[OT] How much of history do we really know?

[Xeriar]

A historian friend of mine said that, in order to get at the numbers, look at the supply orders. "An army of 100,000 men" - yeah right...

But hey! Here's a food order for about 5,000...

 

[green slime]

No, most of those figures come from Nazi records. There are vagaries, areas of discussion and clarification, et cetera.

Gerhard Reitlinger put the figure at between 4,194,200 and 4,581,200 in his book "The Final Solution - The attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe 1939-1945"

Soviet atrocity propagandist, Ilya Ehrenburg, had publicized the six-million-figure in the Soviet foreign press as early as January 4, 1945, i.e., fully four months before the war’s end.

But two facts remain:

1. Jews were by and large sent to death camps not concentration camps, and to conflate the two is dishonest.

They were sent to ghettos, work camps, concentration camps, and extermination camps. Many died already in the ghettos, due to starvation, overcrowding, and lack of shelter. No matter where they were, they were forced to live in such squalor and in such conditions that death was almost inevitable. Surely, they were deliberately sent to their deaths. The intention was to murder them. But they (the nazis) needed the labour as well.

2. The majority of Jews killed by the Nazis were murdered in death camps.

So those that died from various diseases (typhus, jaundice, tbc, cholera) that always appear and wreck havoc upon cramped groups living in unsanitory conditions were somehow neglible? That the cause was carefully planned Nazi brutality is no doubt. You must remember that the latest "guestimates" of total deaths by "gas chamber" are now at 500,000, (Pressac) which is a remarkably lower figure than the original 4 million deaths attributed to Auschwitz's gas chambers alone.

Consider in ages past, that the number of actual casualties on the battlefield was less than those that succumbed to disease and sickness after the fight. Captain Bligh lead an expedition to the West Indies and ended up with most of his sailors dead from all sorts of tropical sicknesses, with little no fighting being done. When you remove medicines, shove several families to live together in a single draughty room, with little or no sanitation, no clean water, nor proper food for 6 months, yet they must labour when required, or receive no rations whatsoever, people will start dying. Simple things as cutting yourself shaving has dire consequences in such an environment. Such were the conditions in the ghettos. It is still deliberate murder in my book, as they (the nazis) were well aware of the consequences.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

I agree with Reapersaurus, somewhat. While I do agree with other posters that it's not quite right to say we know absolutely nothing about the past, there is quite a bit we don't know. Two specific areas I'd point to for this are the Three Kingdoms era, and the whole Jack The Ripper thing (although of course, there are others)... Three Kingdoms (along with Arthur, Robin Hood, etc.) is problematic because so many folktales and legends have sprung up around that period that it's extremely difficult to get through the embroidery to find the way things really happened. JTR and other historical mysteries are tough because in the 115 years since it happened, there's been countless theories tossed about, and TONS of books by people who do really shoddy research and change the facts to fit their theories, rather than change their theory to fit the facts. Part of the problem here is that while fairly good records were kept, for the most part they've been lost or destroyed. Bottomline, it's really hard to say how much of what we know about it is true and how much of it is just crappy research by later authors. One invention or common mistake which gets picked up on by other authors, and 100 years later it's accepted as fact.

I'll insert a slight off-topic comment and say that this is why I really believe that things like, for example, Jack the Ripper will NEVER be solved. Everyone has a pet theory, and bottomline, no one can prove or disprove any of them.

A good specific example here is the story of Samuel de Champlain's sighting of the Lake Champlain monster, which has appeared in cryptozoological books ad nauseum. Research in the original sources (Champlain's journals, etc.) reveals that the actual sighting was made far from Lake Champlain, near the mouth of the St. Lawrence IIRC, and was simply a large garfish or pike at that. Another is the piasa rock painting in Illinois. Although we have this image of it as a thunderbird-type, consultation of Marquette's original journals and sketches reveals that the original painting lacked wings, and further research also reveals that the story of piasa-as-thunderbird was the invention of an author in the 1830s.

 

[reapersaurus]

umm... I don't really know what happened here.

I truly don't remember starting a thread like this, and unless I'm going senile, or REALLY have to watch what I'm typing more, I'm guessing that my original post was in response to something else in a different thread (hence the "Neat." comment), and when my somewhat off-the-cuff post spurned such a response (which is great), some Moderator moved the hijack to its own thread?

Moderators - help me to remember...

For the record, my opinion is not that we know "Jack" about history and prehistory, but that we know far less than what most people believe, and far less about the real causes and motivations and details than most scholars will admit. Basically, I feel the same as the many people who said that we know little (paraphrased).

Actually, I'm comforted by so many people's posts about this subject - I'd wager that most groups of people wouldn't have so many people that are wise in their take-with-a-grain-of-salt approach to history. Gamers ARE a smart breed, in my experience.

Also for the record, I was thinking about pre-1800's history, basically.

 

[Dirigible]

He's attempting to distance himself from his creation! After him !

 

[MaxKaladin]

A fine example of this is the Battle of the Alamo. Most people in the United States "know" that Davey Crockett, Jim Bowie, and the gang fought to the last man against the Mexican army. In doing so they provided an example of courage and honour that has rung through U.S. history, a story that is repeated and many attempt to emulate in their own periods of need. However, there is a school of thought, based on documentary evidence, that suggests that the defenders of the Alamo actually surrendered and were shot by a firing squad. This is an argument taking place between academics at the moment in an attempt to understand what "really" happened. But to most Americans the story remains. Since the story remains, we act upon it as if it were real, whether it proves to be or not.

I've never heard this theory. Is this, perhaps, a reference to the de la Pena diary? If so, that's not what it says. It says that a small number of men, including Davy Crockett, were captured during the battle and Santa Anna ordered them executed by Firing Squad. If my memory serves me correctly, it was about 7 or 8 men. That's a far cry from all of the defenders surrendering, which I've never heard suggested.

If it's not the de la Pena diary, then can you direct me to a URL?

 

[MerakSpielman]

Hey, you better not tell Texas the Alamo didn't happen like they say. They have an entire section on it in their Texas History classes, and they won't take kindly to it not being the way they've decided...

 

[Wombat]

I've never heard this theory. Is this, perhaps, a reference to the de la Pena diary? If so, that's not what it says. It says that a small number of men, including Davy Crockett, were captured during the battle and Santa Anna ordered them executed by Firing Squad. If my memory serves me correctly, it was about 7 or 8 men. That's a far cry from all of the defenders surrendering, which I've never heard suggested.

If it's not the de la Pena diary, then can you direct me to a URL?

I wish I could give you a URL, but this is based on an article I read in a Historiography class back about 1988 -- I no longer have the article in question. I remember the article was written by a Mexican historian, that he was connected with the university in Mexico City, but beyond that I remember few specifics. We read it as an example of "Controversies In History", less for specific content than for the notion of revisiting "closed" historical questions.

Sorry I cannot be of further aid here.

My major point in bringing it up is that it doesn't matter to most people whether the theory is correct or not, that they will still act in accordance with what they believe happened. The same could be said of almost any historical period or action.

Personally, I am more fascinated by what people think happened (and how long ago they think the event in question happened) than the actualities of the case. For example, I had many students who believed that the Middle Ages continued until sometime in the late 1700s, while others believed that during the Renaissance religion immediately become a matter of personal choice and that all Europeans accepted this notion straight away, never accepting priests as authority figures again.

While I celebrate and revel in the discovery of historical "truths", I know most people don't care at all, especially if the new "truth" clashes with their own opinions.

 

[MaxKaladin]

I wish I could give you a URL, but this is based on an article I read in a Historiography class back about 1988 -- I no longer have the article in question. I remember the article was written by a Mexican historian, that he was connected with the university in Mexico City, but beyond that I remember few specifics. We read it as an example of "Controversies In History", less for specific content than for the notion of revisiting "closed" historical questions.

Sorry I cannot be of further aid here.

I see. I've never heard of this theory and I did some looking on the web just now. I'd say that would indicate its not terribly controversial in most circles or, most likely, is it seen as very credible. It strikes me as being in the same category as things like the old "FDR knew about Pearl Harbor and didn't do anything so he could get us into WWII" theory. For one thing, it would have to ignore all the eyewitness accounts on the Mexican side that agree there was a battle.

 

[Elric]

I forget where I saw this analogy, but consider the sum of our knowledge (in this case, about history) as a sphere. Then, the surface area of that sphere is the knowledge that we discover we don't know. Increasing the size of the sphere (the sum of our knowledge) increases the amount that we discover we don’t know. On the good side, as we gain more knowledge, we increase the ratio of the knowledge that we have to the knowledge that we have yet to learn.

So, the more we learn about history, the more we discover that there is to know, but at the same time, the more we know compared to that which we are currently discovering.