(See The Great Politics Mess-Up for more on this particular fallacy.) For instance, a character in 1919 could plausibly predict that the Treaty of Versailles would cause hardship, anger and instability in Germany (indeed, Marshal Foch himself said at the time it was "not a peace treaty, just an armistice for twenty years", if only because he understood it to be too lenient), but it would be stretching it for him to confidently assert that the instability would specifically result in the rise of a ruthless racial supremacist paramilitary regime in Germany that would be responsible for the systematic murder of millions of Jews, Roma, and others. Although some historical individuals made predictions that came true, this is not the same thing as knowing what would happen. and that all of this happened in isolation with no effects from or to the world outside of the USA.Īlso, many authors commit what's called the "historian's mistake", the idea that historical characters acted and made their decisions with full knowledge of the future-including the repercussions their actions would cause (like for example: portraying Churchill as saying his Darkest Hour Rousing Speech with knowledge that Nazi Germany was going to be defeated in 4 years). They think Columbus personally discovered the United States, George Washington cut down a cherry tree, Benjamin Franklin flew a kite, and that Paul Revere was the only person warning everyone about the British. This trope is for those who try to use history, but their knowledge of history seems to stop some time last week. Mainly caused by not doing the research properly, especially when a fiction writer bases his history on the works of other fiction writers instead of actual histories. but for some reason some people just don't seem to even want to try to understand. We very well know what happened in the past for the most part, and as we all know that history repeats itself, and those who do not know it are bound to repeat the mistakes of the past. That in the end, all known history is subjective and therefore useless as a source of knowledge. Some say it's one of those mysteries that man cannot know. Ah yes, history, written by the victors, with all the eyewitnesses lost to time.
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