Tbf the amount of misconceptions when it comes to Spain in the era of conquest is wild. As someone bilingual who studied history, English translations tend to be unreliable and like to warp a few meanings. Not only that, but when it comes to “La Malinche” who gets labeled as a traitor despite being Mayan and hating the Aztecs from the start.
Sorry to point this out but while la Malinche wasn’t a traitor to the Aztecs because she was Mayan, even Mexicans say “malinchista” when a Mexican doesn’t love / defend their country. In their view she joined (what today is ) a foreign country to attack (what today is ) her own country. Of course that wasn’t the case back then, but the adjective persisted
This is one I’d always heard and never really thought about until I listened to a (very good) podcast series about Cortes and the conquest of the Aztecs. The role of native peoples who had been conquered by the Aztecs or were rivals of the Aztecs had always been downplayed or left unmentioned in this story as I’d heard it before. I feel silly for never questioning the idea that a small number of Spanish (with a few cannons and like 13 horses) were able to roll over the Aztecs solo.
I think there is a youtube channel like that, a very good one. Originally they were in spanish but recently they opened a new channel in english, it has excellent content About the conquest, virreinal and impendence periods
I’m sorry, but I was always taught this. I’m not doubting you in the slightest but could you please elaborate a bit more? I would be very interested to read it!
The first mention of the "white gods" story comes from 1552 and was written by a guy who was Cortes' chaplain. Nowadays, it's generally believed that the Aztecs almost immediately knew what was up, especially as the conquistadors came into conflict with some groups on the way to Tenochitllan.
If anyone believed they were gods, it might have briefly been the Aztec leader, Moctezuma. By pure happenstance, Cortes had arrived during a holy day, and some stories claim Moctezuma was insanely religious, seeing "messages from the gods" frequently. But the idea was probably abandoned before they even met. After they met, what native sources we do have paint Cortes as cruel, rude, and far from noble.
If the Aztecs knew right away what happened, and Moctezuma himself only believed the lie shortly, why they were hesitant to react, too slow??
Not invalidating your point, I want to know more
I had to do a little bit of research because I hadn't heavily researched the subject either, but in general contrary to popular belief the conquistadors didn't just bee-line their way straight to the Aztecs/Mexica. They started with the Tlaxcala who were an independent state and major rival of the Aztecs. They then moved onto the Cholula's who had broken away from Tlaxcala some years before, but were currently under the protection of the Aztecs. It was the massacre of the Cholula that really got their attention. Nevertheless, the Cortes was able to leverage these military victories into a meeting with Moctezuma, after all they had just kicked the crap out one of their most hated rivals.
Also: "The French were stupid for believeing that the Ardennes was impenetrable hahah!"
They didn't think it was impenetrable. They just thought that it would take a long time for Germany to go through it, which is a view that the German high command also held for a long time before Mannstein and Guderian came in and said that it could be done much faster than anticipated.
What was stupid however, is that they paid almost no mind to the reports coming in that German panzers were massing near and later advancing through the Ardennes, and still believed that the main assault would come through Belgium.
Both sides going "well what now?" After spending the better part of a decade preparing for this excat situation and doing essentially nothing would be considered "absurd" in any fictional setting
In that case, they shouldn't have lied to Poland about helping though, the entire polish plan was based on the fact that France *will* go on the offensive, as promised. If the french stated outright that their army was shit and Poles were on their own, Polish high command would have chosen a better and more adequate to the situation plan than it did.
> But like why didn't they make it longer though
Mostly for three reasons:
* Following the [1920 Franco-Belgian Accord](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Belgian_Accord_of_1920), France and Belgium were in a collective defence pact. Therefore, building major fortifications along the Belgian border would have sent a signal that France may not help Belgium in the event of German invasion, making such a move diplomatically unpalatable.^[1]
* The Franco-Belgian border doesn't really lend itself to building formidable fortifications anyway. It's flat, it has very few natural features you can take advantage of. The water table is high, meaning you can't easily build underground. It's also a densely populated and densely industrialized area, meaning that building fortifications here would cost a fortune.
* The Franco-Belgian plan was for the best-equipped French divisions to move into Belgium and dig in behind its defensive features (the Albert canal, the Dyle river...) in times of heightened tension, in order to achieve a better concentration of fire than any incoming German invasion. The defence strategy for Northern France was to stop the Germans in Belgium, thus making fortifications along the French-Belgian borders redundant.^[1]
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[1]: Belgium pulling out of the defence pact in 1936 is a key reason why the French battleplans were so inadequate in 1940. As per the defence pact, Belgium would invite the French army to come in and entrench itself if imminent invasion was feared, thus giving the Germans a tough nut to crack.
Post-1936 Belgium could not do that, however, because it had proclaimed neutrality. The Belgians had to wait until the German invasion was already underway to call for help, and with so little time to move in and dig in, in addition to France' dreadfully slow and rigid decision making cycle, it's no surprise that the *Plan D* went as bad as it did.
That Hitler was shocked when Japan declared war on the US. That mf was literally estatic because it would mean finally sinking American ships for a chance to starve out Britain.
That Britain basically just threw money at the Allies and invested most of its resources on the navy during the Napoleonic Wars, when it's hands are full trying to drive back the French from Spain (while trying to coordinate the Spanish and the Portuguese, who hated one another)
Chiang Kai Shek is some sort of 'good guy' because he lost the Civil War to Mao. That man's leadership basically shot China in the foot numerous times, especially the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Interesting that throughout the cold war, despite being the "democracy" side, America was in bed with a lot of dictators, and then buries the nature of these arrangements in the classroom
Dunno what America you’re learning from, because in my class we learned about all the revolutions in Central and South America as well as Africa, and all the messy dictators that came into being from it. We own up to it, plus, it’s not exactly like it was a secret.
Chang Kai Shek was a ruthless, immensely incompetent and corrupt autocrat. it's especially glaring when you consider that he managed to get outcompeted in terms of competence by the Chinese communists -- whose leader at one point waged a war on sparrows and managed to starve 15 million people to death.
*frank caleindo doing john madden*
"If the Germans had just won all the battles and not lost so many guys, huh, huh, they probably would have won the war!"
“Hehe the euros didn’t know how to bath until the Muslims brought it to Spain”
“Hehe the euros taught the American Indians how to act civilized”
Makes me wanna blow my brains out
War is stretching it slightly, but it was China vs Vietnam for control of the Johnson South Reef: the islands are part of the disputed Spratly Islands, and at the time both Vietnam and China claimed the entire chain (other countries claimed only part). The two countries have different accounts of exactly what happened both before and during the engagement, but the certain facts are that three Chinese frigates engaged two Vietnamese transports and a tank landing ship, initially with their 100 mm guns, and then with boarding parties, sinking all three and killing 64 Vietnamese servicemen and wounding 11 others (9 men captured). Chinese casualties are disputed: China claims 1 wounded, Vietnam claims 6 killed & 18 wounded. Following this, China established control over the entirety of the Spratly Islands.
The way history is taught there makes a majority of the population think they won the French and the US on their own with little support. They know the Soviet helped but not a lot know to what extent. And fewer would know that the Chinese helped them. Those who know all of that are mostly ultra nationalist who would say the same thing regardless
I forgot to put Cuba in there since the state media talks a great deal about Fidel Castro. North Korea doesn't get any mention ever since their relationship went sour, they don't even bother translating Kim Jong Il and Un name to Vietnamese but still call Kim Il Sung by the translated name for some reason
That we should be exploring the galaxy right now if wasn't the burning of Alexandria library/Christianity/Fall of Roman empire/historical event or religion of your choice
This. The Alexandria library was a hoard of *greek* writing. It was sitting on thousands of years of Egyptian culture and they didn't even bother with it. We lost the ability to read hieroglyphs while that library was standing. Literacy of Sumerian and Akkadian disappeared during the library 's existence also. The Alexandrian librarians couldn't be bothered with punic/phoenician stuff either, despite Carthage being one of the most important trading partners of Alexandria.
If a Babylonian had discovered the theory of relativity, it wouldn't have made its way into the library, unless some greek stole the idea and claimed it as is own.
Also the obsession with Christians getting rid of hieroglyphics in the first place. Coptic was better for the average person, and we can read hieroglyphics today anyway so what's the point of "they destroyed all that history" 20/20 hindsight
I have actively heard someone say, talking about indigenous American people, “shame they’re all gone now huh?” Which, of course, is nowhere near the truth.
As much as I wish that were the case friend, it was a person during a tour of an archeological site I was working at, discussing the indigenous lens underneath the main site. Very much believing the people themselves were “all gone.”
Oh, there's quite a lot of myths about the Middle Ages:
* Public execution were very common - No, they were not. If we look at actual numbers, it averages out to about 2 executions per year in cities. Also, they were not performed in the middle of the city, but often outside.
* Torture was very common - No, it was VERY strictly regulated. Also, most torture devices were inventions of later periods.
* People in the Middle Ages didn't wash and were filthy - Nope, people in the Middle Ages actually believed that bad smells cause disease and washed quite regularly. Public bathhouses were very common. They washed daily and bathed about once a week.
* In the Middle Ages the church burned witches - Technically true, but only for the last decades of the Middle Ages. For the majority of the Middle Ages, the church denied the existence of witchcraft.
* People in the Middle Ages drank beer/ale, because water quality was bad - No, they drank beer/ale, because it tastes better. Medieval cities were not big enough to pollute drinking water.
* Medieval plague doctors wore beaked masks - That's from the 17th century.
* Medieval people believed that the Earth is flat - No. There's a book from 1230 called De sphaera mundi, so literally "On the Sphere of the World".
* The Bubonic plague was spread by rats - No. Newest evidence suggests that, while the first transmissions of the plague were from black rats to humans (or rather from fleas jumping from those rats to humans after the rats died), it was then probably spread from person to person.
* Medieval knights were immobile when wearing armour - Yes, armour is heavy (up to 30 kg I think), but its weight is divided upon your entire body. It's very similar to the gear modern soldiers wear or firefighters. Also, plate armour was REALLY good at protecting you against arrows, spears, and swords.
* Fire arrows - Fire arrows did exist, but not like they are depicted in films. If you just put fire on your arrow tip, it would go out by shooting the arrow. Instead, they transported gunpowder and would explode on impact.
* Probably the most important medieval myth: the Middle Ages were one homogenous time period - "The Middle Ages" itself is a very broad term. They spanned 1,000 years of human history, so general statements about what people did during the Middle Ages should all be taken with a massive amount of salt (yes, also mine). For comparison: The Middle Ages span as much time as the Western Roman Empire, the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, Napoleon, both World Wars, and everything up until today COMBINED. [This](https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/059/916/105/large/robbie-mcsweeney-matt-lewis.jpg?1677435868) and [this](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/22003) is both medieval. The Vikings are as medieval as the invention of the printing press, the Crusades are as medieval as the construction of Notre-Dame.
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[More details here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/14r6zjd/its_insane_how_many_historical_facts_are_just/jqr4ged/)
>* In the Middle Ages the church burned witches - Technically true, but only for the last decades of the Middle Ages. For the majority of the Middle Ages, the church denied the existence of witchcraft.
And that was mainly the protestant doing that. Once the church have decided something they very rarely come back on it. So once they said "witchcraft isn't real" they stood by it. Killed a shitload of "heretics" and Jews though.
Oh and the Spanish Inquisition rarely used torture. Or killed witch. But killed a FACKIN LOT of Jews because that's pretty much the one constant of the Middle Ages: "fuck the Jews".
> because that's pretty much the one constant of the Middle Ages: "fuck the Jews".
I mean, it's not like they stopped after the Middle Ages. Or began with the Middle Ages.
I mean, do we? Jewish population peaked at 17 million in 1939 and today, 85 years later, it has not yet recovered from the Holocaust and is at about 15 million. Estimates say that it will reach 16.4 million in 2060.
But this makes the entire "Jews run the world" conspiracy so silly. How would that be possible? They have been expelled, massacred, and discriminated against for about 3,000 years. If they would still be able to control the entire world after all of that, maybe you should follow them, not fight them lmao
Speaking as a Jew myself, anyone who has ever spent any significant time around us learns really quickly that we don't agree on very many things. One of the rabbis at a temple I used to attend always joked "Where there are two Jews, you can find three opinions on any topic because someone's going to run with it for the sake of argument". There's a reason why so many of us are lawyers. Basically, we're far too busy meddling in the lives of our immediate circles to ever exert control over anything larger than a synagogue, law firm, deli, or bakery.
There's as much (if not more) animosity between the sects of Judaism as there are between Christian sects. The Reform folks think the Orthodox are uptight, the Orthodox think the Reform are heretics, the Conservatives are somewhere in between. At least most of us, agree that the Haredim are a bunch of misguided fundamentalist misogynist assholes.
Jews in Europe during the feudal era were usually on contract with a Lord nearby. They were a group of mostly literate folk and weren't tied to the land so they had a number of benefits if you took them into your patronage. You had a group that could handle writing things for you, often they got employed as doctors.
Jews at the time would gather questions they had and send a representative to the holy land where there were still big schools of Judaism, once there they would meet Jews from all around and had a common language to communicate.
Were you a clever lord you might ask the Jews you allowed to settle, to see if they can't find someone to buy the goods from your domain. Jews also offered a nice loophole to the rule that Christians can't trade with Muslims.
Jews however were usually forced to live in their own area, which further made them targets.
Peasants usually attacked them for a number of reasons from "we blame.the Jews for the plague" to "the Lord gives the Jews preferred treatment" to "the Jews free their pagan slaves and convert them to Judaism so we're losing potential souls"
So while there were a lot of dangers, often the Jews were protected by their local Lord.
Judaism also doesn't allow usury and they are supposed to forgive all debts each year. So it's a bit more complicated. That is to say different communities approached it differently and that includes Christians, who routinely loaned money with interest. I don't have my old notes but several popes leant money with interest.
That is to say both Jews and Christians leant money with interest to both Jews and Christians.
If you can't own land, you have to find a sustainable way to support communities since you have to pay taxes. Facilitating trade is only going to get so much money, unless you can get some skin in the game for the actual goods.
Jews could add interest to loans to non Jews and different communities interpreted that differently. Spanish Jewry were fairly straightforward with "we need to live so loaning to the gentiles is the way forward"
So while many Jewish communities used loans as a way to create money, it was by no means just a Jewish practice.
The big Italian banking families were quite Christian.
It’s pretty amazing when you think about it that way. I admire Jews who have the courage to openly practice their religion, considering all the massive amounts of historical hate they’ve gotten over the centuries for doing just that.
Could we add “Jews being shrewd, unscrupulous money lenders” to this discussion?
I assume more than one pope started getting greyhair just from insisting on it: "Witchcraft isn't real. The bible clearly says that god is the only that has power to make miracles. This is stupid."
It's worth noting noting that things like execution and torture practices varied significantly across Europe and across the centuries. Your source looks specifically at certain German cities in the late Middle ages.
There are LOTS of misconceptions regarding the processes for these things and they pretty much never played out like Hollywood depicts, but it's important to avoid oversimplification when myth busting.
>Fire arrows - Fire arrows did exist, but not like they are depicted in films. If you just put fire on your arrow tip, it would go out by shooting the arrow. Instead, they transported gunpowder and would explode on impact
also to my knowledge, fire arrows weren't used in open field battles. They were used to set buildings on fire.
I want to add other things i heard:
Love didnt exist and ppl had so many children because most would die. They didnt care much. I really cant think of anything more mean and weird to say.
PPL worked less. Well what ppl? Yes they had holidays, but had to work the fields and feed the animals still. Women sure did not have less work.
PPL were stupid and schools were for boys only. If given the oportunity boys and girls would learn to read and write at home. If someone visited any kind of school they were expacted to allready know the basics.
The church wasnt aposed to translations of the bible because they wanted to keep ppl stupid, but because good translations were rare.
Kings did NOT randomly go to war to get more land.
Becoming a Nun wasnt a bad thing.
Becoming a Beguine would propable be one of the best fades for a woman who doesnt want to be married or have children.
Freedom wasnt considered a good thing. Not as we know it today. You had Rights to duties and Freedom from duties. In documtaries they opfen talk about the example of some ppl not having the rights to wear weapons. This could be considered a good thing. If you dont have the right to wear weapons you dont need to fight.
Neanderthals were stupid unga bunga oafs.
Look at a Mousterian tools and tell me Neanderthals unga bungad their way through life. Those tools are sophisticated. Look at the examples of Neanderthal art we've discovered within the past decade. Look at the fact they had the same FOXP2 gene that we have, which correlates with our speech.
Overall it annoys the hell out of me when someone implies historical or prehistoric people were idiots compared to today. They weren't stupid, they just didn't know everything we know. But guess what? We don't know everything *they* knew, which is why the entire field of Archaeology and especially the subfield of Experimental Archaeology exists.
Have any of you built a kiln from mud, stone, and sticks? I have, it's hard fucking work, and that's before we get to the point where we fire anything.
We scoff now because, "How could you *possibly* not have known that is dangerous?" but we're walking around with microplastics in our blood.
Yes! Neanderthals were literally people, full stop. People look at you crazy when you tell them Neanderthals are humans.
Any philosophical thought to be had about human consciousness or emotions or anything which is thought to be unique to human animals must also have room for Neaderthals.
Not only that, but ancient homosapiens considered them human enough to intermingle with.
"The Titanic didn't have enough lifeboats for all passengers because they thought she was unsinkable"
The Titanic carried *even more* lifeboats than guidelines required at that time. It's just that guidelines didn't consider lifeboats to be required to hold all passengers at once, they were just tiny rowboats intended to carry passengers from a (slowly) sinking ship over to another in multiple turns.
And the plan was pretty sound. They were on one of the busiest shipping routes in the world, a nearby ship would almost certainly be close, and would be supposed to have their radios turned on. The ocean was also prone to being very choppy, lifeboats would not protect you for very long and turning the ship itself into the lifeboat was seen as a much better idea. A large number of things had to go wrong independently for the Titanic to be the disaster it was.
> They were on one of the busiest shipping routes in the world, a nearby ship would almost certainly be close
And the funny (sad) thing there was one close, the SS Californian was only 5 miles away and through chance and incompetence did not come to the Titanic's aid.
In addition to that, most ships that sank went down very quickly. Only like 15 minutes in some cases. Titanic actually went down very slowly (around 2.5 hours), but they still struggled to fill all lifeboats, finishing just minutes before the final plunge (the last collapsible was not filled at all and floated away upside down).
Even if the ship had more lifeboats on board, they would not have been able to fill them in the time they had.
This improved after the Titanic disaster as more focus was put on training the crews to fill and lower the lifeboats quicker. For example Titanic's sister ship Britannic sank during WW1 in only 55 minutes, and they were a hospital ship ~~filled with wounded soldiers~~; yet only around 50 people died (mostly those sitting in a lifeboat that was hacked into pieces by the ships screws, which had started back up in an attempt to beach the ship).
My favorite one is where in patriot they show the opposing lines waiting for each other to get organized, fire and do it one by one. Nope. If you got into position and your enemy is still fumbling to get into rank, you fire. And if they haven’t managed to fire yet, you fire again. The one after the other fire would happen cause one party fired first, is busy reloading and the enemy has fired and will be reloading.
The only reason that you wouldn’t be firing is if you were marching under fire to get dangerously close so that one of your valleys would have more devastating effect, which is pretty scary tactic in itself. They absolutely wouldn’t stand still waiting for the enemy line to arrange itself and take turns firing.
"HiStOrY iS wRiTtEn bY tHe VicToRs" especialy when talking about WWII.
Like, my guy, have you read all the books the german generals wrote about how they were "just following order", "the army wasn't involved in genocide and warcrimes" and "Rommel wasn't a political soldier"... and the british and US historians to read those books and go "oh yes, that makes sense" even tho it didn't and there are clear evidence that everything is more nuanced.
The amount of world war propaganda (both of them btw) that came out of Germany and STILL IS SEEN AS TRUE by the general public is... frightening to say the least.
From technologies to politics passing by personnal feats and strategies... so many lies for such a horrid truth.
Like the propaganda about how the Treaty of Versailles is to blame for Germany starting WWII. The treaty was punitive, yes, but the whole idea that the allies were out to get Germany is pretty far off the mark when you consider how they actually carried out the terms of the treaty.
Oh gods yes that one. Or the fact that the German population was under such a terrific amount of propaganda that they believed in the final victory being close all the way until November 11. Which led to the whole country feeling betrayed when it was revealed that they were, in fact, severely losing. And refusing to accept this reality and search for scapegoats.
Gods I need to learn more about that period because it's so interesting.
> the whole idea that the allies were out to get Germany is pretty far off the mark when you consider how they actually carried out the terms of the treaty.
It's even more out of the mark when you consider the terms the Germans themselves [gave to their defeated foes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Brest-Litovsk).
Brest-Litovsk was a harsh treaty, and so were [Trianon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Trianon) and [Sèvres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_S%C3%A8vres). Versailles, on the other hand...
I'd also say the amount of British propaganda from the first ww that is still believed today is disheartening. But yes, in general, propaganda has had too strong an influence on the perception of the world wars and wars after
I'm sure there is loads but could you give an example of British ww1 propaganda that's still believed, today, because I'm trying to think of one and my mind is blank.
First one that comes to mind is the portrayal of Wilhelm II as a warmongering tyrant who wanted to take over the world. iirc Wilhelm made many attempts at friendly relations with other nations before the war (with some failures, granted) and was generally on good terms with many leaders of other nations. I recommend reading, "The Innocence of Kaiser Wilhelm II" by Christina Croft for a better understanding 👍
>I'd also say the amount of British propaganda from the first ww that is still believed today is disheartening.
Would you have any examples? Because except maybe the Great Rape of Belgium that was slightly exagerated I don't really see any.
This is WWII, but a real classic one is: carrots give you good eyesight.
This was literally a rumour made up to protect allied secrets so that their code breaking abilities weren’t discovered. They claimed that their pilots ate excessive amounts of carrots, and the vitamin A gave them incredible eyesight.
Vitamin A *is* necessary for good vision, in that vitamin A deficiency causes blindness, but your sight not like a cordial bottle where you can super-charge your sight by concentrating vitamin A in your eyeballs.
The idea that you somehow can is pure WWII propaganda.
Also "taxes" or "states rights" to which, I ask thee :
What taxes? The state of New York paid more in taces than the whole Confederacy in the years previous to the war.
States rights? Well then, why did the confederate constitution stated that member states were forbidden to abolish slavery? Where states rights?
"Hitler said "You what? Oh noooooo..." when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor."
No you fuckwits. Hitler was EXTREMELY happy about Pearl Harbor because now his UBoats could now actively target and sink American shipping with 0 political consequences. Not to mention, him believing he could finish the war before the US got across the Atlantic...
There were also Japanese horrified by the Holocaust. The nazis kinda liked chiang kai-shek (even inviting him to the anti-communist pact) before he lost most of the coastal cities
That Japanese guy who saved the Jews - Chiune Sugihara - previously resigned from his post in Manchuria in protest of the mistreatment of the local Chinese.
Before Eratosthenes even. Eratosthenes was'nt the First to Prove the earth is a Globe. His Experiment showed the earth was a globe but He Set Out to measure the circumference of the earth. Actually the ancient people had figured Out the earth was a globe way before that by Looking at the stars and thinking
Medieval peasents drank beer instead of water, because the water was foul and ubdrinkable.
Brooooo, how did they manage to make beer with that foul water then?!
So, to clarify, water in the Middle Ages was perfectly fine. The worst thing that would regularly happen was for it to get stale when stored in a barrel. Other problems are when your source is a river, you kight occasionally get a virus or malicious bacteria in there. Sometimes wells could be badly built or maintained, but that was very rare, and groundwater compared to today was of much higher quality, since they didn't pour massive amounts of manure on their fields like we do.
>Medieval peasents drank beer instead of water, because the water was foul and ubdrinkable
People actually think that a whole continent had fetal alcohol syndrome.
Only Portugal did that for a while, but Portugal hilariously isn't usually remembered as one of the biggest culprits of the transatlantic slave trade despite the fact that they were lol.
That medieval peasants had bad teeth or rarely bathed. Medieval peasants did practice oral hygiene. The food they ate also contained very little sugar. So cavities were practically non-existent.
Exactly, many people think that back then everyone just aged faster. A 30-40 year old looked like a 70-80 year old now. Which is just not true.
Life expectancy was shorter because life was more dangerous. Fewer people made it into old age because there were more things that could kill you back then like disease, war, famine, and accidents. Plenty of examples of people making it into old age though. Leonidas himself was thought to be in his 50's or 60's when he fought at Thermopylae. He was fighting battles. There are many 50 and 60 year olds now that can't even run short distances or walk up flights of stairs without getting winded.
People assume that back when average life expectancy was 35-40 years most people died at that age, but it's the many infant deaths skewing the statistics. Once you made it past 5 you had pretty good chances of living 60-70 years
It's like they always say, "just take X city/Moscow." And "don't have a siege just push". Some of the takes for "Germany coulda won" crack me up because it's genuine stuff like that from armchair Einstein's who don't realise Germany depended entirely on risky and dangerous gambles to get any kind of progress, because they knew what would happen if they had to fight the enemy head on, instead of rushing through their lines and encircling/extending as many enemy forces as possible like they normally did.
Also obligatory "Just make better fighters for air supremacy, bomb their navy and capitulate the UK before the US joins 4head."
I mean, there are definitely historians out there who are racist. And if not racist, then heavily biased or prejudiced in some other way. Not all of them, to be sure, but a lot of them, including ones that we have come to rely on.
Oof ain’t that the truth. Was trying to explain to someone once why someone would approve of the trans-Atlantic slave trade when it happening and started
They kept arguing *but it’s still a human no different tI them*. Yeah. We know and believe that. A person from the 1500s whose never seen a black person before doesn’t
His response at the end was. *Well you keep saying really racist shit then go I’m not racist.* Then the convo ended
Not my opinion. Certainly what a 16th century person would be thinking about in the moment
They often wrap history with nationalistic propaganda, Cough Roman historians. Take everything you read with a grain of salt and consider the context of the writer and the situation of the time it was written.
"Italy switched sides in the world wars."
Not completely, in WW1 they left the Triple Alliance and then joined the Entente and THEN joined the war, they never switched sides while they were at war. In WW2, the Fascist regime fell, with the partisans taking over the south of Italy and fighting against the Axis, but the north became the Italian Social Republic which was still run by Mussolini.
"Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (future King Karl XIV Johan of Sweden) had a tattoo that said 'Death to Kings' which he got before he became king."
Nope. That comes from a 19th century play, much like "Et tu, Brute?" comes from Shakespeare. There is no evidence that he had such a tattoo.
"Afghanistan is the 'graveyard of empires.'"
Yeah no, the land which is now Afghanistan has been conquered by foreign powers many times, some controlling it better than others.
And then the obvious ones like Lost Cause myth.
>in WW1 they left the Triple Alliance and then joined the Entente and THEN joined the war,
And it's not like they betrayed anybody since the Triple Alliance was a defensive agreement and the Germans were the aggressors.
"Genghis Khan is the ancestors of 5% of the human population because he raped a lot of women."
He is the ancestor of 5% of the human race because he lived a long time ago and by using basic exponential math, we can guess that his gene got spread around as time went on. Heck, even the research that started this myth came from the research that involved " study the gene of a tribe that RUMORED to be the descendants of Genghis Khan".
That the Reconquista was a genocide and that all the muslim states in the peninsula were benevolent and tolerant while the Christian states were all zealots and fanatics
"The Treaty of Versailles was totally unfair and caused WWII!!!"
You do realize that it was more fair than most of the treaties France was forced to sign prior to WWI, and that it's literally Nazi propaganda to blame the allies right? Furthermore, while it IS unfair to say Germany is solely to blame for the war, they didn't exactly rush for peace now did they?
Bonus: When Marshall Ferdinand Foch said, "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years." He wasn't saying the treaty was unfair. He was saying it because it didn't do enough to disarm Germany to not make them a threat in the future.
And he was right.
This is a misconception that really annoys me, people trying to argue against jewish being in Egypt by using evidence that Jews did not build build pyramids. When it’s not said in Bible they did. I wonder how the myth started. I assume some just heard “built” and “ancient Egypt” and assumed it must be pyramids!
Similar logic gets Cleopatra always dressed in Egyptian fashions couple of thousand years out of date (combined with whatever tie seen as sexy when the film is made with a plenty of shiny fabrics), instead as a Hellenistic Greek woman. That’s also a pet peeve of mine, you don’t have to make a Cleopatra movie if you are interested in Egypt if era of pyramids
Egypt history is amazing. First Pharaon was from 3.000 bC, the last one from almost year 0, so a ton of years, yet we tend to shrink 3.000 years to the Bronze Age look and pyramids.
We, today, are closer to Cleopatra than Cleopatra was to the first pyramid
“The Jews killed Jesus” OR “Corrupt Leadership who happened to be Jewish killed Jesus”
The answer to who/how actually killed Jesus is “we don’t know due bias/contradictions of the source material”.
If we take the Bible at face value then yes the Corrupt Leaders who happen to be Jewish are responsible. But there are inconsistencies: how come Corrupt Leadership needed Pontius’s execution order to kill Jesus, but don’t need his permission to stone James or Stephen.
Yeah it was the Romans. I wrote a ~~could~~ couple of papers on the crucifixion and Jesus’s relationship with other Jewish groups. The Bible says that he was crucified by the Romans. Tacitus says that he was crucified by Pilate.
The cross was a Roman punishment. Everything we know about Pilate, and the political environment at the time, make it clear that Pilate wanted to suppress any insurrection as soon as possible and kill the leader in the most humiliating way.
Edit: I wrote the papers in university while getting a degree in philosophy and history.
That Anne of Cleves was ugly.
That Queen Mary I was exceptionally brutal (to clarify I'm not arguing with the 'brutal' part, but the 'exceptionally' part; burning was *the* standard punishment for heresy at the time and it's not like she invented it; Henry VIII burned people at the stake, too.)
"tHe nAziS weRe aPpaUleD bY uNit 731 aNd JaPanEsE tReAtmEnT oF tHe cHinEse" bitch the Nazis were horrible people and probably didn't even Care because after all the people that were being massacered were not Part of their fictional aryan race. One Nazi didn't like it, to say they were "all soooo appauled" is borderline trying to make them look better for peoples wet dreams about the Nazis winning ww2 where they conveniently ignore the fact that the Nazis would have killed all the "inferior races" afterwards.
The common "dark ages" misconceptions about the medieval period drive me crazy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions_about_the_Middle_Ages
Some misconceptions related to Poland (most of them are repeated by either tankies, nazis, polish ND supporters/nationalists/fascists and... Czechs, of all people):
**"Poland started the Polish-Soviet war"** - Bolsheviks were the first ones to break the Brest-Litovsk pact, invade the contested Borderlands region and attack the Polish army in early 1919, which later escalated into war
**"Poland invaded every one of its neighbours after ww1, which is why they had bad relations with them"** - Poland only alienated/invaded Lithuania, was attacked/invaded by Czechoslovakia and Russia, didn't have almost any relations at all with Belarus, gained lands in Germany through independent uprisings and the Versailes treaty, had great relations with Latvia and helped it during its war of independence against russia, and there was no clear "aggressor" in the Polish-WUPR war. Besides, Poland and Ukraine became allies later on, and the relations only became as bad as they did because of ND's terrible handling of Riga treaty, not because of an invasion.
**"Piłsudski singlehandedly won the polish-bolshevik war/Piłsudski was a coward, imbecile and it was Gen. Rozwadowski who won the Battle of Warsaw"** - Neither is true. The war wouldn't have been won without people like Rozwadowski or Haller, but Piłsudski was very influential too: his leadership and military brilliance was crucial for keeping the nation together. He also personally led one of the polish armies during the counteroffensive in the Battle of Warsaw, which was pretty cool. I think it was also one of the last instances of the head of state commanding his army in battle. Only other I can think is King Albert of Belgium (and maybe Atarurk and Mao, though I'm not sure whether they were heads of state during the turkish war of independence and the chinese civil war, and also Chaing-Kai-Shek, though I don't think he personally led any armies)
**"Piłsudski was a German spy/Hitler's ally"** - Piłsudski despised Hitler and even once suggested to France to jointly invade Germany and topple the nazi government. Most of his dictatorship was spent trying to get Poland ready for ww2. He also refused to swear allegiance to Germany in the Oath Crisis and only supported Germany when it was most beneficial to Poland
**"Piłsudski was a fascist"** - Piłsudski was a socialist patriot ideologically and initially supported democracy, stepping down 2 times from a position of a Supreme Commander to allow for democratic elections. He did become disillusioned with parlimentary democracy after the shitshow that were the polish politics at that time, but he didn't embrace fascism, rather a more authoritarian system of government where a President would hold more power. The coup didn't happen only because of these beliefs too, other reasons included a cabinet crisis and a worsening polish international situation. Poland after the coup was authoritarian/oligarchic, not fascist.
**"Ribbentrop-Molotov was just a normal non-aggresion pact"** - it included a secret protocol that divided Europe between USSR and Germany. No other non-aggression pact had that.
**"Poland allied Nazi Germany/collaborated with nazis"** - The Polish-German non-aggression pact was a normal pact that only stated that Poland and Germany wouldn't attack each other. Poland signed a similar pact with USSR as a part of the "Balance until it's possible, and when it's not: set the world on fire" strategy. Everyone in Poland, except for the German minority and some Ukrainian nationalists, despised the nazis. Even the Polish fascists hated hitler. There was no official collaboration, one of the lowest individual collaboration levels in Europe, the biggest amount of people who risked their lives to save Jews and one of the biggest resistance movements in the world.
**"USSR's invasion of Poland in 1939 wasn't in alliance with Hitler/was done to liberate Ukrainians and Belarusians/was a part of Stalin's 4d chess strategy to have more time and more land for nazis to go through/was a necessity because USSR tried to join the allies but they didn't let them"** - 1. It was a part of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. It was absolutely coordinated with Hitler. 2. USSR suppressed the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages and commited a genocide on them (Holodomor). 3. USSR actually made the operation Barbarossa harder for themselves because they invaded Finland (also in accordance with the R-M pact) and not only lost 500k men, they also made the USSR-Axis frontline bigger than it would have been if USSR didn't invade anyone. So unless Stalin was a time traveller who saw 14 trillion alternate universes and Finland invaded USSR in every one of them, this doesn't make sense. 4. Allying with nazis is never a "necessity", no matter the circumstances. If this was the actual reason, as opposed to just imperialism, then Stalin was one of the most disgusting, cowardly spineless bastards to ever live.
**"Poland allied with Nazis and invaded Czechoslovakia"** - annexation of Zaolzie was 1. Done independently. Poland didn’t even participate in the Munich conference, let alone sign any partition treaties with the nazis. 2. Done already after the Munich conference, so when Czechia was all but annexed by the Reich. 3. Just as vile and in a bad taste as the Czechoslovak annexation of Zaolzie in 1919. Czechia didn't want this polish-majority region to go to Poland because of 1 stupid railway station, so instead of allowing a democratic plebiscite, they just invaded it. I consider the 1939 annexation to be, despite the ethnic composition of zaolzie at that time, an awful decision and a morally bad thing to do, but if someone calls that "nazi collaboration", then they have to acknowledge that according to their logic, Czechia was collaborating with Bolshevik Russia in 1919 as well.
**"Stalin was actually sympathetic to the Warsaw uprising and only didn't help it because the red army was exhausted and wasn't able to enter Warsaw because of logistics"** - one of the most overdone tankie arguments. 1st of all: Stalin didn't allow allied airplanes carrying help for the uprising to refuel on soviet airports. There is no bullshit "but logistics" excuse for that. 2nd of all: Operation Tempest took place in many Polish cities, not only in Warsaw. And in every single polish city liberated by a Polish uprising, regardless of whether the Home Army cooperated with Red Army or not, the soviets entered the city and either disarmed or imprisoned the partisans (when the partisans agreed to cooperate) or outright murdered them (when they were more hestitant). These aren't the actions of someone only restricted by logistics. Stalin fucking despised the Poles and wanted as many of them dead as possible.
The Spanish inquisition was a mass genocide ... nope , compared to secular courts of the time church courts were far more likely to grant a fair trial to an accused with an expectation of it being an actual trial rather than a lord punishing some commoner who annoyed them (with variable degrees of fairness depending on the lord in question) and a proper secular trial was usually reserved for nobles accused of a crime.
And during the three hundred or so years the Spanish inquisition was in effect it only executed around 2000 people, with the most common punishments being made to wear sackcloth for a while , reprimands/warnings , fines , or floggings.
To add to this, the Mexican Inquisition and the one in Lima did commit quasi-genocide in the middle of the seventeenth century. They did this through the use of conspiracy theories that increased persecution of Conversos. This ultimately lead to the Great Auto-da-fé of 1649 that practically destroyed the Converso community in Mexico City.
Also as much as I love the iconic joke from Monty Python, people actually did expect the Spanish Inquisition- you were given a thirty days' notice before they showed up.
confusing horthy miklós with szálasi ferenc. hate horthy for stuff that he actually did, not stuff that szálasi did. actually, hate both, just hate szálasi more than horthy.
horthy made shitass decisions, szálasi wanted to be worse than hitler.
ultimately, horthy had good ideas, and terrible ideas. unfortunately, only the terrible ones were succesfull.
“The Aztec thought the Spanish were gods.”
Tbf the amount of misconceptions when it comes to Spain in the era of conquest is wild. As someone bilingual who studied history, English translations tend to be unreliable and like to warp a few meanings. Not only that, but when it comes to “La Malinche” who gets labeled as a traitor despite being Mayan and hating the Aztecs from the start.
The whole destruction of Aztec archives probably doesn’t help.
Sorry to point this out but while la Malinche wasn’t a traitor to the Aztecs because she was Mayan, even Mexicans say “malinchista” when a Mexican doesn’t love / defend their country. In their view she joined (what today is ) a foreign country to attack (what today is ) her own country. Of course that wasn’t the case back then, but the adjective persisted
Because they are taugh at school to hate and call her a traitor to a country that did not exist but after 300 years later
So it's like American nationalists calling anyone who isn't an American nationalist a communist
This is one I’d always heard and never really thought about until I listened to a (very good) podcast series about Cortes and the conquest of the Aztecs. The role of native peoples who had been conquered by the Aztecs or were rivals of the Aztecs had always been downplayed or left unmentioned in this story as I’d heard it before. I feel silly for never questioning the idea that a small number of Spanish (with a few cannons and like 13 horses) were able to roll over the Aztecs solo.
What’s the name of that podcast? I just finished one on the Mongols and need something new to listen to
The Rest Is History. The Aztec series starts on episode 384.
I think there is a youtube channel like that, a very good one. Originally they were in spanish but recently they opened a new channel in english, it has excellent content About the conquest, virreinal and impendence periods
I’m sorry, but I was always taught this. I’m not doubting you in the slightest but could you please elaborate a bit more? I would be very interested to read it!
The first mention of the "white gods" story comes from 1552 and was written by a guy who was Cortes' chaplain. Nowadays, it's generally believed that the Aztecs almost immediately knew what was up, especially as the conquistadors came into conflict with some groups on the way to Tenochitllan. If anyone believed they were gods, it might have briefly been the Aztec leader, Moctezuma. By pure happenstance, Cortes had arrived during a holy day, and some stories claim Moctezuma was insanely religious, seeing "messages from the gods" frequently. But the idea was probably abandoned before they even met. After they met, what native sources we do have paint Cortes as cruel, rude, and far from noble.
If the Aztecs knew right away what happened, and Moctezuma himself only believed the lie shortly, why they were hesitant to react, too slow?? Not invalidating your point, I want to know more
I had to do a little bit of research because I hadn't heavily researched the subject either, but in general contrary to popular belief the conquistadors didn't just bee-line their way straight to the Aztecs/Mexica. They started with the Tlaxcala who were an independent state and major rival of the Aztecs. They then moved onto the Cholula's who had broken away from Tlaxcala some years before, but were currently under the protection of the Aztecs. It was the massacre of the Cholula that really got their attention. Nevertheless, the Cortes was able to leverage these military victories into a meeting with Moctezuma, after all they had just kicked the crap out one of their most hated rivals.
They thought that the gods sent the Spanish to them, not that the Spanish themselves were the gods
I have also heard it. In context of the arrival and not for some extended period of that’s something people here mean is a myth people say?
This one drives me batshit—especially “Cortes looked like Quetzalcoatl.”
When someone says Nero played the fiddle as Rome burned
The fiddle didn't even got invented until the 10 century so checkmate to this.
If anything he probably would have played a lyre, right?
*that fruity-ass greco-phile!*
*"The French were so stupid for building the Maginot line, didn't they know that Germany could just go through Belgium and around it??"*
Also: "The French were stupid for believeing that the Ardennes was impenetrable hahah!" They didn't think it was impenetrable. They just thought that it would take a long time for Germany to go through it, which is a view that the German high command also held for a long time before Mannstein and Guderian came in and said that it could be done much faster than anticipated. What was stupid however, is that they paid almost no mind to the reports coming in that German panzers were massing near and later advancing through the Ardennes, and still believed that the main assault would come through Belgium.
*Why didn't they just went on the offensive on September 3rd? Were they stupid?*
The phony war was funny af though
I will never get over that video of those French soldiers riding bicycles back to France after raiding a bicycle factory on the German side.
Both sides going "well what now?" After spending the better part of a decade preparing for this excat situation and doing essentially nothing would be considered "absurd" in any fictional setting
I love things like that in history, when you go "if I read that in a novel I would make fun of the author"
The Japanese invaded Malaysia on stolen bicycles. Have fun!
If r/batmanarkham was a ww2 subreddit
In that case, they shouldn't have lied to Poland about helping though, the entire polish plan was based on the fact that France *will* go on the offensive, as promised. If the french stated outright that their army was shit and Poles were on their own, Polish high command would have chosen a better and more adequate to the situation plan than it did.
But like why didn't they make it longer though
> But like why didn't they make it longer though Mostly for three reasons: * Following the [1920 Franco-Belgian Accord](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Belgian_Accord_of_1920), France and Belgium were in a collective defence pact. Therefore, building major fortifications along the Belgian border would have sent a signal that France may not help Belgium in the event of German invasion, making such a move diplomatically unpalatable.^[1] * The Franco-Belgian border doesn't really lend itself to building formidable fortifications anyway. It's flat, it has very few natural features you can take advantage of. The water table is high, meaning you can't easily build underground. It's also a densely populated and densely industrialized area, meaning that building fortifications here would cost a fortune. * The Franco-Belgian plan was for the best-equipped French divisions to move into Belgium and dig in behind its defensive features (the Albert canal, the Dyle river...) in times of heightened tension, in order to achieve a better concentration of fire than any incoming German invasion. The defence strategy for Northern France was to stop the Germans in Belgium, thus making fortifications along the French-Belgian borders redundant.^[1] ------ [1]: Belgium pulling out of the defence pact in 1936 is a key reason why the French battleplans were so inadequate in 1940. As per the defence pact, Belgium would invite the French army to come in and entrench itself if imminent invasion was feared, thus giving the Germans a tough nut to crack. Post-1936 Belgium could not do that, however, because it had proclaimed neutrality. The Belgians had to wait until the German invasion was already underway to call for help, and with so little time to move in and dig in, in addition to France' dreadfully slow and rigid decision making cycle, it's no surprise that the *Plan D* went as bad as it did.
That was the initial plan, until Belgium backed out at the last moment, because neutrality and all.
Belgium moment
That Hitler was shocked when Japan declared war on the US. That mf was literally estatic because it would mean finally sinking American ships for a chance to starve out Britain. That Britain basically just threw money at the Allies and invested most of its resources on the navy during the Napoleonic Wars, when it's hands are full trying to drive back the French from Spain (while trying to coordinate the Spanish and the Portuguese, who hated one another) Chiang Kai Shek is some sort of 'good guy' because he lost the Civil War to Mao. That man's leadership basically shot China in the foot numerous times, especially the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Chiang Kai Shek was a monster. See the White Terror in Taiwan.
he's no worse than mao except for maybe destroying ancient artifacts and unleashing the red guard(that's what mao did)
But if he were a more competent leader and less awful in general, maybe we wouldn’t have had to worry about Mao
Interesting that throughout the cold war, despite being the "democracy" side, America was in bed with a lot of dictators, and then buries the nature of these arrangements in the classroom
Dunno what America you’re learning from, because in my class we learned about all the revolutions in Central and South America as well as Africa, and all the messy dictators that came into being from it. We own up to it, plus, it’s not exactly like it was a secret.
Basically America: "Human rights? Civil wars? Un-democratic institutions? If it helps being anti-Commie then he's good!" -America , probably
Chang Kai Shek was a ruthless, immensely incompetent and corrupt autocrat. it's especially glaring when you consider that he managed to get outcompeted in terms of competence by the Chinese communists -- whose leader at one point waged a war on sparrows and managed to starve 15 million people to death.
The Germans could have won if they *insert unrealistic and/or scenario incompatible with nazi-ideology* My favourite: Just take Moscow
Germany would have won if they hadn't lost
I mean just win, were they stupid?
\> Claim to be the master race \> Fight one war \> lose
> Called 1000 year Reich >12 years later
>don't elaborate any further, probably because they're dead
*frank caleindo doing john madden* "If the Germans had just won all the battles and not lost so many guys, huh, huh, they probably would have won the war!"
The Germans would have won WW2 if the Allies had just surrendered. Alternatively, the Germans would not have lost WW2 if they did not start WW2.
I just mentally replace “could have won” in those hypotheticals with “could have delayed losing long enough to get atomic bombs dropped on them”
I dunno, if they didn't hate the Jews they may have been able to get the bomb first?
If they weren't racist they probably wouldn't have been driven to conquest on the first place.
Try telling that to Hitler
They still wouldn't have the resources to even make even one bomb or the delivery mechanism to get them where they needed to be.
“The Europeans didn’t know how to bath before they went to X area or X people showed them” Bruh
And the opposite. "X people of X area were uncultured savages until the Europeans educated them"
“Hehe the euros didn’t know how to bath until the Muslims brought it to Spain” “Hehe the euros taught the American Indians how to act civilized” Makes me wanna blow my brains out
Roman public bathouses: "are we jokes to you"
Anytime when someone says "Vietnam is invicible"
Vietnam lost a war as recently as 1975......
Hell, Vietnam even lost a war to Vietnam!
In 1975......
This little conversation sounds like a joke the Animaniacs would do.
Vietnam is so strong it even wins against itself
The last time Vietnam go to war is 1988 and they lost
Which war?
War is stretching it slightly, but it was China vs Vietnam for control of the Johnson South Reef: the islands are part of the disputed Spratly Islands, and at the time both Vietnam and China claimed the entire chain (other countries claimed only part). The two countries have different accounts of exactly what happened both before and during the engagement, but the certain facts are that three Chinese frigates engaged two Vietnamese transports and a tank landing ship, initially with their 100 mm guns, and then with boarding parties, sinking all three and killing 64 Vietnamese servicemen and wounding 11 others (9 men captured). Chinese casualties are disputed: China claims 1 wounded, Vietnam claims 6 killed & 18 wounded. Following this, China established control over the entirety of the Spratly Islands.
The way history is taught there makes a majority of the population think they won the French and the US on their own with little support. They know the Soviet helped but not a lot know to what extent. And fewer would know that the Chinese helped them. Those who know all of that are mostly ultra nationalist who would say the same thing regardless
Fun fact, North Korea and Cuba also helped them!
I forgot to put Cuba in there since the state media talks a great deal about Fidel Castro. North Korea doesn't get any mention ever since their relationship went sour, they don't even bother translating Kim Jong Il and Un name to Vietnamese but still call Kim Il Sung by the translated name for some reason
> Vietnam is _invicible_ Like John Cena?
That we should be exploring the galaxy right now if wasn't the burning of Alexandria library/Christianity/Fall of Roman empire/historical event or religion of your choice
If not for the Finno-Korean Hyperwar, we would have been exploring the multiverse by now...
This. The Alexandria library was a hoard of *greek* writing. It was sitting on thousands of years of Egyptian culture and they didn't even bother with it. We lost the ability to read hieroglyphs while that library was standing. Literacy of Sumerian and Akkadian disappeared during the library 's existence also. The Alexandrian librarians couldn't be bothered with punic/phoenician stuff either, despite Carthage being one of the most important trading partners of Alexandria. If a Babylonian had discovered the theory of relativity, it wouldn't have made its way into the library, unless some greek stole the idea and claimed it as is own.
Also the obsession with Christians getting rid of hieroglyphics in the first place. Coptic was better for the average person, and we can read hieroglyphics today anyway so what's the point of "they destroyed all that history" 20/20 hindsight
I have actively heard someone say, talking about indigenous American people, “shame they’re all gone now huh?” Which, of course, is nowhere near the truth.
Maybe it was more about as a independent state free of colonialism?
As much as I wish that were the case friend, it was a person during a tour of an archeological site I was working at, discussing the indigenous lens underneath the main site. Very much believing the people themselves were “all gone.”
Oh, there's quite a lot of myths about the Middle Ages: * Public execution were very common - No, they were not. If we look at actual numbers, it averages out to about 2 executions per year in cities. Also, they were not performed in the middle of the city, but often outside. * Torture was very common - No, it was VERY strictly regulated. Also, most torture devices were inventions of later periods. * People in the Middle Ages didn't wash and were filthy - Nope, people in the Middle Ages actually believed that bad smells cause disease and washed quite regularly. Public bathhouses were very common. They washed daily and bathed about once a week. * In the Middle Ages the church burned witches - Technically true, but only for the last decades of the Middle Ages. For the majority of the Middle Ages, the church denied the existence of witchcraft. * People in the Middle Ages drank beer/ale, because water quality was bad - No, they drank beer/ale, because it tastes better. Medieval cities were not big enough to pollute drinking water. * Medieval plague doctors wore beaked masks - That's from the 17th century. * Medieval people believed that the Earth is flat - No. There's a book from 1230 called De sphaera mundi, so literally "On the Sphere of the World". * The Bubonic plague was spread by rats - No. Newest evidence suggests that, while the first transmissions of the plague were from black rats to humans (or rather from fleas jumping from those rats to humans after the rats died), it was then probably spread from person to person. * Medieval knights were immobile when wearing armour - Yes, armour is heavy (up to 30 kg I think), but its weight is divided upon your entire body. It's very similar to the gear modern soldiers wear or firefighters. Also, plate armour was REALLY good at protecting you against arrows, spears, and swords. * Fire arrows - Fire arrows did exist, but not like they are depicted in films. If you just put fire on your arrow tip, it would go out by shooting the arrow. Instead, they transported gunpowder and would explode on impact. * Probably the most important medieval myth: the Middle Ages were one homogenous time period - "The Middle Ages" itself is a very broad term. They spanned 1,000 years of human history, so general statements about what people did during the Middle Ages should all be taken with a massive amount of salt (yes, also mine). For comparison: The Middle Ages span as much time as the Western Roman Empire, the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, Napoleon, both World Wars, and everything up until today COMBINED. [This](https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/059/916/105/large/robbie-mcsweeney-matt-lewis.jpg?1677435868) and [this](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/22003) is both medieval. The Vikings are as medieval as the invention of the printing press, the Crusades are as medieval as the construction of Notre-Dame. ----- [More details here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/14r6zjd/its_insane_how_many_historical_facts_are_just/jqr4ged/)
>* In the Middle Ages the church burned witches - Technically true, but only for the last decades of the Middle Ages. For the majority of the Middle Ages, the church denied the existence of witchcraft. And that was mainly the protestant doing that. Once the church have decided something they very rarely come back on it. So once they said "witchcraft isn't real" they stood by it. Killed a shitload of "heretics" and Jews though. Oh and the Spanish Inquisition rarely used torture. Or killed witch. But killed a FACKIN LOT of Jews because that's pretty much the one constant of the Middle Ages: "fuck the Jews".
> because that's pretty much the one constant of the Middle Ages: "fuck the Jews". I mean, it's not like they stopped after the Middle Ages. Or began with the Middle Ages.
True. Which makes me wonder : How da FUCK do we still have large Jew communities pretty much anywhere?
I mean, do we? Jewish population peaked at 17 million in 1939 and today, 85 years later, it has not yet recovered from the Holocaust and is at about 15 million. Estimates say that it will reach 16.4 million in 2060.
Oh, didn't know that. You're right, they're not that large.
But this makes the entire "Jews run the world" conspiracy so silly. How would that be possible? They have been expelled, massacred, and discriminated against for about 3,000 years. If they would still be able to control the entire world after all of that, maybe you should follow them, not fight them lmao
>maybe you should follow them, not fight them lmao Imperial Japan being like:
Speaking as a Jew myself, anyone who has ever spent any significant time around us learns really quickly that we don't agree on very many things. One of the rabbis at a temple I used to attend always joked "Where there are two Jews, you can find three opinions on any topic because someone's going to run with it for the sake of argument". There's a reason why so many of us are lawyers. Basically, we're far too busy meddling in the lives of our immediate circles to ever exert control over anything larger than a synagogue, law firm, deli, or bakery. There's as much (if not more) animosity between the sects of Judaism as there are between Christian sects. The Reform folks think the Orthodox are uptight, the Orthodox think the Reform are heretics, the Conservatives are somewhere in between. At least most of us, agree that the Haredim are a bunch of misguided fundamentalist misogynist assholes.
Jews in Europe during the feudal era were usually on contract with a Lord nearby. They were a group of mostly literate folk and weren't tied to the land so they had a number of benefits if you took them into your patronage. You had a group that could handle writing things for you, often they got employed as doctors. Jews at the time would gather questions they had and send a representative to the holy land where there were still big schools of Judaism, once there they would meet Jews from all around and had a common language to communicate. Were you a clever lord you might ask the Jews you allowed to settle, to see if they can't find someone to buy the goods from your domain. Jews also offered a nice loophole to the rule that Christians can't trade with Muslims. Jews however were usually forced to live in their own area, which further made them targets. Peasants usually attacked them for a number of reasons from "we blame.the Jews for the plague" to "the Lord gives the Jews preferred treatment" to "the Jews free their pagan slaves and convert them to Judaism so we're losing potential souls" So while there were a lot of dangers, often the Jews were protected by their local Lord.
Thanks for this additionnal knowledge!
No problem. Took a college course and it forever was burned into my mind.
Were they used as debt collectors too, because Christianity doesn't allow usury? I've heard that too from some people in history.
Judaism also doesn't allow usury and they are supposed to forgive all debts each year. So it's a bit more complicated. That is to say different communities approached it differently and that includes Christians, who routinely loaned money with interest. I don't have my old notes but several popes leant money with interest. That is to say both Jews and Christians leant money with interest to both Jews and Christians. If you can't own land, you have to find a sustainable way to support communities since you have to pay taxes. Facilitating trade is only going to get so much money, unless you can get some skin in the game for the actual goods. Jews could add interest to loans to non Jews and different communities interpreted that differently. Spanish Jewry were fairly straightforward with "we need to live so loaning to the gentiles is the way forward" So while many Jewish communities used loans as a way to create money, it was by no means just a Jewish practice. The big Italian banking families were quite Christian.
It’s pretty amazing when you think about it that way. I admire Jews who have the courage to openly practice their religion, considering all the massive amounts of historical hate they’ve gotten over the centuries for doing just that. Could we add “Jews being shrewd, unscrupulous money lenders” to this discussion?
>Could we add “Jews being shrewd, unscrupulous money lenders” to this discussion? How dare them practice a job that we explicitely forced unto them.
Also burning witches was more of a European thing; the Salem “witches” were mostly hanged
Plus that one absolute badass that was crushed with rocks
I assume more than one pope started getting greyhair just from insisting on it: "Witchcraft isn't real. The bible clearly says that god is the only that has power to make miracles. This is stupid."
It's worth noting noting that things like execution and torture practices varied significantly across Europe and across the centuries. Your source looks specifically at certain German cities in the late Middle ages. There are LOTS of misconceptions regarding the processes for these things and they pretty much never played out like Hollywood depicts, but it's important to avoid oversimplification when myth busting.
>Fire arrows - Fire arrows did exist, but not like they are depicted in films. If you just put fire on your arrow tip, it would go out by shooting the arrow. Instead, they transported gunpowder and would explode on impact also to my knowledge, fire arrows weren't used in open field battles. They were used to set buildings on fire.
I want to add other things i heard: Love didnt exist and ppl had so many children because most would die. They didnt care much. I really cant think of anything more mean and weird to say. PPL worked less. Well what ppl? Yes they had holidays, but had to work the fields and feed the animals still. Women sure did not have less work. PPL were stupid and schools were for boys only. If given the oportunity boys and girls would learn to read and write at home. If someone visited any kind of school they were expacted to allready know the basics. The church wasnt aposed to translations of the bible because they wanted to keep ppl stupid, but because good translations were rare. Kings did NOT randomly go to war to get more land. Becoming a Nun wasnt a bad thing. Becoming a Beguine would propable be one of the best fades for a woman who doesnt want to be married or have children. Freedom wasnt considered a good thing. Not as we know it today. You had Rights to duties and Freedom from duties. In documtaries they opfen talk about the example of some ppl not having the rights to wear weapons. This could be considered a good thing. If you dont have the right to wear weapons you dont need to fight.
Ah, a fellow Geschichtsfenster enjoyer?
Neanderthals were stupid unga bunga oafs. Look at a Mousterian tools and tell me Neanderthals unga bungad their way through life. Those tools are sophisticated. Look at the examples of Neanderthal art we've discovered within the past decade. Look at the fact they had the same FOXP2 gene that we have, which correlates with our speech. Overall it annoys the hell out of me when someone implies historical or prehistoric people were idiots compared to today. They weren't stupid, they just didn't know everything we know. But guess what? We don't know everything *they* knew, which is why the entire field of Archaeology and especially the subfield of Experimental Archaeology exists. Have any of you built a kiln from mud, stone, and sticks? I have, it's hard fucking work, and that's before we get to the point where we fire anything. We scoff now because, "How could you *possibly* not have known that is dangerous?" but we're walking around with microplastics in our blood.
Yes! Neanderthals were literally people, full stop. People look at you crazy when you tell them Neanderthals are humans. Any philosophical thought to be had about human consciousness or emotions or anything which is thought to be unique to human animals must also have room for Neaderthals. Not only that, but ancient homosapiens considered them human enough to intermingle with.
"The Titanic didn't have enough lifeboats for all passengers because they thought she was unsinkable" The Titanic carried *even more* lifeboats than guidelines required at that time. It's just that guidelines didn't consider lifeboats to be required to hold all passengers at once, they were just tiny rowboats intended to carry passengers from a (slowly) sinking ship over to another in multiple turns.
And the plan was pretty sound. They were on one of the busiest shipping routes in the world, a nearby ship would almost certainly be close, and would be supposed to have their radios turned on. The ocean was also prone to being very choppy, lifeboats would not protect you for very long and turning the ship itself into the lifeboat was seen as a much better idea. A large number of things had to go wrong independently for the Titanic to be the disaster it was.
> They were on one of the busiest shipping routes in the world, a nearby ship would almost certainly be close And the funny (sad) thing there was one close, the SS Californian was only 5 miles away and through chance and incompetence did not come to the Titanic's aid.
In addition to that, most ships that sank went down very quickly. Only like 15 minutes in some cases. Titanic actually went down very slowly (around 2.5 hours), but they still struggled to fill all lifeboats, finishing just minutes before the final plunge (the last collapsible was not filled at all and floated away upside down). Even if the ship had more lifeboats on board, they would not have been able to fill them in the time they had. This improved after the Titanic disaster as more focus was put on training the crews to fill and lower the lifeboats quicker. For example Titanic's sister ship Britannic sank during WW1 in only 55 minutes, and they were a hospital ship ~~filled with wounded soldiers~~; yet only around 50 people died (mostly those sitting in a lifeboat that was hacked into pieces by the ships screws, which had started back up in an attempt to beach the ship).
All the misconceptions about linear warfare.
My favorite one is where in patriot they show the opposing lines waiting for each other to get organized, fire and do it one by one. Nope. If you got into position and your enemy is still fumbling to get into rank, you fire. And if they haven’t managed to fire yet, you fire again. The one after the other fire would happen cause one party fired first, is busy reloading and the enemy has fired and will be reloading. The only reason that you wouldn’t be firing is if you were marching under fire to get dangerously close so that one of your valleys would have more devastating effect, which is pretty scary tactic in itself. They absolutely wouldn’t stand still waiting for the enemy line to arrange itself and take turns firing.
"HiStOrY iS wRiTtEn bY tHe VicToRs" especialy when talking about WWII. Like, my guy, have you read all the books the german generals wrote about how they were "just following order", "the army wasn't involved in genocide and warcrimes" and "Rommel wasn't a political soldier"... and the british and US historians to read those books and go "oh yes, that makes sense" even tho it didn't and there are clear evidence that everything is more nuanced.
The amount of world war propaganda (both of them btw) that came out of Germany and STILL IS SEEN AS TRUE by the general public is... frightening to say the least. From technologies to politics passing by personnal feats and strategies... so many lies for such a horrid truth.
there's a reason why we think carrots have such an improvement on eyesight, that was british propaganda to hide their plane mounted radars
Like the propaganda about how the Treaty of Versailles is to blame for Germany starting WWII. The treaty was punitive, yes, but the whole idea that the allies were out to get Germany is pretty far off the mark when you consider how they actually carried out the terms of the treaty.
Oh gods yes that one. Or the fact that the German population was under such a terrific amount of propaganda that they believed in the final victory being close all the way until November 11. Which led to the whole country feeling betrayed when it was revealed that they were, in fact, severely losing. And refusing to accept this reality and search for scapegoats. Gods I need to learn more about that period because it's so interesting.
> the whole idea that the allies were out to get Germany is pretty far off the mark when you consider how they actually carried out the terms of the treaty. It's even more out of the mark when you consider the terms the Germans themselves [gave to their defeated foes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Brest-Litovsk). Brest-Litovsk was a harsh treaty, and so were [Trianon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Trianon) and [Sèvres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_S%C3%A8vres). Versailles, on the other hand...
I'd also say the amount of British propaganda from the first ww that is still believed today is disheartening. But yes, in general, propaganda has had too strong an influence on the perception of the world wars and wars after
I'm sure there is loads but could you give an example of British ww1 propaganda that's still believed, today, because I'm trying to think of one and my mind is blank.
First one that comes to mind is the portrayal of Wilhelm II as a warmongering tyrant who wanted to take over the world. iirc Wilhelm made many attempts at friendly relations with other nations before the war (with some failures, granted) and was generally on good terms with many leaders of other nations. I recommend reading, "The Innocence of Kaiser Wilhelm II" by Christina Croft for a better understanding 👍
>I'd also say the amount of British propaganda from the first ww that is still believed today is disheartening. Would you have any examples? Because except maybe the Great Rape of Belgium that was slightly exagerated I don't really see any.
This is WWII, but a real classic one is: carrots give you good eyesight. This was literally a rumour made up to protect allied secrets so that their code breaking abilities weren’t discovered. They claimed that their pilots ate excessive amounts of carrots, and the vitamin A gave them incredible eyesight. Vitamin A *is* necessary for good vision, in that vitamin A deficiency causes blindness, but your sight not like a cordial bottle where you can super-charge your sight by concentrating vitamin A in your eyeballs. The idea that you somehow can is pure WWII propaganda.
I replied to another reply with a good example, that of Wilhelm being a warmonger, but yes the rape of Belgium being exaggerated is another good one
The myth of clean wehrmacht is one of the most annoying historical lies that's still insanely common as a belief
A lot of American history books are still teaching that the Civil War was more about federalism than slavery
Also "taxes" or "states rights" to which, I ask thee : What taxes? The state of New York paid more in taces than the whole Confederacy in the years previous to the war. States rights? Well then, why did the confederate constitution stated that member states were forbidden to abolish slavery? Where states rights?
"Hitler said "You what? Oh noooooo..." when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor." No you fuckwits. Hitler was EXTREMELY happy about Pearl Harbor because now his UBoats could now actively target and sink American shipping with 0 political consequences. Not to mention, him believing he could finish the war before the US got across the Atlantic...
NaZiS wErE hOrRiFiEd By NaNkInG cool, hey tell me what happened when the Gestapo found out about John Rabe talking about it.
salute to Rabe and his records.
There were also Japanese horrified by the Holocaust. The nazis kinda liked chiang kai-shek (even inviting him to the anti-communist pact) before he lost most of the coastal cities
That Japanese guy who saved the Jews - Chiune Sugihara - previously resigned from his post in Manchuria in protest of the mistreatment of the local Chinese.
That the library of Alexandria had all the classic knowledge in the world
Well it mihht have had a copy of nearly everything... but it was definitely not the ONLY storage place for all those scrolls, people aren't THAT dumb
That everyone thought that the earth was flat, people knew this since Erathostenes
Before Eratosthenes even. Eratosthenes was'nt the First to Prove the earth is a Globe. His Experiment showed the earth was a globe but He Set Out to measure the circumference of the earth. Actually the ancient people had figured Out the earth was a globe way before that by Looking at the stars and thinking
Medieval peasents drank beer instead of water, because the water was foul and ubdrinkable. Brooooo, how did they manage to make beer with that foul water then?! So, to clarify, water in the Middle Ages was perfectly fine. The worst thing that would regularly happen was for it to get stale when stored in a barrel. Other problems are when your source is a river, you kight occasionally get a virus or malicious bacteria in there. Sometimes wells could be badly built or maintained, but that was very rare, and groundwater compared to today was of much higher quality, since they didn't pour massive amounts of manure on their fields like we do.
>Medieval peasents drank beer instead of water, because the water was foul and ubdrinkable People actually think that a whole continent had fetal alcohol syndrome.
They did, it's why Luxembourg exists.
Fair enough. I don’t know anything about Luxembourg, but I generally respect this ridiculous sort of hate for anything.
European slavers kidnapped Africans rather than buying them from African slavers.
Only Portugal did that for a while, but Portugal hilariously isn't usually remembered as one of the biggest culprits of the transatlantic slave trade despite the fact that they were lol.
That medieval peasants had bad teeth or rarely bathed. Medieval peasants did practice oral hygiene. The food they ate also contained very little sugar. So cavities were practically non-existent.
Kinda related: "old timey people had short miserable lives! People past 30 were considered elderly lol"
Exactly, many people think that back then everyone just aged faster. A 30-40 year old looked like a 70-80 year old now. Which is just not true. Life expectancy was shorter because life was more dangerous. Fewer people made it into old age because there were more things that could kill you back then like disease, war, famine, and accidents. Plenty of examples of people making it into old age though. Leonidas himself was thought to be in his 50's or 60's when he fought at Thermopylae. He was fighting battles. There are many 50 and 60 year olds now that can't even run short distances or walk up flights of stairs without getting winded.
People assume that back when average life expectancy was 35-40 years most people died at that age, but it's the many infant deaths skewing the statistics. Once you made it past 5 you had pretty good chances of living 60-70 years
That Germany could win WW2 Civil War Lost Cause/State's Rights (with no further elaboration)
But I won as Germany in HOI 4. All they had to do was focus on tank destroyers and they win.
All Rommel had to do to take Suez was deploy several units of Space Marines!
It's like they always say, "just take X city/Moscow." And "don't have a siege just push". Some of the takes for "Germany coulda won" crack me up because it's genuine stuff like that from armchair Einstein's who don't realise Germany depended entirely on risky and dangerous gambles to get any kind of progress, because they knew what would happen if they had to fight the enemy head on, instead of rushing through their lines and encircling/extending as many enemy forces as possible like they normally did. Also obligatory "Just make better fighters for air supremacy, bomb their navy and capitulate the UK before the US joins 4head."
"Historians are all racist"
I mean, there are definitely historians out there who are racist. And if not racist, then heavily biased or prejudiced in some other way. Not all of them, to be sure, but a lot of them, including ones that we have come to rely on.
Don’t forget where the “good roommates” jokes come from
They're not racist, they're brutally honest
Oof ain’t that the truth. Was trying to explain to someone once why someone would approve of the trans-Atlantic slave trade when it happening and started They kept arguing *but it’s still a human no different tI them*. Yeah. We know and believe that. A person from the 1500s whose never seen a black person before doesn’t His response at the end was. *Well you keep saying really racist shit then go I’m not racist.* Then the convo ended Not my opinion. Certainly what a 16th century person would be thinking about in the moment
They often wrap history with nationalistic propaganda, Cough Roman historians. Take everything you read with a grain of salt and consider the context of the writer and the situation of the time it was written.
"Italy switched sides in the world wars." Not completely, in WW1 they left the Triple Alliance and then joined the Entente and THEN joined the war, they never switched sides while they were at war. In WW2, the Fascist regime fell, with the partisans taking over the south of Italy and fighting against the Axis, but the north became the Italian Social Republic which was still run by Mussolini. "Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (future King Karl XIV Johan of Sweden) had a tattoo that said 'Death to Kings' which he got before he became king." Nope. That comes from a 19th century play, much like "Et tu, Brute?" comes from Shakespeare. There is no evidence that he had such a tattoo. "Afghanistan is the 'graveyard of empires.'" Yeah no, the land which is now Afghanistan has been conquered by foreign powers many times, some controlling it better than others. And then the obvious ones like Lost Cause myth.
>in WW1 they left the Triple Alliance and then joined the Entente and THEN joined the war, And it's not like they betrayed anybody since the Triple Alliance was a defensive agreement and the Germans were the aggressors.
Yes, forgot to mention that.
And AH had actually secret plans to invade Italy even if they were allies. And Also after annexing Bosnia they did not respected the pact.
"Genghis Khan is the ancestors of 5% of the human population because he raped a lot of women." He is the ancestor of 5% of the human race because he lived a long time ago and by using basic exponential math, we can guess that his gene got spread around as time went on. Heck, even the research that started this myth came from the research that involved " study the gene of a tribe that RUMORED to be the descendants of Genghis Khan".
This. THIS SO MUCH We don't even have his genes for research. This 16 million children thing is only theory at best
That the Reconquista was a genocide and that all the muslim states in the peninsula were benevolent and tolerant while the Christian states were all zealots and fanatics
Yeah don’t even get me started on the Almohads. They were almost the equivalent of ISIS in medieval Iberia.
The whole "Macedonian nation" thing.
"The Dark Age" Middle Age was a time than harmed humanity's knowledge.
"The fall of Constantinople caused the discover of the maritime path to India and the arrival of Columbus to America"
I didn't know that that was a misconception, how was it in reality?
"The Treaty of Versailles was totally unfair and caused WWII!!!" You do realize that it was more fair than most of the treaties France was forced to sign prior to WWI, and that it's literally Nazi propaganda to blame the allies right? Furthermore, while it IS unfair to say Germany is solely to blame for the war, they didn't exactly rush for peace now did they? Bonus: When Marshall Ferdinand Foch said, "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years." He wasn't saying the treaty was unfair. He was saying it because it didn't do enough to disarm Germany to not make them a threat in the future. And he was right.
Medieval Europeans didn’t bathe Everyone in antiquity died by their 30s The Romans ate to such excess that they had a room for ritual bulimia
“The pyramids of Giza were built by slaves”
I believe that one is a nodern invention, the bible said the jews built cities, nothing about the pyramids
This is a misconception that really annoys me, people trying to argue against jewish being in Egypt by using evidence that Jews did not build build pyramids. When it’s not said in Bible they did. I wonder how the myth started. I assume some just heard “built” and “ancient Egypt” and assumed it must be pyramids! Similar logic gets Cleopatra always dressed in Egyptian fashions couple of thousand years out of date (combined with whatever tie seen as sexy when the film is made with a plenty of shiny fabrics), instead as a Hellenistic Greek woman. That’s also a pet peeve of mine, you don’t have to make a Cleopatra movie if you are interested in Egypt if era of pyramids
Egypt history is amazing. First Pharaon was from 3.000 bC, the last one from almost year 0, so a ton of years, yet we tend to shrink 3.000 years to the Bronze Age look and pyramids. We, today, are closer to Cleopatra than Cleopatra was to the first pyramid
"Oh, you mean they were built by salaried workers, right?" "..." "Right?"
The french are cowards
That corsets were deadly torture methods that caused an array of diseases and fainting women were forced into.
“The Jews killed Jesus” OR “Corrupt Leadership who happened to be Jewish killed Jesus” The answer to who/how actually killed Jesus is “we don’t know due bias/contradictions of the source material”. If we take the Bible at face value then yes the Corrupt Leaders who happen to be Jewish are responsible. But there are inconsistencies: how come Corrupt Leadership needed Pontius’s execution order to kill Jesus, but don’t need his permission to stone James or Stephen.
Yeah it was the Romans. I wrote a ~~could~~ couple of papers on the crucifixion and Jesus’s relationship with other Jewish groups. The Bible says that he was crucified by the Romans. Tacitus says that he was crucified by Pilate. The cross was a Roman punishment. Everything we know about Pilate, and the political environment at the time, make it clear that Pilate wanted to suppress any insurrection as soon as possible and kill the leader in the most humiliating way. Edit: I wrote the papers in university while getting a degree in philosophy and history.
“Neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.” In the context of the HRE’s entire history.
I think it was Voltaire who originally coined that phrase. And I’ve heard a few people say he was half joking when he said it.
Omg finally someone brings this Up, Its one of the Most annoying Things i Hear on a regular Basis on the Internet.
Her: Babe, someone just posted something about the Holy Roman Empire. Me: Then it is time. Bring me the Voltaire quote!
That Anne of Cleves was ugly. That Queen Mary I was exceptionally brutal (to clarify I'm not arguing with the 'brutal' part, but the 'exceptionally' part; burning was *the* standard punishment for heresy at the time and it's not like she invented it; Henry VIII burned people at the stake, too.)
Italy "switched sides" in WW1.
Also don’t forget y’all history is written by the winners, until the victims are able to correct them generations later.
Pretty much all of Lost Cause mythology regarding the Confederate States, Antebellum, and Reconstruction.
"tHe nAziS weRe aPpaUleD bY uNit 731 aNd JaPanEsE tReAtmEnT oF tHe cHinEse" bitch the Nazis were horrible people and probably didn't even Care because after all the people that were being massacered were not Part of their fictional aryan race. One Nazi didn't like it, to say they were "all soooo appauled" is borderline trying to make them look better for peoples wet dreams about the Nazis winning ww2 where they conveniently ignore the fact that the Nazis would have killed all the "inferior races" afterwards.
mfs be acting like Hitler read a telegram and started weeping in his suite or some shit, like dawg no.
The common "dark ages" misconceptions about the medieval period drive me crazy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions_about_the_Middle_Ages
That’s me whenever I see someone say that the Wehrmacht were good guys who did no wrong and didn’t know that the SS or Einsatzgruppen hurt anybody.
Some misconceptions related to Poland (most of them are repeated by either tankies, nazis, polish ND supporters/nationalists/fascists and... Czechs, of all people): **"Poland started the Polish-Soviet war"** - Bolsheviks were the first ones to break the Brest-Litovsk pact, invade the contested Borderlands region and attack the Polish army in early 1919, which later escalated into war **"Poland invaded every one of its neighbours after ww1, which is why they had bad relations with them"** - Poland only alienated/invaded Lithuania, was attacked/invaded by Czechoslovakia and Russia, didn't have almost any relations at all with Belarus, gained lands in Germany through independent uprisings and the Versailes treaty, had great relations with Latvia and helped it during its war of independence against russia, and there was no clear "aggressor" in the Polish-WUPR war. Besides, Poland and Ukraine became allies later on, and the relations only became as bad as they did because of ND's terrible handling of Riga treaty, not because of an invasion. **"Piłsudski singlehandedly won the polish-bolshevik war/Piłsudski was a coward, imbecile and it was Gen. Rozwadowski who won the Battle of Warsaw"** - Neither is true. The war wouldn't have been won without people like Rozwadowski or Haller, but Piłsudski was very influential too: his leadership and military brilliance was crucial for keeping the nation together. He also personally led one of the polish armies during the counteroffensive in the Battle of Warsaw, which was pretty cool. I think it was also one of the last instances of the head of state commanding his army in battle. Only other I can think is King Albert of Belgium (and maybe Atarurk and Mao, though I'm not sure whether they were heads of state during the turkish war of independence and the chinese civil war, and also Chaing-Kai-Shek, though I don't think he personally led any armies) **"Piłsudski was a German spy/Hitler's ally"** - Piłsudski despised Hitler and even once suggested to France to jointly invade Germany and topple the nazi government. Most of his dictatorship was spent trying to get Poland ready for ww2. He also refused to swear allegiance to Germany in the Oath Crisis and only supported Germany when it was most beneficial to Poland **"Piłsudski was a fascist"** - Piłsudski was a socialist patriot ideologically and initially supported democracy, stepping down 2 times from a position of a Supreme Commander to allow for democratic elections. He did become disillusioned with parlimentary democracy after the shitshow that were the polish politics at that time, but he didn't embrace fascism, rather a more authoritarian system of government where a President would hold more power. The coup didn't happen only because of these beliefs too, other reasons included a cabinet crisis and a worsening polish international situation. Poland after the coup was authoritarian/oligarchic, not fascist. **"Ribbentrop-Molotov was just a normal non-aggresion pact"** - it included a secret protocol that divided Europe between USSR and Germany. No other non-aggression pact had that. **"Poland allied Nazi Germany/collaborated with nazis"** - The Polish-German non-aggression pact was a normal pact that only stated that Poland and Germany wouldn't attack each other. Poland signed a similar pact with USSR as a part of the "Balance until it's possible, and when it's not: set the world on fire" strategy. Everyone in Poland, except for the German minority and some Ukrainian nationalists, despised the nazis. Even the Polish fascists hated hitler. There was no official collaboration, one of the lowest individual collaboration levels in Europe, the biggest amount of people who risked their lives to save Jews and one of the biggest resistance movements in the world. **"USSR's invasion of Poland in 1939 wasn't in alliance with Hitler/was done to liberate Ukrainians and Belarusians/was a part of Stalin's 4d chess strategy to have more time and more land for nazis to go through/was a necessity because USSR tried to join the allies but they didn't let them"** - 1. It was a part of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. It was absolutely coordinated with Hitler. 2. USSR suppressed the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages and commited a genocide on them (Holodomor). 3. USSR actually made the operation Barbarossa harder for themselves because they invaded Finland (also in accordance with the R-M pact) and not only lost 500k men, they also made the USSR-Axis frontline bigger than it would have been if USSR didn't invade anyone. So unless Stalin was a time traveller who saw 14 trillion alternate universes and Finland invaded USSR in every one of them, this doesn't make sense. 4. Allying with nazis is never a "necessity", no matter the circumstances. If this was the actual reason, as opposed to just imperialism, then Stalin was one of the most disgusting, cowardly spineless bastards to ever live. **"Poland allied with Nazis and invaded Czechoslovakia"** - annexation of Zaolzie was 1. Done independently. Poland didn’t even participate in the Munich conference, let alone sign any partition treaties with the nazis. 2. Done already after the Munich conference, so when Czechia was all but annexed by the Reich. 3. Just as vile and in a bad taste as the Czechoslovak annexation of Zaolzie in 1919. Czechia didn't want this polish-majority region to go to Poland because of 1 stupid railway station, so instead of allowing a democratic plebiscite, they just invaded it. I consider the 1939 annexation to be, despite the ethnic composition of zaolzie at that time, an awful decision and a morally bad thing to do, but if someone calls that "nazi collaboration", then they have to acknowledge that according to their logic, Czechia was collaborating with Bolshevik Russia in 1919 as well. **"Stalin was actually sympathetic to the Warsaw uprising and only didn't help it because the red army was exhausted and wasn't able to enter Warsaw because of logistics"** - one of the most overdone tankie arguments. 1st of all: Stalin didn't allow allied airplanes carrying help for the uprising to refuel on soviet airports. There is no bullshit "but logistics" excuse for that. 2nd of all: Operation Tempest took place in many Polish cities, not only in Warsaw. And in every single polish city liberated by a Polish uprising, regardless of whether the Home Army cooperated with Red Army or not, the soviets entered the city and either disarmed or imprisoned the partisans (when the partisans agreed to cooperate) or outright murdered them (when they were more hestitant). These aren't the actions of someone only restricted by logistics. Stalin fucking despised the Poles and wanted as many of them dead as possible.
“Female leaders have never stared a war or committed atrocities.” Facepalm
"Soviets won through constant meatwaves!!!" **"Why isn't it considered a viable strategy then"**
The Spanish inquisition was a mass genocide ... nope , compared to secular courts of the time church courts were far more likely to grant a fair trial to an accused with an expectation of it being an actual trial rather than a lord punishing some commoner who annoyed them (with variable degrees of fairness depending on the lord in question) and a proper secular trial was usually reserved for nobles accused of a crime. And during the three hundred or so years the Spanish inquisition was in effect it only executed around 2000 people, with the most common punishments being made to wear sackcloth for a while , reprimands/warnings , fines , or floggings.
To add to this, the Mexican Inquisition and the one in Lima did commit quasi-genocide in the middle of the seventeenth century. They did this through the use of conspiracy theories that increased persecution of Conversos. This ultimately lead to the Great Auto-da-fé of 1649 that practically destroyed the Converso community in Mexico City.
Also as much as I love the iconic joke from Monty Python, people actually did expect the Spanish Inquisition- you were given a thirty days' notice before they showed up.
confusing horthy miklós with szálasi ferenc. hate horthy for stuff that he actually did, not stuff that szálasi did. actually, hate both, just hate szálasi more than horthy. horthy made shitass decisions, szálasi wanted to be worse than hitler. ultimately, horthy had good ideas, and terrible ideas. unfortunately, only the terrible ones were succesfull.
AfGhAnIsTaN iS tHe GrAvEyArD oF EmPiRes!!!
This comment section is very educational