What other countries could rewrite their history with a 'Lost Cause Mythos' akin to the (Southern) US
- Thread starter ennobee
- Start date
I don't know if I'd file it under "lost cause", but Britain's role in WW2 is very romanticised for sure. The iconography is all over the place, and every child learns about the "cold damp island that stood up to Hitler", a story that only consists of the Battle of Dunkirk to the end of the Battle of Britain.
On Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina, maybe on other south american countries too, there is this myth propped up in 1970s by marxist historians that butchered the narrative of the paraguayan war, but thankfully it's being questioned now. The war was distorted from Paraguay invading Brazil and then Argentina and Uruguay to Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay declaring war on them to prop up a pro british regime. The myth is positive for paraguayan nationalists since it preaches that...hahah, no sorry, the myth preaches that AAHAHAHA, that PARAGUAY WAS THE LARGEST LATIN AMERICAN ECONOMY HAHAHAHAH and the british tainted other latin american HAHAH countries to HAHAHA invade paraguay HAHAHAH and destroy it through the war, even tough the paraguayan dictator not only started the war, but refused to surrender and went into a madness similar to WWII nazi germany, using a army of conscripts (most of them being the poor and the natives), and then child soldiers against the coalition armies.
Edit
If you play the kaiserreich mod for hearts of iron 4, everything is worded on a extremely nationalistic way, claiming that assuncion in Paraguay is a capital of similar level to Paris or Berlin, and Paraguay has the most glorious army in the world. All of this is a made mocking that myth.
Edit
If you play the kaiserreich mod for hearts of iron 4, everything is worded on a extremely nationalistic way, claiming that assuncion in Paraguay is a capital of similar level to Paris or Berlin, and Paraguay has the most glorious army in the world. All of this is a made mocking that myth.
Last edited:
TBF until Germany invades Russia in June 1941 Brtiain and Co (but also Free French and Free Polish TBF). are the only combatants still standing against Germany, and it's even longer still until joint combat missions are being run in the west.
But you're not wrong regarding romanticism and iconography being all over the place, and it sometimes goes in odd directions. For instance we love playing the plucky underdog, only we haven't been the under dog for centuries!
A similar one is this idea the British war machine was run by funny men making mad machines in small sheds, or plucky & lucky crazy schemes. And yeah there are examples of that Barnes Wallace (cue music) etc. However, what we also did was often put in place effective wide spread systems after trial and error. The air defence co-ordination system in the BoB, the ASW system in the battle of the Atlantic, code breaking in Blecthley park. But good admin is less exciting than "crazy, daring Maverick Barnes Wallace defies Whitehall and invents a scientific machine to beat the Bosch".
Last edited:
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
19th Century Britain probably had more black voters than Rhodesia.
I would probably do some moderator stuff here if I really thought you were trying to claim the Rhodesian regime wasn't racist, but this is so ridiculous and silly that there's no way in hell you can mean this as a defense of Rhodesia.
In the Philippines, we're constantly having this regarding numerous historical political figures --- what if Aguinaldo wasn't defeated by the Americans, but the one most commonly seen is what if Ferdinand Marcos (our very own tin pot dictator) had lived.
The latter is particularly pervasive, with some die-hards actually suggesting that had he not been toppled, our country would be a developed country already, despite the mountain of evidence regarding corruption, poverty, economic stagnation, persecution of opposition figures and the press, crony capitalism which just redistributed wealth from old oligarchs to new Marcos cronies, etc. In fact, enough people believe this BS that his son is a sitting senator and ran (and nearly won!) as vice president, while his daughter was elected as governor of their home province.
The latter is particularly pervasive, with some die-hards actually suggesting that had he not been toppled, our country would be a developed country already, despite the mountain of evidence regarding corruption, poverty, economic stagnation, persecution of opposition figures and the press, crony capitalism which just redistributed wealth from old oligarchs to new Marcos cronies, etc. In fact, enough people believe this BS that his son is a sitting senator and ran (and nearly won!) as vice president, while his daughter was elected as governor of their home province.
Well, there was/is a weird case of late USSR changing attitude to White Guards. Which were going since 1970s or maybe earlier. You can see it in contemporary movies most vividly in comparison to previous generation. While in, say, Chapaev (1934) Whites are altogether evil and unsympathetic enemies, in popular movies of 1960s like Two Comrades Were Serving or The Elusive Avengers (and especially it's sequels) Whites are depicted as not without honor and even likable opponents. By late 1980s the common perception of White guards was noble officers who fought for their country and whose loss was a tragedy. That's while accepting (more or less) the Revolution as a good thing. That attitude was also extended to pre-Revolutionary, Tsarist Russia which was increasingly seen in positive light. Its somewhat quintessential expression was The Russia We Lost (though USSR was gone by that time).
Essentially there is an interesting twist when a literal Lost Cause triumphed in the end and became an official accepted position. It is Stalin USSR which is Lost Caused now.
Essentially there is an interesting twist when a literal Lost Cause triumphed in the end and became an official accepted position. It is Stalin USSR which is Lost Caused now.
Doesn't the US have a secondary Lost Cause Myth in Manifest Destiny?
Allowing it to pretend that it doesn't have a brutal history of Colonialism and Imperialism the same as everyone else.
Allowing it to pretend that it doesn't have a brutal history of Colonialism and Imperialism the same as everyone else.
I can this being possible for Australia by having Joh Bjelke-Petersen being elected as prime minister, resulting in him trying to claim that Australian Aborigines need to be "civilized" and keep them segregated in horrid conditions. Eventually you probably might get a significant number of people in Australia (mostly Queensland in this scenario) to basically think that the Stolen Generation never happened and instead was simply a lie created by the "Labors". Hell even see some saying that even the Australian frontier wars never happened either.
You'll get a huge load of messed up people as a result by having Bjelke-Petersen elected as prime minister of Australia.
You'll get a huge load of messed up people as a result by having Bjelke-Petersen elected as prime minister of Australia.
Yes and no. You'll rarely find people who actually understand what it was and don't think it was horrible (though it's certainly more common now than before) but our schools don't go into enough detail on either side. For the ACW, not only do people argue for the Confederacy to be a state's rights issue, many schools are actually taught such things because of the daughter's of the confederacy.
Germaniac
Donor
That used to be a real big one around here back in the day. Just do a search and 08-12' there are a ton of threads about it (I may have even started one
)I blame Churchill.
"If the British Empire, and its Commonwealth should last a thousand years men will still say, "This was their finest hour"".
Wasn't it Sir Walter Scott who concocted the image of the fiery cross, so beloved by a certain faction of southern American, umm, "nationalists"?
That's the German term. The odd thing is many apologists i see aren't even german themselves (and also too young)
I suppose some of the apologism and downplaying of the Nazi Collaboration/Antisemitism/Ethnic Cleansing of the OUN/UPA in Ukraine could qualify.
en.wikipedia.org
Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Last edited: