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AIBU?

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Original poster

To think there are a lot of people out there who have no grasp of WW2 history

33 replies

Stripyseagulls · 06/06/2019 14:45

My grandfather fought in WW2 and I have visited the Normandy sites & it’s extraordinary how moving they are.

Today on Facebook/Twitter I have seen loads of really disturbing posts saying stuff like ‘our war hero’s didn’t fight world war 2 to live in a country full of muslim/ foreigners’ etc. Really really disturbing and horrible.

Aibu to think people don’t understand history and that the war was fought to defeat facism and these kinds of beliefs. Hitler didn’t start off gassing people- it was a long propaganda campaign against religious and ethnic groups that ended up with the holocaust.

Aibu to be disturbed by the lack of understanding of why the war was fought and what it was fought against. I find some of the attitudes in the UK today so troubling.

OP posts:
JHound · 09/04/2025 20:36

This is like when Laurence Idiot Fox threw a tantrum over a World War II movie featuring a Sikh soldier. I am sure a not insignificant part of our populace think Britain were on the wrong side in WWII.

LlynTegid · 09/04/2025 20:42

Simon Schama's programme about the Holocaust and its origins quoted a survey about the number of people in the UK who do not believe it happened. Cannot remember the percentage but if accurate it is a few million people.

missmollygreen · 09/04/2025 20:46

JHound · 09/04/2025 20:36

This is like when Laurence Idiot Fox threw a tantrum over a World War II movie featuring a Sikh soldier. I am sure a not insignificant part of our populace think Britain were on the wrong side in WWII.

Im eager to hear who you think may believe that the axis were to good guys?

JHound · 09/04/2025 20:54

missmollygreen · 09/04/2025 20:46

Im eager to hear who you think may believe that the axis were to good guys?

Show quote history

Whut?

JHound · 09/04/2025 20:56

DotForShort · 06/06/2019 16:36

I would amend your thread title to read more simply “no grasp of history.” So many of my students arrive at university with only the vaguest notions of historical events, timelines, currents, causes and effects. And presumably they are among the more academically engaged of their generation.

This is true. I was at the National Portrait gallery and was listening in to a foreign sounding woman who was patiently explaining to her English mate about Henry VIIII and how his daughter was Elizabeth I. He had no idea they were related. How?!

cakeorwine · 09/04/2025 21:08

I would argue that it's also the way Germany changed and the rise of the Nazis, the way that it was possible for the Jewish population and other minorities to be turned on, to be seen as other and then for the events that led to the Holocaust to happen that people don't really understand.

Living under the Nazi regime. The horrors of occupation, The horrors of the concentration camps.

It's so important people are educated about how that happened. How did Hitler rise to power and what did he do to stay in power. How was it possible for society to turn on its own people.

GertrudePerkinsPaperyThing · 09/04/2025 21:10

cakeorwine · 09/04/2025 21:08

I would argue that it's also the way Germany changed and the rise of the Nazis, the way that it was possible for the Jewish population and other minorities to be turned on, to be seen as other and then for the events that led to the Holocaust to happen that people don't really understand.

Living under the Nazi regime. The horrors of occupation, The horrors of the concentration camps.

It's so important people are educated about how that happened. How did Hitler rise to power and what did he do to stay in power. How was it possible for society to turn on its own people.

I would say it’s absolutely vital for everyone to understand this at the moment!

cakeorwine · 09/04/2025 21:16

And what amazes me:

Germany - the Nazis - committed awful atrocities in occupied countries. Absolutely awful.

You only have to go to France and see memorials every to resistance fighters who were executed. Villages wiped out.

WW2 ended in 1945. And the Europe that emerged out of it formed trading partners, freedom of movement - and I think that is incredible.

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