Comments by "Evan" (@MrEvanfriend) on "Is History Written by the Victors?" video.

  1. 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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