Have you notice people criticizing blunders in history repeat same mistakes in their personal life?

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Griffith

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Since this is alternate history forum, I'd thought I'd post this. This is an observation I notice within the field of History and the History community.

We all know the Saying "History Repeats itself" and other similar historical maxims and often I see people (especially in Military History) often attack past mistakes done by Historical figures such as the good old "they were arrogantly stupid to have underestimated their enemy!" and so forth.

Here's the big observation I noticed. People who often espout criticism on the past (especially Armchair Generals and Armchair Politicians) often are precisely the type who would commit these mistakes or actually even do commit them IRL!

To use an example is the good old on how Military Leaders and Politicians are criticized for "failing to learn from History so history repeats itself" in a certain conflict or political fiasco. I can list so many people I know who espout this but I'll use myself as an example as I would be the epitome of this.

I often criticized Military leaders from failing to learn from their predecessors when I was first getting into Military History esp. in regards to counterinsurgency in "guerrilla" wars like thos of the Vietnam War and the Afghan-Soviet War and the Maginot Line constructors failing to realize weaponry and tactics always change. Of course I learned the story was much more complex, but I'll just leave it at there. I was a know-it-all who criticized people like Westmoreland for failing to learn from the French War in Indochina or Chamberlain and other politicians back in WW2 for failing to learn from history of the German aggressive nature.

However when I look back in my life, I realized how much I Repeated History as though it was an intrinsic part of me and despite making the same mistakes over and over and suffering harsh consequences, I failed to learn and continue repeating them (particularly in regard to procrastination and college work).

So in other words I'm just as guilty for making the same mistakes of Repeating History and failing to learn from it as many generals and politicians are criticized when getting into future conflicts that are similar to disasterous past ones.

The underestimation of enemies is one frequently espouted in History but almost everyone who espouts it do it at their own game. Southerners today often boast proudly that the Union Army arrogantly underestimated the fighting ability of the Confederate Army and thus were beating the Union Army up really bad during the CIvil War.But what Southerners who espout this often tend to selectively forget that the Southern Army did the same-that they underestimated the Union Army's will to fight and military potential and made the fatal mistakes of attacking the North rather than staying on the defensive. So here is a live example of "failing to underestimate" your enemies coming into repitition by people who spout this maxim.

I can go on and on. How people criticize that Chamberlain committed the apeasement policy with Hitler and criticize Chamberlain for lacking the backbone to stand up to Hitler. They criticize even though Chamberlain was doing what the population felt was the best option, that "Chamberlain should have known better and just go straight out against Hitler!!!!"

To use an analogy, well in fact if these people just got out of the Hospital after a brutal fight that sent them injured so badly and forced to be hospitalized for 1 month, they wouldn't have the guts again to fight the same bully who caused such injuries (even if fighting back is the best thing to do at the moment to show that they won't let themselves get pushed around) as the injuries were so grave in the last fight and instead these people would try to do what they can to avoid conflict where they can get hurt.

Same thing with the Chamberlain story, except in this case Britain LOST an ENTIRE GENERATION of young men from World War 1 and was still struggling to rebuild the country's scars from World War 1 back at the start of WW2. I mean if you don't got the backbone to fight a bully who just beat your up last time because he caused such grave injuries requiring a month to stay in a Hospital, what the hell do you expect for a prime minister of a country as exhausted of war as Great Britain was to go out there and rush intoa fight without thought???!!!

I can put so many examples but these should show my points.What do you think?

To add another example is Colonel Peroth, the commander of the Algerian Artillery battalion in Dien Bien Phu. When I first read about DBP and later when I read Hell In a Very Small Place by Fall, I thought Peroth was a ****ing idiot for committing suicide after making the fatal mistake that would lead his entire bazillion to death.Other people who read Hell In a Very Small Place or DBP state the same criticism.

However when I look back in my life, I realized I literally broke down and cried over much smaller things that aren't even much such as not having a girlfriend and whatnot.If such small pointless matters made me collapse out of stress, I now realized that I would probably have committed suicide too or at least panicked and whimper in a corner if I was in a dangerous situation that I brought myself into such as Peroth's decisions prior to Dien Bien Phu. The same can be said for most people who criticized Peroth for his decisions that lead to the Slaughter of his Algerian Artillerymen-they break too at things that are relatively laughable compared to battle such as being overburdened by debt. I mean if you can't even take care of your basic finances and you're crying from the stress, how the hell do you expect to last with the scar of knowing you got all your troops killed because of stupid decisions?

See what I'm saying?

I mean here in Alternate History Forum we always see people criticize past leaders and individuals for being so fucking stupid about letting their impulses take over or failing to realize the enemy adapting. However many of such make mistakes of the same nature in our personal lives, the only difference is that its not decisions on the scale life or death as the leaders who are frequently criticized have the stress of facing.
 
I will pass on comment on personal lives. Will comment on this as it applies to wargames. I used to participate in a lot of limited Intel or blind games. Was a player in over two dozen military & commercial games. Umpired nearly fifty commercial wargame with limited Intel rules. These were not first person shooter games, they were tactical and operational games.

What observed is most player became extremely cautious. There were no Pattons or Rommel, and players as reckless as Montgomery were rare. Even active service professional officers tended to be slow, methodical, & cautious.

I also noticed nearly none ever grasped how to use recognizance, or were any good at Intel analysis. Of sixty or seventy participants I observed maybe 10 percent showed any serious ability. Most of those were trained military, & they were largely doing it by the numbers as the text books presented. Of the others exactly one was superlative at using recon & reading the information. He was a insurance salesman with zero military training. Go figure. One or two others were ok at it. They both had a few years military service. the rest had difficulty & many left the scout or recon piece S idle.

I have no explanation for this.In thirty years of observing these games. It was fairly consistent. I'd expected trained Army or Marine officers to be much better at this, but was repeatedly suprised to see mediocre or failing use of recognizance & Intel.
 

Deleted member 1487

I will pass on comment on personal lives. Will comment on this as it applies to wargames. I used to participate in a lot of limited Intel or blind games. Was a player in over two dozen military & commercial games. Umpired nearly fifty commercial wargame with limited Intel rules. These were not first person shooter games, they were tactical and operational games.

What observed is most player became extremely cautious. There were no Pattons or Rommel, and players as reckless as Montgomery were rare. Even active service professional officers tended to be slow, methodical, & cautious.

I also noticed nearly none ever grasped how to use recognizance, or were any good at Intel analysis. Of sixty or seventy participants I observed maybe 10 percent showed any serious ability. Most of those were trained military, & they were largely doing it by the numbers as the text books presented. Of the others exactly one was superlative at using recon & reading the information. He was a insurance salesman with zero military training. Go figure. One or two others were ok at it. They both had a few years military service. the rest had difficulty & many left the scout or recon piece S idle.

I have no explanation for this.In thirty years of observing these games. It was fairly consistent. I'd expected trained Army or Marine officers to be much better at this, but was repeatedly suprised to see mediocre or failing use of recognizance & Intel.
Arguably the reason the Germans were more effective in their early engagements (until 1942 when they bogged down) and the Allies thereafter was better access to intel and enemy intentions. Control of the air is a very important one for getting tactical and sometimes operational intelligence as well as denying it to the enemy; when the Germans lost control over the air they were truly finished. At that point their opponents could deploy as they wanted with extremely limited ability for the Germans to detect them provided basic information protection efforts were observed by the Allies. Plus as commanders got worse with using their recon battalions, assuming they had them at all (look at the Panzer Brigade fiasco in 1944 for example), often using them as combat elements rather than their intended purpose, German combat abilities dropped off a cliff because they had no idea what was going on.
 
What observed is most player became extremely cautious. There were no Pattons or Rommel, and players as reckless as Montgomery were rare. Even active service professional officers tended to be slow, methodical, & cautious...

I have no explanation for this.In thirty years of observing these games. It was fairly consistent. I'd expected trained Army or Marine officers to be much better at this, but was repeatedly suprised to see mediocre or failing use of recognizance & Intel.

I'm not sure exactly how the wargames you describe pan out but I imagine part of the reason is the timeframe, since a few hours is vastly different to having days of planning and then seeing an operation unfold hour by hour.
 

Griffith

Banned
Getting off topic everbody. I'll post another example of what I mean so that people can understand what I want to discuss by posting this thread.

What I'm going it is how people act all tough and know-it-all that if they were Montgomery, they would have done this in Operation Marketgarden or that. Of if they were (to use an example from my OP), Colonel Peroth, they wouldn't have chickened out as a pussy and committed suicide. Or how amateur historians criticize the Union for underestimating the Confederacy, etc.

Well in fact they commit the same exact things in their own personal lives.


Using myself as an example. Being formerly a diehard libertarian (now I'm a centrist with libertarian leanings), I thought it was fucking stupid that the US government was making the mistake of Keynesian economics during the Great Depression and that FDR was a moron who lacked common sense. Well in fact during my early college years my home was suffering immense screw up in infrastructure and I was already broke from college debt. I thought the best way to resolve my debt was to spend all my paycheck and even get more loans to help repair the home. I ended up accumulating at least 3X the initial college debt and I've been paying all of it over the years until just the Fall last year when I finally finished paying the interest. Much like how FDR though spending money to build infrastructure and employment to resolve the problem in the long run, I though by getting rid off the house repairs my problem would be over far quicker than if I were to pay it later and wait for everything to collapse. It turns out I ended up being in debt and paying far more than I expected and parts of the house got destroyed anyway so I had to replace them entirely.


So I ended up doing the exact same Keynesian strategy FDR did in resolving my money problems. I realized when I paid off my debt last month how fucking naive and arrogant I was in criticizing FDR.


Thats the best way I can explain about what this thread is about.

This reddit post I made hopefully can clear up further what I mean.

https://www.reddit.com/r/althistory...otice_people_criticizing_blunders_in/deq4ve0/
 
I'm not sure exactly how the wargames you describe pan out but I imagine part of the reason is the timeframe, since a few hours is vastly different to having days of planning and then seeing an operation unfold hour by hour.

A portion of the games were run in a few hours. Most of the commercial 'entertainment' games were played at long distance by postal derive or email. The players typically had a week or more to ponder their moves. Some of the military games were designed to run in a few hours most longer, & most were at or near real time. The largest was a ten day affair that was run in 13 hours each day for each 24 hours of game time. I think there were around 300 participants including umpires and support staff. Commanders & staff principals from a dozen Japanese & US divisions & other flag commands were represented. Most of the military games I participated in were tactical & ran from eight to 30+ hours & were in real time, no compression.
 

Deleted member 1487

A portion of the games were run in a few hours. Most of the commercial 'entertainment' games were played at long distance by postal derive or email. The players typically had a week or more to ponder their moves. Some of the military games were designed to run in a few hours most longer, & most were at or near real time. The largest was a ten day affair that was run in 13 hours each day for each 24 hours of game time. I think there were around 300 participants including umpires and support staff. Commanders & staff principals from a dozen Japanese & US divisions & other flag commands were represented. Most of the military games I participated in were tactical & ran from eight to 30+ hours & were in real time, no compression.
Where did you find games like that?
 
I've seen people on this site posit that Hitler could've won if he wasn't as brutal and had more rational goals, which may have been true.

I've seen some of those same people arguing that nuclear carnage and other crimes against humanity are acceptable responses to terrorism or secession.

The cognitive dissonance is nosebleed worthy.
 
Many times accusations tell us more about the accuser than the accused.

For example, I have been publically accused of many sins that never crossed my conscious mind!
My ex-wife was great at accusing me of random sins. Many times, those sins never happened!
 
I was watching the Making of Brass documentary on Youtube yesterday. At the time I thought it was a send-up of TV dramas set in the north of England during interwar period like When The Boat Comes In. The writers said that it was really a satire on Thatcherism.

One of them also said that history was about greed and stupidity. In the TV series Bradley Hardacre was greedy and everybody else was stupid. I think he was spot on.
 
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