Almost everyone knows that Germany invaded Poland in September of 1939 and on account of that, the British and French declared war on Germany. Thus began World War II, as every schoolboy knows.
But what about the other thing?
How many schoolboys know that the Soviet Union also invaded Poland shortly after the Germans did? How many who do know that have ever asked how come Britain and France did not declare war on Soviet Russia? Very few. No doubt because they have not been encouraged to ask such impolite questions by the government schools, which impart a redacted and politically correct version of “history.”
This redacted and politically correct version of history frames Germany as the incarnation of All That Is Evil but avoids scrupulously informing schoolboys of the Evil that was Soviet Russia. They are not told the interesting history of the meeting at Yalta – where Stalin introduced Lavrenty Beria to Roosevelt as “our Himmler.” Heinrich Himmler is a name known to most schoolboys. Beria not so much. His predecessors, Yagoda and Dzershinsky even less so.
Why is that?
Himmler was a baddie, certainly. As the head of the German equivalent of Stalin’s Cheka/NKVD “Blue Hats,” Himmler had lots of innocent people rounded up, sent to camps and dispatched to the next life. Drzhinsky, Yagoda and Beria did the same. How many schoolboys know this? Perhaps a better question is: Why is it that they are not told of this?
Vachyslav Molotov was Soviet Russia’s Joachim Ribbentrop. Both were the foreign ministers of their respective states. Both were key players (behind the scenes) in the dissection of Poland by their respective states. Ribbentrop was sentenced to death and hanged as a war criminal by the postwar Nuremburg Tribunal, at which a Soviet judge named Vyshinksy was among the presiding. The latter was the judge presiding at Stalin’s infamous “show trials” of the 1930s, at which various politically incorrect people were convicted of being just that and sentenced to death. Yet Vyhshinsky sat in judgment of Ribbentrop, while Molotov clinked glasses at postwar celebrations of victory over Germany. He lived a long life and died an old man, of natural causes. Ribbentrop dropped from a height with a rope around his neck and was no more.
At Nuremburg, Herman Goring – the head of the German air force during the war and also Hitler’s designated heir and successor – made his accusers squirm when, after having been charged with being a key player in the attacks upon other countries that had not attacked Germany first, pointed out that his accusers’ countries had all done the same things. The United States, for example, had codified chattel slavery and did to the natives of North America very much what the Germans did to populations of similarly inconvenient people. The entire British empire was based upon imperial plunder. Cecil Rhodes can be fairly compared with Hans Frank, the German governor of occupied Poland.
It was the British, Goring pointed out, that first bombed civilian targets for the express purpose of terrorizing the civilian population. Germany retailed in kind; which is not to suggest either was right to do what was done. The point is they both did the same things but only one was excoriated for having done them. The losing side.
Goring was a baddie, of course. But what of his counterparts? For example, Arthur Harris, the architect of the fire-bombing of Dresden? Schoolboys are not told of this and most could probably not tell you who Harris was.
Why not? Is it not history? The unredacted version?
The truth is almost always nuanced. It is rarely binary, though schoolboys are very much encouraged to believe that it is. The so-called Civil War is another example, beginning with the misleading use of that term to describe what was in unredacted fact the attempt made by a confederacy of Southern states to form their own nation by separating from a “union” they believed had become overbearing and tyrannical to their interests. In other words, the states of the Southern confederacy were very much motivated by the same desire as the American colonies and neither of them had any designs to take over the country. The South wanted to separate from the North, not rule over the North – just as the 13 colonies wanted to separate from the British Empire, not rule it.
A “civil war’s” defining element is two sides vying for control of a country. The British Civil War was a civil war. What occurred in America in 1861-1865 was nothing of the sort. Most schoolboys believe otherwise, though – because it is important that they believe it.
Napoleon famously said that history is a lie agreed upon. He was not wrong, but it’s more than just that. Lies are usually overt. The history imparted to schoolboys is subtler. Exaggerrations and omissions. Half-truths rather than the whole truth. To get the latter, it is necessary to suss it out for yourself. As you do, you will often find that what was imparted to you when you were a schoolboy was not the truth but a narrative. One written and imparted by the victors.
This article was originally published on Eric Peters Autos.
