My 7th grade history teacher was Russian. Very cool guy. During our uni on WWII he actually taught with both a Russian school textbook and our own American textbook to help establish the idea of history being a tool to manipulate public thought. This got me thinking. How is history taught in the various other nations?
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James Gonzalez
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Jose Jenkins
In Poland it is generally "we wuz always victims"
Jaxon Russell
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Austin Brown
My entire family is Russian, I visit Russia every year but I live in Canada. Pretty much this when it comes to history, specifically 20th century history. Since I was pretty interested in WW2 and WW1 when I was young, I got to see to completely different perspectives. WW2 , specifically the Eastern Front is a super touchy subject. Many of my North American friends don't have too well of an understanding of it because of the Cold War. Since Soviet archives weren't opened up until the late 90s, a lot of the info came from former Axis veterans, the Cold War also helped popularize a lot of myths like the Soviets only won because of human waves, all of their weapons and tactics were inferior to their German counterparts, etc. But don't get me wrong, what they teach about WW2 in Russia isn't exactly true either, while for the most part its a lot better than what they teach in North America, they really downplay some stuff. Like Lend-Lease and the War in the Pacific, the Strategic Bombing Campaign and so on. They also tend to gloss over some stuff like their post war treatment of partisan groups, the amount of looting that took place, etc.
Mason Young
how do they spin M-R Pact?
Adam Jenkins
History classes in Canada are generally "we are better than the US"
I remember my teachers really focusing on the Vimy Ridge, how Canadian troops were able to do what the British and French couldn't and Canadian troops were feared by Germans and how Canada won the war of 1812 and burned down the US White House. They also loved to focus on Pearson and how prevented WW3 during the Suez Crisis and they really loved to emphasize how peaceful and fair Canada was unlike the US who went around committing war crimes in Latin America and Asia.
They also talked a bit about Canada badly Canada treated aboriginals, just like the US did with Native Americans.
Another huge part was the relationship between French Canadians and English speaking Canadians, mainly the FLQ crisis and the conscription crisis during WW1 and WW2.
Bentley Rogers
They justify it by saying that Stalin was doing it to defend himself from Hitler. Saying that Stalin wanted to go to war with Hitler, but he wasn't ready at the time because the Red Army was undergoing reforms and recovering from the Purges. Stalin annexed Poland as he wanted to create a buffer zone from Hitler as Western Russia was pretty flat and easy to invade besides the lack of infrastructure. This buffer would both deter Hitler from invading and it would act as a jumping off point for the Red Army would invade Germany after it was all tired out from fighting England and France.
Gabriel Hill
In Italy we're taught that Mussolini did everything wrong and that we sucked during WW2 and should be ashamed of everything we've done.
What they don't teach, howewer, is how we've committed war crimes in Africa and especially the balkans.
It has always been a touchy subject, one just needs to think about how England and America basically tried to hide our war criminals, who all had the privilege of dying in their own beds without consequences, and how they basically flipped off Yugoslavia who had been trying to give our war criminals what they deserved because we were quite simply more valuable to America's plans in case the Soviet Union attempted to invade Europe (operation gladio).
You could ask any italian and they will all tell you that Mussolini did nothing wrong, that we hid jews and didn't have concentration camps (over thirty were built), that ethiopians are thankful to us for the civilization and freedom we brought to them (partly true), that italian soldiers would party and have fun with the greeks (this is something even greeks will tell you, despite the greek government trying to make Italy pay for its war crimes in Greece after WW2) and that it was all Germany's fault that Italy ended up in a war that it could never win (hilariously wrong and somewhat popular among even Veeky Forumstorians).
Evan King
I'm German, I thought for a large part it was actually taught fairly objectively, sure the Nazis were the ulimate evil and nationalism was frowned upon, but in my later grades for the most part 20th century was about the rise of Hitler, which was done very thouroghly and the aftermath. Of course we also went to a KZ and stuff, but we probably spent more time on the industrial revolution than the holocaust or WWII proper. On the other hand in German schools you tend to discuss the topic quite a bit in other classes, besides history. For example reading books in German class, discussing it in religion/ethics, social studies or even art class.
Angel Howard
You had the curriculum taken from the 19th century Warsaw school of history?