As a child of the 60s, I lucked out and learned about Oliver Cromwell – as I learned (or mis-learned) a lot of history – from the movies. 1970 saw the release of the Ken Hughes film Cromwell, starring Richard Harris (King Arthur and Dumbledore!) as the Lord protector of England. I think they were trying to cash in on the wave of British History Films Based on Stage Plays that had just given us a Man for Al Seasons and Anne of a Thousand Days. Cromwell wasn’t based on a play, and probably suffered, as well, from being a topic we Americans didn’t know all that much about. But I loved odd history, and kinda liked the music (the only aspect of the film, IIRC, that won an Academy Award.
at any rate, it was an opportunity to see some actors we knew or would come to know – Harris himself, Alec Guinness as King Charles. Robert Morley, Timothy Dalton (who was doomed at the time to play Historical figures – he had been in The Lion in Winter and would be in Mary Queen of Scots), Charles Gray (Mr. Henderson/Blofeld! and The Narrator!), Patrick Magee, Nigel Stock (He’d been in Lion in Winter, too).
I’d say the #1 most misrepresented thing I can think of in recent history is the US contribution to the European Theater in WWII (i.e. vs. the Germans).
The Soviets bore the brunt of the ground fighting and tied up the lion’s share of the Wehrmacht in the East. When D-Day finally came around in mid-1944, the Soviets had been fighting the Germans tooth and nail for 3 years by that point, and were on the verge of crushing them altogether without US/British help. Certainly D-Day helped; I suspect Operation Bagration wouldn’t have been so successful had the Germans not been being pulled two ways, but even without that, it would have been overwhelmingly successful.
The US contributions in the European theater that really mattered to the defeat of Germany were the merchant shipping, U-boat war, strategic bombing of Germany and eventually, the fighting in France & Germany.
Fighting in N. Africa, Sicily and Italy were more along the lines of distractions to the Germans than existential threats.
Yet popular history and media portrayals always make it seem like the US forces post D-Day won the war vs. the Germans.
Similarly, in the Pacific, there’s precious little mention of the submarine offensive, strategic bombing and aerial mining that just about crushed the Japanese. It’s all about Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima for the most part, with some tiny sidelight bits about Peleliu, Saipan and Okinawa. And nothing about the British, Australian or New Zealander contributions either.