Brainlet History

As a kid I heard of the Viet Cong. I assumed it was spelled Viet Kong because they told me they were a gorilla army.

I used to believe that whites were the most evil people on the planet because they were the only people who had slaves.
I used to believe native Americans were noble savages who never made war upon each other.
I didn't know the Soviets helped Germany invade Poland and that the UK and France apparently only get mad about Poland being invaded when their regional adversary does it.

many technically were

Used to think that Russia was still communist.
Used to think the Dutch beat the Spanish Armada by themselves.
Used to think the Spanish destroyed the Aztecs because they were jealous of their achievements.
Used to think all indians lived in tipis.
Used to believe just about every way Lucky Luke portrayed Indians was true.
Used to believe Alaska was sold to America because the Tsar had debts from poker (again, from Lucky Luke)
Used to think Julius Caesar faked dying and later renamed himself to Augustus Caesar.

made me chuckle. Have a (you)

>Thought the new world just meant spain and nobody had gone that far south, which is why all the "new world" stuff ended up so similar to spanish stuff

What. Explain this, I don't understand.

>I would use "England","The U.K", and "Britain" interchangeably until I went to university.

Most people do that for their whole lifes outside the anglosphere. I've seen even australians, americans and irish referred as English.

Thought Russia began winning wars after 1812
Thought the Russians beat the Finns during the Winter War
Didn't really understand French colonialism in Indochina
Didn't know that the USSR helped conquer Poland in 39 till I was 19-20.

>Mfw learning most of these things on my own

/pol/ literally tries to slither its way into everything. pls go

>thought Turks were natives of Anatolia
>thought Jews were always only native to Israel and that hitler invaded it to Shoah them

>I would use "England","The U.K", and "Britain" interchangeably until I went to university.
I still do this, and throw in "Commonwealth" as well. And the sad thing is, I actually know the difference between the four political entities, I'm just too lazy to be precise when I speak.

>used to think the republic era was better than the imperial one
>used to think athenians were the good guys and that spartans were evil misogynists
>used to think the carthaginians dindu nuffin and everything written about them was propaganda
>used to think cicero was an honorable man and an intellectual luminary
>used to think marcus aurelius was the best emperor
>used to think vikings were badass raiders and metal as fuck
>used to think everything about the nazis was flawless apart from their sense of morality
>used to think using nukes was justified
>used to think griffith did something wrong

Except all of those are things that public school and mainstream media teach until you do your own research.

Underrated post.

I though Prussia was just a misspelled Russia. I was also surprised to learn the Irish hated the English so much.

Turks are native to Anatolia, at least by blood, not culture

I thought Prussia was just the area in between Russia and Poland and they just mixed the two names together

Marcus Aurelius is top 10, maybe top 5.

Used to think The Good The Bad and The Ugly was filmed in the setting its in.

The Russians did win the Winter War.

Saying they didn't is like saying the US won Vietnam despite failing in every objective they had.

The Russians weren't trying to conquer Finland, the Russians declared war because the Finns refused to move the border a few miles to the north. In the war, the Finns lost their second largest city; it crippled Finland, which is why the Finns were so desperate to reverse the situation that they joined with Germany in WWII.

Killing more people doesn't mean you win the war, even if you kill way more people. Killing people is just a way of accomplishing your objective. The Finns failed in their objective, while the Russians actually exceeded their initial demands.

...

I meant militarily winning the war.
International politics weren't interesting to 14 year old me.

Not him, but there's no such thing as a divide between "Militarily" and "not-militarily" winning a war. War, by definition, is political violence. You are using force in an attempt to achieve some kind of goal. The point is to achieve that goal, regardless of how the battles go.

The reason the Finns surrendered was that the war was turning against them. In fact, I might even argue that the Finnish fighting cost them dearly: one reason the Soviets made such harsh demands (that the Finns had no choice but to accept, as they had exhausted their army) was that they had to justify a war in which they had just lost over 100K men to their people. Could you imagine what the Russian people would have done to the Soviet government if they had lost 100,000 soldiers to move the border a few miles to the North in one place?

This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. So if we have a society centered around pitch battles like the Greeks, and all of my troops die from disease before we reach the battlefield, that means you took a military victory?

Yes. If your army is dead, it doesn't matter how it died, just that it died. It's still their military might forcing you to give up.

"militarily winning but diplomatically losing" would be like if you defeated the enemy army, took over their country, and then paid them reparations for some stupid reason.

You don't have an army to defend yourself so I end up sacking your city. Result is the same if the army gets defeated by disease or violence

youtube.com/watch?v=6wyk5tGYTjY

There is no such thing as a "Military victory" distinct from an overall victory you dunce. If your troops died of disease and you can't obtain your objectives (or resist your opponent from obtaining his objectives if you're a passive player in this), yes, you lost. And it sure as fuck happened plenty often in history, the Athenian Plague in the Peloponesean war coming rather quickly to mind, as does the 5th crusade.

Because again, you don't go to war with the hope that you'll kill a bunch of your opponent's troops and civilians and then go home. You go to war to seize a disputed bit of territory, to change a governmental regime, to enforce a trade treaty, hell, just to loot their cities, etc. Success or failure is defined in terms of that, and the military's job is to help the polity achieve those aims. If it has not in fact done so, it's failed.

Yes? Because without an army i can achieve what ever the fuck i was trying to do, fights and battles break out because one side wants something, if i get, i've won the war, if i haven't, i lose.

There were a lot of different entities I didn't know the difference between when I was fairly young, i.e. Greeks (or atleast spartans) and Romans
I used to assume modern Americans were directly descended from the native Americans (I think my parents lied to me and told me we had Native American ancestry too)
Later I thought Spanish (I probably would have thought of it as "Mexican" at the time) was a Native American language
Not necessarily history, but I at first though other languages were basically the same but written in a different alphabet, and then later assumed learning a second language would just involve learning everything word for word as direct translations.
I assumed English was descended from Latin because of "Latin roots"
I used to the think the entirety of both North America and South America were once part of the United States and that the civil war was what caused the split
I used to think Alexander the Great was a Roman emperor
I assumed for a long time that Persia was somewhere in Europe, since I thought depictions of Persians looked a lot like Spanish ( and I may have thought they were the same thing)
I used to assume countries were basically the same as they were during their most known/relevant (to me) period, i.e. Europe was still in the Middle Ages under absolute monarchs, the Chinese still lived like stereotypical Han or whatever dynasty depictions, Egypt still lived under pharaohs, etc
I used to think the reason Jews couldn't just hide the fact that they were Jews was because they just had too much pride in their religion, not that there were documents etc proving they were Jews
I used to think Romans went around stealing gods from other cultures and then renaming them
That's all I can think of right now

Plato and Socrates were

I meant to say during the holocaust, sorry

I used ot think the Holy Roman Empire was holy, roman and an empire.

The sad thing is that, while these are mostly things that we believed when we were kids who didn't have any reason to know better, these are things that a lot of adults still believe. I mean, in the general population, you will find the occasional history buff (which is what most of us here are), but a lot of people just don't know anything about history. I don't even necessarily mean /pol/ or tumblr stuff (although that doesn't help), but just general historical myths that persist to this day. Think of how many things your history teachers taught you that you know now are bullshit (Columbus flat-earth myth is still taught in most elementary schools).

For example, at least in my state (Tennessee), our High School world history course standards skip the entire medieval period. There's a brief chapter on feudalism, but otherwise it's skipped outright, and we go right on to the Renaissance. This is the reason myths like the Dark Ages persist. The chapter on the fall of Rome is also pretty much ripped right out of a summary of Gibbon mixed in with other pop-history garbage (Christianity destroying tech and lead pipes making retard babies included). A significant portion of intro to ______ history classes are pretty much devoted to dispelling prevalent myths about history.

Sorry if it's not the most well-structured rant, I didn't have an outline or anything like that.

>Thought Texico was a country

I thought WW2 lasted 3 days.

In my defence I was 7.

I confused the secession war with the First World War when I was younger

This

I was taught non of this and I graduated hs a year ago
and I live in a major metropolitan area in the U.S.

I didn't realize history is the process of the evolution of the consciousness through time.

I thought WW1 and WW2 were the same wars. Now I know that they are.

I thought all Jewish eyewitness testimonies were true; I even thought "Night" by Elie Wisel, which I had to read in high school, was historically accurate.

Used to think the USA was the entire Americas.

I was thinking the same thing. I love how every thread is like a mini /pol/

>thought the WW1 was ended with Peace of Westphalia
>thought that every country is an island, didn't know what artificial borders are ( i was 5 )
>When mom pointed to show me where on the globe our country is, I thought that it's the whole of Eurasia
>in elementary school claimed they speak austrian in Austria
>thought Prussia was Russia before 1917
>thought that China is still a rural backwater with monks and ninjas, which I found cool as a kid
>used to think that Dmitri Mendeleev and Josef Mengele were the same person

Only recently found out that the Taiping and Boxer rebellions were different.

Tbh fuck China eurocentric history is the tits

...

>Thought karl marx was from russia

When i was 6 i thought germany was an island

>Empire over Republic
When will this meme die?

>tfw I played Age of Empires II as a kid pronouncing the 'Byzantines' the 'bai-zuh-nites'

I thought it was called Prussia because it was where Poland and Russia are today

Japan wanted to/could have invaded the mainland US in WW2

The Bolsheviks overthrew the Tsar

Holy Roman Empire was Roman

This is kind of tame but I thought the cold war was a traditional ground fought war.

That USA won against Vietnam

>I thought it was called Prussia because it was where Poland and Russia are today
Genius

I thought the Entente were the good guys in WW1.

Not Eurocentrism's fault you're a dumbass.

I used to call samurai "Sam-ah-roo-e"

>Thought the Russians beat the Finns during the Winter War
But they did. The real meme is people thinking Finland won.

i remember thinking the moon and mars were the same thing until i was like 10

not super Veeky Forums related, but that's that.

>armors and swords suddenly stopped being used in 1500 when firearm first appeared
>all Native Americans were the same people
>Chile and Mexico were the same country because they were both colored yellow on the map
>Arabs an Turks were the same vague Muslim Empire

>used to think Muslims wear turbans
>used to think Normandy is the alternative name for Scandinavia, and D-Day occured in Norway and Denmark, not in France.
>used to think Hungarians are direct descendants of Huns and speak a mongolian-related language
>used to think Romanians are gypsies who settled in Europe in Medieval.
>used to think Macedonians speak Greek and are right descendants of Ancient Macedonians.
>used to think Scottish Gaelic was original language of ancient Picts

>used to think Hungarians are direct descendants of Huns and speak a mongolian-related language
but thats true

No, they are Ugric, came to Europe centuries after Huns and speak language completely unrelated to Mongolian.

FUCK YOU GRIFFITH DID DO SOMETHING WRONG

That's so odd i feel like i couldn't even blame you? Where did you go to school!

>Dmitri Mendeleev and Josef Mengele were the same person
Big if true.

>used to think it was impossible to reach sardina by boat

I thought the holy roman empire won the thirty years war until i was like 16

Mate the Russian people didn't do shit to their government during the whole span of the USSR, especially under Stalin.

>These people think that everyone died at Auschwitz for the whole Holocaust.
Go to Eastern Europe and see for yourself the relics and ruins of these atrocities.

>thought Asians had slanted eyes because they got nuked

We learned in school that natives never hurt each other and only killed 1 buffalo a year

Also I thought that ottomans/Egypt were sub Saharan black

Are you saying those things aren't taught in schools? Or just observing that people on Pol are right about those three points?

>Look Auschwitz had a pool Jewish conspiracy exposed!!! XDD

Also thought the Americas were in Europe, like I would look at maps of the Americas and imagine they were located next to England and france and Spain

More like "get mad when they make agreements that the regional adversary would not invade Poland, then he invades Poland anyway".

Do you mean you thought it was actually filmed in the Western United States, or did you think it was filmed in the 1860s?

>Used to think Ivan The Terrible was a bad person

he was a pretty cool guy in age of empires 3

I first thought the British and Americans were one country since they shared the same language, and later thought the americans launched operation Overlord directly from America instead of England

I mean, that's not an entirely ridiculous thought by itself, I'm more astonished you've had access to map of the Americas, but not a simple world map.

I used to believe in justice

put your grasses on
and realize griffith dindu nothing wong

Kek

Wait what? I thought Socrates was Plato's teacher and Plato wrote down a lot of the stuff Socrates said.

I had to write a report on Ptolemey I and the diadochi wars. While researching the causes I read the while story about Alexander saying that "the strongest" had to rule. I somehow mamaged to misread or misinterpet this so bad that I thought Strongest was a person. I spent a week trying to find out about this guy called Strongest.
This was last year, all the others way earlier.

Used to think Caesar and Augustus were the same person, and that Caesar was stabbed because he made himself emperor.

I used to think Vietnam was somewhere in or at least near the middle east.

Used to believe in the whole Christian Dark ages myth and that suddenly all knowledge was lost.

I had a real hard time placing American events and periods in history, or at least anything between the independence war and WWI. I wouldn't have been able to tell you when the civil war was, for example. And I didn't know the wild west and industrial revolution were at the same time.

It's just that we have nothing from Socrates himself. The things we know about him comes from what his pupils tell us about him. Plato's and Xenophon's versions of Socrates are quite different from each other however.

>thought miami was one of america's biggest cities
>thought new york was the capital of america
>thought south america was 100% spanish instead of being mixed with natives
>thought rio de janeiro was the capital of brazil
>thought yugoslavia still existed
>thought that belgians spoke belgian
>thought that the vikings were actually strong
>thought the holy roman empire was one centralised country
>thought england invaded and annexed scotland
>thought prussia was related to russia
>thought finland hungary and romania were slavic countries
>thought poland was a small country with only a few million people
>thought russia was always cold and snowing all year
>thought until the 1900s all wars in europe were over religion
>thought napoleon was actually very short
>thought france was completely occupied by germany in ww1
>thought the germans parachuted over the maginot line

last one is true though

>the Greek Polis and German states were definitely nations, that's why they spent most of their history trying to kill each other!