US History and actual History.

[Korten12]

I dunno, to they teach you guys about Japanese American Internment?

Not like we're clean of blood either, Canada did the same thing.

They don't teach much about WW2, but they do teach that. But really, I'm not really sure why people bring that up so often...it's among the least of our sins. Us Americans, that is. I'm not really sure how much evil Canadians have done.

Where I did we learned quite a bit of WW2 including the Japanese American Internment and the horrors they had to face. We also did learn about the horrible things we did in Veitnam where we began to kill civies and such because we didn't know who was enemy or not.

Lastly I also did learn that it was mainly because of Russia that Germany fell, not the US.

 

[flarty]

Mmmm. Hmm-mmm. And what evidence exactly are you basing that statement on?

The whole tired cliche "If it wasn't for America you'd be speaking German."

 

[Auron]

One example I heard in another thread was that even before we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, apparently Japan was already gearing up to sign a surrender and then after we dropped the bombs they were almost ready to fully retaliate.

That story's pretty complex, and very few individuals even my non specialized history teachers(It's my major.) there's a translation problem(a certain phrase during the talks had two meanings and was very vague to the translators.) and an infighting within the Japanese government and military with the radicals wanting to take the war on until their last breaths.

Ultimately the message they delivered was that there would be no surrender and they would fight to the death, the bomb was the logical reaction and allowed for a much lower loss of life on both sides, turning the streets of Japan into wake Island 2 was the other option. Inhumane as it was, it was a sound strategic decision given the circumstances.

So, Japan's leadership was willing to surrender but some weren't and did their most to sabotage the effort, those guys won and then even they gave up.


I do believe the most clear example and probably already discussed to death by page three is the war on terror which has some fair reasoning but could have been handled much better. Don't have time to read the entire topic now but I doubt someone actually cleared the nuclear bomb bit.

 

[Edguy]

History will always be biased, I prefer science and math.

 

[flarty]

One example I heard in another thread was that even before we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, apparently Japan was already gearing up to sign a surrender and then after we dropped the bombs they were almost ready to fully retaliate.

That story's pretty complex, and very few individuals even my non specialized history teachers(It's my major.) there's a translation problem(a certain phrase during the talks had two meanings and was very vague to the translators.) and an infighting within the Japanese government and military with the radicals wanting to take the war on until their last breaths.

Ultimately the message they delivered was that there would be no surrender and they would fight to the death, the bomb was the logical reaction and allowed for a much lower loss of life on both sides, turning the streets of Japan into wake Island 2 was the other option. Inhumane as it was, it was a sound strategic decision given the circumstances.

So, Japan's leadership was willing to surrender but some weren't and did their most to sabotage the effort, those guys won and then even they gave up.


I do believe the most clear example and probably already discussed to death by page three is the war on terror which has some fair reasoning but could have been handled much better. Don't have time to read the entire topic now but I doubt someone actually cleared the nuclear bomb bit.

So why was they attempting to get Russia to mediate peace between themselves and the allies in the months before the dropping of the bomb?

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

When it comes to WW2, America came in late but did help tip the balance and make the war end quicker. I think the Brits and Russia keeping the fight going slowly drained Germans resources. If the Brits gave up then the full German war machine would head to Russia, and if Russia was beaten then then America would have to face the might of 3/4 globe against them. An America couldnt have beaten that.

Other history stuff that annoys me are American movies that make out they did everything. Like U-571. In history that was the Brits and they found the 1st Enigma machine. Thing is if there were battles that America won on there own then fine, i dont expect them to add other countries that were not involved.

Also American Independence, the amount of Americans that have said "we kicked you English out" is surprising and untrue. By that time in history America had the help of the French as they were our enemy and thought this would be a great chance to attack us and thus they declared war on us. Then Spain joined in and declared war on us and Denmark helped give American ammunition etc. The best part of this i like is we lost America, America gained independence (which is good - im English, but each country deserves the right to run themselves), this lead to the us kicking the crap out of France near Jamica when they got cocky and tried to still our sugar trade. Then finally the French revolution which lead to lots of French snobs being beheaded. So the peace of 1783 meant that France had major financial problems while the British and America began doing trade.

But, in all honesty. America has never won a war on its own. Even.....maybe the Civil war i guess. They never beat Vietnam or Korea so the idea they think they saved a whole world from the Germans twice is laughable. Its great to be patriotic and proud of your Army and the great work they do. But you have to take into account the allies.

 

[CC17]

One of the things that really irritates me about the "If it wasnt for America you'd all be speaking German" attitude is that Britain was actually very important in the US's counter invasion of Europe. If we'd been conquered, the D-Day landings would have been a lot harder, if not impossible. And also the true defeat of the German army came at the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, which no-one seems to give the Russians credit for.

 

[DonTsetsi]

There is a theory that the the Soviet Union not only finished, but also started WW2. The German communist party supported Hitler, giving him the victory. The plan was for the USSR to "save" Europe and convert it to "socialism". It was only a half victory, because they got half of Europe, in stead of the whole thing. The reason? Germany attacked first, leaving most of the Soviet military technology unusable. For example, they had BT tanks, the fastest at the time, by a large margin, they could only operate on well-built roads, though, such as the German highways. There are a lot of other examples, but what's really fascinating is that both popular history and this theory are plausible, meaning that history is really flexible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controversy

 

[DrOswald]

I am starting to wonder if this should have been in Religion and Politics... Damn hindsight... If possible and if needed to. It can be moved there, if so Mods allow.

I hope this can be kept civil but after reading another thread it got me thinking. How much of the US History (involvement with other nations), is just censored to make the US look better? Now as a US Citizen who did good in my US history class, I didn't feel it was bias.

What I meant was that it never seemed to shy away from all of the bad things we did and how we were straight up wrong in situations and so on.

One example I heard in another thread was that even before we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, apparently Japan was already gearing up to sign a surrender and then after we dropped the bombs they were almost ready to fully retaliate.

Which is much different than I learned. What I learned was that Japan wasn't willing to surrender and a land invasion would have been more costly and ended more lives than dropping the bombs. After the first bomb was dropped, apparently they didn't surrender and the second bomb is what happened.

Now I just don't know which is the truth, I would like to believe what I was taught, at least if I am remembering my class correctly (it was a bit ago...), is correct but I can't be sure.

So can anyone kind of give me some examples of events that are alerted in US history to make certain events in the history book look more pro-US than what happened?

Spoiler

I have read a great deal about the 2 bombings and the circumstances around them. The big problem is that no one was sure of anything back then. We still don't know a great deal about what was going on.

Consider who was making the decision. The men who were running our military in WWII were our foot soldiers in WWI. They had seen and survived 2 world wars. They were not about to risk another in 30 years by leaving our enemies with significant military power.

So, lets talk about the willingness of japan to surrender. This is a half truth. They were willing to surrender, but the conditions they purposed would have left them with significant military strength and the government that began hostilities against us fully intact, which were both conditions that our leaders would never accept unless they had no choice.

Japan was attempting to establish a position of power with which to negotiate a beneficial surrender. They wanted the US to believe that an invasion would be so costly that it would be in our best interest to allow them their conditions, or at least a better surrender than what was offered in the Potsdam declaration (Basically, removal of the current government and complete disarming of the Japanese military.)

Our leaders believed it, but instead of allowing them their conditions we took a third option and used the bomb.

Now, as far as casualty estimates go, it is very difficult to say. If the only two options were use the bomb or traditional invasion then using the bomb most likely saved many lives, most of them Japanese.

Casualty estimates at the time were very difficult to make. For example, let me list some of the battles leading up to what would have been the traditional invasion of Japan:

Location: US estimate: Japan estimate: US actual: Japan Actual: civilian actual
Leyte: 17,000: 78,000: 15584: 49,000: N/A
Luzon: 31,000: 156,000: 37870: 205,535: N/A
Okinawa: 41,000: 81,000: 84525: 105,755+: about 100,000
Iwo Jima: 20,000: 25,000: 26038: 21844: N/A

As you can see, the estimates and the actual vary wildly. The battle of Okinawa alone resulted in more deaths than either bomb and the island was occupied by only 120,000 Japanese troops and had a basically neutral civilian population of only 300,000. Japan proper was guarded by 900,000 soldiers, was much more entrenched, and had a hostile civilian base numbering well over 50 million, with 28 million citizens organized into the Patritoic Citizens Fighting Corps which were expected to basically suicide themselves in an attempt to kill as many Allied soldiers as possible.

The point of contention is basically how many Japanese would have had to be killed before they would surrender, and also how the Japanese civilians would play into the invasion. This is why casualty estimates of the invasion vary so wildly. The numbers given to President Truman by General Marshall were US casualties of 250,000 to 1 million. Japanese military casualties, based on previous trends, would be around 3-4 times the number of US casualties. However, many historians have contested that number giving estimates that range from 100,000 to 2 million US casualties (with a comparative decrease/increase in Japanese casualties.) The last wild card is Japanese civilian casualties, which are basically impossible to estimate but they would have been significant.

TLDR:

1. The Japanese were willing to surrender before the bombs, but only with terms that the Allies would never accept.

2. The Japanese were not considering retaliation after the bombs. I don't know who said that, but it is dead wrong and pretty stupid. They did not have the ability to retaliate even if they had wanted to.

3. Dropping the bombs, when compared to a traditional invasion, almost certainly saved lives. Had the invasion gone poorly the amount dead would have been well over a million.

4. There is not a people in the world that do not retell history in a way that makes them look better.

 

[Sean951]

-snip-

But, in all honesty. America has never won a war on its own. Even.....maybe the Civil war i guess. They never beat Vietnam or Korea so the idea they think they saved a whole world from the Germans twice is laughable. Its great to be patriotic and proud of your Army and the great work they do. But you have to take into account the allies.

While I am the first to admit that the US does a poor job teaching US history, your lack of knowledge on US history is also rather apparent. Mexican American War, where America was expected to get its ass kicked since Mexico is code for "French" at this point and had a fairly impressive military. Instead, the US got the West Coast. Spanish American war, which wasn't really a surprise, but kicked Spain out of Cuba and some Pacific holding, like the Philippines.

In Vietnam, the US and Co. most certainly did "beat" the North in the sense that after the Tet Offensive, the Viet Cong ceased to be a threat and it was 2 years after the US left until the South fell. While the Vietnam War is pretty horrific and we really shouldn't have been there, it is very much misunderstood in the wider culture of both the US and the world.

Korea is more difficult. The US/UN Allies definitely would have won if anyone had actually cared enough to continue the fight, but it was unpopular and we had a President who didn't particularly care for the war. So they signed an Armistice and left and technically, the North and South are still at war. While China certainly pushed them back when they joined, they were running out of forces and were getting pushed back themselves when everyone said "screw this" and left.

There are other wars, but they are either tiny or enough cooperation existed that America definitely shares credit.

 

[Saviordd1]

First off, some people contend that the empire of Japan was willing to surrender, it is by no means accepted fact, in the US or out.

Personally, I feel that the US perception of the war overall is skewed into the Uncle Sam and others show. Russia is neglected fairly often, the European allies show up only to cry for help and be rescued and the rest of the commonwealth is omitted entirely. This is a bug-bear for me, being Australian in that we, along with the Kiwis, Papuans, Indonesians and other islanders, were, for a fair while, the last allied powers actively fighting the Japanese and that gets completely ignored. Even after the yanks showed up, they tended to take the 'glory' assignments and leave the shitty, obscure jobs to the ANZACS. I mean, look at 'the pacific', to the best of my knowledge Australian soldiers only show up to show how ungrateful we are to our glorious fucking american saviours.

Not sure where people get their shitty education but my history teacher was sure to underline how important the russians were in Europe and how hard it was for the Europeans to hold the line.

That said I hate to tell you but if the USA (Plus canada) hadn't shown up in the Pacific Japan would still own most of it.

A lot of countries held a line and stopped the Japanese from going to far but you guys weren't winning without our military budget and expendable troops.

OT: My biggest nitpick is the American Revolution.

Guess what, the British were NOT nazi's; it was a very grey war overall.

 

[DrOswald]

One example I heard in another thread was that even before we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, apparently Japan was already gearing up to sign a surrender and then after we dropped the bombs they were almost ready to fully retaliate.

That story's pretty complex, and very few individuals even my non specialized history teachers(It's my major.) there's a translation problem(a certain phrase during the talks had two meanings and was very vague to the translators.) and an infighting within the Japanese government and military with the radicals wanting to take the war on until their last breaths.

Ultimately the message they delivered was that there would be no surrender and they would fight to the death, the bomb was the logical reaction and allowed for a much lower loss of life on both sides, turning the streets of Japan into wake Island 2 was the other option. Inhumane as it was, it was a sound strategic decision given the circumstances.

So, Japan's leadership was willing to surrender but some weren't and did their most to sabotage the effort, those guys won and then even they gave up.


I do believe the most clear example and probably already discussed to death by page three is the war on terror which has some fair reasoning but could have been handled much better. Don't have time to read the entire topic now but I doubt someone actually cleared the nuclear bomb bit.

So why was they attempting to get Russia to mediate peace between themselves and the allies in the months before the dropping of the bomb?

When it is said that the Japanese were unwilling to surrender it is meant that they were unwilling to surrender under any terms the allies would accept. You must realize that one of the core goals of the United States in the terms of Japanese surrender was to eliminate them as a potential threat for at least a generation. This meant disarming the Japanese military and changing the Japanese government. The Japanese were unwilling to accept those terms (as outlined in the Potsdam Declaration) and so sought Russian mediation in the hopes that with the weight of the Russians they could get the surrender terms they wanted.

 

[Jodokh]

I dunno, to they teach you guys about Japanese American Internment?

Not like we're clean of blood either, Canada did the same thing.

They don't teach much about WW2, but they do teach that. But really, I'm not really sure why people bring that up so often...it's among the least of our sins. Us Americans, that is. I'm not really sure how much evil Canadians have done.

Probably because you guys put George Takei in an internment camp.[/q

OP: Most things you were taught in history were probably skewed to make the US look better and more self-important than it was but every country does that. There isn't one who doesn't.

Actually I'm teaching the history of Canada in high school right now. While the curriculum tries to gloss over any of the horrific shit we used to do I always make sure to put it front and center and tell my students about it. A lot of them don't care but some of them pick up on the fact that maybe we aren't as nice a country as we pretend to be.

Really? I remember in High School nothing getting glossed over. Like chinese head tax, residential schools, the treatment of chinese workers during the Grand Trunk Pacfic, attempted Homoingation of aboriginals, japanese interment and the rejection of Kena Maru( I think thats what is was called?) thats just top of my head, that I can remember.

 

[aceman67]

I dunno, do they teach you guys about Japanese American Internment?

Not like we're clean of blood either, Canada did the same thing.

Not only did we do it to the Japanese, we did it to the Germans and Italians too...

Also, want to know the difference between History taught in the US, and History taught elsewhere?

Ask who won the War of 1812. I bet you'd get a different answer depending on who you ask.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

According to what I learned in History, the American government covered up their compromise during the Cuban Missile Crisis aftermath: the agreement that both sides would withdraw nuclear arms from Turkey(the US) and Cuba(Russia).

This essentially depicted JFK as a hero, since the press didn't mention anything about the withdrawal of missiles from Turkey by the US.

Other than that, I don't know about any other instances.

 

[KungFuJazzHands]

It's the little things in history that those of (un)lucky enough to receive an education in US schools never get to learn. Like the fact that Columbus was a sadistically violent slave-wrangler, or our attempted intervention in the Russian Civil War, or the fact that MK/ULTRA was actually a thing, or the Phoenix Program, or how the Gulf of Tonkin incident really happened, or one of a thousand other tidbits that Texas-produced history textbooks don't bother mentioning.

To be fair, all of my middle/high school education was during the mid 80s to the early 90s when the schools in my region didn't bother replacing books that were literally decades old. I don't know how much textbooks have changed over the last 20 years, but I would hope that we've seen at least some improvement in historical accuracy.

Here's a good primer book on how much is intentionally left out of US history education: http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0743296281

 

[Imperiused]

"In Vietnam, the US and Co. most certainly did "beat" the North in the sense that after the Tet Offensive, the Viet Cong ceased to be a threat and it was 2 years after the US left until the South fell.

No way. I'd say the North resoundly defeated the United States. With no small thanks to the result of their ingenious engineering, the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

 

[flarty]

snip

The only surrender terms they sought was for their emperor not abdicate, which they got anyway. So even if there was no other choice but to use the bomb to gain unconditional surrender, then the US failed in doing so.