
A lot of what we think we know about WWII is wrong - rmason
http://warisboring.com/articles/a-lot-of-what-we-think-we-know-about-world-war-ii-is-wrong
======
mturmon
This seems like a junk article. World War 2, especially the European theater,
is one of the best studied historical times in existence. Especially since the
Russian archives have come to light. It is really not believable to claim that
we have gotten the story that wrong -- with such weak evidence.

I don't believe carping about the merits of specific machine guns is
substantive, and I think what he said about tanks was incomplete and
misleading, although I don't want to spend the time to demonstrate it.

The article really went off the rails in dismissing the significance of the
Battle of the Atlantic. TFA claims that U boats only sunk 127 ships during
1940, but Wiki claims that 270 ships were sunk during June-October alone. And
it is well known that Churchill himself said that winning the battle of the
Atlantic was critical to Great Britain's survival.

In a later phase in early 1942, after America had entered the war but before
it understood the threat, German subs sunk 609 ships at a loss of only 22
u-boats.
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Happy_Time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Happy_Time))

A recent examples of a book that _has_ changed emphases and perceptions about
WWII is Timothy Snyder's _Bloodlands_ , on the unique savagery of the Eastern
European conflict.

~~~
eru
I found David Edgerton's "Britain's War Machine)
([http://www.amazon.com/Britains-War-Machine-David-
Edgerton/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Britains-War-Machine-David-
Edgerton/dp/0141026103/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=)) quit interesting.

He highlights that the Germans---far from the technical wizards they are often
portrayed as these days---won in the beginning despite inferior material. The
British and their allies always had material and technological superiority.
(Lots of their gadgets just didn't work very well at the beginning.)

------
peteretep
Everything you need to understand about Germany's defeat in two numbers, which
can be surprising ones for Brits and Americans:

German troops killed, missing or POW on the Eastern front: 2.1m

German troops killed, missing or POW _everywhere_ else: 1.2m

The Russians beat the Germans in any meaningful sense of the word.

~~~
_delirium
This used to be a widespread perception in Western Europe, too, but changed
during the cold war. When people in France were asked in May 1945 which
country had contributed most to the defeat of the Germans, the answers were:
57% USSR, 20% USA, 12% UK. But asked again in 1994, the numbers had shifted
to: 49% USA, 25% USSR, 16% UK.

According to: [http://www.les-crises.fr/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/sondage-...](http://www.les-crises.fr/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/sondage-nation-contribue-defaite-nazis.jpg)

~~~
icelancer
This is weird, because it is mostly accepted in American History classes - at
least from my school and a few other public school kids I asked when I saw
this. Everyone I asked at LEAST thought the USSR contributed as much as the
USA in terms of winning the war.

~~~
enraged_camel
My experience has been the exact opposite. Americans by and large see
themselves as the "saviors of Europe" when it comes to World War II. That's
where a lot of the deeply rooted hostility towards Europe (especially France)
comes from: they shouldn't be giving the USA shit about anything, they should
be grateful we saved them from Hitler, etc. etc.

~~~
adventured
Serious question then: what would Europe look like today if the US had stayed
home and not engaged at all in WW2 in Europe or the aftermath? How many more
countries would have fallen to the USSR in Europe? Without US supplies, would
the UK or the USSR have been able to keep fighting? Would WW2 have dragged out
for years longer than it did? And so on.

The US spent a huge amount of money to stand off with the USSR in Europe after
WW2 (which was in its self-interest). In fact it's still dealing with Russia
in Europe to this day, trying to keep them from reclaiming more former Soviet
territory, and carrying the majority of the burden in NATO.

Most Americans I talk to view their country's contribution in WW2 as the push
that tipped the scales in the allies favor once and for all (rather than being
the savior of Europe). Or allow me to paraphrase Churchill - he believed the
war was won, when the US was convinced to fully join the war effort.

Further, what other countries in Europe are we going to claim had a large
contribution to defeating Germany? The list is really, really, really short.
The UK, Russia and the US carried the radical majority of the effort. It's
that simple.

~~~
tdkl
> In fact it's still dealing with Russia in Europe to this day, trying to keep
> them from reclaiming more former Soviet territory, and carrying the majority
> of the burden in NATO.

How many foreign military bases does Russia have in other countries ?

How many foreign military bases does USA have in other countries (NATO or not)
?

Who's the "territory reclaimer" now ?

~~~
Terr_
Since WWII, how many square-kilometers of territory did the US seize from its
neighbors, versus USSR (before it broke up) or Russia (after breakup) from its
neighbors?

Even if you believe the leases on US bases are somehow secret hostile seizures
from their host country (which is unlikely, except for in Cuba)... I'm pretty
sure we're talking _much_ less in terms of "taken" territory and people.

------
jonesb6
I just watched "Back to 1942" which shows a glimpse of WWII from the Chinese
perspective. They had to cope with a famine AND a war, and lost ~20 million
people during the struggle. To put it into perspective Russia lost around ~28
million [1].

In my opinion it was an excellent film that left me again pondering how much
I've really lost in my education by only getting the "Western" version of
history.

Word of warning, the movie has no happy ending. It's also in Chinese with
English subtitles. Available on Netflix.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties)

~~~
yeukhon
Being a Chinese growing up in America, what you said is true and often I feel
the Western civilization didn't appreciate the war in Asia until the Japanese
had attacked Pearl Harbor, and even then I feel people see America as the sole
savior in the pop culture. America's first battle in Africa was a huge
casualty (echoes the stuff in the movie Fury). Of course no one is born out to
succeed, but the truth is thousands died on the path to victory.

Korean and Chinese had been fighting the Japanese long before Germany
declaring war in Europe, way before 1937. For more than a decade, the Chinese
had been fighting alone (well with very unpleasant support from the Western
civilization like getting weapons at a very expensive rate and siding with the
Japanese). Everyone else was still supplying industrial material to Japan,
aiding and helping killing millions in Southern-Asia, because the rest of the
world wanted to stay neutral. If the Chinese didn't hold back the Japanese,
the entire Southern Asia would have fall in the hand of Japan in a few months
(what the Japanese generals had promised their emperor). The British and the
French armies did not stand a chance in their colonines against the Japanese.

Soon May-in, First Lady of Republic China came to the U.S. and begged the U.S.
Congress to help China [1]. I quote: "When Japan thrust total war on China in
1937 military experts of every nation did not give China even a ghost of a
chance. But when Japan failed to bring China cringing to her knees as she
vaunted, the world took solace in this phenomenon by declaring that they had
overestimated Japan’s military might."

It wasn't until late in the war did the Chinese receive air support (and many
kind volunteers from the U.S. Army such as the Flying Tigers group) to help
stabilize the war against Japan in China. But millions, were poured into the
battlefield, untrained, uneducated, with little armor, fought against a
modernized elite army from Japan.

Oh not to mention the shitty Commander Stilwell who caused a huge causality of
the allies in the Southern-Pacific/Burma...don't get me started there. The
British hated him. The Chinese hated him (he seized control of an elite
Chinese army division and lost 60% of them - that division stayed and fought
the Japanese so hard the Japanese had to surrender).

We had lost so many lives in WWII, including tens of thousands of American
(some were recruited from U.S. territories that still don't have voting right
in the Congress!). We can definitely improve history class by not just always
focusing on American's effort. Even the local rebels in Europe helped the
Allies to finish missions. Intelligence that the Chinese had provided to the
Allies regarding the Japanese had helped Allies in attacking Japanese later in
the war.

[1]: [http://china.usc.edu/soong-mei-ling-%E2%80%9Caddresses-
house...](http://china.usc.edu/soong-mei-ling-%E2%80%9Caddresses-house-
respresentatives-and-senate%E2%80%9D-february-18-1943)

\-- edit --

For those who can comprehend Mandarin, you can watch
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30QQtJoJ9Zg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30QQtJoJ9Zg)
(and other episodes).

~~~
east2west
You appear to have a view shaped by the Nationalist propaganda. The Flying
Tigers were mercenaries recruited from US Naval aviation and Marine corps
because the top commanders were more sympathetic to Chinese plight. They were
in China before Pearl Harbor, hence so-called "volunteers." Russian pilots,
also called "volunteers," helped defend Wuhan before Americans got there. The
demise of Chinese Air Force was a direct result of incompetence on Madam Soon,
who for political reason had a hand in procurement and wanted to save money
until the war started. The Chinese pilots were exclusively recruited from the
upper class and generally lacked skills and capabilities to mount effective
campaigns or devise innovative tactics. The Kumingdon so mismanaged the war
efforts that in 1945 Japanese force could still launch successful drive across
China to improve their line of communication, and when American air power
failed to stop Japanese advances, the American Commanding general, general
Chennault wanted to fly in ammunitions to Chinese ground troops, like general
Stilwell earlier advocated, generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (that is right, the
husband of the first lady wasn't the president of China; in fact he lacked
legality, but had legitimacy, for his rule during the entire war) refused
because he couldn't be certain his troops wouldn't turn their guns on him and
replace him with a competent leader. The performance of Chinese force during
WWII was abysmal, which directly contributed to loss of the Outer Mongolia as
the price for Soviets to open a second front against the Japanese. It is not
just that Chinese troops were ill trained, ill equipped, and poorly led; they
were ill clothed, ill fed, had no ammunition; the Chinese soldiers were worth
more to his commander dead then alive because the commander could forge
headcounts and pocket dead soldiers' pay. The entire government and the armed
force were thoroughly corrupted.

I just cannot let you cast aspersion on general Stilwell without challenge. He
did clash repeatedly with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek because he wanted to
fight the Japanese and the generalissimo did not. He wanted to equip and train
Chinese Army, but the generalissimo only wanted to maintain his control over
elite Chinese units because that is how he controlled China. An American once
asked the commander of the best artillery unit, after patiently inspecting
German made 150mm guns, why he didn't move his unit to the front line and
actually fight, he was astounded when the commander replied that he didn't
want to suffer loss and no longer being the best artillery unit in Chinese
Army. The Chinese Expeditionary force to Burma was remote-controlled by
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who insisted that the entire force go through
dangerous mountain range to retreat back into China rather than going to
India. The units that obeyed and went back to Chine suffered such loss that
they had to be reconstituted, while one brave commander took his troops to
India saw his division forming the core of counter offensives later. The same
commander, who was trained in US, would later train the main force defending
Taiwan. Most of loss suffered by the Chinese Expeditionary force was non-
combat causalities.

Madam Soon May-in, as you call her, was greedy, corrupt, clever in PR, and did
more than her part in losing China to the Communists. Her meddling in politics
made it impossible for Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's son to do even minor
reforms to cleanse the government. Corruption was so bad that when a top
commander correctly outed a Communist spy because the spy was above reproach,
the spy correctly fingered another spy (they worked for different branches of
Communists) in the Defense department because he was also clean, Generalissimo
Chiang Kai-shek chastised his top commander for effectively saying no
Nationalists could be clean. I couldn't make this up.

I suggest you carefully read all sides before making your mind. I hate the
Communist with all my heart but the Nationalist lost the mainland because they
were corrupt, incompetent, and organized themselves on a classical Chinese
patronage system, which ironically the Communists are doing their best to
emulate. The corrupt but all powerful bureaucracy has reasserted itself, as it
has done for two thousand years. The choice is suicide now, by attempting
reform, or suicide later, by doing nothing. All the wounds are self-inflicted.
The Chinese Communists are wisely choosing to wait, as the Empress Dowager did
during the last era of Qin dynasty. It is truly a tragedy. The Chinese
revolution, it turned out, wasn't necessary.

------
alejohausner
This is pretty much the premise of "Brute Force" by John Ellis (1). It argues
that Britain, Russia and especially America won the war by sheer industrial
capacity, which vastly exceeded Germany's output. Their logistical advantage
was reflected in their tactics. If I remember correctly, in the battle of El
Alamein, Montgomery had vastly more equipment than Rommel, and won the battle
through massive artillery bombardments and by numerical superiority in tanks.
In the invasion of Normandy huge numbers of shells were fired, using carpet
bombing which overpowered the Germans in the Falaise gap. Germany's "war of
movement", with its aggressive advances, which had been so successful at the
start of the war, sputtered to a halt before sheer quantity of materiel
against both Russians and Americans.

The book also argues that the Allied "brute force" mentality worked against
them at times. Patton used a dynamic war of movement against the Germans
several times, but was often held back by the plodding methodical approach of
his superiors.

1.[http://www.amazon.com/Brute-Force-Allied-Strategy-
Tactics/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Brute-Force-Allied-Strategy-
Tactics/dp/0670807737)

~~~
eru
Britain's War Machine by David Edgerton argues similarly.
([http://www.amazon.com/Britains-War-Machine-David-
Edgerton/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Britains-War-Machine-David-
Edgerton/dp/0141026103/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=))

------
Animats
These are old, well-known issues. WWII machine gun designs reflected WWI
trench warfare experience - fixed gun positions, fire in the general direction
of the enemy. WWII didn't go that way, mostly because everybody had tanks, and
could now operate against machine guns.

The most effective tank of the war was the USSR's T-34. More T-34s were
produced than any other tank, including Shermans. The T-34 had a good gun, a
decent Diesel engine, and an adequate transmission. The Sherman was a lighter
tank, and early Shermans had a rather weak gun and some strange powerplants.
(One version had five V-8 car engines arranged in a circle around one
crankshaft. Chrysler had a good plant for making V-8 car engines, but the
specialized machinery could not make a bigger engine.) The Sherman's big
strength was simply that it was a good driving machine, and tens of thousands
of them were driven from the French coast all the way to Berlin. Patton's "War
as I knew it" talks about this, in the chapter "Touring France with an army".
Many of the heavier German tanks would wear out on a long road trip; within
Germany, tanks were often moved by rail. Basic truth: the tank that makes it
to the battlefield beats the tank that doesn't.

(The overly complex Tiger tank transmission thing is real, but confusing.
Tanks steer with the transmission. The Tiger tank had a steering wheel, which
controlled the relative speed of the two tracks. The Sherman had two foot
clutches which disengaged the left or right track, and turning was more of a
lurch than a smooth turn. The Sherman could not turn in place. There was a
Tiger variant with an electric drive, like a Diesel-electric locomotive, but
that was harder to keep working than the hydraulic/gear system. Modern tanks
steer like the Tiger, but now the technology works.)

The article author's info about the U-boat was is totally bogus. There was a
big worry that Germany would be able to starve out the UK. Liberty ships,
convoys, "jeep" carriers, periscope-spotting radar, and Ultra intercepts
reduced the effectiveness of U-boats. The US Merchant Marine puts the number
of ships lost to U-boats between 2,742 and 2,919.[1] The figures for 1940 are
from 470 to 520, compared to the author's 127.

[1]
[http://www.usmm.org/battleatlantic.html](http://www.usmm.org/battleatlantic.html)

------
ikeboy
Those first few paragraphs give off so many crank vibes.

~~~
nemo
Yeah, this sentence, "Almost every narrative history of the war ever published
almost entirely concentrates on the strategic and tactical levels, but gives
scant regard to the operational," either suggests the author hasn't read much
or is a really poor reader.

------
munin
the history that I got about WWII was that Germany built wunder-weapons that
individually were of far superior quality to anything else, but couldn't be
built at any kind of scale. their tanks were initially technologically
superior, but not much else about their mechanized infantry stuff was. the
bismark was probably better than any individual ship in the british navy (when
they finally found the wreck they determined that british main gun shells
literally bounced off of the armor), but it wasn't better than _all_ of them
and the germans could only build one.

~~~
vacri
The Germans built just fine at scale - remember that it took the resources of
Russia, the British Empire, and half of the US industrial juggernaut to take
them down.

~~~
munin
> America built 74,000 Sherman hulls and engines; Germany built just 1,347
> Tigers.

~~~
nemo
The Tigers were heavy tanks plagued by manufacturing problems. The Sherman was
a medium tank more comparable to the Panzer line - the Germans built around
45,000 of those. The American M6 was comparable to the Tigers, of which few
were built and 0 saw battle.

~~~
Pinckney
Panzer is just the German generic term for tank (or more literally, "armor".)
Everything from the tiny, machine-gun armed Panzer I, to the Panzer VI Tiger.

The standard, 75mm Sherman was roughly equal to the long-barreled Panzer IV
(~6000 built).

------
klipt
> In truth, there were never enough U-boats to more than dent the flow of
> shipping to Britain. In fact, out of 18,772 sailings in 1940, they sank just
> 127 ships, that is, 0.7 percent, and 1.4 percent in the entire war.

I thought this was partly thanks to Turing et al's breaking of Enigma. The
allies had a window into tons of "secret" Nazi communication.

~~~
dboreham
And airborne Radar.

------
peteretep
There's a very interesting article arguing the simplicity of Russian
armaments:

[http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov12/06.html](http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov12/06.html)

~~~
avn2109
Suvorov is worth reading at length - you can learn a lot about Soviet/Russian
strategy, tactics, and military culture from him.

------
SCAQTony
If you look specifically at the Spandeau machine gun mentioned in the article,
Is the US using the same damn process with the F-35 Strike Fighter? A plane
that is over designed, clunky and extravagantly expensive?

From War is Boring: No, the F-35 Can’t Fight at Long Range, Either — Stealth
fighter can’t see, shoot or survive.

[https://medium.com/war-is-boring/no-the-f-35-can-t-fight-
at-...](https://medium.com/war-is-boring/no-the-f-35-can-t-fight-at-long-
range-either-5508913252dd#.igh2f33ob)

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
I don't find the comparison particularly compelling.

The MG 42's issues were more logistical. It was designed for an idealised
situation (e.g. shooting range). Not as the article describes it "total war"
where you have to carry everything you need to the battlefield. That meant
issues like weight, complexity (for field repair), and replacements became a
real headache. Arguably the real issue could have been bad
feedback/communications between lower ranks and engineers/designers (and
something we still see today with field equipment failing e.g. see the M16's
long history, and how long it took for some of the changes).

The F-35 is more "too many chefs in the kitchen." The F-35 likely is over-
engineered, but not because of too little feedback like the MG 42, but too
much. Every major US military arm tacked on their own little requirements here
and there, until the aircraft was so loaded down with toys and gadgets that it
could barely fly. For example, the entire airframe is designed around a lift
fan that the vast majority will never be fitted with.

~~~
hga
_The MG 42 's issues were more logistical. It was designed for an idealised
situation (e.g. shooting range). Not as the article describes it "total war"
where you have to carry everything you need to the battlefield. That meant
issues like weight, complexity (for field repair), and replacements became a
real headache._

But the whole idea of the General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG), which I'll note
_everybody_ adapted after WWII, was to make a lightweight "heavy" machine gun.
No water cooled barrel, no requirement for a heavy tripod, in the light
machine gun use case it was fired from a bipod, and could be put into use
quickly.

Those extra, quick change barrels were a _feature_ , not a bug, such a German
infantry unit was organized around the GPMG, one guy would carry it, others
would carry spare barrels and ammo, their job was in part to keep the machine
gun running and protected from the enemy.

Issues like the high rate of fire were a tactical choice the Germans made,
shared by no others to my memory (I believe the theory is that you would
seldom have a good target for long, so you had to make the best of it while it
existed). E.g. I see in the Wikipedia page that the post-WWII Austrian version
has a much heavier bolt to reduce the rate of fire:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MG_42](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MG_42) And
the Germans are still using it in the adapted for 7.62 NATO MG 3 variant.

Accuracy is also a tradeoff, there are many modes of machine gun fire like
plunging where you want a degree of dispersion.

That said, yeah, feedback from the front is slow, can take a whole war to
result in real changes. These things don't get put to the real test until real
war; e.g. aside from the earliest M16s, none of these issues are a patch on
the string of problems that initially crippled our Mark 14 torpedo used in
WWII:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo)

------
bootload
War is a racket, some lesser acknowledged operation information of WW2:

a) IG Faben and Standard Oil and the supply of TEL (Tetraethyl Lead) to Nazi
Germany. [0],[1]

b) Production of Ford (and GM) engines by German subsidiaries for motorised
transport was directly used against the Allies.

 _" Mel Weiss, an American attorney for Iwanowa, argues that American Ford
received "indirect" profits from forced labor at its Cologne plant because of
the overall increase in the value of German operations during the war. He
notes that Ford was eager to demand compensation from the U.S. government
after the war for "losses" due to bomb damage to its German plants and
therefore should also be responsible for any benefits derived from forced
labor. Similar arguments apply to General Motors, which was paid $32 million
by the U.S. government for damages sustained to its German plants."_

This came out from a law suit (class action) by Elsa Iwanowa in 1999 (IWANOWA
v. FORD MOTOR CO) for being rendered from Belgium to work in Nazi Germany for
a Ford subsidiary in Cologne. [3]

It could be argued, more effective control of TEL to the Nazi war machine
would have resulted in a halt or severe reduction in Nazi air power. And Ford
did sue the US Government post-war for $32M USD for bombing their factories in
Germany during WW2. [4]

Reference:

[0]
[http://web.mit.edu/thistle/www/v13/3/oil.html](http://web.mit.edu/thistle/www/v13/3/oil.html)

[1] [http://soilandhealth.org/wp-
content/uploads/0303critic/03031...](http://soilandhealth.org/wp-
content/uploads/0303critic/030311borkin/030311marriage.htm)

[2],[4] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/national/daily/nov98/na...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/national/daily/nov98/nazicars30.htm)

[3]
[http://www.leagle.com/decision/199949167FSupp2d424_1453/IWAN...](http://www.leagle.com/decision/199949167FSupp2d424_1453/IWANOWA%20v.%20FORD%20MOTOR%20CO).

------
Synaesthesia
I think the most important fallacy about WW2 is that nobody entered the war
for a noble cause. It was all self-serving. It's often held up as a just war.
Now of course I agree Hitler had to be defeated once 1939 came around, but it
was also preventable, like most wars. The extent of appeasement was really an
eye-opener to me. I'm 1937 the US state department still said Hitler was a
"moderate" and should be supported! The background to the Pacific war by Noam
Chomsky also tells of an economic war among empires which led directly to the
Pacific war.

[http://www.chomsky.info/articles/196709--.htm](http://www.chomsky.info/articles/196709--.htm)

The indescribable savagery of the war, particularly near the end is hard to
imagine.

Lastly one of the biggest fallacies concerns Hitler's invasion of the USSR,
and speculation as to whether he could have won. The truth is the Germans were
incredibly fortunate to do as well as they did! In fact the USSR was a world
leader in tank production and tank strategy, before the 1937 purges they had
the best and most innovative tank commanders and the most advance tanks. They
should have crushed the Germans from the beginning!

~~~
frozenport
Nonsense, why did France, UK enter the war? How about Poland?

~~~
Synaesthesia
Well France tried to avoid confrontation and the U.K. was trying to hold on to
its empire and contain the German threat, but also had many business
interstate in Germany. The allies thought they could diplomatically
outmaneuver Hitler.

France and the U.K. then caved to Hitler's demands repeatedly and essentially
sold Czechoslovakia and Poland down the river to Hitler at Munich 1938, and
during the "phoney war". France was then surprised by the swiftness of the
German attack but capitulated very quickly. Her armies were still mostly
intact when France fell.

It must also be remembered that the extent of collaboration in France under
occupation was very great and the French resistance was always very small.

------
boring_pedant
Yes, it is. Captain America is a fictional character, the US didn't 'win' the
war, and yes, all 'winners' engaged in war crimes that were just as heinous
and cruel as the losers.

~~~
Synaesthesia
I agree with you, except that the USA very much _did_ win the war. The problem
with winning wars is that the victor gets the learns that military power
violence is a solution to problems.

------
AC__
After being downvoted for a completely innocuous comment on this thread it is
apparent that people only want to hear 'textbook' history, so I won't bother
adding anything other than to say politics runs roughshod over history all day
long. If humans survive another 70 years, I wonder how the history of the War
OF Terror's 'coalition of the willing' will be written(whitewashed is probably
a more suitable term), tyrants and criminals or liberators?

------
orionblastar
What I was taught in public school is that the Germans used slave labor and
POWs to work in factories to make their weapons, tanks, planes, rockets, etc
and this led to a quality control issue while the USA and Britain had well
paid and well fed people who made better quality weapons, tanks, aircraft,
etc.

The Russians had an advantage because of their AK-47 rifle and a lot of
fighting was done at the Russian front as Hitler tried to take over Russia.
People forgot that Russia did a lot of fighting as well as had better weapons
and stuff as well.

The USA has military superiority because we have better technology and better
trained people. For example our fighter jets are better designed and our
pilots are better trained than their Russian counterparts. Most of the USA's
enemies buy fighters and stuff form Russia, but they end up being no match for
the USA stuff.

~~~
usaphp
Ak-47 was designed in 1949, I think you are missing something, war was over by
that time

~~~
PhasmaFelis
After the war, yes, but design began in 1945 and was completed in 1947, thus
the "-47."

~~~
usaphp
But it was adopted by Soviet army in 1949 officially, at least that's what
Wikipedia says

------
Asbostos
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.

~~~
vacri
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.

~~~
Asbostos
You can't publish holocaust denial material. That means if you find a new
discovery that seems to challenge the legally sanctioned story, you can be
breaking the law by publishing it. I don't think that politicians should
decide what research is "right" and what is "wrong". This is completely
against the American concept of free speech.

Austrian law seems quite clear on holocaust denial being a crime:

§ 3g. He who operates in a manner characterized other than that in § § 3a – 3f
will be punished (revitalising of the NSDAP or identification with), with
imprisonment from one to up to ten years, and in cases of particularly
dangerous suspects or activity, be punished with up to twenty years'
imprisonment.

§ 3h. As an amendment to § 3 g., whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves
or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist
crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media.

[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial#Austria)]

Imagine if he US criminalized downplaying the crimes of the Vietnamese
Communists or any other group the government decided was "bad". This should be
a matter for public discourse, not an imposed official history.

~~~
vacri
The Austrian law you're quoting isn't a law sitting all by itself. It's part
of a law saying "No Nazis, and no bullshitting about what they did"[1]. If you
look at your own quote, you'll see it says "grossly plays down". The scale of
the Holocaust was large - there was a heap of physical evidence, and tens of
thousands of eyewitnesses. And it's not a topic that has had little research -
to characterise the story of the holocaust as springing forth from the mouths
of politicians is grossly misleading.

Denying the holocaust altogether is not research - it's an attempt to _stifle_
research for political gains. It moves the needle from 'what actually
happened' to 'did it happen at all', wasting resources - the same needle-
moving tactics are seen in intelligent-design and anti-climate-change
arguments, stopping productive conversation on a topic to further a political
goal.

Finally, note that these laws limiting freedom of speech around holocaust
denial are particular to that topic and nazism. The 'slippery slope' argument
hasn't taken hold; it's not these laws that are limiting freedom of speech
(hell, even with "the American concept of free speech" you still have Free
Speech Zones, National Security Letters, and copyright that lasts for author's
life + 70 years). The laws don't stop you from doing research into the shitty
things the Allies did. They don't stop you researching Nazism in general or
the Holocaust in particular. They only stop you playing politics from
pretending that something does't exist when it has tens of thousands of eye-
witnesses, troves of physical evidence, and heavy existing research on the
topic.

Europe has a problem with violent nationalism; cutting off this particular
avenue helps alleviate that, and doesn't do harm in return. These laws make
Nazism (and it's trappings) less able to be used politically, something Europe
is serious about - see Merkel's recent chiding of Netanyahu for him claiming
that it was Palestinians who started the holocaust. How often do you see a
head of government declare "Those atrocities, they're on us, not anyone else"?

[1][https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nachkriegsjustiz.at%2Fservice%2Fgesetze%2Fgs_vg_3_1947.php&edit-
text=&act=url) (does not have section 3h, added in '92)

~~~
Asbostos
Many countries have problems with violent political extremism of different
sorts. When they outlaw free speech for supporters of those ideas, we call
them violators of human rights. When China locks up dissidents because they
spread anti-government messages, we say it's bad. But Germany and Austria do
the same.

Would you really be happy if the US outlawed climate change denial and
intelligent design? It's one thing to not like them but a massive step to
imprison people for talking about them.

~~~
vacri
If intelligent design itself was responsible for drawing a demographic from
all across a continent and destroying an estimated 6 million of them in an
attempt to exterminate them completely, and was associated with a larger
movement that was ultimately responsible for the deaths of 50 million people,
then yes, I wouldn't have a problem with outlawing it to prevent a resurgence.

> _But Germany and Austria do the same._

Yeah, one each according to that WP link. Irving was imprisoned for all of 13
months in Austria. Compare to the recent HN article on Rikers Island in New
York where 400 people have been imprisoned _for more than two years without
being charged_ , and suddenly the _extremly low_ conviction numbers of these
"political dissidents" comes into focus.

Also, classing holocaust denial as 'anti-government messages' is a pretty
gross mischaracterisation.

~~~
Asbostos
Seperatist muslims in Xinjang, anti-government rebels in Egypt or Nazi
sympathisers in countryside Germany. They're all people sharing ideas that can
lead them to violence. It's not reasonable to pick one of them and class it as
"truly worth suppressing their speech" while accusing governments which
suppress the others of violating human rights.

