Six Ways to Change History II
You can forget it...
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This is the second of a series of essays based on the Nicole James article by the same name in Epoch Times in October 2023.
The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
Eric Blair/George Orwell
“History” in my sense of the term for these essays, is the record of the past, not the past itself. But what have we of the past other than the record?
Nothing…if we just don’t pay attention.
Take, for example, the Waffen SS officer Yaroslav Hunka, who got a standing ovation in the Canadian parliament for killing Russians in World War II. On 22 September 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau applauded this member of the original Nazi party in Ottawa’s House of Commons. Had these parliamentarians forgotten that Canada was on the side of Russia, fighting against the Nazis in World War II? No, but it was expedient to just not think about it while Ukraine was fighting the Russians.
But there are many ways to “forget” the past.
The record of the American Civil War is fairly comprehensive in broad strokes, and in many small ones, too. We know the Confederacy fired on Ft. Sumter in April without a shot being fired at them. We also know that Lincoln called out the militia. So, why is it, do we imagine, that some “authorities” blame Lincoln and the Union for the conflict? Well, retroactively, there’s that legal doctrine called reversion where, if a legal entity, say a state, separates from another, say a country, the property of the country reverts to the state. Lincoln, therefore, was guilty of war-mongering by not giving up Ft. Sumter as demanded. Now, no one brought up in 1861, but by the 1980s it was a hot topic in southern historiography. This idea still gets floated by Confederacentrists once in a while as their justification for the war. Secession/slavery/ “peculiar institution?” Naw…
And there’s that other thing, the one where an entire country thought it could stay out of world affairs….because.
Looking at 1941 in realistic terms, the US did a great job of collective amnesia after 1918. Sure, the Great War was awful. But many in the military knew it wasn’t the end of Germany and looked at Japan with trepidation. But Congress and a few demagogues did a fine job of convincing millions of Americans that no Americans would ever have to fight a war overseas again. Never Ever. FDR ran on it in 1940, for his third election campaign. But…Wilson had said it in his campaign in 1916, too. You know, before that War to End All Wars. By the spring of 1940 and the fall of France, saner heads knew what was going to come sooner than later. So they prepared for it, but loud and shrill voices wanted no part of this right until Pearl Harbor and a few even afterwards. Another case of collective amnesia. Some witless wags still insist it was an inside job, that FDR knew all about it, that it was all for the bankers and arms merchants…just like they said about WWI.
And there were those other times before 1939.
Britain and France took a beating in WWI, and so did Germany. Parts of Germany, called the Saarland and the Rhineland, were occupied and demilitarized after 1918 to keep Germany from rearming. Well, Hitler and the Nazis wanted them back. So, first, Saarland held an election to see if they wanted to go back to being part of Germany. Well, they did. Hitler reassured the British and French that that was all he wanted in Europe. Then, Hitler wanted the Rhineland. He moved in; Britain and France objected, but did nothing else. Hitler reassured…Then there was the Sudetenland, which was part of Czechoslovakia. This time, Britain and France objected, so they held a conference. Hitler reassured… Then Poland and Britain had finally got their fill of Hitler’s reassurances and went to war. Hitler reassured after Poland, too. After Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and France went down in flames, Hitler offered reassurances, if only… Only this time no one was buying it.
Seems like Europe did a lot of forgetting.
So do a lot of others. It’s done a great deal, frankly, for political and other purposes to manipulate opinions. If the past isn’t a fixed record—and it really isn’t—it isn’t a store window to be redressed when seasons or fashions change, either. It has lessons to teach if we pay attention to it.
The Liberty Bell Files: J. Edgar’s Demons
The Liberty Bell Files is about what people believe and why they believe it, how some forget the past just because they can. It's about how some people feel compelled to do certain things because important people tell them to, regardless of whether it makes any sense.
Imagine a division of the FBI dedicated to conspiracy theories…only some of them aren’t theories. Available from your favorite bookseller or from me if you want an autograph.
Coming Up…
Deadly Emigres
Britain's Darkest Hour Reconsidered
And Finally...
On 22 June:
1815: Napoleon abdicates his throne for the second and last time in Paris. After a whirlwind three months, which once again brought the spectre of global war, the Emperor accepted exile in the South Atlantic, where he stayed for the rest of his life.
1941: Operation BARBAROSSA began, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The largest land invasion in human history, 2.5 million men crossed into occupied Poland and the Soviet Union in what was supposed to be a six-week campaign. Just under four years later…
And today is NATIONAL KISSING DAY. Just make sure that the object of your osculation is in on the deal before you go about laying one on them. But you’ll have another chance in another couple of weeks.
The history books are written by the people who won the war.