Sealand.
Which Historical Figure(s) does Pop Culture do the least credit?
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sub-Saharan Africa & south east Asia
as well as whomsoever inhabited the Pacific!
as well as whomsoever inhabited the Pacific!
I think contemporary sub-saharan Africa is still given too little credit. I've been to Africa a few times (on account of having siblings there), and I swear that people are surprised every time when I tell them that there are cars in Africa. Ironically, it's usually the extremely politically correct people (you know, those who call normal people racists) who sport this view of Africa. Well-meaning racism?
If, with "pop culture" we mean the western culture, I'd add "URSS during the second world war".
I mean, growing up in this side of the world, pop culture doesn't really help you to understand that it was the URSS and not the western allies that fought and destroyed most of the german army. North Africa and Italy were really secondary fronts, only useful to engage few german divisions. And while it was of pivotal importance and surely needed, operation Overlord and what followed are really nothing compared to the war the URSS had to sustain and I'm not only talking about how many divisions the germans had deployed on the western front. The terrible losses suffered (more than 20 million people!), the atrocities committed by both the SS and the Wehrmacht to the "inferior slav untermenschen", the scale of that conflict...
I mean, I understand that there has been the Cold War and stuff, yet it still seems to be impossible to honestly represent the URSS role in WW2, even today. Enemy at the Gates, one of the few western movies on the eastern front, is more concerned in showing to the public that the Red Army was badly equipped, badly led, badly disciplined, better in shooting its own men than killing the germans than the opposite (that, in fact, it held the line and held the Wehrmacht off the Volga: yet the american debacle in the Ardennes will be always be seen as somethig epic). I mean, try to watch that movie forgetting you already know the outcome of the battle of Stalingrad: you will have no idea on how the soviets could have possibly won the battle when the movie ends, as Vassilij, the main character, is in fact the only one that manages to kill some germans. All the scenes that involves the Red Army only shows it being massacred by the hundreds, being unwilling to fight, unprofessional and scared. Go tell it to the defenders of the Grain Elevator, the Pavlov's house, the factories. As I, nevertheless, liked that movie, it's undeniable that it contains a lot of cold war era propaganda. I've picked up that movie as an example because I think that Enemy at the Gates is probably the only thing the western youngest generations know about the eastern front.
More than often I see people feeling (correctly) bad (and I share the feel!) for the mass rapes in East Prussia or in Berlin committed by Red Army, those barbarians. As a contrast, most of these people forgets or simply doesn't know about what the soviets suffered by the hands of germans: the siege of Leningrad, in which the germans, unwilling to capture the city, simply tried to starve the population to death, or killing it with artillery, or waiting for the cold to do the job; the massacres committed by the anti-partisan warfare in Belarus, a region in which more than 600 villages were burned to the ground together with their population. Just to make a pair of examples.
You can read, quite often, about the Wehrmacht as a disciplined, noble, chivalric and absolutely not devoted to the Nazi Regime army, like if the SS were the only one to have been exterminators and, in fact, nazis: on the opposite, the Red Army will always be painted by western media as a communist mongol horde. You know, the Wehrmacht was too disciplined to commit atrocities, unlike the inferior slavs: this is how more than an half of a century of propaganda as forged our views on a pivotal part of our history.
How I wish Sergio Leone had filmed The 900 Days movie on the siege of Leningrad. That would have surely taught some lessons.
I mean, growing up in this side of the world, pop culture doesn't really help you to understand that it was the URSS and not the western allies that fought and destroyed most of the german army. North Africa and Italy were really secondary fronts, only useful to engage few german divisions. And while it was of pivotal importance and surely needed, operation Overlord and what followed are really nothing compared to the war the URSS had to sustain and I'm not only talking about how many divisions the germans had deployed on the western front. The terrible losses suffered (more than 20 million people!), the atrocities committed by both the SS and the Wehrmacht to the "inferior slav untermenschen", the scale of that conflict...
I mean, I understand that there has been the Cold War and stuff, yet it still seems to be impossible to honestly represent the URSS role in WW2, even today. Enemy at the Gates, one of the few western movies on the eastern front, is more concerned in showing to the public that the Red Army was badly equipped, badly led, badly disciplined, better in shooting its own men than killing the germans than the opposite (that, in fact, it held the line and held the Wehrmacht off the Volga: yet the american debacle in the Ardennes will be always be seen as somethig epic). I mean, try to watch that movie forgetting you already know the outcome of the battle of Stalingrad: you will have no idea on how the soviets could have possibly won the battle when the movie ends, as Vassilij, the main character, is in fact the only one that manages to kill some germans. All the scenes that involves the Red Army only shows it being massacred by the hundreds, being unwilling to fight, unprofessional and scared. Go tell it to the defenders of the Grain Elevator, the Pavlov's house, the factories. As I, nevertheless, liked that movie, it's undeniable that it contains a lot of cold war era propaganda. I've picked up that movie as an example because I think that Enemy at the Gates is probably the only thing the western youngest generations know about the eastern front.
More than often I see people feeling (correctly) bad (and I share the feel!) for the mass rapes in East Prussia or in Berlin committed by Red Army, those barbarians. As a contrast, most of these people forgets or simply doesn't know about what the soviets suffered by the hands of germans: the siege of Leningrad, in which the germans, unwilling to capture the city, simply tried to starve the population to death, or killing it with artillery, or waiting for the cold to do the job; the massacres committed by the anti-partisan warfare in Belarus, a region in which more than 600 villages were burned to the ground together with their population. Just to make a pair of examples.
You can read, quite often, about the Wehrmacht as a disciplined, noble, chivalric and absolutely not devoted to the Nazi Regime army, like if the SS were the only one to have been exterminators and, in fact, nazis: on the opposite, the Red Army will always be painted by western media as a communist mongol horde. You know, the Wehrmacht was too disciplined to commit atrocities, unlike the inferior slavs: this is how more than an half of a century of propaganda as forged our views on a pivotal part of our history.
How I wish Sergio Leone had filmed The 900 Days movie on the siege of Leningrad. That would have surely taught some lessons.
Uh, you started off well but then, by the end, got consumed by your own frothing rage and went off the deep end.
Your claim on how the Wehrmacht is portrayed does not hold any water. Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far - just to name a few - and many, many more, usually demonize the Germans, with only occasional humanizing moments. Remember how the German soldier begged for mercy in Saving Private Ryan? Only to return in the finale as an eager wanna-be American-killer. Just one example off the top of my head.
Your criticism of Enemy at the Gates are well warranted but it's important to remember that the movie is based on an American book that is very loosely based on Soviet war-time propaganda. Almost nothing is "real". As for Red Army in 1941 and 1942, it absolutely was an inferior fighting force compared to the Wehrmacht. Even during 1943, Germans checked as many Soviet attacks as they lost and casualties were lopsided until 1944 when the Red Army finally reached a level comparable to the Germans. However, I agree that this transformation progress is never seen on the silver screen.
Your other claims are clearly based on history books. However, books are not really pop-culture, so we have the trouble here of mixing our definitions and comparisons. If we do take history books as part of "pop culture" - which I don't really swallow but whatever - then your arguments can be tossed out of the window because Soviet importance to the annihilation of Nazi-Germany has been well understood and accepted by historians for decades now. It wasn't just the Cold War, USSR kept most of her archives closed to Western historians, who thus could only use German sources when it came to the Great Patriotic War - this naturally coloured history books until the early 1990's.
As for comparison of war crimes and atrocities, please don't even start. It's completely pointless and both sides are guilty of awful things. Germans raped, Russians raped. Germans tortured, Russians tortured. Germans shot prisoners and used forced labour, Russians shot prisoners and used forced labour. What do you think NVDK or SMERSH agents did to Soviet citizens who were suspected of collaborating with the invaders?
Finally, the only ones who claim that Wehrmacht committed no war crimes whatsoever are ignorant revisionists. I haven't read a single history book or seen a serious documentary that tries to make that claim. I'm curious as to where you've come across it, as I've only seen it on the Internet message boards, usually by some kid who thinks the uniforms are snazzy or something.
Your claim on how the Wehrmacht is portrayed does not hold any water. Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far - just to name a few - and many, many more, usually demonize the Germans, with only occasional humanizing moments. Remember how the German soldier begged for mercy in Saving Private Ryan? Only to return in the finale as an eager wanna-be American-killer. Just one example off the top of my head.
Your criticism of Enemy at the Gates are well warranted but it's important to remember that the movie is based on an American book that is very loosely based on Soviet war-time propaganda. Almost nothing is "real". As for Red Army in 1941 and 1942, it absolutely was an inferior fighting force compared to the Wehrmacht. Even during 1943, Germans checked as many Soviet attacks as they lost and casualties were lopsided until 1944 when the Red Army finally reached a level comparable to the Germans. However, I agree that this transformation progress is never seen on the silver screen.
Your other claims are clearly based on history books. However, books are not really pop-culture, so we have the trouble here of mixing our definitions and comparisons. If we do take history books as part of "pop culture" - which I don't really swallow but whatever - then your arguments can be tossed out of the window because Soviet importance to the annihilation of Nazi-Germany has been well understood and accepted by historians for decades now. It wasn't just the Cold War, USSR kept most of her archives closed to Western historians, who thus could only use German sources when it came to the Great Patriotic War - this naturally coloured history books until the early 1990's.
As for comparison of war crimes and atrocities, please don't even start. It's completely pointless and both sides are guilty of awful things. Germans raped, Russians raped. Germans tortured, Russians tortured. Germans shot prisoners and used forced labour, Russians shot prisoners and used forced labour. What do you think NVDK or SMERSH agents did to Soviet citizens who were suspected of collaborating with the invaders?
Finally, the only ones who claim that Wehrmacht committed no war crimes whatsoever are ignorant revisionists. I haven't read a single history book or seen a serious documentary that tries to make that claim. I'm curious as to where you've come across it, as I've only seen it on the Internet message boards, usually by some kid who thinks the uniforms are snazzy or something.
Jhessail 说:
I admit you got a point, here, but I'll still try to explain myself better.
Jhessail 说:
Both Band of Brothers and Longest Day doesn't give such a bad image of the Wehrmacht (I'm not mentioning the SS). We must remember that they are both set on the western front, of course, but still...while I'm agreeing with you on Private Ryan. Man, you didn't even get to know americans were not alone in Normandy by that movie!
Jhessail 说:
You're right on the Soviets' being an inferior force: still, the battle of Stalingrad saw them prevail on the germans not only because of higher numbers: the Wehrmacht simply didn't have the ability to manouver according to its own tactics, the Panzers were stuck among the ruins, the fighting was street by street, room by room, yard by yard. This was mainly Germans' own fault, as they created the debris and the ruins that proved worthy allies to the Red Army, but the Red Army did not face an easy task in defending its position. It was not something that could have been done with a rag tag army armed with a rifle for two men and stuff. I mean, episodes like those happened, but they were not common practice in late 1942 as the movie suggests. Also, trapping the VI army with the pincer manouver of Operation Uranus was a great military success, both in planning (assaulting the weak flanks) and execution (obtaining a surprise effect: a good intelligence result). All of the above mentioned is never showed in the movie and can hardly be grasped. I mean, it's just a movie, not a documentary, I'm fine and I've even liked it. I'm just talking about perception of history through popular media.
Jhessail 说:
Well, history books are not pop culture (well, not in my opinion) and we agree on that. But since this topic was made to compare factual historical events and the pop perception of the same, I thought I could have used history books as a source for factual history; movies, even more than documentaries, are, in my opinion, a good source to get the popular view.
And, well, I've been quite stupid forgetting about the closed archives, I have to admit. Even if this does not justify the fact that the popular vision has not evolved a lot, yet.
Jhessail 说:
On this peculiar point I have to disagree with you a bit.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not denying the horrors produced by the Stalinism, neither I'm saying they are lesser. Only in WW2 the URSS: came to agreements with nazi Germany when they both invaded Poland, applied the same kind of aggressive expansionism of the Hitlerians on Finland...no, I'm not the Stalin era nostalgia guy. I hope this premise is clear enough so that I won't have to go back to it once again.
Still, I don't think you can fully say that the crimes the two dictatorships committed on each other are exactly the same thing. Rapes, executions of prisoners, all these kind of stuff tend to happen during a war. The western allies committed the same kinda stuff even if it is not often mentioned. But the Third Reich conduced a war of annhilation on the soviets: the soldiers were instructed to consider the citizens of the Soviet Union, or better the slavs, as animals, untermenschen. It is the same racial doctrine the nazis applied to jews or gypsies. And it was not like the german soldier, coming from years of victories and probably a supporter of the nazi regime, as most germans were, did not believe in these racist stuff, the conquering master race, etc.
I mean, it may be a detail or it may seems to be unimportant, but committing atrocities under a deliberate ethnic cleansing doctrine is not really the same thing of atrocities committed according to will of individuals (no matter how many). The soviets did not mass murdered the German population: despite the horrors they have committed, they were not clearing out new lands for the superior slav race, they were not willingly starving the population of Germany's occupied territories to feed their own citizens only.
Jhessail 说:
This is where you are most right on me went on an over the top rampage
Revisionism is not only made by silly kids on the internet, though, and seems to be taken more and more seriously as time goes by. There has been a lot of debate on the Holocaust as something that never happened and I think there's a rising number of people believing these new theories (which I'd dismiss as absurd). And the Holocaust denial is just the bigger and most "shocking" example of how revisionism (which is not wrong by definition) is used to reevaluate fascism. And since the radical, often nationalist, often racist right wing seems to be on the rise once again in several places in Europe, you can understand my concerns, I guess.
Bohemond Chesne
Squire
Possibly the best military movie ever made. But it does seem to be widely unpopular these days.FrisianDude 说:
MadVader 说:
Wouldn't you say that defamation was worse than a lack of acknowledgement?
Ask "Man on the street" in America or Western Europe about Slovaks and you will get a "I dont know who they are." And said man might be curious enough to investigate.
Ask about the known but disrespected nations and he is likely to respond with somethign along the line of "Arn't they the ones who f*£k sheep?"
F.F.C._fritz,
I deliberately did not touch upon the Holocaust because it obviously elevates Nazi-Germany to a category of its own when listing atrocities. My point was that the war-time crimes committed by Red Army and Wehrmacht are comparable - what the Einsatzgruppen did is something quite different. Always when trying to compare two dictators or horror regimes, it usually happens that the crimes of A are being reduced to make crimes of B look worse. Not saying that was your purpose but that it often happens. I could very easily claim here that the terror bombing by RAF and USAAF inflicted upon German and Japanese cities was just as bad as the siege of Leningrad. Whether I'm right or wrong doesn't really matter, both were awful things that were not a military necessity.
Just a little note on nomenklatura: Roman numerals are used for army corps, like III. Armeekorps or XXX. Corps (which rode up that single highway through Eindhoven and Nijmegen to reach Arnhem), whereas armies are numbered with Arabic numerals, like 6. Armee in Stalingrad or 8. Army and so on.
I deliberately did not touch upon the Holocaust because it obviously elevates Nazi-Germany to a category of its own when listing atrocities. My point was that the war-time crimes committed by Red Army and Wehrmacht are comparable - what the Einsatzgruppen did is something quite different. Always when trying to compare two dictators or horror regimes, it usually happens that the crimes of A are being reduced to make crimes of B look worse. Not saying that was your purpose but that it often happens. I could very easily claim here that the terror bombing by RAF and USAAF inflicted upon German and Japanese cities was just as bad as the siege of Leningrad. Whether I'm right or wrong doesn't really matter, both were awful things that were not a military necessity.
You're right and the Germans very well knew that, which is why the original plan for Case Blau didn't see 6. Armee capturing Stalingrad but merely screening the flank of the Heeresgruppe Süd along the river. Hitler's personal fixation with the city that carried Stalin's name was just as much to fault for what happened as was the lack of AT-weaponry among the Romanians or the tenacity of Chuikov's 62. Army in holding a constantly dwindling piece of Stalingrad until Zhukov was ready to unleash the double-pincer. Remember that while Germans were suffering, they were succeeding. In a week or two, Paulus would have been able to hoist the Swastika over the ruins.
Just a little note on nomenklatura: Roman numerals are used for army corps, like III. Armeekorps or XXX. Corps (which rode up that single highway through Eindhoven and Nijmegen to reach Arnhem), whereas armies are numbered with Arabic numerals, like 6. Armee in Stalingrad or 8. Army and so on.
I haven't really noticed. It comes and goes. As long as the revisionists are vigorously put down when they raise their heads, all is good. Sometimes revisionists are on the other side, like when Daniel Goldhagen tried to prove that all Germans were mass-murdering psychopaths in his book "Hitler's Willing Executioners". Don't read it, it's awful collection of lies and half-truths.
Jhessail 说:
You're right on your analysis, I'm surely agreeing on terror bombing. The western allies committed war crimes as well as the dictatorships, even if they are not often mentioned.
Jhessail 说:
Absolutely right on that, I've wrote my previous post on a later hour and didn't really thought about it
Jhessail 说:
With "taken seriously" I'm not talking about academics, luckily.
My opinion on revisionism may be distorced. I'll spoiler the rest since it's really off topic, just to explain my view on this kinda stuff.
In this later years there have been simply too much examples, in my country (Italy) of "crimes of A enphatized to make B look better", in which B are the fascist regime, so maybe I'm just being much too oversensitive.
To make an example appliable to the Eastern front of what I'm talking about: recently it has been introduced a "Remembrance day" to be nationally celebrated on the 10th February to remember the italians killed by Tito's partisan at the end of WW2. Still, the episode is remembered ahistorically and acritically: the crimes committed in Yugoslavia during the war (including concentration camps) are never mentioned, like if those "inferior slavs" did what they did for no reason or without a real motivation. At least, that is the message people get. So, it's not really about remembrance and respect of the victims, it's just political exploitation of a tragedy and opportunism. And I'm afraid this kind of revisionism of being widespread.
To make an example appliable to the Eastern front of what I'm talking about: recently it has been introduced a "Remembrance day" to be nationally celebrated on the 10th February to remember the italians killed by Tito's partisan at the end of WW2. Still, the episode is remembered ahistorically and acritically: the crimes committed in Yugoslavia during the war (including concentration camps) are never mentioned, like if those "inferior slavs" did what they did for no reason or without a real motivation. At least, that is the message people get. So, it's not really about remembrance and respect of the victims, it's just political exploitation of a tragedy and opportunism. And I'm afraid this kind of revisionism of being widespread.
Hengwulf
Sergeant Knight
Jhessail 说:
Dutch
Soldaat van Oranje, with Rutger Hauer and Jeroen Krabbé
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076734/
Zwartboek (Blackbook)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389557/?ref_=tt_rec_tti
Can't recall any other noteworthy Dutch production.
In terms of cultures which are done the poorest credit, by far the Romans. Founded by bandits and rapists, and their history shows little changed from that period. I'd go so far as to call them responsible for the technological stagnation of Europe during the Dark Ages/Migration Period/Whatever you want to call the period from the "fall" of the Western Empire (a roughly 100-year period of decline) to the beginnings of the Merovingian Empire. Mostly due to their role in the brutal subjugation of the Greeks (and the death of Archimedes), and their general trampling over societies which were beginning to centralize and develop themselves. Not to mention the conservative culture of Rome was generally hostile to any sort of scientific advances that did not directly translate into military or limited civic advancements. See some of Cato the Elder's (I think) writings on the Greeks to find out what Romans thought about astronomy and natural philosophy.
The utter glorification of the Roman legion is pretty repulsive to me as well, considering the Roman legion was proven so ineffective that the very "barbarians" they fight against in all the sword-and-sandals movies were the main force of the Roman Army in the late period of the Empire, and its eventual undoing.
The utter glorification of the Roman legion is pretty repulsive to me as well, considering the Roman legion was proven so ineffective that the very "barbarians" they fight against in all the sword-and-sandals movies were the main force of the Roman Army in the late period of the Empire, and its eventual undoing.
Well that would be being done poor credit by popular culture. I just interpreted "the least credit" as meaning popular culture not giving a certain culture or historical figure or what have you the proper justice.
Vermillion_Hawk 说:
Would "almost total ignorance about how things moved along on the other side of the world" count?
Most people here in this forum knows a thing or two about the Far-East, but to the rest of the western world, China, Korea, and Japan is always just China, Korea, and Japan. I doubt most people would even be able to name one dynasty from the entire 2~3 thousand years of recorded history from these parts.
Seems the popular depiction stops at pandas, samurai, ninjas, and Kim Jeong Il.
I'm pretty sure people know some Chinese dynasties and can name at least one Japanese clan. After all, they're pretty prevalent in pop culture.
I think most Europeans know more about Chinese dynasties than European dynasties, even (not counting all the fuzz around current royalty in female-oriented magazines).
I think most Europeans know more about Chinese dynasties than European dynasties, even (not counting all the fuzz around current royalty in female-oriented magazines).
Hengwulf
Sergeant Knight
Mostly, every European country that doesn't have a militairy history with the UK.
Romans vs Britons, both can suck depending on story
Britons vs AngloSaxons, Saxons suck
English vs Scots, EN sucks
100 years war, UK sucks
US war of independence, UK sucks
Nappy vs Anyone, Panoleon Sucks
1st WW, Germany Sucks
2nd WW, Germany Sucks
Cold War, USSR sucks
What I am saying is: in pop culture which is made in the USA, they pick the side of the English, as they feel most alligned. Unless they can make fun of the UK.
Romans vs Britons, both can suck depending on story
Britons vs AngloSaxons, Saxons suck
English vs Scots, EN sucks
100 years war, UK sucks
US war of independence, UK sucks
Nappy vs Anyone, Panoleon Sucks
1st WW, Germany Sucks
2nd WW, Germany Sucks
Cold War, USSR sucks
What I am saying is: in pop culture which is made in the USA, they pick the side of the English, as they feel most alligned. Unless they can make fun of the UK.
Bohemond Chesne
Squire
Untitled. 说:
Thats an interesting one.
I think most people can name, as you say, a couple of Chinese dynasties (mostly due to jokes about antique vase). But I have been proven way off before. As for european dynasties there are a few particularly famous British ones, and one particular French Dynasty stands out as one I think your average MoS (Man on Street) would recognise if not name off the top of their head.
As for the women's mags; I once in passing refered to Queen Liz II with her surname to a group of vocally royalist admin assistants and recieved confused looks. (I also find it entertaining her Initials are EaMU, but as a royalist myself I feel rather guilty about that.)
Anyone up for throwing on some smart looking glasses and heading to the street with a clipboard?
Why does Britain suck in 100years war? We beat them round the head until they believed a crazy peasantgirl was the voice of god. And if you believe some of the sillier documentaries we had magic welsh longbows of armour penetration.Hengwulf 说:
The "America hates Napoleon" thing has always entertained me when America were so enamoured with the crazy murderous sod at the time.
In my personal experience, Napoleon is still generally well regarded in the US, which is somewhat surprising consider how poor Franco-American relations were during the period. I guess in the US he's mainly remember for the Louisiana Purchase, which did help to improve the countries' relations.
nads
Knight
You mean England, Scotland fought on the French side not missing an opportunity to get one in for old times sake while the odds were in their favour and end up on the winning side. I'm afraid burning teenage girls on trumped up charges does make you the bad guys, although in pop culture there's been a few Agincourt movies courtesy of screenwriter Will Shakespeare to try to redress the balance it doesn't compare to forty odd Joan of Arc movies so the French win.....twice.Bohemond Chesne 说:
