So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Lean'n'mean]

now, kids seem to only get a bias, fault-filled version that makes the US sound like a historical horror.

Well, it was for some.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

some today might even be shocked at how close it was.

Surprised maybe, mildly interested prehaps but shocked ? I doubt it.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

and return to Africa with Fay Wray.

Only if she consents.

 

[Fading Fast]

Well, it was for some.

Tell all sides, try to get all the facts out, have as broad a scope of opinions as possible - if for some, as you helpfully note, it was only a horror, for others escaping pogroms and worse, it was a God send. Tell it all / show it all.

And rereading my post, I feel I left something out. Growing up in the '70s, the history I learned in high school and college was far from all favorable toward the US. Slavery - thankfully - was presented as the horrible institution that it was and colonialism was presented with an overall negative tone, but the degree depended on the class, school, teacher (which isn't right, but it wasn't ever, to my memory, taught as a rah-rah event).

 

[LizzieMaine]

Not a land attack, per se, and not the Japanese, but the Gulf of Mexico was crawling with German submarines before and during the war. For a time, the Germans wreaked havoc on the ports of Galveston, New Orleans, and Mobile, sinking dozens of US ships. The war was surprisingly close to home, some today might even be shocked at how close it was.

The East Coast had quite a bit of U-Boat action as well -- and they got rather startling close to home up here: a German sub landed some espionage agents in a cove off Ellsworth, which is about 60 miles from here, and they got as far as New York before the FBI picked them up.

As far as how history was taught in the past, it's extremely interesting to collect actual school textbooks of the Era. The propaganda is troweled on with a broad, flat blade. The sociologist J. W. Loewen wrote a fascinating book in 1995, "Lies My Teacher Told Me," analyzing the content of twelve popular high school texts published between 1974 and 1991 to demonstrate that exactly that same propaganda continued to be taught far beyond the time when "political correctness," so called, is popularly believed to have taken over the schools.

An interesting fact is that the content of textbooks right up to the present day is heavily influenced by the heavily right-leaning Texas State Board of Education, which is the single largest consumer of school textbooks in the US. In recent years, some of their proposals in the way of "encouraging balance" have revealed a rather profound ignorance of worldwide political and cultural history.

 

[ChrisB]

The Japanese did invade the Aleutians, which may be quite remote but were nevertheless US territory.

German U boats were sinking ships within sight of the NJ shore, and mined the Delaware bay as well.

 

[sheeplady]

The one highlight of my education is that we were well versed in local history, including in the pre-colonial era. My knowledge of the Iroquois Confederacy is still pretty good.

I now live in an area where the civil war was very much contested and split families into factions, particularly given the pacifist anti-slavery religions which dominated in my area- in the south. It will be interesting to see how the civil war is taught to my kids.

 

[Trenchfriend]

But, the U-boat-massproduction came too late and the XXI-boats much much too late.

If there had been a big number of XXI-boats some years earlier, that could probably have been "evil" for the seas.

 

[tonyb]

The one highlight of my education is that we were well versed in local history, including in the pre-colonial era. My knowledge of the Iroquois Confederacy is still pretty good.

I now live in an area where the civil war was very much contested and split families into factions, particularly given the pacifist anti-slavery religions which dominated in my area- in the south. It will be interesting to see how the civil war is taught to my kids.

It's hard to lose a war. All of that death and destruction and for what? You don't even get to wag your weinie (or battle flag, take your pick) and proclaim "We're Number One!"

To this day believers in the Confederate cause make themselves the persecuted, the victims of the Northern aggressors. Okay. But what about that peculiar institution y'all were not only seeking to perpetuate but to spread throughout the Caribbean and beyond?

"It wasn't really about slavery." We still hear that. Seriously. It's hard to believe that people really believe it. But they say they do.

 

[HudsonHawk]

...In recent years, some of their proposals in the way of "encouraging balance" have revealed a rather profound ignorance of worldwide political and cultural history.

They are still in awe of Rick Perry’s magnificent head of hair.

 

[HudsonHawk]

It's hard to lose a war. All of that death and destruction and for what? You don't even get to wag your weinie (or battle flag, take your pick) and proclaim "We're Number One!"

To this day believers in the Confederate cause make themselves the persecuted, the victims of the Northern aggressors. Okay. But what about that peculiar institution y'all were not only seeking to perpetuate but to spread throughout the Caribbean and beyond?

"It wasn't really about slavery." We still hear that. Seriously. It's hard to believe that people really believe it. But they say they do.

Not only do they believe it, it’s a “cause”. But people see what they want to see.

And as for US history, one of my favorites to remind people is that at the time of the American Revolution, there were not 13 British colonies that became US states, there were 15. Only 13 declared independence at the time, and are referred to as “the original 13” (though at first there were only 12).

 

[Zombie_61]

Not a land attack, per se, and not the Japanese, but the Gulf of Mexico was crawling with German submarines before and during the war. For a time, the Germans wreaked havoc on the ports of Galveston, New Orleans, and Mobile, sinking dozens of US ships. The war was surprisingly close to home, some today might even be shocked at how close it was.

Steven Spielberg's movie 1941 was loosely based on an actual incident in which a Japanese submarine shelled two oil fields on the California coast near Santa Barbara; it's considered to be the first naval bombardment of the mainland U.S. during World War II. Being a comedy, the movie plays the entire incident for laughs and makes it difficult for anyone to believe it actually happened, but according to reports Japanese submarine I-17 did fire 16 to 25 rounds at the oil fields on February 23, 1942, most of which were wildly off-target and caused little actual damage. But the incident, and a false air raid warning over Los Angeles the next night, did lead many Californians to believe a Japanese invasion was imminent.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

The success of the U-Boats off the American coast was a tightly kept secret during the war. Even local papers didn't report the dead sailors washing ashore. Ostensibly, this was to keep the Germans from being sure how many casualties they were inflicting, but in truth it was to avoid harming civilian morale. Even after the war it was kept quiet so as not to conflict with the triumphalist narrative.

 

[Bamaboots]

For a time, the Germans wreaked havoc on the ports of Galveston, New Orleans, and Mobile, sinking dozens of US ships.

A good read covering some of this is "The Heart Mender" by Andy Andrews, originally released as "Island of Saints".

 

[LizzieMaine]

The success of the U-Boats off the American coast was a tightly kept secret during the war. Even local papers didn't report the dead sailors washing ashore. Ostensibly, this was to keep the Germans from being sure how many casualties they were inflicting, but in truth it was to avoid harming civilian morale. Even after the war it was kept quiet so as not to conflict with the triumphalist narrative.

A couple of unidentified bodies washed ashore here in early 1942, and despite the fact that no official confirmation has ever been found as to their identity, it was believed at the time, and is still widely believed, that they were German submariners. They were buried in a local cemetery and for many years after the war a West German flag (the red-black-gold) appeared on their grave on Memorial Day. Which I thought was kind of presumptuous, they might have been from Magdeburg.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's hard to lose a war. All of that death and destruction and for what? You don't even get to wag your weinie (or battle flag, take your pick) and proclaim "We're Number One!"

To this day believers in the Confederate cause make themselves the persecuted, the victims of the Northern aggressors. Okay. But what about that peculiar institution y'all were not only seeking to perpetuate but to spread throughout the Caribbean and beyond?

"It wasn't really about slavery." We still hear that. Seriously. It's hard to believe that people really believe it. But they say they do.

The "Neo-Confederate Movement" is very much a current thing. The Dunning School might have been dismissed, but its remedial class is still in session.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

To this day, there are people who believe that German agents were operating on America's coasts, communicating with German U-boats offshore. The boats only needed two figures: the time a convoy was to set sail, and the top speed of the slowest ship. That was the speed at which the convoy would have to travel. This info could be transmitted, encoded, in a very short burst, making it impossible for listeners to get a fix on where it was coming from. There were those who complained that no priority was given to finding these spies because J. Edgar Hoover claimed he'd found and neutralized all the German spies in the US, and so looking for them got you on the wrong side of J. Edgar. Whether true or not, it makes for fine thriller material.

 

[3fingers]

I think that in hindsight we know that a lot of J. Edgar's claims would not stand much looking in to. Propaganda is a popular subject here. J. Edgar could support his own thread for that alone, and that would barely scratch the surface.

 

[HudsonHawk]

A good read covering some of this is "The Heart Mender" by Andy Andrews, originally released as "Island of Saints".

One of the great scuba dives off the coast of the Florida panhandle is the HMS Empire Mica, a British fuel tanker sunk near the mouth of the Apalachicola River by a German U-boat in June 1942 en route from Houston to Key West. 33 men were lost in the attack.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Hoover's propaganda usually had an agenda behind it besides the obvious one. While there really was a good bit of fifth-column Nazi activity in the US before the war and Axis agents really were active during the war itself, it also suited Hoover's purposes to give these activities an unusual amount of emphasis so as to build himself up in the eyes of the public and to perhaps reflect unfavorably on an Administration that "allowed these activities to thrive." Hoover labored mightily to build up a public image for himself as the Incorrruptible Number One G Man, but he was in fact a master of the art of Machiavellian politics.