Mrs. Leska

Yellow L.A.

April 1 2021

Our Past is Not Unknowable

“You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you.”

This is from the speech given by Dwight D. Eisenhower to his troops before the launch of the D-day invasion. It was given for the purposes of boosting morale, but it shows the immense gravity of this moment in history. People know far too little about historical facts and it is worrying. If you were to ask the average 8th-grader about WWII, they would most likely tell you that they know about Hitler and a bomb, but that would be about it. That is on the more knowledgable side as well, which shows how little is known.

An excellent example of an event like this, is the Blitzkrieg Battle for France in 1940; it was the German invasion of France and the low countries which ended in a swift German victory. To many, the reason not to bother with learning these facts, is simply they think they are too hard to know, however, that is false. When asked a simple question in a survey of my L.A. class I conducted, which one would expect to be easily answered correctly, about who won the 1940 battle for France, most of the takers of the survey responded with a “No” or an “I don’t know.” This shows how even with simple questions, there is a severe lack of knowledge. 

Additionally, on the survey, the question was asked about whether they had heard of the battle for France. You would think that most have. However, only 15.3 percent of the surveyed people said they had heard of it. For such a gargantuan moment in history to go unknown by so many people is terrible. I would wager the reason they don’t know is because they mistakenly think that type of history is too complicated. “Gamelin's ill-fated decision to push his forces into Belgium and Holland created the opportunity for the German breakthrough in the Ardennes.” This quote from Reader's Companion to Military History by Douglas Porch illustrates that the facts are quite simple. It’s not a jumble of dates and names. Most often, it’s a simple, learnable fact that provides an umbrella explanation for the event at large. In this case, it was Maurice Gamelin’s poor decision to move the Anglo-French troops into the low countries where they could be encircled. There was evidence from History Today by Andrew Roberts, implying that the Allies had promised to protect Poland if she was invaded. Though not strictly speaking simple, it is a simple explanation which covers the information, and should suffice. However, it is not known by almost anyone. There is more evidence from the book, Military History, by Ron Soodalter. It mentions that the French military was commanded by old generals who used static warfare, like WWI. They refused to modernise their defensive military strategy. Ultimately, this affected the outcome of the battle greatly. An umbrella fact to use to simplify this larger one, is just that the French high-command was old-fashioned in their military strategy. This fact is quite simple. One could learn it easily and it proves that this variety of fact is not too difficult to memorize. This could and should be commonly known fact.

One could oppose my argument based on a timeline. It is a timeline from the Newsela “WWII Part One: Origins of the War” by Kenneth T. Jackson which mentions major events of WWII. One could argue that this shows that if people know this much in general, it says they know enough about history. The issue is though, that these are only arguably the Major Events. The truth is, that it leaves out many of the biggest ones. It entirely ommitted 1940, one of the most eventful years of the war. This is representative of how little is known on the topic by most. It is terrible to say the least.

 In an interview, Henry Nowak (Staples Sophmore) mentioned his opinion stating “I think that the fact that only 15.3 percent of (the surveyed people) have even heard of the 1940 Blitzkrieg is pretty terrible” In fact, this is spot on with the facts. People ignore the fact that they know very little about history. It is very worrying. 

To conclude, people know too little about historical facts and it’s worrysome. In order to prevent similar disasters from happening again, we need to learn from our past mistakes and learn from them going forward. Humans have a dangerous habit of causing destruction in their wake. It has held us back for almost as long as we have existed. If we were able to truly learn from our historical mistakes, imagine what our world would look like today.