistical spread with a certain percentage of history written by winners and others by losers. Or maybe it is written by both winners and losers, and the writings of the ultimate winners are those that come down to us.

rat87 10y ago

There is introspection and there is revisionism. > My observations have been that most people in America believe Japan just attacked Pearl Harbor for no good reason. This story is told in the hollywood movie Pearl Harbor. In the movie, there were just kids playing, good people BBQ'ing, and beach volleyball and then these evil bastards just attacked for no reason. They don't know who Perry was or what we did to Japan before this happened. Admiral Perry engaged in a bit of light imperialism. Japan was luckily able to understand the threat facing it from the west and resisted heavy imperialism by modernizing. Unfortunately it modeled itself after some of the worst of Western imperialism and decided to go conquer territory. Just because the west was hypocritical doesn't make Japan good or right. Also more importantly Pearl Harbor wasn't revenge, it was a strategic preemptive strike hoping to keep US out of the war while Japan engaged in bloody imperialism over european/american imperial possessions. It failed. The whole total war thing (mass bombing) was ugly and arguably a war crime but nukes weren't worse then other bombs. And it's a myth that Japan was willing to surrender at best they were considering negotiating for surrender under conditions (including not demilitarizing, keeping substantial colonies, self punishment of war criminals in addition to keeping the emperor). Even after 2 nukes some argue it was the addition of the soviet invasion of manchuria that got them to surrender, barely. > I think most Americans know that Germany committed horrible mass murder against races of people, but not that their economy was destroyed by through financial schemes (even Keynes, mainstream macroecon's hero, told of this). https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4hneeq/was_the_versaille_treaty_effective_and_realistic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4hneeq/was_t... I understand the treaty conditions that were imposed were harsh but the weren't just for punishment, they were intended to help prevent another war. Many people including American President Woodrow Wilson thought the conditions were too harsh. Others thought they were too soft. Either way history showed that the treaty failed to prevent another war. The conditions weren't harsher then Germany imposed on France in the French-Prussian war or on the soviet union in WW1. And a good deal of blame for the economy lies on the German government that purposefully tanked the economy trying to get out of the treaty. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/39wikd/to_what_extent_is_the_treaty_of_versailles_cause/cs76wdm/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/39wikd/to_wh... > The only way the Treaty of Versailles actually contributed to the downfall of the Weimar Republic is because the Germans used it as a scapegoat, not because it actually was particularly punitive. > The "Deutsches Reich" (which was the real name of the Weimar Republic) was particularly incensed by three key factors: firstly, the so-called "stab in the back," where it seemed that a nearly triumphant Germany utterly collapsed in a matter of months, ostensibly by speculators (particularly Jews), the idea of German responsibility for the war, which (despite being true) was heavily resented by the average German: and lastly, the rise of Poland out of former German territories. Never mind that the population of those territories was primarily Polish, that the Germans had gone out of their way to antagonize the Poles (in the case of Silesia and Posen), and that the Germans had resurrected the Polish state in the first place (as part of Brest-Litvosk). > These factors, combined with the arms limitations, meant that a large section of the population, primarily former soldiers and nobility, became extremely reactionary. This was not helped by attempted communist uprisings that were put down brutally by both German troops and paramilitary forces known as Freikorps. Incidentally, the forced disarmament of Germany was a massive boon to the government budget, so any excuse that Germany could not afford the reparations payments (which had already been diluted to a third of the face amount by the Entente powers prior to the signing) is ludicrous. > These factors led to the German government attempting to sabotage their own economy to renegotiate the reparations. During the period known as Weimar hyperinflation, rather than do something sane like raise taxes or cut spending, the German government chose to print marks and use the marks to buy gold for reparations, thus rapidly inflating the currency and destroying the economy. This coincided with a refusal to properly pay the reparations, prompting French and Belgian troops to move into the industrial Ruhr region to force Germany to satisfy payment. But in response, Germany declared a general strike that further crippled the German economy but in return made the Franco-Belgian occupation unprofitable (and also started another communist uprising). In effect, Germany decided to be the petulant little child that whines that he's hungry and throws his food on the floor because he wants ice cream. > This did cause the Entente to further renegotiate Germany's reparations, in what became known at the Dawes Plan. And the reactionaries were still upset about it, considering the deal to be treason. Germany still did not consistently make its reparation payments, albeit with slightly more regularity.