Darryl, as I've been following you over the last couple years, it seems as though you are at your best when you are going against or at least providing more nuance to the the popular understanding of a topic or situation such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Israeli-Palestinian situation, etc. What are some other historical misconception…
Darryl, as I've been following you over the last couple years, it seems as though you are at your best when you are going against or at least providing more nuance to the the popular understanding of a topic or situation such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Israeli-Palestinian situation, etc. What are some other historical misconceptions that you feel that we may have as Americans or people living in the modern age?
World War 2 is the founding myth of the current global system and the American domestic political order, so its study and reporting have been set about with taboos and prohibitions that could cost someone a career (or, in Europe, their freedom) for violating. As such, that topic (and the interwar years that preceded it) is one in which the official court history has been reduced to a flat mythology. This seems to happen with every event that founds a new political order - both the US Civil War and the American Revolution are poorly understood by laypeople because the official histories - with their larger-than-life heroes and villains that come down as archetypes relevant for all time (that is, mythological figures) - are not real histories, they are myths, and consciously so. Given that the Civil War came 89 years after 1776, and World War 2 ended 80 years after the Civil War, I'd say there's a good chance that today - 77 years after the end of World War 2, people taking irreconcilable sides, the global and domestic political orders being delegitimized by the day - we're probably hurtling toward another one of those epoch-defining events.
Makes me think about The Fourth Turning, a book about generational cycles (which I think I've heard Darryl mention on an Unraveling episode, but I know he mentioned it somewhere and I was excited because finally I had read a book he'd read! The authors were on Coast to Coast back in the day.) Anyway, it's basically a book-length version of the "hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times" meme.
But they do it by generation (every twenty years) and the next big conflict (hard times) is supposed to be in this decade. I originally thought that it might be the pandemic, that was the crisis, but now I think that might have been the prelude to a human-on-human conflict for some reason people seem to be thirsting for right now. I hope we can avoid it!
Darryl, as I've been following you over the last couple years, it seems as though you are at your best when you are going against or at least providing more nuance to the the popular understanding of a topic or situation such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Israeli-Palestinian situation, etc. What are some other historical misconceptions that you feel that we may have as Americans or people living in the modern age?
World War 2 is the founding myth of the current global system and the American domestic political order, so its study and reporting have been set about with taboos and prohibitions that could cost someone a career (or, in Europe, their freedom) for violating. As such, that topic (and the interwar years that preceded it) is one in which the official court history has been reduced to a flat mythology. This seems to happen with every event that founds a new political order - both the US Civil War and the American Revolution are poorly understood by laypeople because the official histories - with their larger-than-life heroes and villains that come down as archetypes relevant for all time (that is, mythological figures) - are not real histories, they are myths, and consciously so. Given that the Civil War came 89 years after 1776, and World War 2 ended 80 years after the Civil War, I'd say there's a good chance that today - 77 years after the end of World War 2, people taking irreconcilable sides, the global and domestic political orders being delegitimized by the day - we're probably hurtling toward another one of those epoch-defining events.
Post JFK assassination I feel like I have a good sense of what not to believe, but pre-1960s I haven't escaped from the mainstream story.
Any hints on where to start reading to better understand the lead up to WWII?
I found the answer to my question in the answer to Dale's question 😁👍
Makes me think about The Fourth Turning, a book about generational cycles (which I think I've heard Darryl mention on an Unraveling episode, but I know he mentioned it somewhere and I was excited because finally I had read a book he'd read! The authors were on Coast to Coast back in the day.) Anyway, it's basically a book-length version of the "hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times" meme.
But they do it by generation (every twenty years) and the next big conflict (hard times) is supposed to be in this decade. I originally thought that it might be the pandemic, that was the crisis, but now I think that might have been the prelude to a human-on-human conflict for some reason people seem to be thirsting for right now. I hope we can avoid it!
I would really like to hear a series about the mythology of WWII. The more I learn the more it seems that mythology fits better than history
Yes please!
Just chiming in because Maxwell is right, this is a great question. Please answer this one.
great question