lmao, took me a second hahah

But what if victor is the only one who would be willing to write his-story of past events?

@@pablonarcoboy185 you're joking but there's actually a lot of truth in that word play. History is not the collective story of humanity, but a particular viewpoint.

Victor/Victoria, it's all the same.

@@Yarblocosifilitico Yeah, whole thing is BS, with just a seconds of research I have found many that have write about history... none of them had the name Victor. LOL!

It's a proverb not meant for strict, mathematical acceptance. It just means consider your source

Could also be written by the bored and nerdy.

@@OreoBambino That’s why they specified Powerful bystanders

@@james3876 That's being too generous. It is also used in bad faith quite often, so as to paint any given victor in a more negative light, typically for political purposes. We can't simply restrict the phrase to its best form of use when speaking about it generally.

@@OreoBambino oh man, not sure if you're American, I am, and what you said sounds very familiar. 😉 Free Julian Assange!

yes. In general Activist are extreme idealists, and Idealism puts ideas before facts/history.

Activists carrying the Battled Flag into the Capitol?

@@kmaher1424 cope.

Historians who aren’t aware of their biases are often useful tools for politicians governed by similarly biases. Protecting historical “truth” from activists sounds nice, but is the prevailing “truth” actually correct? Often activists become activists because accepted “truth” seems inaccurate to them (often incorrectly, but it always).

@@Justanotherconsumer That's why in science there is such a thing as peer review: the conclusions of historians or other kinds of scientists are checked by their colleagues. Sure, nobody can probably ever be totally objective, people's point of view is always gonna be somewhat based on their own experiences and opinions, but there is a major difference between scientists and activists in that scientists will be critical to eachother, weeding out the untruths and weaker ideas, whereas in activist circles you are socially rewarded for agreeing more with the established doctrine.

I challenge history professors in class. They hate me for it, but it makes them tougher and more intelligent to be challenged on historical fact and intellectually because half of all they know is fluff they learned in the classroom themselves. Tough love for the socialist professors preaching philosophy and hateful foreign ideologies in the college classroom is the best way to show we students actually care they exist and we care about their souls remaining intact. Challenge my professors is my motto.

"Some even project their modern political ideology on history" r/askhistorians in a nutshell. Took me years to realise how biased that sub is

@@purplespeckledappleeater8738 sometimes is better say I don't know and there is a beauty on that

That's why it's important to share opinions and point of views so we can avoid having someone's bias take over others And instead have all opinion matter proportionally, as long as they are based on actual facts

@@purplespeckledappleeater8738 It's good that you appear to have no bias yourself ;)

Well said

Ultranationalism is a disease for people who love history. It keeps someone to the idea that his/her people cannot lose or do anything wrong and makes him/her believe any form of criticism is treason.

Exelent!!

But what should be avoided is letting that go overboard into cynicism and nihilism. Self-criticism is a great thing but you can't let yourself wallow in our past failures and our shortcomings.

Except in the States. Americans love to see themselves as nefarious in every historical event.

formerly Chuck's

There Hugo again, blaming Victor.

Theres got to be some Bobs too, most people have one as an uncle

Nope, it's written by sneaky cowards, losers who made it alive out of the battlefield and continued to report everything the way they saw fit.

There's a Martin Gilbert out there as well.

romanes eunt domus??

@@hic_tus, now right it out a hundred time! 😁

And even his writings couldn't avoid being edited by later writers who wanted to put Jesus into history or push personal agendas.

@@Lobsterwithinternet Josephus isn't the only source confirming Jesus's existence. Ignore all that tales about miracles, etc but to say that Jesus did not exist is proposterous.

@@chrismath149 Do you mean all the sources of historians talking about the existence of Christianity and that they believe that a man known as Jesus Christ died on a cross? Most of those were written centuries later and by people who either were reporting what others told them or were early church fathers who assumed that he existed. Or do you know of original firsthand accounts that speak of a man named Jesus of Nazareth that were contemporary?

Thank you!

indeed. Rewritting in the name of 'progress'... which will lead to us repeating past mistakes, as the saying goes.

@@Yarblocosifilitico The progressives although I agree with many civil rights stances are sure to have many policies that are regressive

@@HakcerCD Indeed. Quite the paradox

@@HakcerCD I'd say it's more to do with movements that have accomplished most of what they set out to do and are hanging on to issues to justify their existence while youth in the west has been locked out of the vast majority of the economy due to the processes of globalization and financialization and isn't allowed agency of its own. This gives rise to vast swaths of people who are not taught responsibility and seek alternate social groups as replacements for the ones they are locked out of to find meaning in their meaningless lives. It's why youth are being increasingly radicalized on the extremes of Left and Right-wing politics. It reminds me of the movie Mystery Men where the superhero Captain Amazing has destroyed all crime and has basically put himself out of a job and is threatened by the loss of sponsorships because of it. So he is forced to release his greatest arch-nemesis, Casanova Frankenstein, to justify his continued existence.

Why quantity does not necessary mean quality.

That's fair, but unfortunately that's not how that expression is actually used. Usually it's used by us contemporary people to dismiss sources - which, however biased they might be, are still sources, and are useful. Or, even, to completely deny the history learned in school - which, again, it has its flaws, but that doesn't mean all of it is fake. Often this is accompanied by an arrogant attitude. Something like: "You trust the history books? Only a naive child would do that, not superior beings like me!" It's also used to support vilified causes - stuff like denying the Holocaust is an obvious example. I had one person tell me that history is a marxist conspiracy against the free market. I don't know if they actually believe that or they were trolling.

@@JustGrowingUp84 Thats the firs time I heard of this. In the cases I have heard the expression used were referring to viased history written before a major war. Specifically those who villify the enemy (like the carthaginians and the gauls from the roman point of view) and or try to justify their actions against the enemy. Its something that resonates a lot in my family, since my parents had to study under a dictatorship created because of a war and who liked to create lots of viased accounts of such war. And the area I live was pretty much in the "losers side".

@@JustGrowingUp84 A good point. The expression is sadly used to dismiss earnest history in favour of conspiracy theories and bad-faith revisionism. I was looking at the possible origin of the expression.

@@JustGrowingUp84 Yes, I agree with you on how the expression is 'wrongly' used. Especially irking if they can't provide more argument/sources and then using "history is written by the victors" to close off the conversation. That's sooo ewww...

You don't have to be a victor to leave the most records. For example, who's going to write the history of the Afghanistan War, the Taliban? Obviously not. Why? Because while they may have "won the war", they didn't conquer and vanquish their enemies, they just drove them off. Meaning they are left in no better position to write the history than the Americans. Not all conflicts and encounters between people result in a war of annihilation. Sometimes one culture may just die out due to unrelated events. Things are complicated.

Hello Leonidas, It's Publius Cornelius Scipio...just here to say Hello and thank you.

So, Capitalism is.

@@varana Pretty much yes, when "truth" is just another commodity that can be bought and sold, and the "fact checking" that fits your narrative goes to the highest bidder. Big business has a long tradition of covering up the deaths it has caused via bribery and lobbying. The electronic age just makes in more sophisticated, if far less subtle.

@@ravenlord4 KZfaq also does that not to cover up anything, or suppress any valuable information (or even random opinion). KZfaq earns money from advertisers, and advertisers can be picky about what to associate their product with.

@@varana toMAYto, toMAHto -- that excuse is pretty much the entire point of the video, eh? ;)

@@varana I think it is corruption not capitalism.

The Romans intentionally tried to erase parts of history, and they weren’t even the first. The assumption that modern historians have “figured it out” and aren’t misled is vanity and arrogance at the highest level.

He says this in a dystopian world where one government controls all of the knowledge and therefore, the truth. No leader in history has had access to those resources and the whole point of that book is that it should never come to that.

Just to clarify, this quote is from the book called 1984. This quote is not from the year 1984.

These narrative are often the evidence or a part of the evidence. Historians today are taught to look at all the available evidence (including the narratives) and to integrate that with other things we currently know about the time, area, and prevalent narratives to try and reconstruct what what’s happening. These narratives are especially important when we look at long term things like the overall rule of a monarch or the long-term effects of the Black Death.

Indeed. The single exception seems to be historians of WWII. They literally never exaggerate or lie. Never.

@@RJStockton yes we still have all or most of the original documents of ALL sides.

@@Delgen1951 I like how you used the word "we," as if you were doing some kind of original research at the Bundesarchiv. Pro tip: Don't ever look at original documents like the nightly radio reports from Polish camps or the documents from American POW camps in the Rhine from after the war. If you do, you'll have to stop talking to your friends and family because they'll think you've gone insane.

Richard Stockton They’ll think you’ve gone insane because you never read those “documents” in the first place. I’m not familiar with the first thing you mentioned but there are no “original documents” about any sort of atrocities at the Rhine camps. The oldest mention of the supposed atrocities in ANY text let alone some sort of document is from the late 1980s. Its literally just an unproven theory of some Canadian author.

@@RJStockton really, oh yes there are first hand accounts, of the death camps. recorded at the time as well as films of them, sorry guy but you are the insane one and I have spoke to US troops who were their.

Yes, along with "everyone is the hero of their own story". History written by the victor is really just a perspective thing because more often than not it is told from the perspective of the victor.

If you're reading history, there shouldn't be a good guy. Only guys.

Yes, but many things would still remain on record. No matter how gloriously the Nazis portray themselves, drastic reduction of Jewish and Polish population, invasion on France and USSR would remain facts that one can form opinions about and attempt to conduct research.

@@Fif0l It might've been "justified" in the same way as, for instance, the drastic reduction of civilians in two Japanese cities.

@@AnotherDuck I used the word "drastic reduction" because the Holocaust might have been hidden, so the only fact on the table would be the reduction of population. Now, justification is another matter entirely. For something to be justified the propaganda has to admit it happened. And justification is always a matter of philosophy. It's always up for debate.

@Zeno the Filipino 😂 thank you it's a 10th century Christian Nubian infantry soldier.

Like World War Two for example, you get a lot of history and information on the Allied side but you have to really dig to find Axis perspective information.

So the British were the good guys when they destroyed India?

@@hughjass69933 true tbh which I unfortunate it is good to see both sides of the conflict we learn so much more.

@@OreoBambino that is true, but a true historian without bias will know the words of the victors alone are not sufficient in giving a full picture of the story so they would dig. For example after colonising my home country Zimbabwe, the British people claimed the ruins and kingdon of our ancestors belonged to a lost white race lol, but our oral accounts said no and ofcourse oral account alone are not enough, archaeological research was done by their own archaeologists which debunked their claims despite this being in the colonial era, so like I said a true historian will dig up.thw facts they hide or ignore as Victors.

Cao Cao was horribly done in that novel. Dude was pretty awesome for a warlord.

Remember the USS LIBERTY

So, after the video, my opinion is still fairly the same although your process was much better formulated than my little 4 minutes babble, and I really enjoy the distinction between the historical sources and the academic practice or researching history. Another amazing video, and I will be sure to keep in mind some of the examples you have used as they might prove very useful some time around. Thank you again!

and his own legend is also a lie, created by propaganidsts, historians and collective wishful thinking of humanity who wished for exceptional individual

@@wilhelmu except that he truly was exeptional you can't deny that

@@Shisnoparadoxe believe what you want, no one can deny it to you because you don't have a time machine; if you want to believe in expetional people, great people, heroes, extraordinary people, geniuses and other such fairy tales, I shall not be so cruel to break your fantasy just think in your free time why expetional people ended somewhere in the second half of 20th century, even though the population is 10x more numerous and we have access to such a detailed documentation on pretty much everyone or could it be...because we have an access to such data that heroes are no more? I'm sure north koreans still believe their leaders are superhuman though.

@@wilhelmu you clearly don't know the criteria to make an exeptional people. When you started as a almost a simple soldier then created an empire, defeated many european coalitions that attacked your country with brilliant strategies, when you created marvels in your capital, monuments, modern egyptology, high schools, civil code, Saint-Cyr, legion of honor, cities, banks and administration, had so much charisma that your troops would follow you until the end; you deserved to be called exceptional. It doesn't matter if you agree or not just open a real History Book and you'll learn many things. And if you just think in your free Time about it you'll probably realise that there are still exceptional people. Elon Musk, Peter Higgs, Nelson Mandela, Stephen Hawkins and so many others.

@@wilhelmu daft

History is written for those paying the historians.

That is historically illiterate, the allies tried as many Japanese as Germans, and no Japanese atrocities were not considered too horrific by "the Nazis' John Rabe a businessman who happened to be German was appalled by the rape of Nanking. There is a bias and fake history born as a result of just looking at a highly limited part of it.

How about the fact that the Allies declared war on Germany FIRST because of the Invasion of Poland but ended up handing Poland to Stalin after WW2 along with HALF OF EUROPE

@Komner07 That just never happened. Again John Rabe is not the same as the Nazi Party. There were individual Japanese appalled by the Nazis.

@@johnssmith4005 Never happened the Russians got into Poland first and the allies correctly believed that a war with Russia was at best uncertain and at worst could lead to Russian world domination. Nobody wanted to leave Poland in Russia's hands besides Hitler who deployed massive amounts of troops to stop the Warsaw Uprising.

No, Soviet sources paint a very good picture of their brutality and provide a balancing view to understanding WW2 to the typical German memoirs (the ones that just blame everything on Hitler and whitewash the Wehrmacht) that have dominated the narrative up until the Soviet Archives opened. Post Destalinization was also a goldmine for showing just how brutally incompetent the whole system was.

cringe

Every time I've heard someone say "History is written by the victors" it's in a context that implies history is false, completely dismisses the source without a reason, or is just thrown out in the conversation as if were a great insight when it really just derails the conversation.

Nope, it's written by sneaky cowards, losers who made it alive out of the battlefield and continued to report everything the way they saw fit.

@@user-jv3mm6vt6e So a survivor is a coward/loser and a dead body lying on a battlefield is a glorious winner? I'm not sure if I can agree on this. (I'm exaggerating a bit, obviously)

@@roffels11-gamingandhistory69 in most of history, yes.)

@@TensileStrength a worthy conversation is aimed for truth.

They only lost on the question of secession. On slavery they just hid it and rearranged it, reconstructed it if you will. The “you will do what the landholding planter class wants” attitude is still a major issue in American politics.

@@Justanotherconsumer Agreed entirely, there. The compromise of the 1876 election, which ended reconstruction, was a victory for the ideals of the confederacy. Even a careful reading of the 13th amendment shows where slavery still can be legal. Reconstruction is the most painful period of US History for me, because even if there are worse individual moments, I feel that nothing comes as close in terms of misssed opportunity as it was. I was trying to be apolitical with my original post, but as a US Southerner it's so present even in our modern politics, it's hard not to.

Nope, it's written by sneaky cowards, losers who made it alive out of the battlefield and continued to report everything the way they saw fit.

That historians are getting it right today when they’ve had a long tradition and history of bias is something we should approach with massive skepticism.

@@Justanotherconsumer Yeah they are MOST DEFINENTLY getting it right with NO FAULTS AT ALL after all, the SCIENCE IS SETTLED and there can be NO DEBATE ABOUT THE TRUTH

@@brodaviing6617 well, science is settled on a lot of things that people still want to talk about (flat earthers the most humorous and harmless example). Some broad strokes of history have been confirmed from so many sources that the probability that they happened is basically 100%. That two nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945 is “settled” - I’ve yet to see anyone question it, though I’m sure that someone at some point has disputed that narrative. Despite the vast effort that went into cataloguing it and the countless personal stories and records, people still deny the Holocaust happened, even people who claim to be historians.

“No matter how honest an historian is trying to be” does not assume that they are all trying to be honest. Rather it point out that even if they ARE trying to be honest, they are still impacted by their biases.

Despite what the news has told you, “ the lost cause myth “ hasn’t been taught in American schools for a long time now. And only a small minority in the South believes in it. I went to school in Virginia in the 80s and I was taught that it was about ending slavery.

@@robinrinsmith Im afraid that what has been tried to be corrected during the last two decades (at most) pales compared by the triumphant southern propaganda that has inundated media, popular culture and even academia during a century and a half. Just remember that a movie such as Gods and Generals was produced in 2003 and was not that critiziced when it came out for sure.

Part of that German superiority was intentional - it justified taking Nazi scientists and turning a blind eye to their offenses. The US used a lot of Nazi technology post-war, most notably the “I aim for the moon only sometimes I hit London” rocketry.

I had read that some of that military leaders were displaced from the eastern front (that's why they survived) because of incompetence and some other things. I doubt they would have been usefull at all. I rather prefer noone writing from "my" side than scum like Halder. Scum like that often do not only blame others for their own faults, they often exaggerate problems ridiculously, misrepresent situations and blame others for incidents that didn't even happen.

If you get defeated by something as predictable as winter you’re just trying to deflect blame from your own failures.

except they literally did not prepare for winter. they thought the war would be over within months. Let's not forget that russia cannot and has not won wars without being propped up by its many allies. Look at how it is unable to secure ukraine

@@Blox117Point being most of the German generals biography’s massively embellished their roles and talents and exonerated themselves of mistakes and crimes etc… they were basically rather self-serving applications for the new NATO alliance to take them seriously. And it kind of worked, in that there is many people that believe “they could totally have won if etc… etc…” which is not super likely.

Some KZfaq layman: Both sides agree on the weather...Therefore history is not written by the victors

Kinda, mainly because there has been cases of cultures trying to do that to the best of their skill and failing, on top of simple logic, wiping all traces of a culture its an extrmely difficult endeavor that requires a lot of resources, knowledge about said culture and incredible logistics. Obviously if some culture was wiped out of history we will probably never know, but we know that its very hard to do.

@@Juanito_Pecados unless it's been done countless times.

@@haraldisdead yeah, but thats extremely improbable, so much so that considering it doesnt go much beyond a thought experiment.

Yes. Because people have tried and we always have evidence of it happening. What can happen is that almost everything about a people or culture will be wiped out but we will have evidence of that happening. So we might not know much of anything about that people but we will know that there was someone there.

No, it's really really easy. Just look how LITTLE we know and have from prehistoric times. We've built this big narrative on occasional potshards, the truth is we have no idea what the truth is. Or well, was.

That's actually a good example because Bartolomé de Las Casas isn't a reliable source. He admitted that he hadn't seen any of the things he said, but they "told" him. Of all the people who fought for the native's rights he isn't one of the best examples to look at despite being the most famous one. He did good things, but was a charlatan. Also, it's amazing how no one mentions the most important of them all, the man who started it and influenced all of those after him, included De las Casas, Francisco de Vitoria. First man to talk about universal human rights.

Indeed. The Crown wanted to protect the indigenous peoples as free subjects of the Crown, with the Burgos Laws of 1512 and Leyes Nuevas of 1542, people like Las Casas helped with this purpose, although he exagerated certain data.

@Great White he talked about things that Spaniards supposedly did and, that are proven to be an exaggeration for the most part, as if he actually saw it. It wasn't until some time later that he admitted he didn't see it, but still said that it was true

yes, on the morality of colonization in Valladolid. Didn't really change much ultimately. The Encomienda system made the natives not much better than slaves but i'm not fully read up on the exact treatment of the "Indos" population. Although Las Casas is important it didn't start with him. Very soon after 1500 Dominican friars began protesting against the colonial enterprise and it's true, as someone here pointed out, Casas heard about the vicious treatment of the natives from a sermon and was so shocked he became a priest and started to work against the colonists. Yup, i'm sure he must have exaggerated also since, according to Diarmaid MacCulloch's Reformation, " The writings of Las Casas about Spanish barbarity in America were so angry and eloquent that they became part of the general Protestant stereotype of Spaniards as a naturally cruel race". In any case i wouldn't use charlatan to describe him either, he was undoubtedly convinced that he was doing good, so more of an idealist but a flawed man of course, like most of us.

Las Casas is also the who, in order to remedy the native situation, recommended they should use African labor instead. Realising his mistake he regretted it later but it was too late. The transatlantic slave trade hade begun.

Why are you using harmfully gendered language such as "his" when referring to victors? Very sexist.

What a crock. Modern historians fall over themselves looking to overturn orthodoxy and demolish shibboleths. Punching a credible hole in an established narrative is the best career move a historian can make. In fact if anything there's too much of it.

​@@OmniDan26 This, so much fucking this. It's actually extremely traumatizing to trans, queer, femme, and non-binary BIBOC like myself.

There’s a fascinating piece from RAND talking about Russian disinformation strategies in Ukraine that’s generalizable to the problems of the Information Age - the firehose of falsehood. Short version is that if you overwhelm an audience with information they’ll give up looking for the truth and retreat back into what their social circle wants to hear.

A man of culture I see.

Wehrm.... atchoooooooo!!! 🤧

Those German officers that influenced were also the ones that accepted to work for the US historiographical services, and were thus willing to paint a portrait of the Soviets that the Americans would find appropriate, like Halder who even got a US medal for his service. The other German commanders that were NOT willing to cooperate with the Americans were very much sidelined and put on blacklists. Ever read any book by the SS General Paul Hausser? He did write about the SS perspective of WW2, but his book 'Waffen-SS im Einsatz' got marked as "apologist", "harmful" and is restricted in Germany. It doesn't even has an English translation. Because, unlike Halder, Hausser didn't get permission from the victors to 'write History', so to say.

@@KnightofAges Still, the Wehmacht officers were able to establish the myth of the clean Wehrmacht. Also they managed to put much of the blame for basically anything on Hitler.

​@@aramhalamech4204 Clean Wehrmacht because the Allies now needed West German troops as buffers against the Soviets. Also, History is not just the West; the Eastern Bloc had a very different History: the East Germans actually believed they had won the war, as it was presented as a victory of the People against Capitalist dictators. This also goes in line with the "clean Allies" myth, where all the crimes committed by the Allies are brushed aside and ignored - few people in the West know of the Soviet-Allied occupation of Iran in WW2, and nearly none know of the millions of dead Iranians registered in the British occupation zone. For that matter, HOW many people know of the Western Allied behavior in West Germany? The rapes of the Red Army are well reported, but the deliberate blowing up of German industry by the Allies is not, and much less their draconian occupation policy, with tens of thousands of civilians executed for even very minor transgressions, nor of the German famine imposed by the Allies after the war (the Western Allies even detoured to other nations food relief sent by other countries specifically to Germany), which caused millions of dead during 1945-1947 (these crimes are not denied, they are well documented, it's just that the vast majority of Western Historians prefers to simply nor talk about them and end their works pretty much around the time of the German surrender). Most ww2 geeks can talk much of events between 1939 and 1945, but if you ask them about what happened in Germany between mid 1945 and 1948 and basically everyone will draw a blank. It's a 'Mystery Zone' for Westerners, akin to the Dark Ages. They will talk about how Germans stole from occupied countries, but have no idea about the open sacking of German Banks, nor of the general confiscation of the wealth of all Germans and the distribution of a set amount between the German Population as a starting point after the war. They will talk about how harsh German occupation was, but ignore that after the war German women had to prostitute themselves to allied troops just to have them give some food so they could feed their starving families, with the Allied authorities having instructed their soldiers to ignore starving German children and give them no food. They will talk about shortages of Wine in Occupied France, but have no idea after the war German children had to be clothed from old flags sewn by their mothers, since there were not enough clothes to go around. And THAT is how the victors write History in the minds of their peoples. The German officers (Halder, as well as the memoirs of Guderian and Manstein) were merely allowed to play a part, nothing more.

@Nic TheCow I'm not sure what you're asking. The Hebrew Bible is what the Jews call the Old Testament.

What do you mean? In the Bible, the defeats of the Israelites are usually explained by the fact that they turned away from God, which is exactly the narrative that the people who conquered them would like to create and probably did. A great example is what the Bible says about Cyrus the Great.

@Nic TheCow the Exodus is a typical origin story of a nation. There is no evidence that the Jews were in Egypt.

@Great White I know, my point is that Hebrew Bible at least in large part was told by victors.

@Nic TheCow it is a historical source. It tells us a lot about the beliefs and values of the people writing it and how they saw themselves and and those around them and how they interpreted their own history.