I wasn’t sure where else to put this.
I’ve been listening to Rachel Maddow’s podcast Ultra about the sedition trial of Nazi sympathizers in the United States in 1943. Is this common knowledge that I just never heard about? Are there other bits of history that maybe have just been forgotten or we haven’t promoted as much as perhaps we should? Obviously history outside the US is welcome as well.
I’d not heard about it, either, prior to listening to the podcast, though I’m not particularly well-versed in that period of U.S. history. I’d known about the America First movement, but I hadn’t known much (if anything) about the role of Nazi agents in it.
My WAG about why it may not be well known (spoilered just in case you haven’t finished the podcast series):
First, as Maddow notes in the podcast, particularly once the war was over, there was a desire to “move on,” as Nazi Germany had been defeated. But, I think more importantly, most of the major players managed to avoid conviction or other serious consequences – in the two separate trials that are detailed in the podcast, there were no convictions, and many of the Congressmen who were implicated managed to stay in office.
The brief period of Reconstruction after the American Civil War. There was a ray of hope, but the good guys lost faith and gave up, ushering in a century of suffering. Lots of lessons for today, but it doesn’t get attention.
What I remember of my US history classes in grade school and high school, Reconstruction was not portrayed as a particularly good thing, inspiring such negative terms as “carpetbaggers” which referred to northerners who went to the South just to take advantage of the situation. African-American civil rights in that era were just not discussed, nor was the conversion to Jim Crow when Reconstruction ended.
This one isn’t covered much in the history books, but the first opponent the United States Army faced after the Revolutionary War kicked it ass in western Ohio.
The response to this was an active campaign to punish the Native Americans and force them into the first treaty with the US government, it turned out to be the first in a long line of broken treaties and promises. This was signed in my hometown and we were taught in school that this was a good thing. It’s shameful actually.
Europeans (Brits in particular) like to claim they ended slavery before the United States did (the British Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 for one) but instead slavery continued in British and French African colonies well until World War 2 and only really ended once those countries got independence. It was one of those “Well we don’t actively own you, but we will round you up to use as free labor whenever we feel like and if you refuse we’ll kill you” sort of things which in it’s worst case (and most prominent) scenario was in the Belgian Congo of the 1890s but similar stuff to a lesser scale was occuring in other European colonies.
Use of hot air balloons in the American Civil War. I had studied and read a lot about the war, but it wasn’t until I recently saw the movie The Aeronauts, and then went on to read the book “Falling Upwards” that I realized the role balloons had played.
The secret project Great Britain started in WW2 t use balloon to bomb Germany.
Operation Outward.
Here’s one that I just learned about this year. In-depth research on this is very recent.
The naval battle of Juminda “involved several times more casualties than Pearl Harbor or Dunkirk,” making it “one of the greatest maritime tragedies in history.” It was covered up by the Soviets because it was a terrible loss for them.
"On 27 August 1941, the evacuation of the Soviet Armed Forces from the German invasion began in Tallinn [Estonia]. More than 30,000 people and more than 200 ships set sail for Leningrad.
“Unfortunately, they headed directly into a trap set by the German and Finnish navies. Over the next two days, more than fifty ships hit a mine or were hit by a torpedo or an aerial bomb, and an estimated 15,000 people died.”
See also
Quite the turkey shoot.
I just finished reading about the American Red Scare of 1918 thru 1921. A. Mitchell Palmer, the Attorney General and a young J. Edgar Hoover plus others shredded the Constitution while President Wilson looked on. Hundreds were arrested, jailed, deported, and where vigilantes were involved, people were whipped, tarred, feathered, and lynched. Some were sentenced to ten years or more under the Espionage Act. Just for speaking their minds and saying that maybe the Great War wasn’t such a good idea, or going on strike, or belonging to the IWW, or the Socialist Party. It dwarfed the January 6th riots for being a scary time. And almost no one speaks of it today
I have the same memory about Reconstruction. In my history classes, it was generally portrayed as well deserved punishment for a rebellious South rather than a sincere attempt to put those states on a more equitable path. The only good thing to come out of Reconstruction was the 13th-14th-15th Amendments to the Constitution (which were pretty much ignored in the post-Reconstruction era anyway.)
The Barbary Wars seem to be not very well known, other than the reason why US Marines sing about the shores of Tripoli.
I only learned of the founding of Liberia a few years ago. Certainly don’t remember hearing about it in history class.
I’d like to see a well-produced movie or perhaps a miniseries on Abraham Lincoln’s death. No, not the night at Ford’s Theater, but the subsequent funeral procession and burial. The train journey took three weeks and drew ever growing crowds to either walk past his casket or to at least watch the funeral train pass through their town or city. Here’s a good History.com overview..
I’d focus on either the first presidential transport, the United States, which was used only once. Imagine if the plane used as Air Force One was decommissioned immediately after JFK’s death. The rail car was bought and sold a few times before being destroyed in a fire.
The other possible story is of the honor guard that accompanied the coffin. I can’t imagine what it was like to travel in full military uniform on a cramped train for three weeks. They were awarded the Medal of Honor, which were later rescinded since they didn’t receive them due to combat.
Come on, Tom Hanks or Steven Spielberg, get on it!
The Las Vegas massacre in 2017. I do believe that it largely disappeared from the news because somebody discovered that classified material would need to be revealed in order to say anything more.
This reminds me of a bit of trivia: when Lincoln’s funeral procession was making its way through NYC one photographer happened to capture then-6-year-old Teddy Roosevelt watching from his granfather’s mansion.
Whiny trivial nitpick: I keep getting minor cognitive dissonance when I see this thread title. Because it conflates the concepts “to vanish down the memory hole”—meaning to disappear into oblivion, be forgotten—and “to go down a rabbit hole”, which means almost the opposite of that: namely, to get caught up in or obsessed by an intriguing labyrinth of discovery that’s monopolizing your attention.
Conspiracy theories are down the hall to the left.
Thank you, saved me from having to be whiny myself.
Bwahahaha! It’s all part of my plan!
But no, good catch. I think I did that subconsciously. Sorry! I will try to get it fixed.