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One more riff on the Nicole James article
The movies do it all the time. But so do “serious” historians. Based on nothing, “history” books repeat long quotes and anecdotes from persons who, OK, might have said such a thing, but…where’s the evidence?
Nimitz at Pearl Harbor, Christmas Day 1941
There’s a flyer you can get at the Pearl Harbor gift shop, or download from the link. The flyer says that President Roosevelt called Nimitz out of a concert on 7 December, sending him to Pearl Harbor. Arriving on Christmas Eve, the admiral took a small boat trip around Pearl Harbor on Christmas Day 1941. After this boat trip, the admiral detailed the “three mistakes” the Japanese made on 7 December to his young coxswain, which includes their “failure” to attack the dry docks and the tank farms. The flyer goes on for three pages.
NO!
The record, including Nimitz’s letters and communications, shows that Nimitz heard about the attack on the radio. And, he didn’t arrive in Hawaii until 31 December 1941. Now, Nimitz was hardly a stupid man, and knew that single-engine aircraft dropping freefall bombs are neither accurate nor powerful enough to damage the drydocks enough to render them inoperative. He also knew that the Japanese hit the tank farms, doing only minor damage and no significant fires. Finally, who would have been recording all this “wisdom?” A lone enlisted man? And why would the brand-new Commander of the Pacific Fleet just sprout all this to one sailor? No, I don’t think so, and neither should anyone else who looks at the evidence.
I fear we have only awakened a sleeping dragon/giant, and filled him with a terrible resolve
Yamamoto Isoroku
Book after book has some version of this saying. Generations of writers have “quoted” it as either a direct quote, a diary entry, even an official communique after 7 December 1941. It’s appeared in history books, memoirs, films, TV series, comic books, and university lectures. Everyone knows…
NO!
Except the first time anyone ever heard of it was Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970, Richard Fleischer, Masuda Toshio, Fukasaku Kinji, Kurosawa Akira). The film is based in part on Gordon Prange’s 1963 Reader’s Digest article by that name, and on Ladislas Farrago’s 1968 book, The Broken Seal. Neither book contains this phrase. The consensus among historians is that scriptwriters cast the line for Yamamura So, the actor who played Yamamoto, to read at the end. Same with all the other film versions.
Then there is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant and I would rather die a thousand deaths
Robert E. Lee
On 9 April 1865, Lee, realizing his position was hopeless, sent word to Ulysses Grant to discuss the surrender of his command, uttering the famous line above. While it sounds very Marse Robert-like…really? Who heard this? Who wrote it down? Where’s the manuscript? The acceptance of such quotes from the 19th Century by historians as plain facts simply boggles the mind. Just because “everyone knows” he said it because “this guy heard it and wrote it down years later…so did that guy,” does not make it a fact.
Make peace, you idiots!
Gerd Von Rundstedt
Von Rundstedt, then commanding all German land forces in western Europe, called Wilhelm Keitel, then the chief of the entire German military (theoretically) on 1 July 1944. Keitel, on Hitler’s orders, had just reversed Von Rundstedt’s order to pull substantial armored forces out of range of Allied air power, which had been decimating them. Von Rundstedt asked Keitel to plead with Hitler to allow the movement. Keitel was said to have replied that doing so was impossible. “What shall we do?” Keitel asked at last. Von Rundstedt famously replied with the German version of the English quote above.
NO!
Most people first heard of this exchange in the 1951 film, The Desert Fox (1951, Henry Hathaway). But it makes little sense. Keitel was Von Rundstedt’s boss, who wouldn’t be asking subordinates what to do in Hitler’s Germany. And another “eyewitness” version leaves out the “idiots” part. Furthermore, the literal German renders as “end the war,” impossible to utter aloud then and there. This “quote” is subject to that same “but this guy heard it and that guy told…” as the Lee story. Who heard it? (we know one witness, FW von Mellenthin, years later wrote of the latter version) Who wrote it down? Where is the text? It may be a traditional understanding of their conversation, and many historians have used it to describe the confusion of the time, but it’s likely a traditionally accepted line the scriptwriters handed to Leo G. Carrol in the movie and has thereafter been declared a fact.
Pericles’ Funeral Oration
The Greek historian Thucydides wrote about the funeral oration of Pericles in his History of the Peloponnesian War. It was supposedly delivered some time in 430 BC to eulogize the Greek dead after the first year of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC). It’s a stirring address in the tradition of such things in Greece at the time, and is in many ways a eulogy for Greek democracy itself. Thucydides, said to have been a stickler for accuracy, more than once declared it to have been accurate.
HOW?
The first issue we should all have with this is that it goes on for over two thousand words in English translation; somewhat more in the original Greek…depending on version. Like the Lee quote, who wrote it down? Verbatim? Was it published contemporaneously? Could anyone write that fast then? The prose soars and weaves through Greek thought. It sounds more like a scholar than a soldier/politician. Pericles might have put his chop on something like it, but…this?
Grant and Sherman at Shiloh
Readers of The Devil’s Own Day: Shiloh and the American Civil War know this already, but here it is again. On the evening of 6 April 1862, on the field of the Shiloh battle, a dramatic meeting took place between Ulysses Grant and William Sherman. At that meeting, Sherman intoned, “Well, Grant; it’s been/we’ve had the devil’s own day.” And Grant answered, “Yes. Whip/beat them tomorrow, though.”
NO!
First, the location of the meeting is never specified. Second, who came to who isn’t either (since Grant was using a crutch at Shiloh, let’s say Sherman came to him). Third, we don’t know where Grant spent that evening (his memoirs say under a tree, but not where). Fourth, neither man mentions the meeting in their memoirs. Finally, and most importantly, a meeting between the two officers was not needed that evening. Grant had left Sherman alone after their initial meeting Sunday morning, knowing Sherman knew his business and just went about it. Grant’s orders for the morning were simple: advance south and west and retake the camps. Sherman had his hands full, pulling his division (or some semblance of it) back together. This is almost certainly another “didja hear, Charlie” legend repeated over and over, like the Lee story above.
We make up “history” all the time. We need to stop.
The Liberty Bell Files: J. Edgar’s Demons
The Liberty Bell Files is a work of fiction, that is so. But…is it? Who’d believe there was a branch of the FBI that was solely dedicated to investigating conspiracy theories?
Well? Is there such a thing as the Special Projects Division of the FBI? Did Jimmy Hoffa disappear that way? Is there a secret prison under the guise of the Department of Agriculture, where stool pigeons serve out their sentences? Well…? Available from your favorite bookseller or from me if you want an autograph.
Coming Up…
Coronel 1914: The Zenith of the Armored Cruiser
I Take It We're Still Here?
And Finally...
On 26 October:
1881: The shootout at the OK Corral took place in Tombstone, Arizona. The minute-long shootout involved five members of the Cowboy gang of cattle rustlers, horse thieves and other ne’er-do-wells against town marshal Morgan Earp, his brothers Virgil and Wyatt, and their friend John “Doc” Holliday. Three Cowboys were killed, and three of the marshal’s deputies were injured.
1977: Health officials detected the last natural case of smallpox in the Merca District of Somalia. The patient was isolated; containment, surveillance, and a vaccination campaign were rapidly instituted. The patient recovered and no other cases occurred.
And today is NATIONAL FINANCIAL CRIME FIGHTER DAY. These intrepid bean-counters primarily fight large-scale money-laundering connected to organized crime and terrorist organizations, though they also go into smaller fields, like identity theft rings and credit card fraud. A tip of the visor to these guys and gals.
The victors write the history books.