 For Authors: September 21, 2005 Issue [#621] |
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This week: Edited by: phil1861
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| Where do you get your history; movies, books, magazines, editorials or political statements? Do you get it from jokes, stories, or notoriously apocryphal anecdotes? Has your understanding been molded by curriculums or perhaps religion? What is your world view and where did you get it? |
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There is a statement attributed to Albert Einstein: If the facts do not fit the theory, change the facts.
One can imagine the tongue in cheek purpose of this statement as it related to the scientific method and the tendency we have of only reporting and supporting those facts that best fit our presupposed conclusions. We are all probably at one point or other guilty of viewing history through the lens of our world view and having that shape our conclusions. We may not necessarily change the facts to support our view but we will point more strongly to those that do as proof of validity. Occasionally a school of thought will be turned on its ear by an enterprising researcher who debunks the old paradigm with new research and newer still conclusions that cause a revolution in the way we see our past. Other times we fall victim to a more subtle form of historic manipulation called propaganda. While both forms may share similar attributes one may be born more of laziness or strong adherence to precedent and established conclusions while the other purposefully bends and distorts the facts for persuasion. This is the form that is the most dangerous to our personal world view.
What is your world view? You have one and it colors everything you see and hear and what you then think and know. What has produced that world view for you? Are what you think and know about molded by media? Do you know of your own origins, i.e. the stock from whence you came and the experiences of your parents and their parents and so on? Is it inner city or back woods? How do you see your beliefs in the framework of the history of your country? Write down what you do believe sometime, everything you believe and a brief description of why. Where did those beliefs come from? Where they born of knowledge or generated from a source that seems nebulous? Is that sourcing your own parents? Why did they believe and pass down what they did? Can you trace the source of that belief?
These are the tools for separating propaganda from fact and how both mold our world view. History is a blank slate that awaits someone to jot down a few notes and conclusions for us to build then a bigger picture of our past. That is the role of the Historian and always has been. Why pour through volumes of works in the Library of Congress when someone with a rounded knowledge and education has done that for us? However, just because that work is down in bound form does not make it any more reliable than information off of someone's blog. There are certainties to history just as there are to natural laws. WWII did happen when Britain and France finally decided to honor treaty obligations with Poland (five days after German Columns crossed the Polish border). These are indisputable matters of record that can be used to judge any conclusion to the contrary.
Let's break down then a few elements to the stated fact of German initiation of hostilities with Poland to further my point. Until the Treaty of Versailles of 1918 Poland did not exist as an entity but was carved out of ethnic elements from parts of German Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Not only where there ethnic Germans now in this new political entity but also the historic German port of Danzig (now Gdansk) on the Baltic Sea.
A reader has pointed out something that in my rush to complete this NL I was myself incomplete in my memory and research  .
Hi,
Thank you for an interesting newsletter. I hope you don't mind if I straighten
out one of the facts...
Poland existed as an independent country already in 966 and disappeared from
the maps in 1795, after the last partition, when what was left of it after the
previous partitions (in 1772 and 1793) was divided between its neighbours:
Russia, Prussia and Austria. It was not "carved out of ethnic elements from
parts of German Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire", it was a sovereign
country with its own king and language for centuries before it was taken
apart.
A useful link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitions_of_Poland
I hope you can include this comment in the next newsletter.
Have a good day,
Agnie 
As in all areas of Europe there is a history to this land and geography that has seen political entities come and go while the people remain the same. As the change in Government and policy was meant to prop one ethnicity over another ethnic Germans, now in the minority, found themselves subject to old hatreds and mistrust leading to violence.
Using a progression of thought and propaganda Adolph Hitler was enabled to justify the military intervention that he did by: if the Treaty of Versailles where wrong and thus void(true, Hitler declared it void in 1935 to no reaction from the Allied powers); if Polish nationals where acting violently against ethnic Germans(true, in the build up of a threatening stance from Nazi Germany and negotiations with the Polish government for a forced annexation of half of Poland containing the port of Danzig ethnic Germans were forced to flee areas of the interior of Poland that had been German for centuries); and a fabricated event at a border radio station where Polish military broadcast a message of incitement to violence upon all Volkes Duetsch (ethnic Germans) in Poland (false, the German army sent a company of Wermacht soldiers to quell the "uprising" masterminded by the German Abwher - German Military Intelligence and distributed concentration camp inmates dressed in Polish Army uniforms and thus shot) you begin to see that Germany's invasion of Poland was not just on a whim or that the goal wasn't just to incite war upon a weaker neighbor. The Polish Prime Minister and Foreign Minister could have bowed to the impossible demands of Hitler and avoided war for the moment. Why bother with the entire charade if Hitler was already decided upon the goal of re-acquiring another chunk of pre-Versailles Europe? German citizens and even the world needed to believe that Germany was forced into the aggressive stance by Polish recalcitrance and protection of the Volkes Duetsche.
How about any one of our current media controversies in America specifically such as Carl Rove? It is far too soon to draw any real conclusions as many of the ordered facts are hidden away in testimonial documentation and timelines that are not clear to the observer on the sidelines such as most of us are. Yet have you drawn a conclusion already based upon what you know or think you know? When you start looking at the timelines and who said what to whom and the main characters involved in this little "drama" you find it is difficult at best to divine the white hats from the black hats and those hats are being revealed based upon our individual world views more than they are in actually revealing a good or a bad guy. This is the danger of propaganda and the molding of a view in the public eye. It is exactly as Einstein was reputed to have said. It is the "cherry picking" of facts to support our world view instead of allowing the full history of the event mold it. The event at that German border radio station was a real event with pictures of the dead polish soldiers to prove it and a headline broadcast around the world. Only until after the war was it learned of the Abwher's master show and legerdemain (as opposed to Leger~   ).
If your world view has come from pop culture and from media or from vaguely factual history text books then you may be viewing as truth what is instead well crafted propaganda or at best agenda driven infotainment. We wonder now how the National Socialist German Workers Party or NSDAP (Nazi) was able to sway an entire nation towards the ways and means of a few hate filled men. Yet we should probably not wonder as we can see it everywhere if we are careful to unveil the purpose behind the words. A generation of German youth was taught from state approved curriculums that laid out how the Jewish banker class and professionals had: brought Communism to Russia, controlled the markets of Europe, where racially inferior, were the cause of plagues and outbreaks of disease, and so on. Were not the facts that we have today about Europe and history also available to anyone to be seen and read? Or did it not matter as much if the world views of those being taught where already molded along the same lines?
Do you know your history and know enough about it to understand that nothing happens in a vacuum and for every action there is a counter action? Do you know that these tenets and thoughts are cumulative and A leads to B leads to C? This may sound elementary but if you find something you once believed now revealed as false or at least questionable you might find that the belief was born more of acceptance of the world view of the author or teacher and not on an understanding of these principals.
What does this have to do with writing? As nothing happens in a vacuum our writing about the present is shaky at best if it is not founded on knowledge of our past. It becomes more fodder for the propaganda mills if we follow along with the main stream of media or even overt political machinations of parties because we do not know any better.
Make your poetry, prose, fiction on a solid foundation of our past in politics, society, religion, economics, and family. These are the bedrock from whence we come and if you find you know little of any one of them how can you then write with truth? These works are held in high esteem today and called classics because they have are timeless and possess something of the truth of life and the universe in them. Why? Perhaps their authors had a good grounding in the foundations of our history as well as having that artistic spark.
Have you come across a work that shook your world view? What was challenged and why?
Did you follow my exercise of writing down what you believe and why? What did you discover?
phil1861
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Plugs this go around are a hodge podge of historical works submitted via the NL submissions from our community. Enjoy!
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Questions from last NL 8/25/05
By what do you write of a historical frame? Why?
If you do not write anything of a historical product, have you found you’ve needed to do any historical research? How did you conduct it?
Paige Turner 
Submitted Comment:
Hi, Phil the Pookie.
I haven’t written any fictional history, but I have done some research.(Just in case, I guess.) Howard Zinn is an historian whose books include “The People’s History of the United States.” Old magazines are a great source, too. My husband has a big collection including Life Magazine that has some interesting 1930s and '40s stories and pictures. And I can’t discount historical sites. I was surprised at the feelings that came up in me when we spent a few days in Gettysburg. Terrific newsletter!! Thanks!
billwilcox
Submitted Comment:
Pookster!
I was very impressed with your newsletter as always. I especially loved your opening about history repeating itself incorrectly. I was reminded of the premise of Asimov's 'Foundation' Series. Great work, my friend.
Submitted Comment:
now I must say that I love reading historical fiction but find most books are of american history. I have learned a lot about my geographic neighbour but wish I could find some really good canadian historical fiction. Any thoughts?
On Canadian history I have 0 sources that I’m aware of, although the works of Jack London often centered on turn of the century Canada and the gold rush in the north lands. While not a specifically historical work it does lend a view of the times in which Jack London lived.
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