George ‘Johnny’ Johnson was a bomb aimer on the historic Dam Buster raid in WWII. I’m watching a documentary now, and I wanted to quote him. The narrator sets it up.
Narrator: ‘Johnny’, now 86 years old, has always been proud to be part of the Dam Busters legend. In recent years, some historians have debunked the Dams raid as a pointless sacrifice. ‘Johnny’ has no time for their views.
Not quite as visceral as Edwin Aldrin actually hauling off and smiting someone, but nicely articulate.
Yeah, those “retrospective historians” are so shitty. Why don’t they tell us about history that hasn’t happened yet, instead of just writing about shit from the past?
Of course he meant ‘revisionist historians’. But I wasn’t going to change his words.
So, according to this, no historian can express a contrary opinion on any event they were not a personal participant in? Any event that passes beyond living memory is simply out of bounds to any re-interpretation whatsoever?
My father is at least honest enough to admit that, as a front-line participant in WWII, he was in about the worst position to understand the big picture. They were told NOTHING. Australia had a national election during the war, and they weren’t even told which party their candidates belonged to - they just had the name to go on. They only found out even the public picture of the overall progress of the war from newspapers they came across every now and then, or during home leave.
Odd as it may seem to this dude, but new data does actually emerge well after a historical event. Is he saying that all the stuff about WWII that came out of East Germany and Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall ought to be out of bounds to people who were not over 70 at the time?
Almost equally stupid. Revision is what historians do; it’s the raison d’etre of a good historian, in fact. They don’t do it just for the sake of it, but because new evidence comes to light, or because old evidence can be interpreted in new ways by different people.
I understand why the old codger doesn’t want his defining moment criticized, but historians exist precisely because we can’t always rely on the people who have a personal interest in an event to be the most reliable sources regarding its significance. As Askance correctly notes, the guy’s whole position implies that the study of history as we understand it is completely pointless, and that we can learn nothing from looking back on an event with the benefit of subsequent experience and of having access to more information than the contemporary participants had.
There are people who say that Aldrin didn’t walk on the Moon. If he asked, ‘Were you there? Because I was.’ would that be invalid?
It’s true that often people closest to an event do not see it the best. On the other hand, there are people who say things didn’t happen, or happen as they happened, when the participants have first-hand knowledge that they did.
The reason I posted this thread was not to bash historians. It’s just that his comments reminded me of Aldrin’s ‘rebuttal’ to a nay-sayer.
Articulate but stupid. I am sorry, but the fact that suggestion that the dambusters raid might have been a bad idea hurts Mr. Johnson’s feelings is not evidence that it actually was a good idea, or a reason why such issues should not be discussed. He needs to get a grip. It is not like it is his own courage or competence, or that of his comrades in arms, that is being called into question. Everybody knows that the Charge of the Light Brigade was futile, but the brigade’s actions are still a byword for courage and military discipline.
Johnson is displaying the same sort of dangerous, anti-democratic attitude that we saw during the Iraq war: the notion that nobody should never question whether we should go to war, or remain at war, because that is being disloyal to “our brave troops.”
The case of Buzz Aldrin is totally different. First of all, Buzz’s personal honesty and courage were being called into question in that case. If he did not go to the moon, he did not do anything brave, and he has been lying about it for years. Secondly, the questioning arose not from serious historical investigation, but from an idiotic conspiracy theory. Buzz did right. Johnson should quit whining.
Really? I’m having a hard time seeing the equivalence. If people are going around and telling this guy he didn’t really bust the dams or whatever, then yeah, that’s a silly and mockworthy thing. But if someone is objectively analyzing a situation from a distance and comes to a conclusion that offends you as a participant in that situation, well, that’s a different matter.
If “they” are any good as a historian, then the answer to his second question is “Yes”.
In fact, the truth is that any reasonably well-informed historian is going to know more about the conditions at the time than Mr Johnson did when he was ordered to go on his raid. He wasn’t privy to all the information his army and government had, and he certainly didn’t know what the Germans knew.
Agreed, Mr. Johnson is making the mistake of thinking that to question the strategic usefulness of the operation is to question the courage or heroism or accomplishment of those who undertook it. That is in no way the case.
There’s a valid point to be made that the military commanders who ordered the raid had less information available to them than do modern historians and that any criticism of them should be made only in that light, but that isn’t the point he’s making.
Your father is rare, really. Most men’s experience of combat tends to make them feel that they, and those they served close to, have earned the ultimate authority. And in a sense, honoring their sacrifice demands that we grant them that authority. But there has to be some way to reconcile the honest historical record with what they went through, and honor both. However, it often ends with the veterans telling the historians to go to hell, because they did not make the sacrifice to serve.
Sort of.
It demands that we respect their experiences, and their accounts of their experiences. It might even demand that we grant them authority regarding the specific incidents in which they were involved. But it does not mean granting them authority over our broader historical understanding of events.
If there’s one thing historians learn in their work, it’s that people are often unreliable witnesses, even in cases where they are being completely honest and where there is no intent to deceive. Human memory is a fallible thing, and this is further complicated by the fact that people involved in large historical movements and events often had only a very circumscribed view of the period in question. In many cases, they simply didn’t know what we know now, particularly about events and developments that occurred outside their own limited experiences.
What we need to do, in cases like the one mentioned by the OP, is make clear that developing a fuller understanding of the overall historical picture is in no way inconsistent with appreciating the courage and the sacrifices of the individuals in question. And if they insist that any attempt to revise our understanding of events is invalid because we weren’t there, we need to insist that they are mistaken, and that history is more complex than that.
A fine precise response, Mr. njtt.