Historical "facts" and popular representations of histrical figures that are wrong

[Knight1172]

Also, the tactics his enemies were using were such a joke that it his hard to tell if the Mongols genius or the stupidness of their enemies won them battles more often. European Knights tactics began and ended at "charge with valor and make them dead," while the Mongols were able to stay out of their reach while pelting their enemies with arrows from horse back.

This is another slight niggle of mine, but that 'charge' tactic isn't stupid, and it didn't end there. Primarily because knights on horseback RULED European battlefields utterly. I mean, most of their infantry was peasant levies, so they'd be untrained and ill-equipped. Even if they weren't, anything but dedicated spearmen were annihilated by heavy cavalry; because it's terrifying. A Knight on a horse with a lance is utterly terrifying. He is a trained, bloodthirsty, big, brutal man in armour who is riding a trained, angry horse to kill you. Either way, though, these men could withdraw, charge, flank and think, as they did as early as Hastings. They weren't idiots, by any means, and they used the best weapon they had. In a straight fight, a European Knight would annihilate a Mongol Horseman.

But, y'know tactics. If you're in a 'straight fight', you're doing it wrong.

The Mongols simply possessed a tactic which was an ideal counter to it, slotting in alongside Pikewalls in it's efficiency for defeating heavy cavalry. Alongside this, while European Knights weren't idiots, they weren't organised - a 'Conroi' system did eventually develop, but it was mostly just 'follow the boss'. The Mongols, however, used a basic system of organisation called 'Tumans' which allowed them to respond quickly and outmanoeuvre their opponents. They were professionals. They didn't fight to, primarily, win wealth and glory, like the Europeans. They fought to win. So they used every dirty trick in the book, which is why they basically kicked so much arse.

 

[Chunga the Great]

...
"Japan tried to negotiate a peace that would have allowed them to keep pretty much all of the land they had conquered before the outbreak of the war....

Second time you claim that. Could you please provide a source?

They were willing to surrender, but not on terms that the Allies would have deemed acceptable.

So all you do is change it to "The bombs were necessary to get Japan to surrender with "acceptable" conditions"? And you think that is much different???

(I should clarify that when I said "AFTER tens, if not hundreds, of thousands had died from either the bombs themselves or the starvation." I was referring to conventional bombs, NOT the atomic bombs. My mistake for being vague.)

No, I understood that, it wasn't vague at all.

http://www.history.army.mil/books/AMH-V2/AMH%20V2/chapter6.htm
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/hiroshima_hoax_japans_wllingne.html
http://nuclearfiles.org/menu/library/correspondence/togo-sato/corr_togo-sato.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Attempts_to_deal_with_the_Soviet_Union (Plenty of sources cited, you can follow them if you wish. I felt it was better to post this than to post all the individual citations within the text.)

First of all, I NEVER said that the bombs were necessary to get Japan to surrender. Stop acting like I did.

At the time of the sending of those telegrams, Japan still controlled Manchuria Southeast Asia, and Taiwan. Peace would have still left them with conquered territory and it was obvious to everyone in the Japanese Government that they were going to lose the war. However, it is clearly stated in those telegrams that they were NOT willing to accept unconditional surrender. The fact that the Allies rejected the clause stating that the Emperor would be kept in power, but kept him in power after the war anyway, does definitely undermine the credibility of the Allies attempts to get Japan to give up, but it does not mean that they were only trying to put on a show for the Russians. There were very tangible reasons behind the atomic bombings, and although they were a horrible thing, they were the quickest and least-deadly way to finally get Japan to surrender unconditionally. I do believe that showing the U.S.S.R the power of the atomic bomb WAS a part of the decision to drop the bombs, but it was most certainly not the primary reason.

 

[Spinozaad]

You make an extremely good point. History is never perfect, and that is part of the reason why I get annoyed when people say with such certainty that their version of history is correct. In a way you have to absorb history with some degree of faith, because unless you fought on that battlefield or were there for a historic speech a leader gave then you can never know with absolute certainty the truth of the matter. History is nothing more than human memory passed down from person to person, and the truth can be forgotten given enough time for it to decay.

However just because history is filled with bias, subjectivity, and mistakes, doesn't mean that the pursuit of history is meaningless. 100% accurate history would be nice but a representation of the truth is better than no truth at all, that is why we seek out history because we are in pursuit of the truth and how that historical truth can serve to set us free in the modern world. Recording history serves the purpose of allowing us to learn from previous generations' mistakes and triumphs, that gives us some foundation to build the future upon.

I agree with you, although my line of reasoning is slightly different.

History is very useful. It contextualizes the present. Everything we do, everything we are is history. Know the past, and you know yourself. Not because there are lessons to be learned in history, but because representations of the past can spring surprises on ourselves. For example, history does not "teaches" us that war is horrific, but representations of the First, Second and Cold War makes us realise that (total) war is something to be prevented at all costs. The past surprises us, forcing us to reconsider our own frame of reference.

Without history, we are nothing. History is all we are.

-EDIT-

A good example of my point would be: "don't fight a war in Russia during the winter". That's a myth. You can fight a war in Russia/against Russians and win. It's not a (historical) law of any kind (a handful of occurences is hardly enough to underpin a law, afterall), but as a myth it was profoundly useful for the Red Army during the Second World War.

 

[bandman232]

America is responsible for winning World War II/America had nothing to do with winning World War II.

That's right, those are both false. Britain was holding out against Germany and Italy, this is true. Russia dedicated a lot of manpower, and the failed invasion of Russia weakened Germany, also true.

However, Britain didn't have the resources to fight against Japan. Meanwhile, Russia lost a lot of manpower in that failed invasion, so they would have had problems with an attack on Japan as well.

On top of that, without the atomic bombs that the U.S. developed, the back-up invasion plan would have resulted in many more deaths on both sides.

So it's not true that America is the only reason the Allies won World War II, but they were a large help.

The was I see it, we were too busy with the Japanese.

 

[oktalist]

Everything in the film "Braveheart". That is all.

Skip to 3:00​

 

[Warforger]

That Germany was a supreme modernized force in WWII. They weren't, to begin with only a small portion of their army I think around 20% was mechanized, another smaller portion was on horseback and the rest were all on foot. This was in comparison to Britain and America, where 100% of their forces were mechanized. Also that their tech was up to date, it wasn't. The average soldiers rifle was from WWI, the majority of tanks were outdated. The thing though was they utilizing their modernized portion of the military so well that the outdated portion was just meat,the up to date forces all formed the tip of the spear so that they outmaneuvered the enemy so that the outdated Germans could rush in as the actual stick of the spear. Another factor was the genuine morale of the German army, at the peak of Desertion in WWII the German armies desertion rate was still lower than the Allied desertion rate.

So it was rather amazing the Germans got as far as they did. Perhaps the Allie used their history writing abilities to make the Germans look alot stronger than they actually were in order to make themselves look better.

Haha, someone who agrees with me about the Revolution. People don't seem to realize that one of the "intolerable acts" was paying for the French Indian war, which prior to, the American colonists weren't paying much in the way of taxes, and another one was basically saying that Quebec was a safe place for Catholics.

Most of the people I've been hearing saying this don't seem to know what they're talking about. Taxes were much higher during the American Republic than under Britain, but there wasn't any movement to go back to Britain. It's because Americans genuinely believed in the doctrine of "No taxation without representation" and a government more responsive to their interests. This is what makes America unique, the politics are not so simple in comparison to Europe. People don't care about economic equality just freedom in general, people care more about principle than practical goals. For example in the US Blue states put alot more money into the Federal Government than most Red States do, yet they get alot less back. For every dollar California pays to the Federal governemnt they get 75 cents back, whereas say Mississippi they get alot more money from the Federal government because they're poorer. Yet California tends to vote more liberal and in support of such Social Programs like Welfare while Mississippi votes in opposition those programs. Thus you see the states which benefit the most from those programs are in the most opposition while those which lose more are in support of them. This would make a Marxist and even a couple Founding Fathers go insane. Thus it isn't as simple as "They didn't want to pay taxes" it's that they genuinely did not like being treated as 2nd class citizens and not have any representation in Parliament.

America is responsible for winning World War II/America had nothing to do with winning World War II.

That's right, those are both false. Britain was holding out against Germany and Italy, this is true. Russia dedicated a lot of manpower, and the failed invasion of Russia weakened Germany, also true.

However, Britain didn't have the resources to fight against Japan. Meanwhile, Russia lost a lot of manpower in that failed invasion, so they would have had problems with an attack on Japan as well.

On top of that, without the atomic bombs that the U.S. developed, the back-up invasion plan would have resulted in many more deaths on both sides.

So it's not true that America is the only reason the Allies won World War II, but they were a large help.

Don't forget that without the Lend-Lease act, Britain and Russia may not have had enough weapons to fight the Germans (not that the Germans had many weapons to begin with).

 

[Sam17]

Churchill didn't shit rainbows and was a righteous force for good, rather he was actually a bit of an arsehole, especially right at the end of WW2.

 

[Syntax Error]

The movie 300 is a thorn in my side. As someone who had looked into the battle of Thermopylae, it got a little bit frustrating with the poor representation of the phalanx, giving the persians elephants, gunpowder, that massive guy, the last stand only containing 300 Spartans (when in reality, there was around two thousand people in the last stand), no mention of Admiral Themistocles, the reasoning for Spartans not sending the full force and the representation of Spartan training as being solely about strength, when in fact they were trained to win at all costs (the right of passage was to murder a slave without being caught, requiring stealth over brute force).

Annoyingly, there are people I know who believe that film was accurate.

One could make the argument that the film was an account by that one guy who had his eye gouged out. Being a bard of sorts, it's his obligation to stylize the battle a bit (making Spartans Loincloth-clad 6-pack wielding Bronze Gods while dehumanizing the Persian beastmen) in order to rally support and the troops and other city-states into action.

 

[Xiroh86]

1) Japan bombed Pearl Harbor without cause.

In all actuality, the U.S. pretty much declared war on Japan by cutting of the oil they were supplying to the Japanese.

2) Those of Jewish faith were the largest portion of those put in German concentration camps.

There were actually more Christians placed in the camps. Now the percentage of the whole Jewish community interned was higher, but only due to the fact the there were way more Christians the Jews. (Disclaimer: I do not mean to offend those of Jewish decent/faith. I feel for all those who suffered and died in those horrible places.)

3) The U.S. in a Christian country.

This is pure BULLSHIT! All of the U.S. founding fathers, did not want a religion associated with the country they were founding.

 

[CMDDarkblade]

1) Japan bombed Pearl Harbor without cause.
In all actuality, the U.S. pretty much declared war on Japan by cutting of the oil they were supplying to the Japanese.

Only if you count economic sanctions by the United States because Japan had been engaging in a brutal invasion of China for about 4 years with acts such as "The Rape of Nanking" as acts of war then yes.

America, along with other nations such as the U.K and the Dutch East Indies, placed economic sanctions because they didn't like the fact that Japan was using the oil and steel bought from them to fuel a brutal war machine.

Attacking another country because they won't supply the resources for you to conduct a horrible war is a pretty low blow in my opinion.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

I love how at least 1/4 things here are actually, historically incorrect. I did not read all this massive thread, but here are a couple of corrections:

Lincoln was a racist. He believed that the whites were innately superior to blacks. However, he was adamantly against the practice of slavery, because he still thought that blacks were human.

The American civil war cannot be blamed on one reason or one person, but Franklin Pierce comes close. His drunken, pro-slavery stance did more to start the outbreak of the civil war than any other single person.

Actually, America played a major role in WWII, and it saying that it was Primarily a conflict of the USSR and Nazi Germany is laughable. Did you know that the richest commercial real estate in one of the world's biggest cities -Shanghai- is called Roosevelt Square? Because to the people of Shanghai, FDR is still a hero.

Also stuff that was not mentioned:

Joan of Arc was not burned at the stake as a witch. She was burned for the horrid crime of wearing men's clothing on the battlefield and while in prison. She elected to wear men's clothes, with the tunic tightly laced to the pants to prevent herself from being raped. Later, the lie would spead in Britain that she was a witch, but it was not until Pope Innocent VIII, about 50 years after Joan's death, that witches were even widely thought to exist in Europe.

The theory of Nuclear Fission dates back to the 11th century, when n Arabic philosopher in Syria stated that if one could break the smallest particle of matter, it would release enough energy to destroy the city of Baghdad.

 

[MrPeanut]

The theory of Nuclear Fission dates back to the 11th century, when n Arabic philosopher in Syria stated that if one could break the smallest particle of matter, it would release enough energy to destroy the city of Baghdad.

I'm not fully sure about this, but wasn't it actually thought that to break the smallest particle of matter would require enormous amounts of energy?

 

[BroJing]

This traps carbon and improves the blade strength (also gives a very cool 'wavy' pattern through the blade.

Isn't it Damaskus Steel, which wasn't probably produced in Europe?

Damascus steel is one of those terms that gets tossed around alot without alot of agreement on what it was or how it was made. The examples we do have (Iranian weapons etc.) do have a swirling pattern but it is a constant one throughout the metal. Pattern welding produces more of a wave i.e if you look at it it seems to go from one direction to the other as a result of the twists in the bars.

 

[BroJing]

This traps carbon and improves the blade strength (also gives a very cool 'wavy' pattern through the blade.

Isn't it Damaskus Steel, which wasn't probably produced in Europe?

I think I read about this, and Damascus steel was entirely dependent on the iron ore gathered from a specific mine in India, which had a specific set of impurities that gave the steel the wavy pattern.

Not sure on the specifics but yeah, this.

 

[BroJing]

That depends entirely on what Celts you're talking about, exactly when you're talking about and how broadly you apply it. "Celts" is quite a broad term and refers to a lot of people spread out over a very large area.

Fair enough, lets say between 300 BC and AD43 in Northwest Europe and the Iberian Peninsula.

 

[tofulove]

mongol tactics work great in the steps and arid lands of the middle east, they worked horrible in the forested areas of Europe, why they never got past eastern Europe.

This may have been addressed already but this is actually something of misnomer. The "failed" expansion of the Mongol Empire into Europe actually was more directly related to severe infighting taking place in the the leadership of the Khanate which culminated in a competition for the throne of the Empire following the death of the Second Great Khan (Ogedei Khan, 3rd son and heir of Genghis). Ogedei's nephew, Batu Khan, was given overall command of the campaign in Europe and his sub-khanate the "Golden Horde" readily overcame all resistance moving through Eastern Europe until hitting central Europe by the winter of 1241. This campaign only ended because Ogedei Khan died that Winter, suddenly leaving an enormous power vacuum in Korakorum. Batu and all the top miilitary commanders in the field abandoned the campaign to get to the capital to try to grab power for themselves since most were direct decadents of Genghis Khan and as "princes of the blood" eligible to become the next Great Khan.

The European campaign was merely never relaunched following the power struggle. Each of the commanders went on to try to consolidate power over the course of the next decade and Western armies of the Mongol armies began moving back eastwards

Heck - even Encyclopedia Britannica cites: [http://books.google.com/books?id=ZKIxAQAAIAAJ&dq=Employed+against+the+Mongol+invaders+of+Europe,+knightly+warfare+failed+even+more+disastrously+for+the+Poles+at+Legnica+and+the+Hungarians+at+Mohi+in+1241.+Feudal+Europe+was+saved+from+sharing+the+fate+of+China+and+Muscovy+not+by+its&q=china+muscovy&hl=en]

Feudal Europe was saved from sharing the fate of China and Muscovy not by its tactical prowess but by the unexpected death of the Mongol's supreme ruler, Ogedei, and the subsequent eastward retreat of his armies.

seems like you know more about the subject than i do.

 

[Dandark]

Im no historian but from what I can tell the Mongols were not an endless horde as they were made out to be. They were actually outnumbered most of the time and were as successful in battle as they were due to their Tactics, strategy, better troops etc

 

[Lovely Mixture]

2) Those of Jewish faith were the largest portion of those put in German concentration camps.

There were actually more Christians placed in the camps. Now the percentage of the whole Jewish community interned was higher, but only due to the fact the there were way more Christians the Jews. (Disclaimer: I do not mean to offend those of Jewish decent/faith. I feel for all those who suffered and died in those horrible places.)

People DO often neglect to mention the others who were sent to the Camps, homosexuals, midgets, cripples, etc.

 

[Azuaron]

Genghis Khan wasn't a mindless Barbarian who raped and pillaged his way across Asia.

He was VERY happy to let you think that, however, since it made you and your city that much more likely to surrender without a fight. The Mongols were actually using some of the best tactics devised by man up to that time, much better than the European knights they would go on to face, which tactics were, "charge straight in for honor and hope for the best."

Funny thing about Genghis Khan... Y chromosome research in Central Asia places 8% of everyone as direct descendents of Khan or his male relatives. He may not have been mindless, but he (and his family) did enjoy rape.

The movie 300 is a thorn in my side. As someone who had looked into the battle of Thermopylae, it got a little bit frustrating with the poor representation of the phalanx, giving the persians elephants, gunpowder, that massive guy, the last stand only containing 300 Spartans (when in reality, there was around two thousand people in the last stand), no mention of Admiral Themistocles, the reasoning for Spartans not sending the full force and the representation of Spartan training as being solely about strength, when in fact they were trained to win at all costs (the right of passage was to murder a slave without being caught, requiring stealth over brute force).

Annoyingly, there are people I know who believe that film was accurate.

300 gets a free pass with me for being ridiculously stylised. Though anyone thinks that it accurately reflects history is an idiot.

Unreliable narrator (one-eye who's telling the story the whole time). It doesn't even pretend to be anything other than propaganda to get the Spartans/Greeks riled up before the big fight.

Christopher Columbus did not discover North America. He rediscovered it several hundred years after the Vikings.

My historical incorrectness pet peeve: the Vikings didn't "discover" a thing. The Native Americans (who were originally East Asians) had already populated the whole hemisphere.

 

[Yoshemo]

That modern psychology was founded by Sigmund Freud or that his theories are still relevant to this day. He didn't and they're not. Freud's lasting contribution to modern psychology is popularizing it and some of his counseling methods.

Pretty much. The most important thing he did was he decided to try talking to "crazy" (crazy including women with opinions) people instead of just locking them up until they died