The USSR (at least unarguably under Stalin) were bad, Finland didn't do anything wrong during WWII, they 'allied' Nazi Germany because they were the only ones willing to offer any direct support. (The same Yugoslavia 'allied' Axis nations because the alternative was invasion... which then led to a coup and they were invaded anyway.) The allies really couldn't afford to fight a war with the USSR, although some people in the UK and a few even in the US (who wasn't in directly involved in a war with anyone at a time) did seriously consider formal military aid to Finland. (Logistically it would have been really hard though.)
All that being said, the Nazis were unarguably even worse than Stalin's Soviet Union (They literally fucking made people into fucking soap to name any of the many horrendously awful things they did that'd be completely unbelievable if they hadn't actually happened.) and the enemy of my enemy is my friend, especially when they're the only ones fighting in a land front in Europe against the Axis. (After Greece fell the Allies didn't really have a front in Europe until D-Day, not counting a few incredibly daring raids on ports by British marines.)
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
WW2 had a bunch of horrific shit happen in it
But it was no WW1
And I think that, and a whole bunch of other related factors, are a big reason it gets cast in a more heroic light
And I think that, and a whole bunch of other related factors, are a big reason it gets cast in a more heroic light
It didn't hurt that all of the powers in the war knew enough to frequently rotate troops, avoid meat grinder battles in favor of fast moving engagements, and generally tried not to be complete, murderous assholes like the WWI officer class. They'd learned through hard experience that if they abused the troops to much, there was a real risk of turning their fighting forces into a revolution.
When i say one side in conflict is good, i don't mean they are immaculately perfect champions of justice with no flaws (might as well stop using the term alltogether if i did).
Slaughterhouse Five was definitely my biggest initial eye opener as to the real nature of WW2, god I wish I'd read that earlier than I did
Paul Fussell is another good critic of the war who served. His big observation was the optimistic "Boy's Adventure" view of the war was a product of wartime propaganda that only hardened in the aftermath due to Hollywood and Cold War Propaganda.
He felt this not only did not reflect the attitudes and experiences of G.I.'s in the war but made it a lot harder for veterans to heal and express their stories. For veterans whose experience was suffering, pain, and death, the return to a homefront that thinks they are getting back from this grand uplifting experience simply amplified the feelings of dislocation.
I'm really quite lucky in that I had enough first-hand accounts from my grandfather and one of his best friends about the European and Pacific theaters; Grandpa was a soldier in Europe and Mr. Wells was a marine in the Pacific. By the time I got into high school, I already knew the textbooks were sanitized beyond all reason. Still, I knew enough to regurgitate the information and move along since starting a one-kid protest against rewriting American history in Texas was gonna go nowhere. I still wish I'd been more involved though.
I'd say south Korea and Kuwait are probably pretty happy for US involvement
doesn't excuse a lot of other shit ofc
The Kurds have had good experiences
When you involve yourself in every conflict you can involve yourself It's sorta inevitable that sometimes it works out.
A magician gives you a ring that, when worn, will let you see the world as it truly is.
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
I'd say south Korea and Kuwait are probably pretty happy for US involvement
doesn't excuse a lot of other shit ofc
The Kurds have had good experiences
When you involve yourself in every conflict you can involve yourself It's sorta inevitable that sometimes it works out.
The Kurds are an open question. A lot will depend on what happens when the U.S. withdraws. They may prosper, or they may be torn apart by the many nations who do not want to see an independent Kurdistan.
it's a shame people test out of history courses through AP/IB or what have you
college history courses would be probably be the best kind of education for a lot of people, but lol history is useless lmao baristas
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ZoelI suppose... I'd put it onRegistered Userregular
eh I did both and I liked ap a lot better
Ap was like here you need to know a broad range of information in order to do well on this
college was like excuse me please parrot the talking points I have put on this chalkboard
A magician gives you a ring that, when worn, will let you see the world as it truly is.
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
Ap was like here you need to know a broad range of information in order to do well on this
college was like excuse me please parrot the talking points I have put on this chalkboard
As someone who has taught college-level history in the U.S., you had a uniquely horrible experience. The usual academic courses are more about reading, discussing, and writing papers about history based on multiple viewpoints.
Most academic historians are actually very adamant about not doing the memorize and regurgitate thing. They know that far too many student come into college with their interest in history crushed due to the "Memorize these dates" style of high school history.
Ap was like here you need to know a broad range of information in order to do well on this
college was like excuse me please parrot the talking points I have put on this chalkboard
As someone who has taught college-level history in the U.S., you had a uniquely horrible experience. The usual academic courses are more about reading, discussing, and writing papers about history based on multiple viewpoints.
Most academic historians are actually very adamant about not doing the memorize and regurgitate thing. They know that far too many student come into college with their interest in history crushed due to the "Memorize these dates" style of high school history.
I loved history for the view it gave me of a completely different world than the one i lived in (kinda why i like scifi and fantasy as well), but damn was there too much focus on individual persons (not even necessarily interesting persons) and exact dates of events (very, very dull events).
I like the History of Rome podcast, and I think it's made me think about why the Empire fell, and I think debating that is a good way to actually get you to think about history.
Ap was like here you need to know a broad range of information in order to do well on this
college was like excuse me please parrot the talking points I have put on this chalkboard
As someone who has taught college-level history in the U.S., you had a uniquely horrible experience. The usual academic courses are more about reading, discussing, and writing papers about history based on multiple viewpoints.
Most academic historians are actually very adamant about not doing the memorize and regurgitate thing. They know that far too many student come into college with their interest in history crushed due to the "Memorize these dates" style of high school history.
I loved history for the view it gave me of a completely different world than the one i lived in (kinda why i like scifi and fantasy as well), but damn was there too much focus on individual persons (not even necessarily interesting persons) and exact dates of events (very, very dull events).
The thing that bugs me about the date fetish - which is a 19th century holdover - is that dates pretty much fall into place anyway once you actually understand the events. You may not remember the exact dates, but who the fuck cares if something was on October 3, 1948 if that isn't important to the story?
People are a little different. Old-school history is very Great Man focused, which ignores the social movements and larger technological/social/environmental trends that make history happen in favor of creating heroes and villains, but I think it is important to realize that there are multiple places in history where a different person with different values and priorities could have tipped the avalanche in a different direction.
I like the History of Rome podcast, and I think it's made me think about why the Empire fell, and I think debating that is a good way to actually get you to think about history.
I'm listening to Dan Carlin's Countdown to Armageddon (World War I) right now, and it is great. I knew some about the war, but I have never considered the Great War as the story of a bunch of people who have access to modern technology that they fundamentally do not understand. To Carlin, WWI as a massive laboratory/slaughterhouse where generals figured out what did and didn't work in modern warfare.
I call it the "loose kindling" theory of history. Socioeconomic and Environmental factors setting the stage that the right decisions could up-end everything.
Taking Rome again: The Crisis of the Third Century could have taken down the empire, but the likes of Aurelian and Diocletian were able to stabilize things. Then you have the Gothic War and mass invasions 100 years later and the likes of Valens and Honorious and Valentinian III totally lost control of the situation.
I call it the "loose kindling" theory of history. Socioeconomic and Environmental factors setting the stage that the right decisions could up-end everything.
Taking Rome again: The Crisis of the Third Century could have taken down the empire, but the likes of Aurelian and Diocletian were able to stabilize things. Then you have the Gothic War and mass invasions 100 years later and the likes of Valens and Honorious and Valentinian III totally lost control of the situation.
My favorite from WWI is the lead general of the German Army deciding to put Lenin and his communists on a train to make sure they made it safely from Switzerland to Russia as a gambit to create a third belligerent in the war who would fight the Allies as well as the Germans. Had he not made that play, it is quite probably the moderates win the Russian Revolution and, if not fulfill their goal of creating a democratic society based on the American Constitution, at least not become the Soviet empire.
Ap was like here you need to know a broad range of information in order to do well on this
college was like excuse me please parrot the talking points I have put on this chalkboard
As someone who has taught college-level history in the U.S., you had a uniquely horrible experience. The usual academic courses are more about reading, discussing, and writing papers about history based on multiple viewpoints.
Most academic historians are actually very adamant about not doing the memorize and regurgitate thing. They know that far too many student come into college with their interest in history crushed due to the "Memorize these dates" style of high school history.
I loved history for the view it gave me of a completely different world than the one i lived in (kinda why i like scifi and fantasy as well), but damn was there too much focus on individual persons (not even necessarily interesting persons) and exact dates of events (very, very dull events).
The thing that bugs me about the date fetish - which is a 19th century holdover - is that dates pretty much fall into place anyway once you actually understand the events. You may not remember the exact dates, but who the fuck cares if something was on October 3, 1948 if that isn't important to the story?
People are a little different. Old-school history is very Great Man focused, which ignores the social movements and larger technological/social/environmental trends that make history happen in favor of creating heroes and villains, but I think it is important to realize that there are multiple places in history where a different person with different values and priorities could have tipped the avalanche in a different direction.
Thing is, pretty much every point in history would have gone differently with different person with different values.
Sure the avalanche might have been quite as abrupt, or obvious.
But eventually the history would have been changed beyond recognition (unless you manage to pick some isolated community hat dies out before having any effect on the world, or spawning anyone that does).
Yes, the person involved in the story are important, and so is how they got to be part of the story.
But, well, how important is it to be able to name every american president?
Or swedish king.
Or even the names of the people who were present at signing of some important document?
Sure, if you have the spare memory capacity, go nuts, but i think general outline of events, and how they came to be, should take precedent.
Ap was like here you need to know a broad range of information in order to do well on this
college was like excuse me please parrot the talking points I have put on this chalkboard
As someone who has taught college-level history in the U.S., you had a uniquely horrible experience. The usual academic courses are more about reading, discussing, and writing papers about history based on multiple viewpoints.
Most academic historians are actually very adamant about not doing the memorize and regurgitate thing. They know that far too many student come into college with their interest in history crushed due to the "Memorize these dates" style of high school history.
I loved history for the view it gave me of a completely different world than the one i lived in (kinda why i like scifi and fantasy as well), but damn was there too much focus on individual persons (not even necessarily interesting persons) and exact dates of events (very, very dull events).
The thing that bugs me about the date fetish - which is a 19th century holdover - is that dates pretty much fall into place anyway once you actually understand the events. You may not remember the exact dates, but who the fuck cares if something was on October 3, 1948 if that isn't important to the story?
People are a little different. Old-school history is very Great Man focused, which ignores the social movements and larger technological/social/environmental trends that make history happen in favor of creating heroes and villains, but I think it is important to realize that there are multiple places in history where a different person with different values and priorities could have tipped the avalanche in a different direction.
Thing is, pretty much every point in history would have gone differently with different person with different values.
Sure the avalanche might have been quite as abrupt, or obvious.
But eventually the history would have been changed beyond recognition (unless you manage to pick some isolated community hat dies out before having any effect on the world, or spawning anyone that does).
Yes, the person involved in the story are important, and so is how they got to be part of the story.
But, well, how important is it to be able to name every american president?
Or swedish king.
Or even the names of the people who were present at signing of some important document?
Sure, if you have the spare memory capacity, go nuts, but i think general outline of events, and how they came to be, should take precedent.
We don't really do the "name every figure" thing in America, even the K-12 memorization fests are more focused on dates and events. Historians at the university level tend to focus more on, "Here's what we know (facts), and here is how people interpret them" with an emphasis on slowly getting students to think about things like schools of history, propaganda, and the ways in which temporal societal values shape how we view and write about history.
As for human being, I think there are plenty of genuinely exceptional people in history where, had they not existed, events would have gone about the way you'd expect because normal people would have made the conventional, status quo-approved decisions. It's when the oddballs, geniuses and monsters get involved that big events start to take shape, usually because the very fact that they can get to power is a signal that the world supporting that conventional wisdom has begun to shatter.
Take World War I for example. For most of the war, dull careerists bashed their toy soldiers together until the millions and millions of deaths started to erode society. You don't really need to know who those generals were, but it is pretty important to realize that their devotion to conventionality in a time of change led to the rise of Lenin and eventually Hitler.
I've seen history done with a focus on individuals as a way to represent a larger whole. like yeah random particular person's name doesn't matter, but their personal experience helps frame how people lived during a certain event.
I've also seen it done as a bit of a trivia arc where you won't be tested on it but this guy invented the elevator and you probably never thought about such a mundane invention before and how important it was to the development of modern cities
Ap was like here you need to know a broad range of information in order to do well on this
college was like excuse me please parrot the talking points I have put on this chalkboard
I did AP but the thing is that almost all decent college history classes are out to provide a lot of different viewpoints on subject matter.
Sure there are survey classes that are more about how things occurred as they did, but there are plenty of classes in academic history where there are concepts and ideas being taught and then applied to events in completely separate time periods of places.
Two of the best classes I had were completely different in approach: the first worked out the events of Japanese imperialism and post-war economic boom from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 to the present with a strict focus on people and periods and how people and groups affected gigantic kinds of socioeconomic change; the second course was taking the idea of "capitalism" and looking at it during earlier periods of history and in different places in order to gauge what "capitalism" is and what it means for our present economy. They were taught by the same person, who ended up being my thesis advisor on 16th century coal in England.
The problem I have with high-school history courses is that, even if they are AP or IB, they're usually taught by people who weren't trained in serious historical literature/concepts/disciplines, but rather focused on learning a general set of post-secondary education techniques that ended up parroting whatever kind of propaganda the state wanted in the curriculum (at least in Texas).
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
my high school us history focused very heavily on 2 areas. Depression and New Deal (with the single worst quiz/test ever devised) and Vietnam. Actually, all our hs history made it to vietnam. because our band director/theatre teacher was a veteran. And he had slides. And every year the entire 11th grade class would spend a 2 hour assembly in the theatre, watching those slides. There wasn't much gore or blood that i remember. But an awful lot of us came out of that school with one helluva social conscience.
but we also had a full semester on civics (9th grade), and a full semester of American Government/Psychology (12th grade. although it was voluntary, you took it as a way to look good for any potential universities).
but no, seriously, fuck that New Deal exam. Teacher gave us a list of all 50~ New Deal programs, Acronym only!, and we had to name the program, name what it was for, whether it was still in place in modern times, and if so, what was it renamed to (if applicable). I hate the New Deal.
ZoelI suppose... I'd put it onRegistered Userregular
eh ultimately I found that political science was more engaging and provided more useful job skills, like statistical analysis and stuff, even if I didn't end up using those very much.
Latin American history was basically hi everything is about neoliberalism, and I found that asking questions was generally frowned upon, so I noped outta that one.
The french revolution was okay but they assigned papers at random and I always got stuck with writing papers about stuff that wasn't interesting, like Emile Zola's interpretation of the french revolution, which inevitably becomes your interpretation of an interpretation of an interpretation.
I took US History because I liked it in high school, but it was basically history for people who failed AP history, so it was pretty dumbed down.
History of the atomic bomb was great but it was actually a science class in disguise
Then I discovered political philosophy and I was like okay I can live with this.
A magician gives you a ring that, when worn, will let you see the world as it truly is.
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
miscellaneousinsanitygrass grows, birds fly, sun shines,and brother, i hurt peopleRegistered Userregular
my senior year of high school, we had one AP course that was basically a two-fer, and tested for both US Government and Comparative Government at the end
We got through the first half in like, the spring I think? Then spent a month or two cramming for world government stuff
It was kind of a joke, on the test day once we'd finished the AP US one and they'd passed out the one for Comparative people were barely containing their laughter cos it was all shit we were completely unprepared for
But overall I'm fortunate that my school system and history education was extremely good, I continued taking as many history classes as I could manage in college despite doing an art degree
The USSR and the Reich were two very different beasts, and equally awful in different ways. You could argue the Russian mass killings under Stalin (which likely outnumbered German mass-killings) were 'worse', in that more died, but the method of those killings was haphazard and sporadic (and conducted over a far longer time scale and larger population) compared to the Nazis, and were oriented largely towards political enemies in occupied nations (for instance Russia killed far more adult males, but Nazi Germany killed far more children).
Whereas with the Nazis, you could argue that while they didnt kill quite as many people, had they won the war they would have done way worse, and even in peacetime they wouldve kept killing on a scale that would've eventually eclipsed the worst of Russia's purges. Essentially the Nazi's became increasingly more industrial in their killings, the efficiency and focus on wiping out ethnic and religious groups in addition to political enemies was much more prominent, they were basically "better" at it, for lack of a better term, and given the timescale that Stalin's terror had they would've been far worse.
The Nazi's by 1944 had developed a controlled and bureaucratic apparatus for mass killing that nothing in history has ever matched, nor has been seen since. In terms of its population, proportionally Nazi Germany's capacity for mass murder was unparalleled, and only would have improved given time. In China you had worse wars, worse mass killings, but you also had far larger populations. Whats horrifying about what Nazi germany did isnt just the numbers killed, its the manner of the killings, the "civilised" and "managed" process of it. It was industrial and efficient, that is what has made it "stick out" from other genocides and killings throughout history. Some argue that its also western bias of history books, which plays a part I agree, but I also think it was genuinely a "unique" development, a phenomenon that hadnt really happened before in terms of its proportionate scale and its processes.
Fundamentally in war the most dangerous occupation is, and always had been, civilian. World War 2 was far more horrifying and destructive than World War 1 simply because far more civilians died. Its a kind of awful myth of history that war is dangerous for soldiers. In reality, a soldier is often the safest thing to be on average. Your upkeep, food, pay, and safety are a priority over civilian populations. Of course its all much more complex than that and there is variance and things have changed recently, but it largely holds true.
Its also why I doubly hate the MRA bullshit of "men fight wars and risk their lives so women and children should be grateful!", when in reality, more civilians die from warfare and its indirect consequences (famine and disease). I mean there are also 'more' civilians in the population to die or be killed compared to soldiers so proportionality is involved, but its an awful and interesting perspective that often goes ignored.
GumpyThere is alwaysa greater powerRegistered Userregular
Angela Eagle is putting forward her vision of a new Labour party, a new Britain, a new WHO CARES ITS THE TORY LEADERSHIP RACE SLAMMING IN OVER HER PRESS CONFERENCE THE MEDIA KNOW WHERE THEY'D RATHER BE!
Tories just kinda pooping on Labour at the moment without even meaning too
May is the best choice we have in regards to a Tory PM.
But seriously, burn your hard drives she gives zero fucks about privacy
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GumpyThere is alwaysa greater powerRegistered Userregular
May is the best results for all of us out of the choice we had, and shows that the Tory party is looking forward to fight Labour on a more moderate platform going forward. Looks like they want to try and gobble up areas of the center ground that Corbyn may be seceding.
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All that being said, the Nazis were unarguably even worse than Stalin's Soviet Union (They literally fucking made people into fucking soap to name any of the many horrendously awful things they did that'd be completely unbelievable if they hadn't actually happened.) and the enemy of my enemy is my friend, especially when they're the only ones fighting in a land front in Europe against the Axis. (After Greece fell the Allies didn't really have a front in Europe until D-Day, not counting a few incredibly daring raids on ports by British marines.)
But it was no WW1
And I think that, and a whole bunch of other related factors, are a big reason it gets cast in a more heroic light
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
It didn't hurt that all of the powers in the war knew enough to frequently rotate troops, avoid meat grinder battles in favor of fast moving engagements, and generally tried not to be complete, murderous assholes like the WWI officer class. They'd learned through hard experience that if they abused the troops to much, there was a real risk of turning their fighting forces into a revolution.
doesn't excuse a lot of other shit ofc
Paul Fussell is another good critic of the war who served. His big observation was the optimistic "Boy's Adventure" view of the war was a product of wartime propaganda that only hardened in the aftermath due to Hollywood and Cold War Propaganda.
He felt this not only did not reflect the attitudes and experiences of G.I.'s in the war but made it a lot harder for veterans to heal and express their stories. For veterans whose experience was suffering, pain, and death, the return to a homefront that thinks they are getting back from this grand uplifting experience simply amplified the feelings of dislocation.
Possibly a cold war era relic in the 80s to 90s Finland.
Hopefully it has gotten better since then (i don't see how it could have gotten worse).
The Kurds have had good experiences
When you involve yourself in every conflict you can involve yourself It's sorta inevitable that sometimes it works out.
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
The Kurds are an open question. A lot will depend on what happens when the U.S. withdraws. They may prosper, or they may be torn apart by the many nations who do not want to see an independent Kurdistan.
college history courses would be probably be the best kind of education for a lot of people, but lol history is useless lmao baristas
Ap was like here you need to know a broad range of information in order to do well on this
college was like excuse me please parrot the talking points I have put on this chalkboard
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
As someone who has taught college-level history in the U.S., you had a uniquely horrible experience. The usual academic courses are more about reading, discussing, and writing papers about history based on multiple viewpoints.
Most academic historians are actually very adamant about not doing the memorize and regurgitate thing. They know that far too many student come into college with their interest in history crushed due to the "Memorize these dates" style of high school history.
The thing that bugs me about the date fetish - which is a 19th century holdover - is that dates pretty much fall into place anyway once you actually understand the events. You may not remember the exact dates, but who the fuck cares if something was on October 3, 1948 if that isn't important to the story?
People are a little different. Old-school history is very Great Man focused, which ignores the social movements and larger technological/social/environmental trends that make history happen in favor of creating heroes and villains, but I think it is important to realize that there are multiple places in history where a different person with different values and priorities could have tipped the avalanche in a different direction.
I'm listening to Dan Carlin's Countdown to Armageddon (World War I) right now, and it is great. I knew some about the war, but I have never considered the Great War as the story of a bunch of people who have access to modern technology that they fundamentally do not understand. To Carlin, WWI as a massive laboratory/slaughterhouse where generals figured out what did and didn't work in modern warfare.
Taking Rome again: The Crisis of the Third Century could have taken down the empire, but the likes of Aurelian and Diocletian were able to stabilize things. Then you have the Gothic War and mass invasions 100 years later and the likes of Valens and Honorious and Valentinian III totally lost control of the situation.
My favorite from WWI is the lead general of the German Army deciding to put Lenin and his communists on a train to make sure they made it safely from Switzerland to Russia as a gambit to create a third belligerent in the war who would fight the Allies as well as the Germans. Had he not made that play, it is quite probably the moderates win the Russian Revolution and, if not fulfill their goal of creating a democratic society based on the American Constitution, at least not become the Soviet empire.
Thing is, pretty much every point in history would have gone differently with different person with different values.
Sure the avalanche might have been quite as abrupt, or obvious.
But eventually the history would have been changed beyond recognition (unless you manage to pick some isolated community hat dies out before having any effect on the world, or spawning anyone that does).
Yes, the person involved in the story are important, and so is how they got to be part of the story.
But, well, how important is it to be able to name every american president?
Or swedish king.
Or even the names of the people who were present at signing of some important document?
Sure, if you have the spare memory capacity, go nuts, but i think general outline of events, and how they came to be, should take precedent.
We don't really do the "name every figure" thing in America, even the K-12 memorization fests are more focused on dates and events. Historians at the university level tend to focus more on, "Here's what we know (facts), and here is how people interpret them" with an emphasis on slowly getting students to think about things like schools of history, propaganda, and the ways in which temporal societal values shape how we view and write about history.
As for human being, I think there are plenty of genuinely exceptional people in history where, had they not existed, events would have gone about the way you'd expect because normal people would have made the conventional, status quo-approved decisions. It's when the oddballs, geniuses and monsters get involved that big events start to take shape, usually because the very fact that they can get to power is a signal that the world supporting that conventional wisdom has begun to shatter.
Take World War I for example. For most of the war, dull careerists bashed their toy soldiers together until the millions and millions of deaths started to erode society. You don't really need to know who those generals were, but it is pretty important to realize that their devotion to conventionality in a time of change led to the rise of Lenin and eventually Hitler.
I've also seen it done as a bit of a trivia arc where you won't be tested on it but this guy invented the elevator and you probably never thought about such a mundane invention before and how important it was to the development of modern cities
I did AP but the thing is that almost all decent college history classes are out to provide a lot of different viewpoints on subject matter.
Sure there are survey classes that are more about how things occurred as they did, but there are plenty of classes in academic history where there are concepts and ideas being taught and then applied to events in completely separate time periods of places.
Two of the best classes I had were completely different in approach: the first worked out the events of Japanese imperialism and post-war economic boom from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 to the present with a strict focus on people and periods and how people and groups affected gigantic kinds of socioeconomic change; the second course was taking the idea of "capitalism" and looking at it during earlier periods of history and in different places in order to gauge what "capitalism" is and what it means for our present economy. They were taught by the same person, who ended up being my thesis advisor on 16th century coal in England.
The problem I have with high-school history courses is that, even if they are AP or IB, they're usually taught by people who weren't trained in serious historical literature/concepts/disciplines, but rather focused on learning a general set of post-secondary education techniques that ended up parroting whatever kind of propaganda the state wanted in the curriculum (at least in Texas).
but we also had a full semester on civics (9th grade), and a full semester of American Government/Psychology (12th grade. although it was voluntary, you took it as a way to look good for any potential universities).
but no, seriously, fuck that New Deal exam. Teacher gave us a list of all 50~ New Deal programs, Acronym only!, and we had to name the program, name what it was for, whether it was still in place in modern times, and if so, what was it renamed to (if applicable). I hate the New Deal.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
Latin American history was basically hi everything is about neoliberalism, and I found that asking questions was generally frowned upon, so I noped outta that one.
The french revolution was okay but they assigned papers at random and I always got stuck with writing papers about stuff that wasn't interesting, like Emile Zola's interpretation of the french revolution, which inevitably becomes your interpretation of an interpretation of an interpretation.
I took US History because I liked it in high school, but it was basically history for people who failed AP history, so it was pretty dumbed down.
History of the atomic bomb was great but it was actually a science class in disguise
Then I discovered political philosophy and I was like okay I can live with this.
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
we ended up taking it 3 times.
nobody passed.
wonderful teacher, hideous test.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
We got through the first half in like, the spring I think? Then spent a month or two cramming for world government stuff
It was kind of a joke, on the test day once we'd finished the AP US one and they'd passed out the one for Comparative people were barely containing their laughter cos it was all shit we were completely unprepared for
But overall I'm fortunate that my school system and history education was extremely good, I continued taking as many history classes as I could manage in college despite doing an art degree
Whereas with the Nazis, you could argue that while they didnt kill quite as many people, had they won the war they would have done way worse, and even in peacetime they wouldve kept killing on a scale that would've eventually eclipsed the worst of Russia's purges. Essentially the Nazi's became increasingly more industrial in their killings, the efficiency and focus on wiping out ethnic and religious groups in addition to political enemies was much more prominent, they were basically "better" at it, for lack of a better term, and given the timescale that Stalin's terror had they would've been far worse.
The Nazi's by 1944 had developed a controlled and bureaucratic apparatus for mass killing that nothing in history has ever matched, nor has been seen since. In terms of its population, proportionally Nazi Germany's capacity for mass murder was unparalleled, and only would have improved given time. In China you had worse wars, worse mass killings, but you also had far larger populations. Whats horrifying about what Nazi germany did isnt just the numbers killed, its the manner of the killings, the "civilised" and "managed" process of it. It was industrial and efficient, that is what has made it "stick out" from other genocides and killings throughout history. Some argue that its also western bias of history books, which plays a part I agree, but I also think it was genuinely a "unique" development, a phenomenon that hadnt really happened before in terms of its proportionate scale and its processes.
Fundamentally in war the most dangerous occupation is, and always had been, civilian. World War 2 was far more horrifying and destructive than World War 1 simply because far more civilians died. Its a kind of awful myth of history that war is dangerous for soldiers. In reality, a soldier is often the safest thing to be on average. Your upkeep, food, pay, and safety are a priority over civilian populations. Of course its all much more complex than that and there is variance and things have changed recently, but it largely holds true.
Its also why I doubly hate the MRA bullshit of "men fight wars and risk their lives so women and children should be grateful!", when in reality, more civilians die from warfare and its indirect consequences (famine and disease). I mean there are also 'more' civilians in the population to die or be killed compared to soldiers so proportionality is involved, but its an awful and interesting perspective that often goes ignored.
But ...
Tories just kinda pooping on Labour at the moment without even meaning too
But seriously, burn your hard drives she gives zero fucks about privacy
Got punted out by a brand new candidate who pretty much resigned as soon as he was locked out the competition.