Comments by "Evan" (@MrEvanfriend) on "The Cynical Historian" channel.

Hammers and safeties on Glocks.
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Mein Kampf isn't history, it's a political manifesto that has historical significance. And if history isn't written by the victors, I'd love to see Vercingetorix's take on the Celtic-Roman wars. Because in that case, Caesar literally won the war and then wrote the history of it. Or how about a history of Alexander the Great from the perspective of any of the numerous peoples he conquered? The accepted historical view on people like Hitler and Napoleon would be significantly different had they won. The same is true for events like the American Revolution. Had the revolution failed, Washington and Jefferson and them would look a lot different in hindsight. The fact that the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal and the 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne are regarded as heroes for fighting through such abysmal conditions, yet German soldiers on the Eastern Front who fought in worse conditions aren't should be a clear indication of this. The problem with this video is that it's cherry picking a few counterexamples rather than attempting to debunk a commonly held theory on anything like a macro scale. Also, the fact of the victors of any given conflict shaping the historical narrative is not grounds to dismiss that narrative. Basically anyone in Asia will admit that the Japanese losing WWII was a good thing, as the American narrative states. Because Americans weren't enslaving, raping, and murdering vast swaths of their populations for no good reason.
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Also, the Spitfires in the Battle of Britain parts are wrong. Those are Mk. Vs, which were later on. The Battle of Britain was fought with Hurricanes and Spitfire Mk. Is.
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And here I went and paused the video to correct you on the planes flown from USS Hornet. However, that's clearly a modern carrier they're flying off. USS Hornet wasn't that shape.
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tim f draper Yamamoto was strongly against war with the US. He had been a military attache in America previously and understood the US quite well, which is why he argued strongly against war. He followed orders that he knew were incredibly stupid because he picked duty over personal beliefs, but he routinely told anyone who would listen that a war with the US would be disastrous and should be avoided at all costs. He said after six months, he couldn't guarantee any positive results. Also, Yamamoto wasn't responsible for Japanese failures in the Guadalcanal campaign. The First Marine Division was.
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William Reid I wasn't sure if they did or not, either way, it would've been the early Mk.IIs without those big 20mm cannon sticking out of the wings.
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tim f draper You're looking at this the absolute wrong way. Yamamoto planned the attack on Pearl Harbor as the best chance he thought he had to accomplish a task that he thought foolish and impossible. To say that he pushed for it is incorrect, he pushed for peace with the US. Given that peace wasn't an option, he pushed Pearl Harbor as the best opportunity to knock out the American fleet, and thus either force capitulation or at least buy time. You're making Yamamoto out to be a warmonger. He wasn't. He was somewhat of a tragic figure, a man who had more foresight and common sense than any of his superiors who was obligated to start a war that he was against and knew he couldn't win.
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As for Flags of our Fathers, one major inaccuracy is that it depicts Doc John Bradley as raising the flag, when the Marine Corps now claims that he did not, and that it was a Marine named Harold Schultz instead. However, Bradley received recognition for it at the time, and the flag raisers themselves didn't really remember it, as to them it was a minor thing that took place on the fourth day of a month long battle.
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jal7852 "Homophobic" is a word used by fools to describe decent people.
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Yeah, Hacksaw Ridge was awful. Like, one of the worst war movies I've seen. Cardboard cliche soldiers going through boot camp and then straight into combat together, the battle scenes were cartoonish, and they basically took an interesting character - Doss - and surrounded him with so much outright crap as to ruin the movie. As a military veteran myself, I didn't find any of the soldiers even remotely believable. I was really looking forward to that movie, and then when I saw it, I thought it was bad to the point of being offensive. Easily worse than Braveheart (which, while grossly inaccurate in every way, is at least good storytelling). Desmond Doss deserved better treatment than he got from Mel Gibson.
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It's amazing how much you get absolutely wrong and still manage to come to the right conclusion on Wilson.
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Let's also have a video game where you get to play an IS suicide bomber. You can increase your level or whatever by bombing local markets, army/police recruiting stations, mosques of a different sect, and churches. The final level is hijacking a plane and flying it into American landmarks. Yeah, the Assassins were just savage paynim terrorists, no different from the savage paynim terrorists today. It's quite illustrative that the specific type of savagery - suicide attacks to murder people whose religion is different from theirs - has lasted damn near a millennium.
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The Assassins were essentially murderers for hire who also killed "infidels". They were the original Islamic terrorists. A precursor to IS. American soldiers rarely raped German women, and they were hanged if they got caught. As for the rest, I don't know because I don't play video games.
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ilyriandevil Hired assassins and religious fanatics are by no means mutually exclusive. The Assassins were both. Look it up. As for the Sunni/Shia split, just because the two sides dislike each other does not make them in any way dissimilar. Both sects have a long history of utter barbarism and savagery. If you read about WWII, you'd know that the Anglo-American forces were almost unprecedented throughout history until then for how little they raped and pillaged. It certainly happened a few times, there's always bad apples, but we're talking about a few isolated incidents where the perpetrators were severely punished. I don't play video games, I don't know the rest of what you're talking about, but it is crass and tasteless to play as terrorists of any era.
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ilyriandevil First, much of that is unintelligible. Use punctuation and spell check. Religious fanatic and paid assassin are by no means mutually exclusive - look up the Assassins, who were both. They weren't the EXACT same thing as IS, but neither is Hizballah or al-Qa'ida or any of these other horrid paynim terrorists that have existed basically since black Mahound claimed to be a prophet. Read actual history, stop basing what you claim to know on video games.
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I completely fail to see how it's a "problem" that people focus on the three defining events of American history rather than the Teapot Dome scandal or whatever. Simply put, the Revolution, the Civil War, and WWII defined what this country is more than any other events have. While your characterization of the narrative may be oversimplified, it's certainly not untrue.
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A guy named Ghost I was in the Corps from 2003-2007. I can't swim for shit. I barely passed swim qual at boot camp, and then had to do it once in the Fleet and again barely passed. Swimming skills are overrated (then again I was stationed at Twentynine Palms, so who knows what the rest of the Corps does).
2
The Scots "armor" is horrible too. Hardly a scrap of chain mail, a lot of bits of leather arranged in a way that makes zero sense. Wallace was a noble, and even a knight eventually, and would have had armor and equipment very similar to what the English nobility had.
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The thing is, the way the soldiers were depicted isn't really wrong. No, it doesn't really go in depth about them drinking too much and doing stupid shit around the barracks, or standing around in the smoke pit waiting for word and arguing if soda is called soda or pop, but apart from that, it isn't inaccurate in a way that I, as a veteran, notice. Obviously the movie is shown from an American point of view, because Moore's book which it's based on was written by an American. I'm not sure where you get nationalism and inaccurate portrayals from that.
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Something like that. The Marine Corps only determined it was Schultz last year. As memorable as the picture is, the moment apparently wasn't so. Bradley was certainly in the vicinity of the flag raising, and may have helped raise the first one. What amazes me is how long it took them to realize that the guy who you have the best shot of was a Marine and not a Corpsman. You'd think they would've noticed from the gear or something. Also, Bradley wasn't the first misidentification in the photo. Cpl Harlan Block, the man at the base of the flag, was misidentified for years as another Marine. Both Block and the other Marine were killed on Iwo Jima, and it was Block's mother who correctly identified him in the picture.
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jal7852 Ooh, Hitler. Because Hitler slaughtered Jews for no reason, and a hatred of paynim based on actual experience plus 1400 years of history is, superficially, mildly similar to that sort of, but not really. You have nothing to say, and you're saying it too loud.
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Edward I was not a pagan as clearly stated in the beginning of the movie, and the concept of "freedom" as depicted did not exist. And let's not even mention that armor that the English wear. Oh, and the real Wallace apparently flayed one of his enemies and made a sword belt from the skin, which is pretty cool.
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Not one mention of the War of the Roses? Cmon, Stark and Lannister = York and Lancaster, the parallels are pretty obvious (the Starks being northern, white and red as their respective colors, even the names sound somewhat similar), and George R.R. Martin has even admitted that the War of the Roses was his inspiration. And I always assumed that the Seven was obviously supposed to be the Catholic church - the multiple aspects of a single godhead is vaguely similar, but the priesthood and monastic orders and parallel power structure with the state aren't even really changed at all from the historical Catholic church.
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Referring to Bradley "Chelsea" Manning as a female is grossly incorrect. He is male. You cannot change your sex.
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What is wrong with depicting American soldiers in a positive light? Oh, and the Thin Red Line was terrible. Boring as all hell. I understand that war involves long stretches of boredom and inactivity, having been to Iraq myself, but it sure doesn't make for much of a movie. And given the subject matter, Guadalcanal, you'd think they'd be able to pull off something far better. But instead of focusing on the 1st Marine Division who did most of the fighting, they focus on the Army who came later, and then they make the kind of movie that damn near puts you to sleep.
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That's a Mosin. I don't own one, though I almost bought one about 10 years ago until my wife asked if I actually wanted it or if I just wanted a $78 gun. I'm not a fan of Mosins, I much prefer a Mauser Kar98K or a Lee-Enfield.
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"Republicans were the progressives at the time". Uh, no. Not at all. There were some progressive Republicans (like Teddy Roosevelt, who didn't even go full-blown progressive until after leaving office thank God), and more conservative Republicans like Taft. And there were progressive Democrats as well, like Wilson. Wilson was (arguably) the worst president BECAUSE of his extreme-left progressivism (I would argue that Franklin Roosevelt was the worst president, and that Wilson is probably the second worst. Roosevelt's dictatorial manner, refusal to leave office, his "new deal" policies which continue to cause problems today, his obsequeousness toward Stalin, and his interning Americans in actual concentration camps outstrip Wilson's legacy.) Wilson paved the way for FDR, but FDR was worse in the end.
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