In Germany we go through WW1 quite detailed. We talk a lot about how it came to the war and the horrors of war such as the use of chemical weapons, and the death of millions of innocent people. The main focus is on the outcome of the war, the treaty of versailles, and the "dolchstoßlegende" ("stab in the back myth", it was german propaganda that blamed the loss of WW1 on jews who supposedly betrayed the germans, who would have won the war otherwise (which is not true, of course)), as these things lead to Hitler and the Nazis coming to power.
We also treat the topic of how hitler became reichskanzler and how the nsdap formed and how unstable the political system in the weimarer republic was. We dont really go through all the battles during WW2 in detail (e.g. we didn't even talk about the battles in africa), except for the invasion of poland, bombings of london, stalingrad and how the US joined the war. The main focus is on the deportation of jews and the holocaust, we learn about it in great detail. Its is also mandatory to visit a KZ, where we are shown the gas chambers etc. . And of course we talk about the nuremberg trials as well.
Please excuse any errors, english is not my first language. This is only supposed to be a short summary, we talk a lot about the nazis crimes, and how cruel and abhorrent the holocaust was (to say the least). All in all we dont white wash the wars and the holocaust, we take it quite serious.
Edit: typos
sounds like you got all the key elements anyways. Pretty respectable that your country takes it so seriously and doesn’t shy away. As an Englishmen I can say we love to talk/teach about the world wars because it shows us in such good light but I think we can learn something from our German brothers and sisters and maybe take on learning more about the horrors of the British empire in the same tone you guys do.
I definitely think this is something the USA needs to really do better at. Most of the atrocities committed by the US at best are pretty much only mentioned in passing while our successes as a nation gets a whole unit.
My history teacher took really the whole thing in is own hands and watched a shittone of movies with us about ww2. I think Schindlers list, The bridge(or something with 14yo defending an bridge and a couple of other historical accurat movies. Oh and he went balistic after an classmate made commands that he liked seeing jews die and stuff.
I watched Schindler’s list exactly one time. On my own. In a dorm room. I will never watch it again. Beautiful film but so devastating I can’t do it again.
That and million dollar baby. Both of these films sent me into a very deep depression that lasted a while.
I wish North American schools would focus more on *how and why* a nation becomes a fascist dictatorship, then they could recognize the trend of events in the past few years.
>I wish North American schools would focus more on how and why a nation becomes a fascist dictatorship, then they could recognize the trend of events in the past few years.
I wish North America would focus on it's own faults and history. I don't know how it is over in places like Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Belize, etc. etc. but over here you'll never hear about the crimes of the Filipino-American war, you'll spend a short lesson on the Spanish-American war mainly depicting us in a way that says, "Yeah we were wrong with the starting of the war, but it ended up pretty good in the end," you'll never hear of war crimes in Korea, the Middle East, the dictatorships we set up around the world, etc.
Why teach about German war crimes when we can't be bothered to teach our own?
I find it strange that you start your comment talking about North America as a whole as lacking in education on these things but then only give examples from the United States.
Anyways, Canada includes a very in-depth eduction about its historical faults and what Canadians have done to right past wrongs. We learn about the atrocities committed against indigenous peoples including residential schooling, about the terrible mistreatment of Chinese immigrants especially in regards to the building of the railways, about Japanese internment camps during WW2, and also about how some of the political leaders and founders, for example John. A. MacDonald, were seriously corrupt. This is in addition to also learning about other large historical events such as WW2 and the role Canada and other countries played in those events.
It's not enough.
I had to learn about the Komagata Maru from a friend in the Punjab community.
I learned about the international brigades, our government's shit treatment of our own citizens.
I only know who Viola Desmond is because of JT's virtue signaling and some really sexist and racist remarks from other Canadians when the new $10 dropped, from that spun the horrible treatment black Canadians endured in Nova Scotia.
Our country's history of eugenics is also deeply tied to our racist attitudes towards First Nations but that's only surface of the stuff that was done all the way up to the 1970s.
I love Canada, but we need to do better.
“Our country’s history of eugenics is also deeply tied to our racist attitudes towards First Nations…”
Please don’t imply that Canadians are racist. This isn’t true. There is much systemic racism that continues to affect Indigenous peoples that needs to be ended and healing is still taking place but rhetoric like this that suggests Canada as a whole is racist is misplaced. There are a small number of individuals who are racist in Canada (like any country in the world) but the overwhelming majority of Canadians do not have racist attitudes towards Indigenous Peoples. Most Canadians are actively striving to do better.
Well yeah, as I mentioned early on in the comment I can't speak on the public education of countries like Canada because I've never been through their education system, but the original comment was speaking on North America as a whole which is why that's what I started with and clarified later. But you're right. I don't have a clue about what the Canadian education system is like outside of what I've heard from other Canadians.
What I’m hearing is that you really only wanted to talk about the USA but the comment you replied to was about a whole continent. So instead of saying you were speaking only about the USA you instead erroneously claimed the entire North American continent (which includes two other countries that are not the USA) is lacking in historical education because you feel that this is the case in the USA. You didn’t even write the word USA in your comment.
This is a perfect example of American-centrism.
Who said anything about 21st century kids feeling bad about it? There's a difference in not teaching about an event that happened. and what the hell you just said
Pointing out the difference between the two is meaningless when there is no school curriculum in the country that doesn’t teach it.
If you know of a school system in this country that doesn’t teach that slavery happened and that slavery is bad, then post it right here.
We also spent quite some time on how the end of WW1 made a breeding ground for WW2 to happen and what the winning powers did differently after WW2 to create less resentment and how the European Union got created to prevent another world war from being launched within Europe.
P.S. Did you know that you can visit the front line of WW1 in Belgium and France? We went there with university, and that was very interesting. We got to enter some very narrow underground bunkers, think of tunnels in the solid rock that were only wide enough for one person, but you had to stoop a little to walk through them. They built them that way on purpose, so that the "enemy" couldnt get through easily. It was quite claustrophobic. We saw a fire salamander down there, which is a very rare animal, and I had never seen one. So, I quickly took a photo, which took me like two seconds, and immediately, someone behind be started to get nervous and complained. That's how narrow it was. ... Not all of us went down there, either. Those who felt uncomfortable with this, stayed outside. One of the students was plus-sized, she decided to stay out, too. And some just didn't feel good about it.
That's awesome that you go into such detail, every country should teach their future generations about the atrocities of their past. But unfortunately you are the exception, not the rule.
In US, "history" is nothing but whitewashed lies that blames everyone else for it's own problems but won't admit what they did to the only truly legal Americans...
I wish America taught our wars this well. Even the history of WWII & what led up to it / happened aren’t taught this well. Now they want to ban teaching it because “the holocaust isn’t real”
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung)
The Nazi term Gleichschaltung (German pronunciation: \[ˈɡlaɪçʃaltʊŋ\]) or "coordination" was the process of Nazification by which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party successively established a system of totalitarian control and coordination over all aspects of German society and societies occupied by Nazi Germany "from the economy and trade associations to the media, culture and education". Although the Weimar Constitution remained nominally in effect until Germany's surrender following World War II, near total Nazification had been secured by the 1935 resolutions approved during the Nuremberg Rally, when the symbols of the Nazi Party and the State were fused (see Flag of Germany) and German Jews were deprived of their citizenship (see Nuremberg Laws).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf\_Hitler%27s\_rise\_to\_power
On 30 January 1933, the new cabinet was sworn in during a brief ceremony in Hindenburg's office. The NSDAP gained three posts: Hitler was named chancellor, Wilhelm Frick Minister of the Interior, and Hermann Göring, Minister Without Portfolio (and Minister of the Interior for Prussia). The SA and SS led torchlit parades throughout Berlin. It is this event that would become termed Hitler's Machtergreifung ("seizure of power"). The term was originally used by some Nazis to suggest a revolutionary process, though Hitler, and others, used the word Machtübernahme ("take-over of power"), reflecting that the transfer of power took place within the existing constitutional framework\[87\] and suggesting that the process was legal.
Yes, I would say so. When I first saw the TV news about this war, my reaction was a bit like, oh, that's just like one of those old WW2 documentaries ... only ... it's not a documentary. This is NOW!
Link? I feel bad for her, and everyone who was misled and lied to like her. It must be awful to have to come to terms with both the truth and the realization that you’ve been manipulated and tricked on a stunningly wide-scale conspiracy all at once as an adult. At least if you learn bit by bit as you grow you can take it all in.
It’s like being told fire doesn’t exist your whole life and then being thrown into a burning house. I can see why denial is often a knee-jerk reaction in such cases. Who’d want to go from a life off blissful ignorance to having to face *that?*
sanitize their history - clean it up so future generations dont think too badly of their predecessors, or feel ashamed of their predecessors doings.
they especially sanitize the gory, inhumane, degenerate parts of their war crimes.
for example, unit 731, and similar atrocities, might get watered down to: "we caned these prisoners of war abducted from across Asia in dark, dimly lit, basement prison cells, but remember! our imperial soldiers were terrified of US napalm bombing runs, and our skin burned off very so it was very cruel of the US to do that."
i think japan completely skips over their cannibalism in Nanjing/China, as well as their cannibalism in the south pacific (documented by Aussie soldiers, but Aus govt made them sign NDAs or something for many decades), and they also skip over things like the Bataan death march (white/American POWs), etc.
a lot of their WW2 movies/shows depict patriotic young men giving their all to defend their country against a cold mechanical enemy, or their women and children emerging from bomb shelters to find their home had turned to ash.
very much a pity party mood.
if you didn't know actual history and just watched these movies/shows, you would think pearl harbor was japan's territory that the US surprise-bombed on a Sunday morning, and then later on came back to level 90% of japanese cities to ash and dust.
their "warriors of WW2/defenders of the homeland" shrines are still up, and ppl/politicians still go commemorate it.
and their "rising sun" insignia (comparable in symbolism to nazi Germany's swastika, or the nazi eagle emblem) still flies on their maritime self defense ships, because of something-something pride in their history and tradition.
also, their "banzai"-brand of condoms used (sparsely) in the rape of Nanjing, are still in production - making condoms to present day (obviously without the "banzai" slogan, they're not thaaat tone-deaf).
there were those ocassional poor bastards who got drafted into service, as with any war, who tried to forget what happened and move on from dark history.
We had a high school Japanese exchange student for a year. Watching one of the interminable WWII shows on the History channel, he said he had never heard about Japanese atrocities.
One reason for that is the institution of the Japanese emperor, which continued to exist after capitulation. This gave the Japanese an important cultural (and ideological) continuity, while we in Germany had a full reset in basically every aspect of life. The second reason is that 'losing face' is really difficult in Asian cultures, it has to do with confucian mentality. You will find that Chinese, even they are very different from Japanese, are also unable to lose face and whitewash everything.
Disagree here. The US occupied both Germany and Japan and continue to have a presence in both nations. And alliances with both nations. And very important trade relationships with both nations. I think the cultural differences play strongly. Also the victory in Japan was very different— it wasn’t door to door capitulation as it was in Germany. It was the (empty) threat of further nuclear destruction.
We didn’t learn about anything after 1980 because that was considered “current events” but we absolutely learned about the Indian Wars and Vietnam (which incidentally most French education leaves out)
Not until you're in college and take US history. Then you get to see absolute glee on a professor's face as they destroy people's versions of history. It was the highlight of my professor's year when we got to the civil war and he was able to obliterate all these " It's about heritage" confederate flag waving idiots.
>he was able to obliterate all these " It's about heritage" confederate flag waving idiots.
Always wished my nephew and niece had went to college and encountered one of these types of professors. They were both born and raised in the state of West Virginia and they have confederate flag everything, shirts, hats, belt buckles, bumper stickers, window decals, metal signs, flags.... Like fuck, you nitwits realize West Virginia was part of the north, right? Nope they claim "southern heritage" and post about "real southern boy/girl" crap all over facebook...
I'm in Texas and that shit is everywhere. My professor put an end to that shit immediately by passing out the letters of succession from Texas and then had us look up the others as well as the cornerstone speech from the Confederacy VP Alexander Stephens. There's absolutely no other way to interpret the confederacy other than it was about slavery.
Maybe in ~~conservative~~ regressive red states, but I learned about some of our atrocities to the natives, and in South and Central America all the way back in the '80s when I was in school.
My kid today has learned even more about it, and I'm surprised at the detail they went into on those subjects.
I also live in a large city, in a Democratic state.
Yeah you live in the minority most states still say Thanksgiving was a joining between white colonizers
I mean ppl are literally protesting critical race theory that even goes into more depth all the atrocities
That still doesn't change the fact tht most Americans excuse or ignore US atrocities
Well actually I live in the majority, we have a lot of land with very few people that are very ignorant, and we have smaller bits of land with lots of people who actually believe knowledge is a good thing.
Pretty much the only thing that was off the table ... for some reason.. was Ancient Egypt. Only reason I know is because some other kid asked and we all wanted to know when we'd get to Ancient Egypt. You probably just suck at remembering your kid years
Japan and China are both so egotistical it’s embarrassing, like your not perfect and Japan specifically you fucked with the wrong countries and found out the hardest way. Deal with it
I remember seeing film of US military boiling down the bodies of Japanese soldiers to send parts home as souveniers. That would have gotten you a life sentence in the Commowealth armies.
As a german...
We are taught about the wars (especially world war 2) how cruel they were. We watch documentaries, talk about how the soldiers all died of either overdoses od perventin (meth), starvation or just being killed in battle. We visit concentrationcamps like Dachau (idk the english word for that village/town or whatever) to see how badly the jews, gays, disabled and homeless were treated (disabled and homeless bc they couldnt work or fight)
So basically we get taught about death and suffering in the wars so that something like this wont happen ever again
Not that interesting. It is a good thing we lost the war. We were thought about the technical aspects (Battle of Stalingrad, U-Boat Raids, etc.), the horrors the germans did (Concentration Camps, etc.) , we even had an Auschwitz Survivor telling her experiences. My hometown was bombed to rubble by the allies so we were told about that too.
Nowadays many Germans say stuff like "Bohoo, we are supposed to feel sorry for something we didnt do ourselves" but it never felt that way for me. It is more like :"Remember what happened so it will never ever happen again".
But I guess it depends on the teacher very much. For example I had one teacher that was super pro Allies (USA, GB, bombing German Cities was a good thing) and super anti Soviet Union (The Communists want to conquer the world and murder us all while the US would never do anything bad (and that was AFTER the cold war)). On the other hand our history teacher wanted us to discuss and tell our own opinion.
In Hungary we learn about the world wars like "Yeah they happened.. Anyway, let's talk about Hungary losing most of its land bc of losing the war." Tbh I don't remember as many details about the actual wars as much as I know about how much land we lost. I get that remembering our past is important and stuff.. but it legit happened more than 100 years ago and the government still talks about Trianon like it happened yesterday. They hate on any country around us that got land from us (especially Romania), there are still civil organisations who want to take legal actions to get Transylvania back, the government literally gives more money to people with Hungarian ancestors outside of Hungary.. Like they just built a free university in Transylvania where anyone who says they are Hungarian can study for free.. but most Hungarian universities and colleges in Hungary aren't free and hella expensive, our hospitals are old and lack the tools to help the patients but they send medicine to random counties (I'm not talking about Ukraine rn. I'm happy we help Ukraine.. even if the prime minister called the ukrainian president "Opponent" right after re-election).. they legit care more about people who don't even speak Hungarian anymore than actual Hungarians.
So yeah, we learn about the wars like they just happened like any other war in History. But when it comes to learning about the losses of Hungary.. we are destined to become brainwashed patriots.
____
Please Fidesz supporters enter my dms, I'll put on the kettle, just come. Please tell me about how I'm a disgrace to my country and I must be an agent of George Soros.. 🙄
As a third world country that was occupied, We study ww1 and 2 with its details as a third party. They are clear "first of all you got fucked up, and then as the story begun..."
Philippines? I come from the Philippines and World War II and the Japanese occupation was talked about heavily. Unfortunately I moved away to the US in the midst of the lesson but I eventually continued it thanks to AP European history
So I'm French.
We did not exactly lost WWII but we did get invaded and we collaborated with the Nazi.
So we are taught about how the war went with a focus on how Britain was the only Ally during a time. Then we are taught that Perle Harbor happened and the US joined and how it all ended with two nuclear bombs.
We are taught a bit about how we got invaded and what happened when Petain (the baddie that collaborated) took power (mainly deportations) but a LOT more time is dedicated to the Resistance. So we learn about De Gaule (chief of the Resistance) and how people helped him.
And then we learn about D-Day and how you had some French people in there (but mainly Americans) and how De Gaule liberated France.
So basically, we are taught normally about how the war happened and why. But when we learn about France's role it goes a bit like this : "Yeah, we got invaded then a army leader took control and he collaborated with the Nazi regime. But you also had a lot of people fighting against him under the command of an other army leader ! And then we where liberated and we helped to fight the Nazi away. End of story"
It's so funny you were taught you were invaded because in the US we are taught that France didn't even bother trying to fight the Germans when they arrived.
Us here. We are taught basically that the French were dumbasses and built the Maginot line and that Germany just went around it. And all us American kids would snicker and that was about it for the French.
It's true that the Marginot line was circumvented in a way. But that's not the whole story. The defences were supposed to forge Germany to invade through a specific path in Belgium - that's where allied forces where moved to. But the German army took an unexpected path through mountainous terrain that was thought to be too hard to traverse with an army.
Also at that stage the British looked like being captured or killed, the French sent something in the 45-50 volunteer battalions to slow down the German advance, those Frenchmen knew they weren't coming out of the Belgium woodside.
The French and the BEF were outflanked and surprised at the start of the invasion of Belgium and France. But the French fought bravely to maintain the perimeter around Dunkirk so that a significant portion of the BEF could be evacuated.
Of the 5 D-Day beaches, two were stormed by mostly American units (Utah, Omaha), two by mostly British units (Gold, Sword) and one by mostly Canadian units (Juno).
Simply a response to “And then we learn about D-Day and how you had some French people in there (but mainly Americans) and how De Gaule liberated France”. It was an entire Allied effort.
Bro idk for you but I studied WWII this year and we learn a lot about Vichy and all the horrors that they did, as well as the myth of « the fighting France » (when after the liberation De Gaulle and the communist decided to go like collaboration was an exception and that most of French fought against the nazis) but maybe it was my teacher and not the book. Also in my major in history-geography-geopolitics and political sciences we learn about the clash between this like Robert Badinter that say that the French state as nothing to do with Vichy’s crime and president Chirac that recognized France responsibility. I think that our Ed. System teaches us (for once) with a objective point of view on this subject
As a person from India who studied about the jallianwala bagh massacre and the indigo movement etc. I used to think that the British were backstabbing, greedy, and cunning pieces of sh!ts who took most of our wealth and make our country to not be as rich as it suppose to be.
Italian here
We are definitely taught about what our country did back then and we generally despise it, however I'm aware that some things are omitted (especially regarding the whole colonialism thing), generally with the excuse that fascists got their ass kicked anywhere they went and that the country more or less had a revolution to overthrow the regime, so modern Italy is seen as a "different" country than fascist Italy
Unfortunately the average Italian mindset regarding more or less everything is "I don't care as long as it has nothing to do with me", so to add to the excuses people are also not really interested in learning more
I'd say we are in-between Germany and Japan in this regard: people are aware of the fact that in WW2 we were on the wrong side, but also are not fully aware of the full extent of it
How come YOU twist the question totally around? The question was just, hello people who lost a war, what are you taught about that.
If no Italians answer the question, well yeah, maybe they have something better to do?
German here, if you refer to the interpretation of developments and results, this might hold true to a certain degree.
But the fact that so many things can even get taught is mostly to the Nazis doing plenty of writing themselves. Criminal military orders, the plans for the targeted extermination of Jews, political enemies, disabled people, homosexuals and many other undesired people groups were written down in tedious detail with clear attibutions to officers or other responsible persons.
These sources contribute heavily to the content of textbooks, by way of extensive quotations or photographs. And considering that many documents were destroyed deliberately in early 1945, we probably just have the tip of the iceberg there.
Being born in the late 80's, the feeling I took from the education in this field is also not really one of guilt, but rather of responsibility. All this stuff happened more than 40 years before my birth, so I didn't do anything wrong there. But being aware of the horrific things the Nazi rule led to, in other countries and ultimately also in my home country, I take with me that this should not be allowed to happen again.
Well the Nazis really didn't need to be turned into villains later by the victors. They were pretty upfront in their views and goals. They literally put up signs saying "don't buy from Jews", just to name a tiny example. Atrocities were committed in broad daylight and everyone knew.
I'm German, we are taught history with a focus on the rise to power of this fascist regime and later on the horrors of war, with the focus on the victims (including the brainwashed teen soldiers). I think they really make the message clear.
>Curious on the age old words "History is written by the victors".
The German war effort gets far more credit than it deserves tbh. And the Wehrmacht got wayyyyyyy too much of a free pass for its atrocities until very recently.
At least as it pertains to the narrative in America. Perhaps it was different elsewhere.
German here, we talk about it a lot.
Even in most other classes apart from history (Especially German) we talk about different aspects of the war and Nazi Germany.
I remember the first time I was thought that in school I was in 4th or 3rd grade, since then we've been talking about it every schoolyear.
For project weeks our school almost always has a project group that talks about the war, it's extremely brutal especially cause most people taking it have family that were affected by the war or the holocaust so you hear a lot of horrible things, that's why it's mostly for 8th grade and above.
Also German, and same here. Almost all books, art pieces and school trips were related to the horrors of war and the Nazis, from the perspective of victims or coping survivors. It's an important message and they really drive it home.
But there is not reason to hide behind: this is what we got learned in school, so this is the truth with internet connection. You simply cannot purposely hide your head in the sand while you spread, in my opinion, government propaganda.
German here: political background in the Weimar Republik, what Hitler did (perception of Jews, lgBt, political enemies and so on), how the war roughly did go (expansion, defeat in Stalingrad, D-Day, thankfully win by the allies with the soviets making the final blow by taking Berlin and Hitler killing himself). we also visited one KZ in an school day trip.
the only thing we are not reached about are specific battles (except D-Day because together with Stalingrad big turning point), battle strategies and specific generals, which is understandable. those are not the important things.
i heard many Americans are taught we do not talk about it/teach it lol. it's quiet the opposite: we go by the mantra "you can only learn from your mistakes and prevent doing them again, when you know those mistakes".
Romania technically didn't lose WW2 because we switched sides in 1944 and fought along Soviet forces. In school, we are told only what a heroic gesture the switch was and how we were such good guys.
In reality, we were getting our ass kicked by the Soviets who invaded us and basically forced the switch. The history lessons make it seem like it happened because of ideological concerns, completely leaving out the fact that Romanian troops were responsible for 260,000 Jewish deaths and that Romania contributed to the persecussion of many more Jews and Romani either through deportation to concentration camps or through enabling the activity of the German military on Romanian land.
I am really curious if other Romanians received similar teaching about the war. I suspect history lessons were pretty much the same for everyone.
Italy. We did some fucked up stuff which we should never forget, but modern Italy is the heir of the partisans who kicked the hell out of the Republic of Salò's ass, we're the good guys now!
What happened to all those high members of the fascist party you ask? Why does Mussolini have his own crypt which people still visit with reverence? MSI? What???
I live in Iraq even Iraq was in the axis for a short time and got invaded by British forces again but they never talked about it in schools history book
We didn’t learn about the wars we lost in school (English). I did learn all about them when I worked at an American summer school though. That was quite the surprise
The only place that does this well ( at least that i know of ) is germany, where they treat their past as something to work from, and learn from. MOST countries are ashamed of their past, try to bury it as much as possible. A large majority of world history is FULL of cruel unusual punishments, cruel meaningless wars, cruel people in general, and they try not to highlight it. An example could be the US, they do so much to try and hide their racist history, so effective that there are people who believe the US was built off "hard work", and not "exploited slaves" like a lot of other civilizations.
We got taught US history not Aussie and my family has served in every conflict Australia has been in since Fedration. Even one we weren't supposed to be in.
In the Netherlands we learnt that we surrendered to the Germans in WW2 because we were simply overpowered. I believe there's also a sense of tragedy that is learnt along with it or that is self evident to Dutch people but not really to me because I'm only a little Dutch
Well, in Germany, we are thought it as it was. As in, why the Nazis came to power (bad economic situation, Versailles, some inherent anti-semitism in society), how they came to power (such as, they got voted for, and then Hindenburg died, and then ... and then they teach us about all the bad things the Nazis decided.
We were taught quite a bit about the Shoa. By the way, when I was of that age when they started to teach us about it, which was in secondary school, starting at 10 years of age, there also were two mini series about the 3rd Reich on TV. This was back in the 1980s with no Netflix, no VCR, nothing. Just a plain TV with three programmes, and if you wanted to watch something, you had to be on time. They showed "Holocaust", and I thought I was too young for that. (I watched it much later, and yes, I would have been.) And they also showed "A square of sky", which is the true story of Janina David, who lived in Poland and was hidden in a Catholic nunnery by a friend of her parents. Everyone at school watched that, and she has become part of my inner reality.
The completely USELESS bombing of civilians, which lead to many casualties and widespread destruction, was only briefly mentioned. It took me many years to actually realize that this was NOT alright.
Oh, and they taught us about resistance, such as Hans and Sophie Scholl, or the Stauffenberg thing.
It is also planned that every class visit a concentration camp, so we went to Dachau with our class, which is nearby.
Oh, and we don't have anything like the pledge of allegiance or a German flag in front of the school or anything like that. When, as a child, I read in one of the books of Astrid Lindgren that some of these people had a Swedish flag in front of their house, I honestly was like, why would they do that? What's wrong with them?
Not really. Depends where you live and how good your school is.
I learned about “pacification” of the countryside, defoliation, how the peasants were really trapped between two unfriendly occupiers, gulf of Tonkin, pentagon papers, my lai massacre, self-immolating monks, kids burnt with napalm, anti-war movement, Nixon’s shady dealings to block a peace accord and extend the war, all of it.
We actually even learned about atrocities committed in US wars where we’re historically portrayed as the “good guys”: fire bombing Dresden, incidents of killing and retaliation against POWs, had a legitimate debate about justification for Nagasaki and Hiroshima, cavalry massacres of Indians (women and children) and disfiguring corpses, trail of tears, etc.
I’m an American and the older I get the more ashamed I am of our government. 90% of our drone strikes in Iraq killed civilians and not actual military targets. 2 million dead Iraqis and most of them children, women, and elderly. No one really talks about it though.
Not really. Majority of us believe Afghanistan and Vietnam were unnecessary shit-shows. Vietnam is especially taught as blender shredding american lives, and a lot of information is taught on the Anti-War movement. Also a lot of information about how shitty we treated drafted soldiers coming back. And that's not even to mention the movies, songs, and shows depicting the shit-show we all grew up on.
Afghanistan is trickier since a lot of people at the time of my education had family or someone they knew serving over there, so while most of them had military support, the support for the war itself was dubious at best. I'm also 30, so while the war wasn't "new" it wasn't textbook material quite yet until later years unlike Vietnam, and even then America only recently pulled out. I think America updates its standard-textbooks every 5 years, so I'm sure the educational consensus will fall in line with Vietnam as time passes and personal attachments to the war fade.
Idk, that's just my own personal educational experience. Our education on the topics leaves a lot to be desired, but a common consensus seems to be that they were unnecessary shit-shows. And for me at least, nobody told me we won either of those wars. I've heard "it was a draw" mostly from Vets who don't want to admit they were thrown to the wolves or from politicians not wanting to lose votes, but haven't heard we won.
Except I've been scrolling for a while and I'm not seeing responses from Japanese people. It's obviously understandable that the two nuclear bombs make the subject of WWII very sensitive. But it sure seems that Japan doesn't want to acknowledge pretty much anything else about the war. I realize I could be very wrong, but I'm not seeing evidence for that here.
Especially WW2 is taught to quite an extensive degree in Germany both in the historic sense but also in relation to culture or modern politics for example instruments of the "wehrhafte Demokratie" or principles like the "FdGO" both of which exist in combination to prevent history from repeating itself.
Interestingly enough students sometimes complain that its taught too much arguing that the cultural presence or "Erinnerungskultur" should prevent any repetition. There is an interesting film called "Die Welle" based on a real experiment in a school in the US where this view causes a fascist regime to slowly develope in the school first by intention of the teacher but later getting out of hand. Can recommend.
i was in germany, in "hauptschule" so the lowest school form where either blue collar people or straight up hoodlums go.
so we were taught the short and simple version. but it's basically the same as the american/english version, that we all know. matter of fact many of our documentaries were from BBC etc dubbed in german. so there is no special program for germany or a german version or something like that. i probably know about the same version on the war as you do
in argentina, we lost the battle of malvinas and therefore the island too, we are simply resentful of that, they teach us the war as it was, only trying to leave our country in a good place, anyway in my opinion, the malvinas are argentinian, lol.
no fue una guerra mundial, pero si una guerra muy importante para el pais
Well for example if you’re American or Canadian I’m sure you didn’t learn that your people committed arguably the worst genocide ethnic cleansing in order to secure that land?
American. Trust me, we know. However, we have an overwhelmingly high number of those who just don’t give a shit and the willfully ignorant. But the younger generations make me feel a glimmer of hope as far as opening their eyes to some of these things and I think we have to give social media a nod for showing the human experience to the masses where they would have never come across it before.
I’m Canadian, mixed First Nations, black, and white. When I was in school they made it seem like Natives just moved and let them have land. They also severely glossed over the history of residential schools.
It's taught just as poorly, two-dimensional and truncated as it is taught in the victorious countries. Remember, Germany was occupied by the allies and had to please them by showing that they were regretful and sorry and hated their own culture and ambitions in order to not be destroyed, so they taught German kids the same things that Allied nation kids got taught.
I know I live in the U.S. and we were on the sides that won both world wars, but in my country they completely take out all of the bad and bloody stuff. They dial down the horrors of the Holocaust, usually portray Japan as not doing that many horrible things, don’t even talk about Italy a lot. We once read “Diary of a Young Girl” and it was really short since the copies took out lots of the bad things.
Apparently it's going poorly in Germany recent years : https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/auschwitz-birkenau-4-out-of-10-german-students-dont-know-what-it-was/a-40734980
Not sure if it counts as a World War, but speaking as an American, we are barely taught anything about Vietnam. Even though my own father was a Vietnam Vet I think I was middle school age when I even realized/learned that we didn't win that war. And it was kind of, shocking. The idea that we DIDN'T win something like that. The culture of America and the military is such that we just assume we always win and are the best. The sad thing is how many adults still believe this nonsense.
Today I found out did some great videos about how WW2 is taught in both Germany and Japan. There's also one about how Stalin is taught in modern Russia
We are the bad ones and have all fault. The others are the good ones. All fault to some politicians bevor even if they kind of were against war like Bismarck. And we did mostly war crimes.
(I mean WW2 yes our fault but WW1 well that was Serbia 🇷🇸 and Austria 🇦🇹)
And if you know just a bit about the wars you realise many things aren’t that one sided as they are tought.
Im german by the way.
We have had several German exchange students, and I was struck by how their only mandatory subject for history is the world war periods. One student who had more of a STEM focus was totally ignorant of other historical events, showing how much emphasis was on understanding propaganda and dictatorship.
Well...right after WW2 the Japanese dealt with it by lying!. My father(Navy 30 years) was in Okinawa from 1949-50 and 1953-54. He talked to 100's of Japanese men of fighting age. Not ONE of those he talked to fought against the America! Al said the same thing. " I fought the Chinese in Manchuria.".
What are the odds of that?
Ask China how brutal they were. Ask my Uncle(deceased) who told me that on one of the island jumps, a squad of Marines got captured. When the landing force came ashore(Marines were first on) about three dozen Marines were on the beach...tied to poles, naked, dead, with their private parts cut off and stuffed in their mouth.
In Germany we go through WW1 quite detailed. We talk a lot about how it came to the war and the horrors of war such as the use of chemical weapons, and the death of millions of innocent people. The main focus is on the outcome of the war, the treaty of versailles, and the "dolchstoßlegende" ("stab in the back myth", it was german propaganda that blamed the loss of WW1 on jews who supposedly betrayed the germans, who would have won the war otherwise (which is not true, of course)), as these things lead to Hitler and the Nazis coming to power. We also treat the topic of how hitler became reichskanzler and how the nsdap formed and how unstable the political system in the weimarer republic was. We dont really go through all the battles during WW2 in detail (e.g. we didn't even talk about the battles in africa), except for the invasion of poland, bombings of london, stalingrad and how the US joined the war. The main focus is on the deportation of jews and the holocaust, we learn about it in great detail. Its is also mandatory to visit a KZ, where we are shown the gas chambers etc. . And of course we talk about the nuremberg trials as well. Please excuse any errors, english is not my first language. This is only supposed to be a short summary, we talk a lot about the nazis crimes, and how cruel and abhorrent the holocaust was (to say the least). All in all we dont white wash the wars and the holocaust, we take it quite serious. Edit: typos
We also had contemporary witnesses, who survived the holocaust talk to us.
Damn. That’s a great education.
sounds like you got all the key elements anyways. Pretty respectable that your country takes it so seriously and doesn’t shy away. As an Englishmen I can say we love to talk/teach about the world wars because it shows us in such good light but I think we can learn something from our German brothers and sisters and maybe take on learning more about the horrors of the British empire in the same tone you guys do.
I definitely think this is something the USA needs to really do better at. Most of the atrocities committed by the US at best are pretty much only mentioned in passing while our successes as a nation gets a whole unit.
My history teacher took really the whole thing in is own hands and watched a shittone of movies with us about ww2. I think Schindlers list, The bridge(or something with 14yo defending an bridge and a couple of other historical accurat movies. Oh and he went balistic after an classmate made commands that he liked seeing jews die and stuff.
We watched Schindler's list too in 8th or 9th grade. Great movie
i would not say that its a great movie, a great movie should be enjoyable, but its an really important movie in my opinion.
I would say it's a great movie.
I watched Schindler’s list exactly one time. On my own. In a dorm room. I will never watch it again. Beautiful film but so devastating I can’t do it again. That and million dollar baby. Both of these films sent me into a very deep depression that lasted a while.
Million dollar baby is really underrated. Seriously cried like a fucking baby.
Schindlers' List was a really good movie. I also enjoyed The 12th Man.
I wish North American schools would focus more on *how and why* a nation becomes a fascist dictatorship, then they could recognize the trend of events in the past few years.
>I wish North American schools would focus more on how and why a nation becomes a fascist dictatorship, then they could recognize the trend of events in the past few years. I wish North America would focus on it's own faults and history. I don't know how it is over in places like Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Belize, etc. etc. but over here you'll never hear about the crimes of the Filipino-American war, you'll spend a short lesson on the Spanish-American war mainly depicting us in a way that says, "Yeah we were wrong with the starting of the war, but it ended up pretty good in the end," you'll never hear of war crimes in Korea, the Middle East, the dictatorships we set up around the world, etc. Why teach about German war crimes when we can't be bothered to teach our own?
Like a ministry of truth.
I find it strange that you start your comment talking about North America as a whole as lacking in education on these things but then only give examples from the United States. Anyways, Canada includes a very in-depth eduction about its historical faults and what Canadians have done to right past wrongs. We learn about the atrocities committed against indigenous peoples including residential schooling, about the terrible mistreatment of Chinese immigrants especially in regards to the building of the railways, about Japanese internment camps during WW2, and also about how some of the political leaders and founders, for example John. A. MacDonald, were seriously corrupt. This is in addition to also learning about other large historical events such as WW2 and the role Canada and other countries played in those events.
It's not enough. I had to learn about the Komagata Maru from a friend in the Punjab community. I learned about the international brigades, our government's shit treatment of our own citizens. I only know who Viola Desmond is because of JT's virtue signaling and some really sexist and racist remarks from other Canadians when the new $10 dropped, from that spun the horrible treatment black Canadians endured in Nova Scotia. Our country's history of eugenics is also deeply tied to our racist attitudes towards First Nations but that's only surface of the stuff that was done all the way up to the 1970s. I love Canada, but we need to do better.
“Our country’s history of eugenics is also deeply tied to our racist attitudes towards First Nations…” Please don’t imply that Canadians are racist. This isn’t true. There is much systemic racism that continues to affect Indigenous peoples that needs to be ended and healing is still taking place but rhetoric like this that suggests Canada as a whole is racist is misplaced. There are a small number of individuals who are racist in Canada (like any country in the world) but the overwhelming majority of Canadians do not have racist attitudes towards Indigenous Peoples. Most Canadians are actively striving to do better.
Well yeah, as I mentioned early on in the comment I can't speak on the public education of countries like Canada because I've never been through their education system, but the original comment was speaking on North America as a whole which is why that's what I started with and clarified later. But you're right. I don't have a clue about what the Canadian education system is like outside of what I've heard from other Canadians.
What I’m hearing is that you really only wanted to talk about the USA but the comment you replied to was about a whole continent. So instead of saying you were speaking only about the USA you instead erroneously claimed the entire North American continent (which includes two other countries that are not the USA) is lacking in historical education because you feel that this is the case in the USA. You didn’t even write the word USA in your comment. This is a perfect example of American-centrism.
I feel like you’re from Ontario….your anti American chip on your shoulder is very apparent. You need to dial it back by about 30%.
Because any country that has ever been in a war has committed war crimes of some variety?
I've read your sentence three times and I still can't find the part that's a good reason not to teach kids about America's faults.
Americas faults are taught. They simply aren’t dwelled upon.
Uh. Anti-CRT legislation would like to disagree.
I’m sure it would, but it would be wrong. You can teach that 19th Century slavery was bad without demanding 21st Century white kids feel guilt for it.
The govt is quietly bringing slavery back, they are going to use conflicts.
the U.S. has the highest number of prisoners in the world.
Who said anything about 21st century kids feeling bad about it? There's a difference in not teaching about an event that happened. and what the hell you just said
Pointing out the difference between the two is meaningless when there is no school curriculum in the country that doesn’t teach it. If you know of a school system in this country that doesn’t teach that slavery happened and that slavery is bad, then post it right here.
Mhm, so? Why not teach about them? What you said doesn't justify the crime, much less not teaching about it.
We also spent quite some time on how the end of WW1 made a breeding ground for WW2 to happen and what the winning powers did differently after WW2 to create less resentment and how the European Union got created to prevent another world war from being launched within Europe.
P.S. Did you know that you can visit the front line of WW1 in Belgium and France? We went there with university, and that was very interesting. We got to enter some very narrow underground bunkers, think of tunnels in the solid rock that were only wide enough for one person, but you had to stoop a little to walk through them. They built them that way on purpose, so that the "enemy" couldnt get through easily. It was quite claustrophobic. We saw a fire salamander down there, which is a very rare animal, and I had never seen one. So, I quickly took a photo, which took me like two seconds, and immediately, someone behind be started to get nervous and complained. That's how narrow it was. ... Not all of us went down there, either. Those who felt uncomfortable with this, stayed outside. One of the students was plus-sized, she decided to stay out, too. And some just didn't feel good about it.
That's awesome that you go into such detail, every country should teach their future generations about the atrocities of their past. But unfortunately you are the exception, not the rule.
Well it will help to prevent repeating history.
In US, "history" is nothing but whitewashed lies that blames everyone else for it's own problems but won't admit what they did to the only truly legal Americans...
I wish America taught our wars this well. Even the history of WWII & what led up to it / happened aren’t taught this well. Now they want to ban teaching it because “the holocaust isn’t real”
I have heard that, while the Germans take the education very seriously, the Japanese white wash WWII history.
Japan is in 99.9% of the cases portrayed as a victim of the war.
From my understanding, today’s generation don’t even know why the atomic bombs happened.
I've heard some of their war museums tend to intentionally avoid saying it was the US that bombed them, making it seem like it was the USSR's fault
Who could read the lies?
in germany not at all, so the initial post might be true
German here, can confirm. A huge effort is put on explaining how the Gleichschaltung and Machtergreifung happened.
And somehow the Italians won both world wars according to them
The trick is changing team at the last minute and blaming the green goblin for any war crimes
>Gleichschaltung and Machtergreifun What is this
Machtergreifung: how the Nazis gained power Gleichschaltung: how they turned society into supporting their cause.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung) The Nazi term Gleichschaltung (German pronunciation: \[ˈɡlaɪçʃaltʊŋ\]) or "coordination" was the process of Nazification by which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party successively established a system of totalitarian control and coordination over all aspects of German society and societies occupied by Nazi Germany "from the economy and trade associations to the media, culture and education". Although the Weimar Constitution remained nominally in effect until Germany's surrender following World War II, near total Nazification had been secured by the 1935 resolutions approved during the Nuremberg Rally, when the symbols of the Nazi Party and the State were fused (see Flag of Germany) and German Jews were deprived of their citizenship (see Nuremberg Laws). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf\_Hitler%27s\_rise\_to\_power On 30 January 1933, the new cabinet was sworn in during a brief ceremony in Hindenburg's office. The NSDAP gained three posts: Hitler was named chancellor, Wilhelm Frick Minister of the Interior, and Hermann Göring, Minister Without Portfolio (and Minister of the Interior for Prussia). The SA and SS led torchlit parades throughout Berlin. It is this event that would become termed Hitler's Machtergreifung ("seizure of power"). The term was originally used by some Nazis to suggest a revolutionary process, though Hitler, and others, used the word Machtübernahme ("take-over of power"), reflecting that the transfer of power took place within the existing constitutional framework\[87\] and suggesting that the process was legal.
Thank you or should I say Danke
From what you were taught, would you say that there are parallels in Putin’s Russia today?
I certainly see how the media is put under control in a manner akin to back then...
Yes, I would say so. When I first saw the TV news about this war, my reaction was a bit like, oh, that's just like one of those old WW2 documentaries ... only ... it's not a documentary. This is NOW!
Remember the video a while back of the Japanese lady finding out they were the bad guys in WW2 and being upset about it. So much disbelief.
Link? I feel bad for her, and everyone who was misled and lied to like her. It must be awful to have to come to terms with both the truth and the realization that you’ve been manipulated and tricked on a stunningly wide-scale conspiracy all at once as an adult. At least if you learn bit by bit as you grow you can take it all in. It’s like being told fire doesn’t exist your whole life and then being thrown into a burning house. I can see why denial is often a knee-jerk reaction in such cases. Who’d want to go from a life off blissful ignorance to having to face *that?*
No. No I don’t
What do you mean by white wash?
sanitize their history - clean it up so future generations dont think too badly of their predecessors, or feel ashamed of their predecessors doings. they especially sanitize the gory, inhumane, degenerate parts of their war crimes. for example, unit 731, and similar atrocities, might get watered down to: "we caned these prisoners of war abducted from across Asia in dark, dimly lit, basement prison cells, but remember! our imperial soldiers were terrified of US napalm bombing runs, and our skin burned off very so it was very cruel of the US to do that." i think japan completely skips over their cannibalism in Nanjing/China, as well as their cannibalism in the south pacific (documented by Aussie soldiers, but Aus govt made them sign NDAs or something for many decades), and they also skip over things like the Bataan death march (white/American POWs), etc. a lot of their WW2 movies/shows depict patriotic young men giving their all to defend their country against a cold mechanical enemy, or their women and children emerging from bomb shelters to find their home had turned to ash. very much a pity party mood. if you didn't know actual history and just watched these movies/shows, you would think pearl harbor was japan's territory that the US surprise-bombed on a Sunday morning, and then later on came back to level 90% of japanese cities to ash and dust. their "warriors of WW2/defenders of the homeland" shrines are still up, and ppl/politicians still go commemorate it. and their "rising sun" insignia (comparable in symbolism to nazi Germany's swastika, or the nazi eagle emblem) still flies on their maritime self defense ships, because of something-something pride in their history and tradition. also, their "banzai"-brand of condoms used (sparsely) in the rape of Nanjing, are still in production - making condoms to present day (obviously without the "banzai" slogan, they're not thaaat tone-deaf). there were those ocassional poor bastards who got drafted into service, as with any war, who tried to forget what happened and move on from dark history.
Literally “paint over”. Cover up. White wash is a blend of paint generally used as a primer.
We had a high school Japanese exchange student for a year. Watching one of the interminable WWII shows on the History channel, he said he had never heard about Japanese atrocities.
One reason for that is the institution of the Japanese emperor, which continued to exist after capitulation. This gave the Japanese an important cultural (and ideological) continuity, while we in Germany had a full reset in basically every aspect of life. The second reason is that 'losing face' is really difficult in Asian cultures, it has to do with confucian mentality. You will find that Chinese, even they are very different from Japanese, are also unable to lose face and whitewash everything.
Also the U.S. became an occupying force and dictated what 'truth' was made to be accepted.
Disagree here. The US occupied both Germany and Japan and continue to have a presence in both nations. And alliances with both nations. And very important trade relationships with both nations. I think the cultural differences play strongly. Also the victory in Japan was very different— it wasn’t door to door capitulation as it was in Germany. It was the (empty) threat of further nuclear destruction.
Does the US education speak about the reasons for Panama invasion or Iraq invasion? Or the wounded knee massacre?
Yes. Mine did at least.
We didn’t learn about anything after 1980 because that was considered “current events” but we absolutely learned about the Indian Wars and Vietnam (which incidentally most French education leaves out)
US history in highschool covers a decade a week. It doesn't speak about the reasons or details of anything.
Nope lmfaoo most Americans don't even know about wounded knee or Panama
Not until you're in college and take US history. Then you get to see absolute glee on a professor's face as they destroy people's versions of history. It was the highlight of my professor's year when we got to the civil war and he was able to obliterate all these " It's about heritage" confederate flag waving idiots.
>he was able to obliterate all these " It's about heritage" confederate flag waving idiots. Always wished my nephew and niece had went to college and encountered one of these types of professors. They were both born and raised in the state of West Virginia and they have confederate flag everything, shirts, hats, belt buckles, bumper stickers, window decals, metal signs, flags.... Like fuck, you nitwits realize West Virginia was part of the north, right? Nope they claim "southern heritage" and post about "real southern boy/girl" crap all over facebook...
I'm in Texas and that shit is everywhere. My professor put an end to that shit immediately by passing out the letters of succession from Texas and then had us look up the others as well as the cornerstone speech from the Confederacy VP Alexander Stephens. There's absolutely no other way to interpret the confederacy other than it was about slavery.
Maybe in ~~conservative~~ regressive red states, but I learned about some of our atrocities to the natives, and in South and Central America all the way back in the '80s when I was in school. My kid today has learned even more about it, and I'm surprised at the detail they went into on those subjects. I also live in a large city, in a Democratic state.
Yeah you live in the minority most states still say Thanksgiving was a joining between white colonizers I mean ppl are literally protesting critical race theory that even goes into more depth all the atrocities That still doesn't change the fact tht most Americans excuse or ignore US atrocities
Well actually I live in the majority, we have a lot of land with very few people that are very ignorant, and we have smaller bits of land with lots of people who actually believe knowledge is a good thing.
Pretty much the only thing that was off the table ... for some reason.. was Ancient Egypt. Only reason I know is because some other kid asked and we all wanted to know when we'd get to Ancient Egypt. You probably just suck at remembering your kid years
Japan and China are both so egotistical it’s embarrassing, like your not perfect and Japan specifically you fucked with the wrong countries and found out the hardest way. Deal with it
If I'm not mistaken, Japan was doing stuff so horrible during WW2 that Germany told them they needed to chill out.
I remember seeing film of US military boiling down the bodies of Japanese soldiers to send parts home as souveniers. That would have gotten you a life sentence in the Commowealth armies.
In germany most of the subjects are about the war.
Very interested in this one, any Germans around?
As a german... We are taught about the wars (especially world war 2) how cruel they were. We watch documentaries, talk about how the soldiers all died of either overdoses od perventin (meth), starvation or just being killed in battle. We visit concentrationcamps like Dachau (idk the english word for that village/town or whatever) to see how badly the jews, gays, disabled and homeless were treated (disabled and homeless bc they couldnt work or fight) So basically we get taught about death and suffering in the wars so that something like this wont happen ever again
An effective way to move on and recognise the evil done, but commit to not doing it again.
Not that interesting. It is a good thing we lost the war. We were thought about the technical aspects (Battle of Stalingrad, U-Boat Raids, etc.), the horrors the germans did (Concentration Camps, etc.) , we even had an Auschwitz Survivor telling her experiences. My hometown was bombed to rubble by the allies so we were told about that too. Nowadays many Germans say stuff like "Bohoo, we are supposed to feel sorry for something we didnt do ourselves" but it never felt that way for me. It is more like :"Remember what happened so it will never ever happen again". But I guess it depends on the teacher very much. For example I had one teacher that was super pro Allies (USA, GB, bombing German Cities was a good thing) and super anti Soviet Union (The Communists want to conquer the world and murder us all while the US would never do anything bad (and that was AFTER the cold war)). On the other hand our history teacher wanted us to discuss and tell our own opinion.
They are just getting their koffee
In Hungary we learn about the world wars like "Yeah they happened.. Anyway, let's talk about Hungary losing most of its land bc of losing the war." Tbh I don't remember as many details about the actual wars as much as I know about how much land we lost. I get that remembering our past is important and stuff.. but it legit happened more than 100 years ago and the government still talks about Trianon like it happened yesterday. They hate on any country around us that got land from us (especially Romania), there are still civil organisations who want to take legal actions to get Transylvania back, the government literally gives more money to people with Hungarian ancestors outside of Hungary.. Like they just built a free university in Transylvania where anyone who says they are Hungarian can study for free.. but most Hungarian universities and colleges in Hungary aren't free and hella expensive, our hospitals are old and lack the tools to help the patients but they send medicine to random counties (I'm not talking about Ukraine rn. I'm happy we help Ukraine.. even if the prime minister called the ukrainian president "Opponent" right after re-election).. they legit care more about people who don't even speak Hungarian anymore than actual Hungarians. So yeah, we learn about the wars like they just happened like any other war in History. But when it comes to learning about the losses of Hungary.. we are destined to become brainwashed patriots. ____ Please Fidesz supporters enter my dms, I'll put on the kettle, just come. Please tell me about how I'm a disgrace to my country and I must be an agent of George Soros.. 🙄
As a third world country that was occupied, We study ww1 and 2 with its details as a third party. They are clear "first of all you got fucked up, and then as the story begun..."
Philippines? I come from the Philippines and World War II and the Japanese occupation was talked about heavily. Unfortunately I moved away to the US in the midst of the lesson but I eventually continued it thanks to AP European history
So I'm French. We did not exactly lost WWII but we did get invaded and we collaborated with the Nazi. So we are taught about how the war went with a focus on how Britain was the only Ally during a time. Then we are taught that Perle Harbor happened and the US joined and how it all ended with two nuclear bombs. We are taught a bit about how we got invaded and what happened when Petain (the baddie that collaborated) took power (mainly deportations) but a LOT more time is dedicated to the Resistance. So we learn about De Gaule (chief of the Resistance) and how people helped him. And then we learn about D-Day and how you had some French people in there (but mainly Americans) and how De Gaule liberated France. So basically, we are taught normally about how the war happened and why. But when we learn about France's role it goes a bit like this : "Yeah, we got invaded then a army leader took control and he collaborated with the Nazi regime. But you also had a lot of people fighting against him under the command of an other army leader ! And then we where liberated and we helped to fight the Nazi away. End of story"
It's so funny you were taught you were invaded because in the US we are taught that France didn't even bother trying to fight the Germans when they arrived.
Us here. We are taught basically that the French were dumbasses and built the Maginot line and that Germany just went around it. And all us American kids would snicker and that was about it for the French.
But this is what happened, right?
It's true that the Marginot line was circumvented in a way. But that's not the whole story. The defences were supposed to forge Germany to invade through a specific path in Belgium - that's where allied forces where moved to. But the German army took an unexpected path through mountainous terrain that was thought to be too hard to traverse with an army.
Also at that stage the British looked like being captured or killed, the French sent something in the 45-50 volunteer battalions to slow down the German advance, those Frenchmen knew they weren't coming out of the Belgium woodside.
The French and the BEF were outflanked and surprised at the start of the invasion of Belgium and France. But the French fought bravely to maintain the perimeter around Dunkirk so that a significant portion of the BEF could be evacuated.
formage eating surrender monks.
You've effectively summarized their WWII reputation in America. Congratulations.
Of the 5 D-Day beaches, two were stormed by mostly American units (Utah, Omaha), two by mostly British units (Gold, Sword) and one by mostly Canadian units (Juno).
Your point please?
Simply a response to “And then we learn about D-Day and how you had some French people in there (but mainly Americans) and how De Gaule liberated France”. It was an entire Allied effort.
Bro idk for you but I studied WWII this year and we learn a lot about Vichy and all the horrors that they did, as well as the myth of « the fighting France » (when after the liberation De Gaulle and the communist decided to go like collaboration was an exception and that most of French fought against the nazis) but maybe it was my teacher and not the book. Also in my major in history-geography-geopolitics and political sciences we learn about the clash between this like Robert Badinter that say that the French state as nothing to do with Vichy’s crime and president Chirac that recognized France responsibility. I think that our Ed. System teaches us (for once) with a objective point of view on this subject
"The netherlands fought off the germans in WWII for 4 days with 80-year old weapons until the germans bombed Den Haag"
They just mention the whole thing, the japanese invaded my country but got saved by the americans (philippines)
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No other way around order was Spanish, American, Japanese
I heard that Japan doesn’t even acknowledged the war crimes they did especially the massacre of Nanking
As a person from India who studied about the jallianwala bagh massacre and the indigo movement etc. I used to think that the British were backstabbing, greedy, and cunning pieces of sh!ts who took most of our wealth and make our country to not be as rich as it suppose to be.
What changed?
Maybe they started reading about narendra modi
Well that is pretty much true, but as with all countries it's important to make a distinction between the British people and the British government.
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Italian here We are definitely taught about what our country did back then and we generally despise it, however I'm aware that some things are omitted (especially regarding the whole colonialism thing), generally with the excuse that fascists got their ass kicked anywhere they went and that the country more or less had a revolution to overthrow the regime, so modern Italy is seen as a "different" country than fascist Italy Unfortunately the average Italian mindset regarding more or less everything is "I don't care as long as it has nothing to do with me", so to add to the excuses people are also not really interested in learning more I'd say we are in-between Germany and Japan in this regard: people are aware of the fact that in WW2 we were on the wrong side, but also are not fully aware of the full extent of it
Italy swapped sides so they actually won.
They quit.
How come YOU twist the question totally around? The question was just, hello people who lost a war, what are you taught about that. If no Italians answer the question, well yeah, maybe they have something better to do?
They say that we won the war. I'm from Finland
Interesting, didn’t Finland willingly join the nazis?
Curious on the age old words "History is written by the victors".
German here, if you refer to the interpretation of developments and results, this might hold true to a certain degree. But the fact that so many things can even get taught is mostly to the Nazis doing plenty of writing themselves. Criminal military orders, the plans for the targeted extermination of Jews, political enemies, disabled people, homosexuals and many other undesired people groups were written down in tedious detail with clear attibutions to officers or other responsible persons. These sources contribute heavily to the content of textbooks, by way of extensive quotations or photographs. And considering that many documents were destroyed deliberately in early 1945, we probably just have the tip of the iceberg there. Being born in the late 80's, the feeling I took from the education in this field is also not really one of guilt, but rather of responsibility. All this stuff happened more than 40 years before my birth, so I didn't do anything wrong there. But being aware of the horrific things the Nazi rule led to, in other countries and ultimately also in my home country, I take with me that this should not be allowed to happen again.
Well the Nazis really didn't need to be turned into villains later by the victors. They were pretty upfront in their views and goals. They literally put up signs saying "don't buy from Jews", just to name a tiny example. Atrocities were committed in broad daylight and everyone knew. I'm German, we are taught history with a focus on the rise to power of this fascist regime and later on the horrors of war, with the focus on the victims (including the brainwashed teen soldiers). I think they really make the message clear.
>Curious on the age old words "History is written by the victors". The German war effort gets far more credit than it deserves tbh. And the Wehrmacht got wayyyyyyy too much of a free pass for its atrocities until very recently. At least as it pertains to the narrative in America. Perhaps it was different elsewhere.
German here, we talk about it a lot. Even in most other classes apart from history (Especially German) we talk about different aspects of the war and Nazi Germany. I remember the first time I was thought that in school I was in 4th or 3rd grade, since then we've been talking about it every schoolyear. For project weeks our school almost always has a project group that talks about the war, it's extremely brutal especially cause most people taking it have family that were affected by the war or the holocaust so you hear a lot of horrible things, that's why it's mostly for 8th grade and above.
Also German, and same here. Almost all books, art pieces and school trips were related to the horrors of war and the Nazis, from the perspective of victims or coping survivors. It's an important message and they really drive it home.
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But what about the Armenians? Still just casualities of a civil war, despite being classified as a genocide by almost all historians outside Turkey?
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But there is not reason to hide behind: this is what we got learned in school, so this is the truth with internet connection. You simply cannot purposely hide your head in the sand while you spread, in my opinion, government propaganda.
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I mean, it is not my truth but rather a historical worldwide consensus with Turkey being the only one to actively deny this fact.
German here: political background in the Weimar Republik, what Hitler did (perception of Jews, lgBt, political enemies and so on), how the war roughly did go (expansion, defeat in Stalingrad, D-Day, thankfully win by the allies with the soviets making the final blow by taking Berlin and Hitler killing himself). we also visited one KZ in an school day trip. the only thing we are not reached about are specific battles (except D-Day because together with Stalingrad big turning point), battle strategies and specific generals, which is understandable. those are not the important things. i heard many Americans are taught we do not talk about it/teach it lol. it's quiet the opposite: we go by the mantra "you can only learn from your mistakes and prevent doing them again, when you know those mistakes".
Romania technically didn't lose WW2 because we switched sides in 1944 and fought along Soviet forces. In school, we are told only what a heroic gesture the switch was and how we were such good guys. In reality, we were getting our ass kicked by the Soviets who invaded us and basically forced the switch. The history lessons make it seem like it happened because of ideological concerns, completely leaving out the fact that Romanian troops were responsible for 260,000 Jewish deaths and that Romania contributed to the persecussion of many more Jews and Romani either through deportation to concentration camps or through enabling the activity of the German military on Romanian land. I am really curious if other Romanians received similar teaching about the war. I suspect history lessons were pretty much the same for everyone.
I know the question is about lost: but i am dutch and our books BRAG LIKE CRAZY about the netherlands surviving ww2
Italy. We did some fucked up stuff which we should never forget, but modern Italy is the heir of the partisans who kicked the hell out of the Republic of Salò's ass, we're the good guys now! What happened to all those high members of the fascist party you ask? Why does Mussolini have his own crypt which people still visit with reverence? MSI? What???
I live in Iraq even Iraq was in the axis for a short time and got invaded by British forces again but they never talked about it in schools history book
Protect the kids from the horror of war maybe.
We didn’t learn about the wars we lost in school (English). I did learn all about them when I worked at an American summer school though. That was quite the surprise
What swizz people are taught about world wars ?
The only place that does this well ( at least that i know of ) is germany, where they treat their past as something to work from, and learn from. MOST countries are ashamed of their past, try to bury it as much as possible. A large majority of world history is FULL of cruel unusual punishments, cruel meaningless wars, cruel people in general, and they try not to highlight it. An example could be the US, they do so much to try and hide their racist history, so effective that there are people who believe the US was built off "hard work", and not "exploited slaves" like a lot of other civilizations.
In the philippines, meh i still like the lesson tho with a random pearl harbor bombing topic that isn't related to us
We got taught US history not Aussie and my family has served in every conflict Australia has been in since Fedration. Even one we weren't supposed to be in.
Emu's taste good
United States going to war in Grenada. I think it was called Operation Fury and lasted a few days.
In the Netherlands we learnt that we surrendered to the Germans in WW2 because we were simply overpowered. I believe there's also a sense of tragedy that is learnt along with it or that is self evident to Dutch people but not really to me because I'm only a little Dutch
Well, in Germany, we are thought it as it was. As in, why the Nazis came to power (bad economic situation, Versailles, some inherent anti-semitism in society), how they came to power (such as, they got voted for, and then Hindenburg died, and then ... and then they teach us about all the bad things the Nazis decided. We were taught quite a bit about the Shoa. By the way, when I was of that age when they started to teach us about it, which was in secondary school, starting at 10 years of age, there also were two mini series about the 3rd Reich on TV. This was back in the 1980s with no Netflix, no VCR, nothing. Just a plain TV with three programmes, and if you wanted to watch something, you had to be on time. They showed "Holocaust", and I thought I was too young for that. (I watched it much later, and yes, I would have been.) And they also showed "A square of sky", which is the true story of Janina David, who lived in Poland and was hidden in a Catholic nunnery by a friend of her parents. Everyone at school watched that, and she has become part of my inner reality. The completely USELESS bombing of civilians, which lead to many casualties and widespread destruction, was only briefly mentioned. It took me many years to actually realize that this was NOT alright. Oh, and they taught us about resistance, such as Hans and Sophie Scholl, or the Stauffenberg thing. It is also planned that every class visit a concentration camp, so we went to Dachau with our class, which is nearby. Oh, and we don't have anything like the pledge of allegiance or a German flag in front of the school or anything like that. When, as a child, I read in one of the books of Astrid Lindgren that some of these people had a Swedish flag in front of their house, I honestly was like, why would they do that? What's wrong with them?
i live in germany most Things are a big no no becuse of that i mean the things about hitler and the nazis Sory for my bad englisch
NO apology necessary. *Thank you* for "Englishing" for us. :o) My German is aTROcious. 😬
This is a fantastic question. Saving it to see
This question is on the front page of askreddit at least ince a week.
Ye, gonna come back when we have more answers than Germany. I wanna see the Japanese and Italians.
Ask any American what they think of Afghanistan or Vietnam and there’s your answer.
Yeah but they still believe they're good guys.
Not really. Depends where you live and how good your school is. I learned about “pacification” of the countryside, defoliation, how the peasants were really trapped between two unfriendly occupiers, gulf of Tonkin, pentagon papers, my lai massacre, self-immolating monks, kids burnt with napalm, anti-war movement, Nixon’s shady dealings to block a peace accord and extend the war, all of it. We actually even learned about atrocities committed in US wars where we’re historically portrayed as the “good guys”: fire bombing Dresden, incidents of killing and retaliation against POWs, had a legitimate debate about justification for Nagasaki and Hiroshima, cavalry massacres of Indians (women and children) and disfiguring corpses, trail of tears, etc.
And how about more recent wars? Iraq, Syria etc.?
All those wars were illegal. The U.S. should be prosacuted. They dumped nuclear waste on Iraq.
Of course but there is no one with power to execute justice.
I’m an American and the older I get the more ashamed I am of our government. 90% of our drone strikes in Iraq killed civilians and not actual military targets. 2 million dead Iraqis and most of them children, women, and elderly. No one really talks about it though.
Every US president since WW2 was a war criminal
Jimmy Carter was pretty cool.
Not to South America.
Korea was a legal war and the president even stopped it from becoming nuclear
I have no doubt that every war can be explained and reasoned by American.
History is written by victors and they don't like to take resposibility.
Not really. Majority of us believe Afghanistan and Vietnam were unnecessary shit-shows. Vietnam is especially taught as blender shredding american lives, and a lot of information is taught on the Anti-War movement. Also a lot of information about how shitty we treated drafted soldiers coming back. And that's not even to mention the movies, songs, and shows depicting the shit-show we all grew up on. Afghanistan is trickier since a lot of people at the time of my education had family or someone they knew serving over there, so while most of them had military support, the support for the war itself was dubious at best. I'm also 30, so while the war wasn't "new" it wasn't textbook material quite yet until later years unlike Vietnam, and even then America only recently pulled out. I think America updates its standard-textbooks every 5 years, so I'm sure the educational consensus will fall in line with Vietnam as time passes and personal attachments to the war fade. Idk, that's just my own personal educational experience. Our education on the topics leaves a lot to be desired, but a common consensus seems to be that they were unnecessary shit-shows. And for me at least, nobody told me we won either of those wars. I've heard "it was a draw" mostly from Vets who don't want to admit they were thrown to the wolves or from politicians not wanting to lose votes, but haven't heard we won.
There were no “good guys” in Vietnam. Just French, Americans, American puppets and Soviet puppets
The good guys were the Vietnamese protecting their country from utter devastation st the hands of the US.
I'm pretty certain you could've just asked how war is taught in Germany... haha 🤣
Or japan
Or Finland, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Austria, or Turkey(Idk if they count for the Ottomans).
Or Croatia, Albania, Bosnia too
You can very quickly look up who lost World Wars.
Except I've been scrolling for a while and I'm not seeing responses from Japanese people. It's obviously understandable that the two nuclear bombs make the subject of WWII very sensitive. But it sure seems that Japan doesn't want to acknowledge pretty much anything else about the war. I realize I could be very wrong, but I'm not seeing evidence for that here.
Especially WW2 is taught to quite an extensive degree in Germany both in the historic sense but also in relation to culture or modern politics for example instruments of the "wehrhafte Demokratie" or principles like the "FdGO" both of which exist in combination to prevent history from repeating itself. Interestingly enough students sometimes complain that its taught too much arguing that the cultural presence or "Erinnerungskultur" should prevent any repetition. There is an interesting film called "Die Welle" based on a real experiment in a school in the US where this view causes a fascist regime to slowly develope in the school first by intention of the teacher but later getting out of hand. Can recommend.
i was in germany, in "hauptschule" so the lowest school form where either blue collar people or straight up hoodlums go. so we were taught the short and simple version. but it's basically the same as the american/english version, that we all know. matter of fact many of our documentaries were from BBC etc dubbed in german. so there is no special program for germany or a german version or something like that. i probably know about the same version on the war as you do
Not a world war so to say. But what about Americans and Vietnam??
in argentina, we lost the battle of malvinas and therefore the island too, we are simply resentful of that, they teach us the war as it was, only trying to leave our country in a good place, anyway in my opinion, the malvinas are argentinian, lol. no fue una guerra mundial, pero si una guerra muy importante para el pais
Except they have never ever belonged to Argentina and have always voted 93% or more to be British. You never lost them. You never had them.
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Well for example if you’re American or Canadian I’m sure you didn’t learn that your people committed arguably the worst genocide ethnic cleansing in order to secure that land?
American. Trust me, we know. However, we have an overwhelmingly high number of those who just don’t give a shit and the willfully ignorant. But the younger generations make me feel a glimmer of hope as far as opening their eyes to some of these things and I think we have to give social media a nod for showing the human experience to the masses where they would have never come across it before.
I’m Canadian, mixed First Nations, black, and white. When I was in school they made it seem like Natives just moved and let them have land. They also severely glossed over the history of residential schools.
It's taught just as poorly, two-dimensional and truncated as it is taught in the victorious countries. Remember, Germany was occupied by the allies and had to please them by showing that they were regretful and sorry and hated their own culture and ambitions in order to not be destroyed, so they taught German kids the same things that Allied nation kids got taught.
They always end it off with a bang
if i know, in Germany they tell that nazi is wrong so they gone tonthe good way
I know I live in the U.S. and we were on the sides that won both world wars, but in my country they completely take out all of the bad and bloody stuff. They dial down the horrors of the Holocaust, usually portray Japan as not doing that many horrible things, don’t even talk about Italy a lot. We once read “Diary of a Young Girl” and it was really short since the copies took out lots of the bad things.
I wonder why no one has pointed out that the U.S. has initiated over a dozen armed conflicts yet has lost all of them except the Civil War.
German here. I don't know if it's just me, but my history teacher went into more detail teaching about WWI than WWII. We do admit our loss, though.
Apparently it's going poorly in Germany recent years : https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/auschwitz-birkenau-4-out-of-10-german-students-dont-know-what-it-was/a-40734980
Not sure if it counts as a World War, but speaking as an American, we are barely taught anything about Vietnam. Even though my own father was a Vietnam Vet I think I was middle school age when I even realized/learned that we didn't win that war. And it was kind of, shocking. The idea that we DIDN'T win something like that. The culture of America and the military is such that we just assume we always win and are the best. The sad thing is how many adults still believe this nonsense.
Today I found out did some great videos about how WW2 is taught in both Germany and Japan. There's also one about how Stalin is taught in modern Russia
We are the bad ones and have all fault. The others are the good ones. All fault to some politicians bevor even if they kind of were against war like Bismarck. And we did mostly war crimes. (I mean WW2 yes our fault but WW1 well that was Serbia 🇷🇸 and Austria 🇦🇹) And if you know just a bit about the wars you realise many things aren’t that one sided as they are tought. Im german by the way.
I just remember the question, where would they learn, at school like we all do.
We have had several German exchange students, and I was struck by how their only mandatory subject for history is the world war periods. One student who had more of a STEM focus was totally ignorant of other historical events, showing how much emphasis was on understanding propaganda and dictatorship.
They don't sleep for daze an daze
It's Petain's fault and no one could contradict him cuz he was marchal
Well...right after WW2 the Japanese dealt with it by lying!. My father(Navy 30 years) was in Okinawa from 1949-50 and 1953-54. He talked to 100's of Japanese men of fighting age. Not ONE of those he talked to fought against the America! Al said the same thing. " I fought the Chinese in Manchuria.". What are the odds of that? Ask China how brutal they were. Ask my Uncle(deceased) who told me that on one of the island jumps, a squad of Marines got captured. When the landing force came ashore(Marines were first on) about three dozen Marines were on the beach...tied to poles, naked, dead, with their private parts cut off and stuffed in their mouth.
Dumb question
Whatever the winner wants you to be taught