# Historical myths? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 8, 2006, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940 "2006-06-08T19:33:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2006, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/121 "2006-07-22T23:58:55Z")
Civil War Myths: Northern Myth: “The war was fought to free the slaves”. Southern Myth: “The war was fought over states rights”. You might almost say, each side was really fighting _against_ what it’s claimed the other side was fighting for. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/122 "2006-07-23T01:17:58Z")
> [@The Long Road](#): > > [link](http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=22650) > Allied area and strategic bombing forced Nazi Germany to commit enormous quantities of anti-aircraft guns and ammunition to homeland defense. A large number of 88mm cannons (some put the figure at 10,000) that otherwise would have been used as anti-tank guns on both the Eastern and Western Fronts, had to guard against Allied bombers. If Germany had been assured that her cities were off limits to Allied bombers, perhaps as many as 7,000 of the 10,000 88mm cannons committed to anti-aircraft defense would have been deployed by the Wehrmacht as anti-tank weapons, a sobering thought when one realizes the toll such firepower could have inflicted on American, British and Russian tank-crews. Germany’s defense of her airspace and cities required 900,000 personnel to man the anti-aircraft “flak guns” (Fliegerabwehrkanonen) which numbered 14,250 heavy guns ranging from the superb 88mm to 12.8 cm, 34,750 light to medium guns ranging from 20mm to 3.7 cm, 1,500 barrage balloons, and 6,750 searchlights. > [link](http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/88_mm_gun) > This led to complaints that, due to the apparent ineffectiveness of anti-aircraft defences as a whole, that the guns should be stripped from the air defense units and handed over to the army for anti-tank duties. However this politically unpopular move was never made. > Or along your lines of debate: whatever :rolleyes: After a very long delay I think I’d better come up with a more complete description than :rolleyes: . Your statement that antiaricraft guns that were shooting at bombers in the west couldn’t be shooting at Russians in the east is true. However it looks to me like a massive case of “presenting a target.” Now that’s fine as a tactic in order to force the enemy to reveal his positions and strength but I have great reservations about it as a good, long range plan. ---
**Author:** ![Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8c91f0/32.png) [@Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Throatwarbler_Mangrove)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/123 "2006-07-23T18:43:53Z")
In other words, if your goal is to tie up German _anti aircraft_ guns, flying massive numbers of bombers over them in an attempt to draw their fire isn’t really the best way to go about it. It may have had the effect but it wasn’t the goal. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/125 "2006-07-23T21:04:42Z")
> [@Filliam H. Muffman](#): > > But if you want to talk about killing entire herds just for the tongues and what not, their effect was nothing compared to that of Europeans. The buffalo herds were doing just fine until white people showed up. By definition, the native Americans could not decimate the bison herds they were dependent on without starving themselves. So they lived in a rough equilibrium. The white settlers could drive the bison to near extinction because they didn’t need the bison to survive. They could hunt bison for the hides which could be exported, and they shot bison both to clear range for cattle and expressly to deprive the natives of game. Yes the whites nearly destoyed the bison and the native Americans didn’t, but it wasn’t a case of native=good, white=evil; it was that the whites had an economic incentive to see the Great Plains covered with cattle instead of bison, and set out to make it so. ---
**Author:** ![Valteron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f17d59/32.png) [@Valteron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valteron)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/127 "2006-07-23T21:55:42Z")
One of the biggest myths in history, and certainly in American History, is repeated every November in the US. Namely, that the Pilgrims came to America seeking religious freedom. It is somehow suggested that theywere proponents of religious freedom and toleration. If you had proposed religious freedom and tolerance of all faiths to the Puritans who setlled Plymouth in 1620, they probably would have flogged you, or cut off your ears off, or at the very least banished you. However, there WERE early Americans who made revolutionary breakthroughs in the concept of religious freedom: The people of Rhode Island. The “founder” of R.I. is Roger Williams, a religious leader who fled Massacchsetts in 1636 to escape arrest for his religious views. Rhode Island became such a hotbed of exiles who had fled the intolerant Bay State that it was sneeringly referred to by the Puritans as “New England’s Latrine”. Roger Williams even declared that Jews and “Turks” (he probably meant Muslims) were welcome in his colony. As early as 1647, representatives of the towns of Rhode Island declared that “all men may walk as their consciences persuade them. . . . .” If you want to celebrate heroic advocates of freedom in early America, celebrate Rhode Island, not the Pilgrom Fathers, who were a bunch of self-righteous bigots! ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/128 "2006-07-24T00:30:33Z")
> [@Valteron](#): > > the Puritans who setlled Plymouth in 1620 [Nitpic on quasi-myth] The Pilgrims were not Puritans. They were separatists who disliked the Puritans nearly as much as the High Church. It was not until after Bradford had died in 1657 that the Puritans (who settled Boston and other towns to the North of Plymouth) were able to cajole/coerce/co-opt the settlement at Plymouth to go along (mostly) with Puritanism. ---
**Author:** ![2sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/e47774/32.png) [@2sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2sense)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/129 "2006-07-25T07:06:12Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > On the other hand, the declarations of secession were very much focussed on the issue of slavery, even though there was no general call in the North to end it. > There was no immediate threat to slavery. There were no proposals to end it. The only issue was whether the South would be able to extend slavery into new states and so keep their control of Congress, but even that would have taken decades to bring to a head if they had not forced the issue using secession. > > As to other issues, the first talk of secession occurred when New England discussed the possibility of opting out of “Mr. Madison’s War” and the South united to condemn the “treasonous” Hartford Convention. Later fights over the Federal bank and similar issues were very much driven by the economies of the various regions and whether or not they were tied directly to slavery. > The war was certainly not fought to end slavery, but it was definitely begun to preserve slavery (from a distant threat that had no immediacy). I would argue that the loss of control of the federal government by pro-slavery forces was a serious setback if not quite an immediate threat. Federal support of slavery was vital to maintaining the institution. Republican Administrations could shackle the “peculiar institution” in a myriad of ways including nominating judges who wouldn’t automatically take a pro-slavery position, seriously attempting to enforce the embargo on importing slaves, and, perhaps most importantly, end the ban on abolitionist literature in the Post Office. Opposition to abolitionism depended to a large degree on maintaining the facade of them as a lunatic fringe. People exposed to genuine abolitionist rhetoric were often surprised at how reasonable it actually was. Once the Republicans won the White House the writing was on the wall. Presidents could be elected with no support from the slave states and that spelled doom for plantation society sooner rather than later. The Southern decision to secede right after the election was perfectly understandable. They were going to lose their way of life unless they left the Union and the longer they waited the greater the disparity in the white population. Each year the North would have ever more potential soldiers than the South. It should also be noted that talk of secession by prominent men in the North certainly predates the Hartford Convention. In [A Wilderness So Immense](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375707611/sr=1-2/qid=1153810142/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-8774320-5059250?ie=UTF8&s=books) historian Jon Kukla argues, unconvincingly IMO, that the impulse can be traced back as far as the machinations surrounding the Jay-Gardoqui negotiations in 1786. He does provide solid evidence that major Federalist leaders ( Timothy Pickering, Roger Griswold, and William Plummer being the most prominent ) considered dismembering the Union over the Louisiana Purchase. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/130 "2006-07-25T16:28:01Z")
> [@2sense](#): > > Presidents could be elected with no support from the slave states and that spelled doom for plantation society sooner rather than later. The Southern decision to secede right after the election was perfectly understandable. Well, Republican Presidents could certainly be elected without support from the South on those occasions when the Southern Democrats deliberately forced the issue, sundering their own party for the express purpose of seeking a pretext to secede and generating two more rump parties that would further divide the electoral vote. There is no particular reason to assume that Lincoln would have won if the slave states had not engaged in a pre-secession at Charleston in April. While Lincoln had a clear majority of electoral votes, with 180, he did it with 40% of the popular vote. Some percentage of that vote was very clearly a rejection of the Democrats (Southern and Northern and their Constiutuional Union splinter) because they had divided themselves over the issue of Douglas. One cannot simply say that since Lincoln happened to get an electoral majority in a four-way race that he would have also gotten that same majority in a typical two-way race. He only carried Illinois (where Douglas was also the home state candidate) with 50.7% and only carried New York 362,646 to 312,510. With a switch of only those two states, the Democrtats win. (Other scenarios are also possible.) It is hardly a foregone conclusion that Lincoln would have won in a two-party race without the reaction against the divided (and loud) Southern Democrats and the (apparently weak) Northern Democrats. In that context, it is clearly “understandable” that the South felt it needed to secede, but it was their “understanding” that caused it to happen as the specific issue that led to secession and war. ---
**Author:** ![Governor\_Quinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@Governor\_Quinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Governor_Quinn)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/131 "2006-07-25T19:57:10Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Some percentage of that vote was very clearly a rejection of the Democrats (Southern and Northern and their Constiutuional Union splinter) [hijack] The Constitutional Union Party, for the most part, was a party made up of former Whigs and Know-Nothings, not Democrats. [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![2sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/e47774/32.png) [@2sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2sense)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/132 "2006-07-26T05:58:28Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Well, Republican Presidents could certainly be elected without support from the South on those occasions when the Southern Democrats deliberately forced the issue, sundering their own party for the express purpose of seeking a pretext to secede and generating two more rump parties that would further divide the electoral vote. There is no particular reason to assume that Lincoln would have won if the slave states had not engaged in a pre-secession at Charleston in April. While Lincoln had a clear majority of electoral votes, with 180, he did it with 40% of the popular vote. Some percentage of that vote was very clearly a rejection of the Democrats (Southern and Northern and their Constiutuional Union splinter) because they had divided themselves over the issue of Douglas. One cannot simply say that since Lincoln happened to get an electoral majority in a four-way race that he would have also gotten that same majority in a typical two-way race. He only carried Illinois (where Douglas was also the home state candidate) with 50.7% and only carried New York 362,646 to 312,510. With a switch of only those two states, the Democrtats win. (Other scenarios are also possible.) It is hardly a foregone conclusion that Lincoln would have won in a two-party race without the reaction against the divided (and loud) Southern Democrats and the (apparently weak) Northern Democrats. > > In that context, it is clearly “understandable” that the South felt it needed to secede, but it was their “understanding” that caused it to happen as the specific issue that led to secession and war. I’m not arguing that Lincoln would have won in a two-way race. On the contrary, I would say that if there were a popular vote with a runoff then Lincoln would have fallen victim to the ABL ( Anyone But Lincoln ) vote. Lincoln’s presidency was due to the Electoral College and that is the thrust of my argument. The nonslave states had enough electoral votes to outvote the slave states even if they weren’t unanimous. And their electoral might was growing. Thus an openly or tacitly antislavery party was viable. The Republican victory in 1860 didn’t fall like a lightning strike. The facts were there to see and the more militant Southrons were ready to act. I would say instead that the election galvanized the footdraggers by demonstating that not only could it happen but it had happened. ## I wouldn’t agree that the sundering of the Democratic Party was mainly deliberate. Natural divisions had been festering that the Party was finding more and more difficult to smooth over. So yes, I think the reality that they could no longer count on controlling the Executive led plantation society to the perfectly rational understanding that they must leave the Union if they were going to maintain the _status quo_. Just my 2sense ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/133 "2006-07-26T06:03:38Z")
> [@2sense](#): > > I wouldn’t agree that the sundering of the Democratic Party was mainly deliberate. I think you might enjoy reading some of the accounts of the Charleston Convention. Catton’s The Coming Fury, of course, but there are others, as well. ---
**Author:** ![2sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/e47774/32.png) [@2sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2sense)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/134 "2006-07-26T16:09:51Z")
## Doubtless I would though given the number of unread books on my shelf now it might be some time before I could get to it. What I would really like is a solid overview of the entire 1860 election. To be clear, I wasn’t contesting your assertion that Southern Democrats deliberately drew a line which they knew their Northern brethren could not avoid crossing. Instead I meant that such actions were the result of the growing tensions within the Democratic Party in the context of the continuing loss of the political power of the slave states. Just my 2sense ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/135 "2006-07-26T16:20:33Z")
> [@2sense](#): > > I’m not arguing that Lincoln would have won in a two-way race. Although, in fact, he would have. Much as I hate to cite [wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_election#Results), I think it’s valid here, because the article includes tables showing the popular vote breakdown by state. [Dave Leip](http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/index.html) for confirmation. Anyway: > [@](#): > > Although the three-way split of the non-Republican vote confuses the issue, the vote split was irrelevant to Lincoln’s victory, because he would have won an outright majority in the electoral vote, 169-134, even had the 60% of voters who supported other candidates united behind a single candidate. Except for California, Oregon, and New Jersey, Lincoln won a popular majority in every state that cast its electoral votes for him. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2006, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/136 "2006-07-26T16:44:13Z")
> [@saoirse](#): > > Although, in fact, he would have. Only if we simply take the number of votes that were given to the other parties and combine them. This ignores the dynamics of the people who voted Republican who might have voted Democrat if they were not angered by the antics of the Democrats. It would have taken fewer than 27,000 vote changes in New York (where the Democrats had a very effective machine and a strong base) and even fewer than that in Illinois to swing the election to the Democrats. During the summer of 1860, there were a lot of people who started out opposing Lincoln and changed their minds as a growing perception of the secessionist movement angered traditional Democrat voters in the North. (And in 1860, the Republicans were the interlopers, only six years old, against the established organization of the Democrats.) I do not claim that it was a foregone conclusion that a united Democrat Party would have beaten Lincoln. I do say that had the disruption of the Democrats not taken place, it is not realistic to simply assign all the votes _as they were cast_ to two parties in November. ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2006, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/137 "2006-07-27T04:25:54Z")
That gets into some what-ifs that are beyond the power of my reckoning. The salient point, I think, is Lincoln had a majority in 15 states, with 169 of 303 electoral votes, and had 40% of the total popular vote. Even if the electoral votes were distributed according to population\*, Lincoln had a majority for 139 of 204 electoral votes. This has a lot to do with why the South seceded. \*No, they’re not. You were wrong then, weren’t you? Wyoming has 164,594 people per electoral vote. New York has 612,143 people per electoral vote. In other words, Each electoral vote that New York has represents more people than live in Wyoming (493,782). ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2006, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/138 "2006-07-27T05:18:54Z")
> [@saoirse](#): > > \*No, they’re not. You were wrong then, weren’t you? Wyoming has 164,594 people per electoral vote. New York has 612,143 people per electoral vote. In other words, Each electoral vote that New York has represents more people than live in Wyoming (493,782). ??? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2006, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/139 "2006-07-27T14:22:25Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > You’ve hit upon another big myth, in the process of denouncing another. > > The legend of the T34 started upon its initial deployment in 1941. At the time, it was quite a capable tank - the overall best on the battlefield by most standards. But the technology and development of tanks advanced amazingly quickly through the war, and by 1943, it was just another target. It was no longer clearly superior to its opposition. Between those periods, Germany developed a lot of weapons specifically designed to counter the T-34, and hence it became quite dangerous to crew one. > > The Sherman was developed around the same time, but a little later. However, it did not see deployment until 1943 (it may have seen limited deployment in 1942), and it didn’t get deployed in the European theater until mid-1944. So, while it was superior to German tanks of 1941, by the time it became deployed, like the T-34, it faced an arsenal of weapons designed to defeat it, and so, while the T-34 had a short period of dominance, the Sherman never did. As a result, the popular perception is that Shermans are regarded as crappy, while T-34s are superb. The “Ronson” part, by the way, was corrected in later models. > > The reality is that the Sherman was well suited, even in 1944, for its role. This is something I wrote in another thread long ago: > > "The Sherman gets a terrible reputation in the common perception of history because it’s being judged by arbitrary standards. The Sherman was an excellent tank - especially considering it’s development was mostly in 1941. Because it couldn’t go toe to toe with heavy tanks designed to be tank destroyers, it was maligned unfairly. > > The Sherman was far more likely to face antitank guns and infantry than any German tank, and it was excellent at dispatching of soft targets. Furthermore, when it did meet a German tank, it was far more likely to be a stug 3 or pz 4 than a tiger or panther, either of which the Sherman was quite capable of killing. > > Because people just sort of skim over history, or perhaps wargame fantasy scenarios with lots of German heavy tanks, people tend to think the Sherman was a bad tank. But it was great. It was extremely reliable - far more than the T34. If you ever look closely at pictures of T34s, they often have extra transmissions strapped to the hull because they were so prone to breaking them, for example. The high velocity 76mm gun later mounted to shermans was more effective than the T34/85s 85mm gun, and even the earlier 75mm gun was quite capable. > > Shermans had good and well sloped armor for the times it was deisgned in, and later modifications gave it very formidable armor even by '45, carried great armament for it’s role - 3 MGs, quite a bit of ammo, and a very capable 75mm gun, and later an even more capable 76mm gun. It could drive hundreds of miles in mad dashes against France - a scenario in which almost every other tank would never have made to the same degree - and was an efficient killer of it’s primary targets and biggest threats: infantry and AT guns. And it was quite capable at taking on most German tanks, the fantasy that Germany had assloads of tigers and panthers aside." > > The Sherman was generally superior to the T-34, the biggest drawback being that it had too high a profile comparison. But for what it’s worth, lend-lease Shermans were given to the best tank units in the Soviet army, because the Soviets viewed them as superior. That should really put some perspective on it. > > This has to be taken into perspective. One thing that most people don’t know is that Germany wasn’t geared for a full war-time economy until, IIRC, late 1942. This was because, at the outset, none of the wars Germany engaged in were expected to be long, protracted, total wars. Russia was expected to fall quickly just as France did. And so the production going up through 1944 doesn’t necesarily mean that strategic bombing was ineffective, because the proper comparison would be the production of 1944 compared to the production with a hypothetical unbombed '44, rather than the production compared to previous years without an economy geared up for total war. > > This is very true. It’s been said that the damage done by trategic bombing pre-transport and oil campaign was mostly in resources tied up to stop it than the actual damage inflicted by the bombing. The planes kept in the west were sorely needed in the east, along with anti-aircraft guns, and the men used to crew them, as well as the gas supply used, and the engineering and research resources used to counter strategic bombing. The industrial bombing campaigns were largely ineffective for their cost, but the resources they tied up put Germany in a bind. > > Take it for what it’s worth, but the constitution of the confederacy banned the importation of slaves. I’ve read that there was a movement among southern politicians to gradually change the economic conditions of the south to move away from a slave-dependent economy over time. It’s just that they couldn’t suddenly stop slavery on a dime without leading to complete economic collapse. > > Personally, I think the idea that even educated people have that the war was only, or almost entirely, about slavery is naive. The war was, in some ways, distasteful - invading a country that wished to be left alone to impose your will on them isn’t nearly as romantic as “We went to free the slaves! Yay us!”. Lincoln said he would’ve freed no slaves if it meant winning/ending the war - how can the war possibly be only about slavery when those executing it would’ve settled for not ending it? > > My 8th grade social studies teacher had a really great way of explaining it, I only wish I remembered it better. There was a political divide amongst the states about which powers would be allocated to the federal government, and which to the states. This was a big, core issue to our country at the time. The fact that it’s not an issue now, because we all know the federal government is our daddy, is largely a result of the outcome of the civil war. > > There was tension between the two factions for decades leading up to the civil war. We came close to secession on several different issues preceeding the civil war - and I wish I could remember them. One involved a national bank, IIRC, and others were about admitting states, and other issues. It’s just that when finally we got to slavery, which was perhaps the dozenth issue of contention that the south either compromised or back down on, it was only where they effectively couldn’t without leading to economic collapse. And so the slavery issue was the trigger to start the war. But to say that it was the only or primary cause is ignoring the fact that the tension and disagreement was there for decades, and was probably going to lead to political seperation at some point. Slavery just happened to be the issue that couldn’t come to a compromise. That doesn’t mean that the tension was started with slavery, or was all about it, or that secession was only about it, as romantic as it is to think so. > > To make an analogy - say there was a bad marriage with a lot of tension, constant bickering. You’ve grudgingly compromised on issues, but neither of you are happy with it or the situation. Then someone does something - say, buying a big ticket item you didn’t approve of, and that was the last straw with you, and so you push for a divorce. Does that mean the divorce was all about that big ticket item? No, it was the trigger that finally resulted in that action after years of tension and unresolved differences. I would add too, that the Sherman was a much more modern design than any of the Germ,an or Russian tank: for example, the Sherman had a servo motor-driven turret-the german turrets were HAND-CRANKED! So the Sherman could aim and fire much faster. And as for the T34 transmissions-the drivers often had to hit the shift levers with ahammer, to get them into gear… Also, I understand that the engine life of the TIGER and KING TIGER tanks was very short-due to the poor quality of the german synthetic lubricating oils. ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2006, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/140 "2006-07-27T20:10:07Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > ??? :dubious: Sorry. Pet peeve of mine. And remember kids: alcohol, politics and EXCEL are unhappy bedfellows. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2006, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940/141 "2006-07-27T20:50:50Z")
1. In the American Revolution, the British were handicapped by the large number of inferior commanders who had acquired their ranks by bribery or influence, and fighting on unfamiliar territory 3000 miles from England. 2. After John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton gave newspapers a picture of John’s brother Edwin as the assassin–they did not look anything alike. 3. Whether the Soviets “beat the living hell” out of the Germans I can’t say. Mussolini had screwed things up by invading Greece, which prompted England to send troops there; this must have infuriated Hitler, who now had to divert _his_ troops to protect the oilfields he had seized in Roumania: His planned invasion of Russia would be critically delayed, and it was–the German forces ran smack into the Russian winter. 4. Some kid wrote that “Magellan traveled round the world and when he returned to Spain he told how he had been killed in the Phillippines.” 😃 5. People of my parent’s generation–including my high-school government teacher who seems a prototype of Rush Limbaugh–say that “FDR sold us down the river at Yalta.” I guess he never bothered to explain to us how the voters had preferred a “traitor” to Hoover, Landon, Willkie, or Dewey. 😛 6. As for Billy Mitchell–a relative of my stepfather’s told us about his appraisal of Mitchell and the U. S. Military in general at the time. He seemed to believe that Mitchell was “rocking the boat,” warning the American public about Japanese belligerence at the time when, so he claimed, the government refused to turn Marxist–this relative’s idea of how to end the Depression–and decided to spring a war on the public in a way that would generate more funds for the manufacturers of war materials. ☹ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths/359940.md?page=6)