Comments by "Evan" (@MrEvanfriend) on "History Buffs" channel.

  1. Well, I saw a few episodes of Vikings, and I thought it insulted my intelligence. The ridiculous costumes, the inability to get basic names right, the feudalism in 9th century Scandinavia, the women raiders, those "priests" (and their dealings with the Norse pagan religion in general), the notion that they were unaware of England...all complete nonsense. It's a real shame too, I was looking forward to it, I figured the History Channel would at least make some attempt to treat the subject with historical accuracy. By the third episode, I found myself wishing that they'd just go all out and put them all in horned helmets.
    20
  2. How are deserters heroes? They're exactly the opposite. They're literally leaving the fight instead of fighting it, and abandoning their units, their comrades, and their country. This is the polar opposite of heroics, it is utterly selfish cowardice. Fighting a rearguard action like they did at Dunkirk is heroic. Quitting because the fight is too dangerous is cowardice. The difference is quite stark here.
    11
  3. +History Buffs That still doesn't answer why you claimed that Vikings is more or less accurate, when it is at least as ridiculous as Braveheart. A legendary character (whose name they get wrong) with an absurd haircut, wearing inaccurate costumes on a raid that did exist but nobody claims he was on in a feudal system where there was none who treats his slaves as equals and takes his wife to war with him? Really the only thing that could have made that steaming pile of shit LESS accurate is if they had jet skis instead of longships.
    8
  4. Chris Wallace But the show doesn't come close to accurately depicting the lifestyle of Viking people or the reality of their culture. Between the feudal system, the roles of slaves, women, and religion, and basically everything that speaks to anything I know about, it's as inaccurate a depiction as they could get.
    4
  5. Das Boot isn't a true story per se. It is an excellent movie though.
    4
  6. Johan Karlsson The Last Samurai wasn't Braveheart in Japan. It was Dances With Wolves II.
    3
  7. ***** What exactly is accurate about it? I don't claim to know everything, but everything I do know, they get wrong.
    2
  8. Fran jaime Because European and American history have had a significant impact on Mexico and everywhere else on earth. Cultural relativism is nonsense, especially when talking about history. The Mayans are only historically important in the very brief period between when the Spaniards first heard of them and their culture ceasing to exist in any meaningful way. I can understand the study of Mayan history being interesting from an academic standpoint, but to say that it's important for any decent education is quite simply indefensible. The Crusades, the Hundred Years War, the Norman Conquest, the American Revolution and Civil War, those all have direct consequences for modern Western people. They shaped our current world. What the Mayans did from the beginning of their existence up until the moment the first Spaniard saw one has done nothing to shape our current world. In Mexico and Central America, it does have the aspect of local history, which I will concede is an interesting and generally good thing to have at least a basic grasp of. To everyone else? Not so much.
    2
  9. Whatever else anyone can say about the British, they are by far and beyond the world's best country at naming naval vessels. HMS Terror is an outstanding name. In America, it would be named after some congressman who spent 40 years in Congress and sponsored a few naval spending bills. In Japan, it would be named something really faggy sounding like "cherry blossom". Pretty much everyone else names their ships after people and places, which is boring. The Japanese come up with weird "poetic" names which are absolutely ridiculous for warships (IJN Zuikaku, one of the carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor, has a name that translates to "Auspicious Crane". Absurd.). But the British give their ships names that would make the sailors proud to serve on them. HMS Vengeance is a ballistic missile submarine. How utterly appropriate for a second-strike doomsday weapon to be named Vengeance. And a lot of their old carriers had names like Glorious, Illustrious, Invincible, Courageous, etc (admittedly HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, their two current carriers, have lame names). I wish the US Navy would take a hint from the Brits when it comes to naming warships. It just doesn't sound as intimidating when USS John C Stennis is steaming towards your coast as it would with a ship named Indomitable or Victorious.
    2
  10. Wow, the UN was completely useless? Couldn't possibly be.
    2
  11. Stick to historical topics, and leave out the incredibly ignorant editorializing on the DAP, which is running through an area that already has a number of other pipelines. The danger to the environment there is the massive wreck caused by those protesters. And don't call Indians "native Americans". It's obnoxious PC Newspeak. While the vast majority of Indians are native Americans, so are the vast majority of Americans in general, including myself.
    1
  12. janiir No, it means being native to America. I was born in New York, which, last time I looked at a map, was part of the United States of America. That makes me, and everyone else born here, by definition native Americans.
    1
  13. janiir The "popular" definition is the bit of PC Newspeak that I was attacking in the first place. As far as legal definitions go, the government uses the word "Indian" to describe Indians, just like all people who can think for themselves instead of mindlessly following the PC herd do. Why don't you look up what "native" means? I am a native of the United States, hence a native American. Cut the PC bullshit, it just makes you sound foolish.
    1
  14. That pretty much covers it. There was a battle in Stalingrad, there was a guy named Vasiliy Zaitsev, and the rest was pretty much entirely made up. Didn't they have Nikita Khrushchev as some low level political officer when at the time he was in charge of starving Ukraine to death?
    1
  15. Red Deimon Plus, there's a lot of evidence that the diary was heavily edited and propagandized by the Soviets. There is, for instance, no evidence at all that there ever was a Major Koenig (as you mentioned). I don't remember there being a Jewish guy in the movie, but the woman was obviously added for Hollywood bullshit purposes.
    1
  16. AngelOfJoy Yeah, no it isn't. Not even close.
    1
  17. AngelOfJoy Comeon, that nonsense with the kid? And the stupid love story aspect? That ruined it. If they were gonna do all that, they should have just said fuck it and given him a CheyTac Intervention instead of a Mosin Nagant (which didn't even have the right optic).
    1
  18. AngelOfJoy But that was stupid too, because the way it ended ruined it. Zaitsev claimed to have shot the head of the Berlin sniper school through his optic - though the fact that there's no record of the guy even existing leads me to believe that the whole thing was made up for propaganda purposes - which would at least be cool, unlike that nonsense. You want to see a good movie with a sniper duel, watch American Sniper. Besides the part where the bad guy is shooting soldiers through body armor at something like 1500 yds with a Dragunov (never gonna happen) and the Marines inexplicably all wearing LBVs, the utter bullshit is kept at acceptable minimums.
    1
  19. patrick Katalenas In what way? I was in Iraq at the same time as the movie took place, and at least found the parts with the Marines to be very accurate. And I find it ironic that you're gonna say American Sniper was propaganda compared to Enemy at the Gates, which was very literally based on Soviet propaganda, including the demonstrably false "Erwin König" character.
    1
  20. Do The Pacific next. I know the whole thing with Bob Leckie and the Greek girl in Australia is bullshit, he mentions nothing of the sort in his (excellent) book.
    1
  21. You missed the point that the saracens were dressed as 15th century Ottoman Turks, and that they couldn't even get Saladin's name right. But yeah, this covers most of it.
    1
  22. Paul H Hey, if they had jet skis, at least we'd all know that it was nonsense without any historical knowledge at all. Putting garbage like that on the History Channel gives it some kind of gravity. Anyone who was completely unaware of early medieval Scandinavian culture might buy it. I'd say the show was better if they put them in those plastic horned helmets that Minnesota Vikings fans wear at football games and gave them jet skis. The historical inaccuracies wouldn't be THAT much more, and at least nobody would watch it thinking that it was realistic.
    1
  23. Paul H I agree. If they're going to have scripted shows, they at least ought to make an attempt at historical accuracy though. Like, at least fuckin TRY. As in, no "Vikings" with half-assed braided mohawks in a feudal system wearing leather gay biker outfits. And fuck, at least get the names right. It's Lodbrok. And Rolf the Walker was named Rolf, not fuckin Rollo (that's Latinized).
    1
  24. Fran jaime We Were Soldiers was actually very good.
    1
  25. Fran jaime I can't say I know much about the Aztecs or Mayans or whoever, but I liked Apocalypto.
    1
  26. Fran jaime Same can be said about many historical movies. Braveheart, for instance, is still extremely popular with people who don't know or care about medieval history. In and of itself, it's actually a good movie - it's just that it takes the fact "there was this guy named William Wallace who fought against the English in the late 13th century" and completely makes everything else from the motivations of the characters to the costumes to the entirely imaginary relationship between Wallace and the princess. Since I know practically nothing about the Mayans other than that I visited Chichen Itza as a kid and thought it was pretty cool, Apocalypto wasn't contradicting anything that I know, and thus had no way of annoying me. The plot was good, the acting was good, the action bits were cool, and the only thing that kinda sucked was when they killed that jaguar that ran the one guy down. I do suspect that some of the more extreme tattooing and scarring was made up though.
    1
  27. Fran jaime In all fairness, Mayan history is by no means necessary to a good education, except possibly to Mexicans/Central Americans. The doings of the Mayans really have next to no impact on modern Westerners.
    1
  28. Fran jaime China, India, Islam, and the Mongols have had a global impact on par with the West. Ancient Persia and Egypt as well. Nothing in the Americas comes even close. The Americas were an isolated global backwater until Europeans came, and their cultures were wiped out by contact with a vastly technologically superior civilization. And the US absolutely is America. What else is there? Canada and a bunch of banana republics? Please. Brazil is up and coming I suppose. And besides the cocaine, Latin America doesn't really have much of an effect on anywhere else. The one continent NOT involved in WWII. That says a lot right there.
    1
  29. ***** I don't drink coffee cause caffeine fucks me up, and South America in general was more or less friendly to Germany during WWII, but not involved in the war in any meaningful way.
    1
  30. ***** No, I understand that many countries besides the US fought in the war. And except for a couple of troops in Italy, none of them were South American. Declaring war is completely meaningless if you don't actually fight.
    1
  31. ***** Brazil allowed the US Navy to use their ports, allowed American airfields to be built in their territory, and sent a small Expeditionary Force to Italy. This is barely being involved at best.
    1
  32. ***** No, I didn't read it, and the Brazilian expeditionary force was small. It was one division in the Italian campaign, about 25,000 men out of 1.3 MILLION. This is not a significant number.
    1
  33. ***** When a country the size of Brazil sends only one reinforced division to the largest war in history, that is a token force.
    1
  34. ***** The US military was rather small before Pearl Harbor. You don't have half the knowledge you think you do.
    1
  35. ***** Did I say that Brazil was as developed as the US? I did not. I said that Brazil was not involved in WWII in a meaningful way. There were also Swedes who fought in the war (on both sides), but that doesn't mean that Sweden was involved, because it wasn't.
    1
  36. ***** "Dishonor the lives lost". Because saying that a token contribution is a token contribution somehow does that. Great logic.
    1
  37. Fran jaime No. The British and Soviets also played very large roles. The Free Polish and a few resistance forces in places like Norway and the Netherlands played notable roles as well. Brazil did not. This is just simple fact.
    1
  38. Fran jaime ...except for all those Indians and Nepalese fighting for the British, or the hispanic American troops, or the King's African Rifles, or the black American troops. But yeah, aside from all them, no brown people. Because actual history doesn't matter, because RACIST, right?
    1
  39. *****​ I'm just biased towards the truth. One division plus in a campaign of 1.3 million troops is a token force.
    1
  40. ***** I'm trivializing Brazil's trivial involvement in the war. That's not the same as trivializing lives. You, on the other hand, are blowing that involvement so far out of proportion as to be ludicrous.
    1
  41. ***** That's called a slight exaggeration of the claims you made.
    1
  42. ***** Because that nice bit of kindergarten wit really helps prove your point.
    1
  43. ***** Did you know any kids who DIDN'T curse in kindergarten? That's where I learned about half the swear words I know (at least the English ones). Also, that's not an analogy. I'm saying that childish insults are childish and don't help prove your ridiculous point. An analogy is comparing the Brazilian Expeditionary Force to the Danish army: cause both were irrelevant to the larger war.
    1
  44. ***** So, a kid who curses at school - as kids do - has bad parents, because reasons. I think I detect the same type of logic whereby the mighty smoking snakes (it is a pretty cool logo, by the way) of the Brazilian expeditionary force beat a German army group with no assistance instead of mostly standing around out of the way while the Americans and British did the overwhelming majority of the fighting in the Italian campaign.
    1
  45. ***** There's that kindergarten argument we talked about again. "I'm rubber and you're glue". You have nothing to say, and you're saying it too loud.
    1
  46. Exactly. I'm not saying it wasn't authentic, or an excellent movie generally, it was both. It just wasn't a specifically true story about a specific submarine and its crew.
    1
  47. Well, I'd never seen this movie, and always assumed the worst. I'll have to check it out now.
    1
  48. MrMcCoGo If you don't want ignorant people making stupid statements, then you probably should comment at all. Or you can explain to me how my calling the UN utterly useless is "ignorant". You know, like pointing out a single problem they've actually solved.
    1
  49. Cleopatra almost certainly did not use a snake to kill herself. She likely took poison.
    1
  50. And a little bit later they learned the truth about cannibalism among British sailors. See R v. Dudley and Stephens.
    1