My passion is history. I find it interesting to study past events that have an essential role in shaping our world today.
For an historian, the greatest enemy of the truth is not the lie but the myth.If the myth is allowed to grow and gain credence, people will soon believe that it is legitimate and will ignore what actually happened.
Places where myths can originate are found in Hollywood films, online social media, and even school textbooks. All are culpable for fomenting the myth. Myths have developed in events surrounding the War of 1812, black slavery in early America, and the early life of Adolf Hitler.
Americans see the War of 1812 as the Second American War of Independence. They believe that they had to beat back the British who were trying to reconquer America. This belief is completely false and far from the truth. With the British embroiled in a war against Napoleon, America attempted an audacious land grab, invaded Canada 10 times, and were driven back by the Canadians. With Napoleon defeated, the British attacks in 1814 on Washington and Baltimore were punitive raids in an effort to bring the war to a halt. It is safe to say that the War of 1812 was for independence, but for Canadian independence against the Americans.
Lately the McGraw Hill textbook on black slavery in the Americas has been accused of manipulating words which could set a new myth in motion. The textbook referred to slaves as “workers” who had traveled from across the Atlantic Ocean to work on farms. This is utter nonsense. They were not workers, they were chattel slaves. They were captured in Africa, crammed into filthy ships, sent to America, and were sold to plantation owners from the South who would use them as forced labor.
In 2015 the History Channel released a three-episode mini-series called the World Wars. It was their take on the history of the two bloodiest conflicts in the history of mankind and the role in these wars of the leading protagonists of their day. The first episode concentrated on Adolf Hitler in WW1 and sees a British soldier, Henry Tandy, sparing Hitler’s life during the Battle of Marcoign on September 28, 1918. The program has an American professor effusively asserting the what-ifs of history. He should have checked his sources. After analyzing the divisional records in the Bavarian State Archives in Munich for Hitler’s regiment, we know that Hitler was actually 50 miles from Marcoign on this day. Therefore the History Channel was wrong about the validity of this story. They had presented a myth. This myth is very popular in social media.
In conclusion, I have learned that it is imperative to read from different sources, different books and authors, to ensure a certain claim or fact is historically accurate. As a historian, in order to preserve the truth, you must make sure to keep the myths at bay.