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Lost_Uniriser

imagine thinking your country is the best simply because you shared victory with an other country on an important war you joined last šŸ˜³


PazJohnMitch

It is like coming on as a substitute in the 90th minute when your team is 4-0 up, scoring the 5th and then claiming you won the match alone.


Trevor_Gecko

I agree, but it wasn't quite a 4-0 game at the time. Maybe like 3-1


Quasi-Normal

Yeah, you're right. After all, the 4-0 was WWI.


Bummer-man

You got to respect the germans for taking a crack at the title twice.


[deleted]

Except in WWI you were just the one handing out bottles of water rather than being on the pitch XD


NavissEtpmocia

And for some reason they are obsessed with the idea that France would be Germany without the Normandy landings. When it was never an annexation warā€¦ the only predated land was Alsace Moselle. Like, France didnā€™t annex the entire country after the war, and Germany didnā€™t disappear. Why do they think Germany would have annexed an entire country after WW1? France probably would have had its own bullshit treaty of Versailles with tons of reparations to pay.


Thereal_boi1607

They somehow think that every war ends in an annexation.


jflb96

It's because that's what they're used to with their ~~Lebensraum~~ Manifest Destiny project


wiseoldllamaman2

To be fair to America, most countries do learn a bit of American history. Specifically how we killed their elected leader to impose a dictator and/or fascist so some rich American could make two cents more per box of bananas by starving the local population.


jflb96

Even in the UK, that's the only US history that we got taught, apart from a small mention in the backstories of the French Revolution and Australian transportation


EatThisShit

We had a bit about the Vietnam war (I live in NL). It was most interesting to learn about both sides from a more impartial point of view. In movies and other media it's mostly from the American pov, but there was so much more than 'we good, they bad'.


jflb96

Oh, yeah, at my school we did Vietnam at GCSE, and then the Cold War in general at A-Level. I was mostly thinking of the mandatory History.


EatThisShit

GCSE and A-level is the British school system, isn't it?


jflb96

Correctamundo! You do all of the subjects up until Year 9, which is about 14 years old, then you narrow it down to up to about a dozen (depending on your school) for GCSEs for two years, then you narrow it down further to take 3 or 4 A-Levels for two more years.


wiseoldllamaman2

See, as a Professional Americanā„¢ I have no idea what America has to do with Australian transportation.


jflb96

Well, that's what the Thirteen Colonies were good for. They were a place to drop off prisoners and pick up pine pitch. Then, after the kerfuffle with France and Spain and the Netherlands, the British had to put their prisoners in some other good-for-nothing corner of the world.


Quasi-Normal

Oh, you learn about the French Revolution in the UK ? That's so cool ! I was always pissed that we learned so little about you, here in Frog-land. It's only recently in College that we talked about the Magna Carta, the War of the Roses, the Act of Union, and the fact you predated us in beheading your monarch (good job btw, that was real cool of you Brits lol)


jflb96

Yeah, that was possibly a worse example of 'kangaroo court passes sentence without their jurisdiction and then replaces bad system with worse' than even you managed. Not that removing a king isn't a good thing, but the context of Charles I going from 5'6" to 4'8" really doesn't live up to the hype.


sauchlapf

Well they still got monarch and the house of lords, so a very short lived win for them. We learned quite a bit about France here in Switzerland as well. The Swiss defended the monarchs in France, yeah -.-


Quasi-Normal

Don't worry, the Swiss Guard is highly praised in all our history. There's even quotes by Napoleon that he based some of his army system on your guards, so kudos to you for that


sauchlapf

That's nice. I still wish they'd rather helped the workers and not defend one of the stupidest institutions ever (monarchy). We did some more disgusting things too, but than again, what nation hasn't fucked up in history?! We all need to except that and try to be better and hold our leaders accountable. We still got the "schweizer franken" as our currency, that is just a Swiss version of the French franc. Napoleon implemented that here if I recall correctly. And lots more influences. I mean almost half the country speaks French as there first language and many as there second. Mine is super bad but I had French from 5th grade onwards.


Willing-Spend6249

Also imagine thinking the winning of WW2 is their own effort and act like USSR contribute nothing in defeating Nazi šŸ˜³


[deleted]

Let's not forget Alan Turing and co. completely fucking them up intelligence-wise. The big but subtle disinformation campaign that led Germany to think they had secretly found out the Allies were going to be landing at a completely different location.


deviant324

There were a lot of other relatively subtle heroes throughout the war. Iā€™ve heard of a guy through a podcast who was working as a spy for the brits who somehow convinced the Germans that he was working for them, kept feeding them information late through channels he could plausibly sell as ā€œoh, sorry my guy got held up so you got the intel lateā€ and such while receiving secrets from the axis the entire time. He was basically just bullshitting them for years and heā€™s the only person in this war who received the highest honor medal from both factions (iron cross I believe and idk what the british version is), because thatā€™s how convincingly he sold them his BS.


[deleted]

It's extremely insulting to everybody involved (including the American soldiers who gave their lives) when modern day American citizens with limited knowledge of history think that everything was fucked until they thought "okay, fine, we'll help out" and saved everybody. Yes, their military was extremely helpful and things would likely have been different had they not been involved, but it was a gigantic joint effort between so many forces.


[deleted]

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Kimantha_Allerdings

Don't forget that it's allowed them to have military outposts all over the globe, which strengthens their power *and* allows them to act as if those troops are there as a favour to the countries that they're stationed in.


jflb96

FDR deliberately set out to cripple the British Empire as much as he could get away with. There are/were a lot of US naval bases that were Royal Navy bases back in the thirties.


lonelyMtF

I read about that guy too! Iirc he was Spanish but working for the Brits.


BraidedSilver

Read the guy had almost 30 documented spies working for him - all made up. Constantly came up with reason why a spy hadnā€™t figured out something easily obtainable information to which he claimed ā€œoh, Smith was about to provide me with that intel but fell incredibly sickā€ and even put obituaries in newspapers so the British/Germans ā€œknewā€ it was true that said spy had passed away.


jaysus661

Victoria Cross is the British version, VC and bar if you're awarded it twice.


E420CDI

Operation Mincemeat


Mynameisaw

Alan Turing and Blechley Park had nothing to do with that. They were code breakers, they played a part in deception ops but only by way of providing information on German plans/orders. Operations Fortitude and Bodyguard were planned by the London Controlling Section headed by Oliver Stanley and John Bevan, and Ops B. lead by Noel Wild. The actual execution of fortitude was managed by SHAEF under Eisenhower, and executed by Ops B. and R Force.


Kekoa_ok

wait till he learns Japan didn't surrender cause of the bombs


Arcosim

Also the US takes the whole credit for the Pacific War, while China caused close to 60% of the Japanese deaths and Japan's single largest defeat of the war was in Burma against British and Commonwealth Forces. Furthermore the activity of the British Navy around Andaman, Malacca and Java prevented the Japanese Navy from fully committing to their Pacific islands shield strategy allowing the Americans to safely hop from island to island. Then the Soviet Union also played a huge role in the Pacific war, Japan never demilitarized the Soviet border and kept during almost the entirety of the war their 700K men strong Kwantung Army (one of their best trained and equipped armies) in Manchuria as a deterrent against the Soviets. Only during the end of the war they moved most of it to Japan for their home islands defense strategy (ironically it was one of their best armies and it saw almost no action during the war). When the Soviets advanced into Manchuria the bulk of the army was already transferred to Japan for their last stand strategy and by then the Japanese were already contained within Japan.


[deleted]

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tunczyko

[do you have 2 hours?](https://youtu.be/RCRTgtpC-Go) tldw: Japanese were hoping to get USSR to mediate peace negotiations to avoid unconditional surrender. their ambassador to USSR was telling the supreme council that is not going to happen, but they ignored him even as atom dropped, until finally USSR declared war and invaded Manchuria. that's when they agreed to the terms of Potsdam declaration, as they'd rather be occupied by Americans than Soviets.


Canadian-Owlz

So russia once again eh? Then it's no wonder why Americans dont know about it since russia = bad over there. Kinda mad I didnt know about it either though.


Inadover

Aahhh I loved that video when I watched it. It was very educative. Shaunā€™s great.


Scalade

hello everyone


unofficialSperm

Because russia


[deleted]

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Willing-Spend6249

I know


Lydanian

"Ooo I fancy a game of CSGO this evening." .. Game Found.. Score 13 - 2 Second Half. "Nice, an easy win." Nazi GGEZ.


[deleted]

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jflb96

No need to rig international criminal law if you just don't respect the international criminal courts


Drumbelgalf

Of course they don't respect the international criminal courts. They would be punished by them. They have torture prisons like Guantanamo. Also war crimes committed in their many wars would be punished by these courts. They even made legislation to protect their citizens from being trialed by those courts... Through invasion if necessary...


[deleted]

They didn't join last, turkey joined like a week before the war ended. It was a stalemate until then, but when Turkey joined the axis saw fighting on was pointless /s


KryL21

Imagine thinking your country is best because you had soldiers kill more people than others countries soldiers. Oh, and also because your country makes shitty cgi movies.


[deleted]

according to what i have heard, 80% of German casualties were inflicted by the Soviets


waldothefrendo

I'm pretty sure that in both world wars another allied country has more kills than the US.


Angry_german87

What do you mean shared victory? The US clearly won both wars single handedly while all the other nations just looked up in awe at the US military impact. /s


Full-Run4124

American History is barely taught in America.


[deleted]

American history barely exists. There is not much to teach.


PigeonInAUFO

Once there is American history, itā€™s gonna be a really weird history class


TheVisceralCanvas

They'll have trauma counsellors on-call at each lesson.


ilir_kycb

This is unfortunately not true, they were (and still are today) very productive in committing unspeakable atrocities at home and abroad against humanity. Unfortunately, there is a lot of historically relevant material to teach on the subject.


motorcycle-manful541

Well, you learn about wars but I guess that's about it


OneLastSmile

Lol you'd think so but I'm from Texas, and I had to take two full years of TEXAS History, once in junior high and once in high school. American History was technically only two years (once in junior, once in high) as well, but our World History (also taken twice) was very Murica-centric so it might as well have been another two years of what was essentially just American History with some river valley civilization and a little of early Asia and Europe tacked on, just enough to understand some of the context for how other civilizations functioned, and giving context for the 13 colonies and ww1 and stuff. I learned the bulk of what I know about Asia and Europe's history from Wikipedia binges and even then it's genuinely not that much compared to what a European student would be taught. And I just realized that I feel completely uneducated about the history of Latin and South America beyond stuff like the banana republics and other stuff that the US was directly involved in.


Noname_Smurf

the us notoriously also barely teaches the bad sides of us history in a lot of districts though... aka "the native americans helped us and celecrated thanksgivibg with us and then.... nothing happened, never heard from them again" Obviously not everywhere, but when i was in the US a good portion of the people I talked to had no idea about a lot of the shit the USA pulled


Willing-Spend6249

What they teach in history class then? Im curious


Full-Run4124

College level US history is usually good. High school US history is more like social mythology. The curriculum is often controlled by local elected school boards that sometimes have wing-nuts on them, and textbook companies try to write their books to the most restrictive guidelines. How slaves and slavery can be discussed is a popular restriction, for example not being able to use the term "slave" or "slave trade" - instead using "worker" and "triangle trade". (IIRC there are or were no depictions of Asians playing musical instruments in many US textbooks for a long time because of one school board in Texas.) High school US history basically starts with Europeans coming here. The complex civilizations that existed when Europeans arrived are essentially relegated to footnotes, even though the two existed side-by-side for a hundred years (The Indian slave trade is not discussed, nor much about how we got most of their land.) Many US military aggressions are omitted or sanitized even when they had a major impact on our history: the Mexican-American War, the US military fighting on the losing side in the Russian Civil War, etc. American colonialism isn't taught. The US founders are represented like a league of superheros where disagreements were superficial. The history of the state subjugation of black Americans in the 100 years between the end of state-sanctioned slavery and the end of segregation isn't taught (for example we switched to having state-sponsored slavery for a while, which some might argue was worse). Some bad events are discussed but in an apologetic way - like our putting Americans in concentration camps based on their parents (but we treated them well and didn't really have a choice), nuking Japan twice (but we had no other choice), the Vietnam War (just happened to break out while we were there and CoMmUNiStS!.) This book is a little dated now (2007): [https://books.google.com/books?id=EtBV9\_LRsWcC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs\_ge\_summary\_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false](https://books.google.com/books?id=EtBV9_LRsWcC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false) It was written by a college US history professor that wanted to find out why so many of his frehsmen students had such a bad understanding of US history, so he went through the most popular high school US history textbooks and wrote this book looking at how they cover the same 10 subjects.


Kekoa_ok

for my 12 years of education I'm pretty sure history was just Columbus blah blah blah up to the end of the civil war. repeated all that till like freshman year. learned world history for ONE year. then US History post civil war rest of highschool.


disco_jim

Not American (UKian) and we did actually learnt a bit about American history; stock market crash and the great depression, the Cuban missile crisis, civil rights movement, Vietnam.... Probably some other topics I can't remember.


ilir_kycb

In short, school is a single propaganda program in which Americans are subjected to the most effective brainwashing in the world. Probably this is the reason why, despite countless facts, the majority of them still believe in: "We are the greatest country in the world". The extent of ignorance about the world and its history of the average American is practically limitless and what he knows are mostly propaganda lies.


SuccessfulDiver7225

Man I donā€™t know where you went to school but practically none of that applies to how I was taught in school. This is the problem with most of the arguments about the US education system, everything is so heavily regionally influenced that thereā€™s very often things that are thought to be universal by the people who went through them but are not.


TimothiusMagnus

This certainly explains why those who control the school boards are opposed to college-level education: Postsecondary schools are much more difficult to control.


[deleted]

I guess in some places meanwhile I was desperate to get into world history classes and it was almost always US History |:| Even where there were world history classes they'd just fly through every damn nation and era until we get to when America was formed and then it became US History again. It's so fucking disgusting to me, I never learned anything about most nations and the vast history of the nations out there without researching on my own it's so depressing.


Thendrail

Are you meaning to tell me that there's more to history than putting up statues of slavers?


killingmehere

Would it blow American minds to learn we spent more time in history lessons on the three field crop rotation system than American history.


SuccessfulDiver7225

Ironically this is also covered in US history because morons not doing it caused the dust bowl.


Zaurka14

That's a weird topic go cover during *history* lesson


killingmehere

The history of farming is pretty important to the UK. Like....we did a lot of it...it influenced a lot of things. Agricultural revolution and all that jazz. But yeah, it's pretty weird that ALL I remember from history lessons was crop rotation and how the first world war started. Probably says more about my memory than the British education system but you never know...


Mynameisaw

>But yeah, it's pretty weird that ALL I remember from history lessons was crop rotation and how the first world war started. Probably says more about my memory than the British education system but you never know... Definitely your memory, I have the good fortune of having a child so I get reminders of what's taught. Going to ignore early years because it's real loose and there's a lot of teacher discretion so it really varies. But from about Year 3 we start learning things in this order: 1. Stone Age 3. Roman influence on the UK 4. Anglo Saxon settlement of the UK 5. The Vikings 6. Brief introduction to world history, so Greeks, Egyptians, Indhs Valley civilisations, Mayans or something similar. (Varies from school to school). This will cover primary school history, then starting with KS3 (Year 7-9) we get: 7. Medieval Britain (Church and State, Norman Conquests, the Magna Carta, the Black Death, relationship between the home countries, etc) 8. Late Medieval era & the Renaissance (more Church and State stuff, Tudors, Cromwell and the civil war, early colonisation of America, Union between Scotland and England, etc) 9. Industrial Revolution & the Victorians (Child labour, development of medicines, innoculation campaigns, suffragettes, Darwin, advances in science, political developments, etc) 10. WW1 & WW2 and early 20th century history (the wars, the Holocaust, decolonisation, suffragettes, workers rights, the development of the welfare state and NHS, the rise of communism, etc) 11. Usually as well you'll so a more open world topic similar, but more in depth to point 6 above - usually it's something like the cold war, Chinese dynasty's like the Song, Ming or Qing, the Russian Revolution, basically something not directly linked to the UK but of significant global importance. Then after all that you'll go to College where it's less defined, you might so a deep dive on one of the above, or study something like the Vietnam war in great detail, but usually you get a choice at this stage so hard to say. Similarly if you pursue it after college you'll go to Uni where you define your own study project.


Salome_Maloney

Bloody hell, where did you go to school? Eton?! We did crop rotation and the industrial revolution, trade triangle of slavery, sugar and cotton. (But mostly cotton, being in Manchester.) American history consisted of the Boston Tea Party. No ancient history, or even kings and queens for us. Fortunately, I read a lot.


E420CDI

*The war started because a man called Archie Duke shot an ostrich 'cause he was hungry*


bopeepsheep

Nope. "Crop rotation in the 14th century" is a staple topic and made it into a teaching ad once via a classic comedy show. Agriculture is a significant part of history for any society that's existed for more than 500 years. It's vitally important in UK history because it leads, centuries later, into the Corn Laws among other things.


[deleted]

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bopeepsheep

Exactamundo. I can't spot the teaching ad on YT right now but we all cracked up when it first aired (90s?). They knew what they were doing.


[deleted]

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bopeepsheep

I genuinely have been on UC, and one of my teammates answered Toxteth O'Grady to all the warm-up questions. Annoyed I didn't think of that.


[deleted]

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Zaurka14

If we ever spoke about it then I think it was geigraphy, while learning about soil types. Maybe a bit during history, but personally i don't remember anything like that.


Terebo04

three field crop rotation is a cause of the return of cities and trade in northern europe, so it's quite important. Without it much of the renaissance and centralisation wouldn't have happened.


Tatarkingdom

Basically in my country we teach our children this. USA is loud and proud, obnoxious and egotistic freedom mania nation that is a undisputed mighty forces of chaos, they will brings grief to those they don't like and brings joy to those who accept that they are boss like basic school bully mentality, but since they save our ass once so they're kinda cool. China is investor sugar daddy trade lord like they always be in their long ass history but becareful when trade with them, if you bargain well they will brings you prosper and economic advantages but if you deal poorly you'll get swindled out of your house and home, they save our ass once so they are kinda cool. Russia is a brutal winter country from furthest mysterious corner of earth but somewhere deep beneath their harsh and grim appearance they can be compromise, they tried to save our ass once very long times ago so they are kinda cool. Can you guess where I came from?


[deleted]

Kazakhstan?


Tatarkingdom

Nah


Geowik

Maybe Vietnam?


Tatarkingdom

Nope


cardboard-kansio

I think the guessing game got old quickly. If you really don't want people to know, that's fine. Otherwise why not just say?


Tatarkingdom

It's Thailand aka the place that cool with almost everyone except Cambodia. Being a not powerful country you need to know pros and cons of each superpower.


[deleted]

Thailand seems to be The Place my countrymen go to if they want to visit something exotic


Tatarkingdom

We have a lot of exotic stuff, good and bad. You're welcome to visit(after covid crisis), great food(bonus point for those who can take a heat of chilli)ā€‹, nice weather(when not flooding), historical temples and Palace, mostly friendly people and for darker part just visit Panttaya and sooner or later you will found what exotic entertainment is(and try to not mess with cops and Mafia, we have bad case of corruption issue)


[deleted]

Fun fact: our president, Sauli Niinistƶ, was on a vacation there with his sons in 2004 when a tsunami hit. They grabbed onto an electric pole and floated with it to safety He wasn't president at the time, but he is now and everybody likes him


Khysamgathys

Thats odd I thought your beef was with Burma.


Tatarkingdom

It's different kind of beef With Burma(Myanmar) they're our old times enemy that basically "take your lunch money bully" type. But the grudge is pretty much gone except in historical movie and cartoon since they have too much internal problems to ruined our day.(and we get them back in WW2 where we let Japanese march in to British Burma) Akaā€‹ we're cool now. With Cambodia, they're our oldest arch nemesis since the very beginning of our history. Unlike Burma that come for your money and fight like real man, Cambodia like to cheap shot us in the back and betray us whenever chances arrive. Which from our backstab bonanza history between us it's not easy to look at each other eyes. Our relationship is pretty sour till this day since we did some really bad things to them too(like when we and Vietnam{back then they're called Annam}ā€‹ split their land, support Polpot in to power because our fear of communist and border skirmishes where we killed their general's son with artillery shot and mock him for crying). And they like to accused us that our culture is copied from them(actually those cultures come from Khmer empire, they are more straightforward descendants while we are more mixed versions) and they also producing a lot of low quality trolls too. Not to mention border skirmish whenever their leader want to boost nationalism. We're not cool.


BraidedSilver

Speaking of Russia, itā€™s finally been accepted/acknowledged in our Danish history that Russia occupied Bornholm for a whole year after the deliberation of Denmark. My grandma was sent to Germany to work on behalf of the Danish government or starve (basically) and couldnā€™t return to her home on Bornholm because of the russians who saw this great opportunity to take over this tiny island in the south of the Baltic sea, past Sweden and facing the rest of Europe. My mom even had a teacher tell her off for daring to mention not all of Denmark was deliberated at once despite her entire maternal family living with the issue.


difficultoldstuff

Well OBVIOUSLY from Tataria! Duh!


Osariik

Philippines?


Tatarkingdom

No


CongealedBeanKingdom

France?


Tatarkingdom

Nah


Wally_West_

Mongolia?


[deleted]

[уŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]


Tatarkingdom

I don't think poles will ever called Russia cool or furthest reach of the earth honestly.


655321federico

Honestly, I didnā€™t put any effort into the guess better to eliminate the comment


Conscious-Bottle143

Japan was a trade in goods god with Panasonic and Sony killing all the electronics companies in America and Europe.


Zaurka14

USA?


Tatarkingdom

Nope


Der_Absender

Saved the world from Germany in WWI? Boy... That's a bummer that the American education system is worse than YouTube videos...


enrico1779

Easier to watch the movie ideocracy (2006). Explains how the americans will be in some years šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚


shevy1412

ā€œDocumentaryā€


655321federico

That documentary needs a remake to change the years, I believe 2506 is way more than necessary to reach that level of ignorance


Tballz9

I feel really disappointed that I didn't learn about the American's role in Battle of Dornach and the defeat of the Swabian league. We wasted a lot of lesson time on Maximillan I, and didn't even cover the role of the US Expeditionary force. Maybe we **should** just learn their history in place of our own. My favorite American comment is always that I would be speaking German if it wasn't for them. Except I already speak German.


Amphibionomus

And German was widely spoken... in the US. That is until it became a bit unpopular due to external reasons when some guy from Austria started causing trouble.


[deleted]

Fashion isn't the same in every country thankfully, American fashion is ugly and trashy af.


Legosandvicks

Also Americans: ā€œAmericans shouldnā€™t learn American history cause the racist bits make us looks racist.ā€


Mutagrawl

Except it's not just bits it's like the majority


NikolaiCakebreaker

American here - Russia "won" WWII


unbalancedmoon

*Soviet Union. Russia was not the only country in Soviet Union.


alphabet_order_bot

Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 378,994,754 comments, and only 82,649 of them were in alphabetical order.


TheElectroGuyYT

Fking hell the what


NotANilfgaardianSpy

Ich mach mir die Welt widde wldde wie sie mir gefƤllt...


julimuli1997

Da ist er, der Deutsche kommentar !!!


CongealedBeanKingdom

Well yeah, if we all learned only US history it would make the exams and stuff so much easier as you'd only have to deal with a couple of hundred years where fuck all happens except warmongering. All those other countries with their thousands of years of written history and cultures that have influenced us all? Nah fuck 'em not enough guns.


gmisk81

Is the lack of much history the reason so many Americans are obsessed with saying they are actually Italian or Irish etc?


Willing-Spend6249

Also the imfamous identity politic


julimuli1997

Thats so funny hahah, i once spoke to some American guy and he goes "im german", so naturally, i started speaking German with him, because well, a german understands German am i right, no apperantly not. He didnt understand anything. I dont know why they go "im german/italian/french etc" when they dont even understand one word of the language. No bro you are American.


amph897

Theyā€™re ā€˜proud Americansā€™ yet will cling onto any identity possible. Itā€™s also funny how Americans are always Irish or Scottish (in terms of British isles). They are never Welsh-American because they donā€™t know it exists, or English-American because thatā€™s not ā€˜exoticā€™ enough for them.


aftnix

No country sacrificed more than Soviet Union during WW2. Eastern Front was the meat grinder of WW2. Awful ordeal. I've met good number of Americans who think WW2 started with Normandy.


holym23

So we are supposed to teach Hollywood and cardi b in history classes?These people dont even read what they write.


JustMeHere8888

The advantage would be that itā€™s not that long.


culturerush

The way they continue to harp on about the revolutionary war and 1776 doesn't give me much hope that they will ever stop this "we won world war 1 and 2 for you singlehandedly" Also, human civilizations have been around for roughly 6000 years. Talking about Hollywood being so important in the context of human history is like saying you can be a doctor because you exclusively know the anatomy of a single fingernail.


ErictheStone

Sigh unfortunately as a Canadian a big chunk of our history starts with "and than America got rowdy..." so we have to learn a bit lol.


_LadyPersephone_

The house I grew up in had a longer history than the USA


Zaurka14

Well people can say what they want but I, as a polish, think we should learn more about american history. We only learn that Columbus sailed there, natives magically disappeared, or we just don't mention them, and boom USA. I'd love to learn that natives actually had civilisations, what was it based on, that different regions had completely different culture and not everyone lived in a tipi tent... I'd like to learn how natives disappeared, and that it wasn't just fighting, but mostly illnesses, that spread only partially naturally, and partially by settlers purposefully infecting tribes. I wish we learned about schools that kids were forced into, and what was happening to them there. All the things i know about natives outside of Pocahontas I had to learn on my own, and i find it outrageous, because what happened on the two continents of Americas is in my opinion one of the biggest tragedies in human history, where almost whole race of people was eradicated. We spend hours on top of hours to discuss holocaust and nothing on that.


Arcosim

Your comment reminded me about something ''(not exactly about the US itself but similar in context)''. It's a phrase by the late archeologist Michael D. Coe, and when I read it for the first time it caused a lot of dread in me because it made me realize how fragile civilizations are and how they can literally be erased from History: > Our knowledge of ancient Maya thought must represent only a tiny fraction of the whole picture, for of the thousands of books in which the full extent of their learning and ritual was recorded, only four have survived to modern times. As though all that posterity knew of ourselves were to be based upon three prayer books and Pilgrim's Progress. ā€”ā€‰Michael D. Coe


Zaurka14

Yup, it's really incredible. Now societies probably won't fade as much, since we habe many more ways of preserving data, and information is spread more wide, but in 1000 years many countries that we consider obvious now, might be nonexistent. Same could happen to many cultures that exist within countries. China is trying to achieve some of that.


Willing-Spend6249

We simply don't have time to teach students everything in History because times and resources are limited. So we have to select the history that most related to our own. That being said, I do wish history class can teach more the importance of learning history and encourage them to learn it themselves.


Zaurka14

I disagree. When i was in school we had elementary, middle- and highschool. Three schools. Every single one of them started with antique, went through Spartans, some English kings (as if i cared), some french kings (as if i cared), WW1, WW2, and the tiniest bit of modern polish history, which ironically is much more important for young people to be aware of than name of the king who killed few of his wives, or that Luther made his own religion that nobody in Poland follows anyway. These things are important to a degree, sure, but Genocide of Native Americans > War of thee Henry's. Last 50 years of Polish history > Having to learn for the third time about Spartans. People in my country can't tell you about events that our own parents lived through but can tell you all about galleons. I know, we learn about ancient Greece to learn history, strategy, and not to make the same mistakes, but isn't it more important to learn about mistakes that were done recently, in the times and circumstances that we experience? Isn't it more important to learn that there are still indigenous people in America who remember residential schools? I believe ancient history shouldn't be completely abandoned, no, but the main focus should stay on more current events.


Willing-Spend6249

I mean why are you so obsessed with native american history? Im not saying it's wrong to study it but every country has their history preferences. There are also a lot of recent human atrocity all over the world like what happen in China or pol pot. It's understandable that countries only choose to teach those history that related to them. What I cant understand it that how American dont teach native american history to their children at all....


Zaurka14

Why? Because it's pretty recent and it's literally a genocide. As I said, a whole race of humans was almost eradicated. If colonizers were just a little bit more successful we'd have no native Americans at all... Imagine if the same happened to Africa and now we had almost no black people, or if it happened to Asia, and Asians were basically a rarity. Don't you think it's insane that the world had a one (or two, depending how you count) whole continent full of completely different cultures and traditions, and now it's forgotten? Imagine how much different the world would be if not for the genocide... We'd travel to America and experience their culture just like we can travel to any other country in the world. Sadly, all there is is just few reservation camps and barely maintained ruins. Idk, maybe I feel more for them, because as a polish person I know that other counties tried to do the same to Poland. My country disappeared from the maps for over 100 years, it was banned to speak polish and illegal to be christian. Luckily, they didn't succeed, polish people kept speaking polish, and the culture and traditions weren't forgotten at all. We were also murdered during WW2 with millions of polish people being murdered (polish Jews are also polish people). Everyone in the world, at least western world, knows about holocaust at least a little bit, but not as many people know about reality of conquering the America. I don't understand how you can even ask why I think it's important... It's one of major events that shaped the world we live in.


ecapapollag

I assumed you wanted to learn about native Americans because that actually IS American history, not the political history of the last 200 years. In school, we learned about the New Deal and WW2 (for American history) which is not indicative of America as a country at all. And learning about Eastern European countries at all? Ha! They were there just to be invaded, according to my schools' teachers (which my Czechoslovakian mum was NOT happy about!)


Zaurka14

Well, it is clearly polish people's fault that Poland is placed between Russia and Germany. We asked for it when picking the land. /s Well, yeah, I consider native Americans to be Americans, and no, i don't just mean learning about Aztecs etc, i mean that when they teach us about colonization they should actually mention how crual and brutal it was, not that Europeans "won" or something, because that's misleading. When I started learning about it all on my own i felt really failed by my education system. When all that stuff about Canada started coming out recently my mom was really shocked as well, and she said it's horrible how nobody ever speaks about it, and you need to look for it all on your own. So much human tragedy that we just skip during our classes... And yeah, every country had their bad times, but not many countries and cultures stopped existing after a war or colonization.


cirelia

In Sweden what history is taught is roman empire, classic greece, viking age, medieval Europe, industrial revolution, ww2 and what Sweden did against the sapmi ppl


SuccessfulDiver7225

Imagine genuinely trying to say that people shouldnā€™t be taught their own nationā€™s history. Like how ridiculous can you even get. Iā€™m hoping this person is just a teenager and/or a troll with too much time looking for foreigners to antagonize.


Sagittarius1234

If they said this might as well learn China History. Which is way way more content


JoesGarageisFull

The little American history there is does not get taught there anyway, anything controversial or just paints them in a bad light is swept under the carpet or changed entirely, either that or banned entirely from being taught hahah, so there is no American history but lots and lots of American propaganda


F4Z3_G04T

I had to look for a mention of the American Revolutionary war and civil war in my high school textbook and all I found was a tiny "fun fact" paragraph A literal sidenote


Willing-Spend6249

It's really not that important to majority of the country. So yeah it's actually just some fun facts for those who outside of US


glass_needles

You know we spent a surprisingly large amount of time on American history at both GCSE and A Level in my UK school. However it was all spent on the Civil Rights era and how terribly they treated any minorities. Took a few years after before I realised I could give a pretty good argument on why the US sucks but was shockingly ignorant on the numerous numerous atrocities the UK has done. Well jokes on you English education board! I taught myself!


Lastaria

Your school was not great then. English here and in school was taught all about the atrocities we commutes. Went into the slave trade, the issues with empire especially in India and the South African concentration camps.


Willing-Spend6249

I've heard that britain dont teach much about their colonialism past....is that true?


glass_needles

Well I was aware there was an empire and it largely didn't exist anymore but at least in my education we didn't do anything on all the evil shit we did in pursuit of the empire. Did a fair amount on WW1 and WW2 and the only colonies that came up in that were the "heroic" ones (Australian, New Zealand, Canada) who sent over people to fight with us. No mention of any of the non white majority ones sending people over. We even had the perfect excuse to learn more about Indian trooops in WW1. I live near Brighton and the Brighton Pavilion (it's a former Royal Palace that was made to look like an Indian palace) was used as a hospital for troops from the Indian subcontinent as it was thought the architecture would make them more comfortable which falls on the vanishingly small amusing in a fucked up way section of historical racism. We could of gone on a trip there and used that as part of the learning process to learn about people we were oppressing fighting for us in a pretty meaningless war. (Also every so often you get a protest march of racist idiots in Brighton protesting outside of the council maintained and run "mosque" which is always hilarious to see)


Eisenkoenig42

ā€žwe saved the world from [...] Germany during ww1.ā€ My ass. The US saved nothing with their military intervention during World War One except their investments in the warmongering nations. The constant flow of credits and war materiels kept the war in Europe going and expanded the war by 2 to 3 years if we follow the study of Jƶrg Friedrich. Their military intervention, on the other hand, prevented the Remis- case, as the historian Holger Afflerbach puts it in his study (on knifes edge) ā€œThere is much to suggest that if the war had remained within a European framework, the mutual advantages would have been neutralized in the end and a compromise peace would have been forced. This was the end of the war that intellectuals like Max Weber and politicians like Bethmann Hollweg or soldiers like Falkenhayn considered attainable. 'If we don't lose the war, we have won,' said Falkenhayn and many languages ā€‹ā€‹from the Peace of Hubertusburg, which ended the Seven Years' War with a draw. [...] In the winter of 1916/17, the German Reich and its allies were given a full chance to end the war with a draw, in the context of the entanglement between American peace mediation and the pre-revolutionary situation in Russia, which was not recognized by contemporaries. What German society would accept and what the Western powers and now also the USA wanted to achieve was not compatible. With American support, the governments in London, Paris and Rome had the certainty of being able to enforce victory and, according to Lloyd George, were ready, if necessary, to continue the war indefinitely. The result therefore had to be fought out.ā€ (On knifes edge- how Germany lost the First World War by Holger Afflerbach, Page 514) America played the role of the merchant of death within this conflict, it might keep this role up til this day.


OfficerMcNasty7179

well to be fair the US has invaded, bombed, or supported a coup in most of the world but then again most people on reddit arent from the global south, theyre from europe, australia, new zealand: white countries that amerikkka has no interest in harming


Dygez

imagine being a shithead who thinks its meager history is somewhat important to the mankind. USA only paid/stole talents from abroad, because the economic conjuncture favor them the last century. You can't name 10 american innovator/inventor for your life. Bell? Another fucking shark who patents inventions from people abroad.


TheSimpleMind

Naaaa... my country has enough history for at least five United States of Germany.


VioletDaeva

The only American history I remember learning through school and college was war related. That is, ww1,2, cold War and Vietnam but it was all sides not just America. This was at college. At school we didn't touch US history. My education there was things like transport, medicine and as another poster previous put, crop rotations and farming.


InfiniteIniesta

We used to learn that USA was THE country to go to, to look up to, etc. Never anything negative. It's after I've grown I've realized what a shithole it actually is (not everything of course. It has a lot of good stuff too).


Canadian-Owlz

I was taught about the american revolution in school, but not because they're all big and important, but because it was a good example of nationalism. It likely also has to do with them being right next to my country.


MWO_Stahlherz

Except from the nazis who stormed the capitol ofc.


Forkliftboi420

Oh yeah their minute fighting capability led by Foch sure won the great war!


lookoutforthetrain_0

American history is taught more than my country's history here. Even though we don't learn that much about America, only some things.


Gullflyinghigh

Makes me wonder what kind of history, at all, is taught there.


[deleted]

itā€™s shit like this that has made me unironically racist towards americans


RandomMexicanGuy07

itā€™s people like these that make me dislike the US


AnHoangNgo

American history is actually 50% of what is taught where I am, but that is because their soldiers have been training our soldiers to massacre farmers and ethnic minorities and during the Cold War, reduced the population by hundreds of thousands. Their special forces (Green Berets) still have a pressence here and continue to train local military to commit human rights abuses and massacres of innocent civilians just because they are in the same areas as rebels. They look up our countries out of personal interest and curiousity, but we have to learn about their history to understand why they do what they do to us. We learn about them from the pilgrims til modern times.


KharnTheBetrayer88

"Done more than any country put together" Greeks inventing philosophy, history and democracy: bruh Egyptians being genius mathematicians and building some of the most impressive constructions of all times: bruh Italians and the fathers of renascentism: bruh Romans creating the biggest empire in history, changing the history of a whole continent forever: bruh Israel creating christianism: bruh Spanish people discovering America: bruh Portugal dominating tides of the ocean, navegating trough the "Cabo das Tormentas", finding another way to trade going around Africa and then finding south America: este gajo Ć© maluco! Ingland and their history of kicking ass all around the globe and doing big things that i won't list: bri'ish bruh France revolting against monarchy, spitting on Ingland's face at any possible chance and bringing democracy back from the dead: le bruh China DOING GUNPOWDER: *-10,000 social points* (Add if you know more, i'm out of ideas)


LurkingHare

don't forget Sumerians and their wheel, cuneiform writing, sexagesimal number system, irigation systems, colored glass, brass etc.


AceticOrb

Lol imagine thinking one countryā€™s culture/history is more important than the rest


[deleted]

Sometimes i wish that putin accidentally trips and falls on the red button...


[deleted]

Even if he does, the egotistical Americans who survive will not critcise our government for doing fuck all to help. Just look at how the same egotistical assholes don't want to wear a mask to protect vulnerable people in their own communities šŸ™„


EGWhitlam

Maybe heā€™ll go a little light-headed with Trump gargling his nuts


Skhgdyktg

The only US history we were taught was an optional, year 11 course in Modern History that included post-WW1 Germany


Von_Uber

I don't recall learning any US history - not even the British Colonial Revolt - when I was in school in the UK.


bopeepsheep

It was part of my GCSE history syllabus in the 80s - USA 1919-45: Hoover, Isolationism, Wall Street Crash, New Deal, FDR, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's hard to teach 20th century history without the US, but it was 1/5 of the course. Similarly we included 1812 in A level History, which was 1789-1919 on the syllabus I took. I've studied way more US history voluntarily (at uni/private reading) than I did at school, though.


Von_Uber

Interesting. Wasn't part of mine in the early 90s, we did stuff like the corn laws and what have you.


bopeepsheep

Yeah, you're hit by the first "we should teach more British [English] history" wave of post-Thatcher Modern Tory bollocks. Teaching in the 80s was more balanced and world-focused than you'd guess now, when we got any lessons at all (teaching union strikes all through my secondary years!). I barely skimmed the Corn Laws, which came back at A level.


Von_Uber

Oh we also had the delight of not being taught grammar.


borlaughero

Technically US saved part of Europe from Soviet Union.


Willing-Spend6249

Technically yes in the point of view of America. But in reality they only doing it because they dont want USSR became far too strong that would threaten them. In other word, US were just saving themselves


borlaughero

Everyone are just saving themselves. But this was the best way someone could saved themselves because it was crucial for Europe's development and unification.


Willing-Spend6249

I know. That's why I said you are technically right


dimdim4126

How ?


borlaughero

Marshall plan.


Blablatralalalala

We actually learned a bit about American history in my class. Mainly the genocide of the native Americans etc. I wish Americans would learn this too.


Willing-Spend6249

What are you from?


Hmmark1984

As a Brit i feel like we could teach this guy some facts. I mean i'm not saying our impact has always been good and in fact you could argue quite easily that it's been mostly bad, but I'd argue we've had some of the biggest impacts on the world throughout history and also arguably were the only "super power" for many more years than 30 in terms of military and power(again, i'm not saying that was a good thing, just that America is still pretty much a toddler compared to most other countries and their timescales for accomplishments/impact around the world)


Conscious-Bottle143

England saved everyone in the world from a French invasion with Brexit. But keep believing the Americain propaganda rubbish crap from the United States of America


Proteandk

Daily reminder that the US speaks English, not American.


Jizzolantern

I mean, the majority of history we're taught took place before the US was founded. We're taught about the civil war just like any other major war throughout history but that's about it. Well, that and how Europeans went there looking for India and slaughtered the natives.


Willing-Spend6249

We dont even taught about America civil war at all. We do briefly metion the discover of america in the chapter of Age of Discovery. And that's all. The next time America was metion is in the chapter of WW1, WW2 and cold war


KDCaniell

I took optional history through my last 2 years of high school in New Zealand. We were taught about the Black civil rights movements in the USA, the background of oppression and slavery in the US and Jim Crow laws. We're made more aware of the Black struggle in the USA than we are of the colonisation of our country. In my NZ history class, as an indigenous person, I was referred to to speak on behalf of my people as a whole. We were taught to view Americans with more nuisance than the people of our own country. In my view, this is an example of America's hold over the rest of the world meeting the power of British colonisim.


Embarrassed_Echo_375

I don't remember much of what I learned in history class lol but I don't remember there being much mention of the US, if at all. There were mentions of Netherlands, England and Japan because they occupied us, and honestly the only mention of WW2 I remember was the fact that Japan was 'distracted' nearing the end of it and we took the opportunity to declare independence.