{"id":6613,"date":"2021-11-11T13:11:10","date_gmt":"2021-11-11T12:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=191948"},"modified":"2021-11-11T13:30:10","modified_gmt":"2021-11-11T12:30:10","slug":"fake-history-3-historical-untruths-that-shaped-the-world","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/fake-history-3-historical-untruths-that-shaped-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Fake history: 3 historical untruths that shaped the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Rachel Dinning\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Thursday, 11 November 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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For many of us, history is a bit like a stew. A hotpot of nutritious five-a-day facts, the cabbage of half-recalled school lessons, the comforting E numbers of family sagas and the tasty off-cuts of myth.<\/p>\n

Add in the dark gravy of \u2018good stories\u2019 so beloved of us all and it can be very hard indeed to divine what is fact-based history and what is fake history.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not always problematic. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn\u2019t matter whether your auntie saw The Beatles<\/a> at the Cavern Club in 1960, or whether she confused them with the Swinging Blue Jeans. Nor is it hugely consequential that chicken tikka masala wasn\u2019t invented in Glasgow, or that Sir Walter Ralegh never threw down his coat in a puddle for Queen Elizabeth I<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the big stuff matters, because false and alternative narratives of empire, war and slavery ever more inform our political discourse. Those notions arguably fed the rise of President Donald Trump<\/a> in the US, both sides of the Brexit debate in the UK, and the mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic in various parts of the globe. We also see it in Xi Jinping\u2019s China, in the Scottish independence movement, and in the ongoing \u2013 and to many, tiresome \u2013 culture wars.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Fake history: how to spot it<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
1<\/span>
Britain was a small, \u2018underdog\u2019 nation that could have lost the Second World War<\/h3>\n<\/div>
You might reasonably imagine that our grasp of recent history like the Second World War is better than almost anything else. After all, many of us know people who lived through it, and there is an almost endless cycle of documentaries and films on our TV screens that have familiarised us with the key events of 1939\u201345.<\/p>\n
The Second World War still matters in Britain. After all, we are all told that 1940 was our \u201cdarkest hour\u201d \u2013 and the idea still defines our collective national psyche. Most of us have been raised on the tale.<\/p>\n
In May 1940, France fell. Following the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk<\/a>, with help from the \u2018Little Ships\u2019, Britain faced down the might of Hitler<\/a>\u2019s war machine until Russia and the US pitched up to help. In the meantime, the so-called \u2018 Blitz Spirit<\/a>\u2019 saw everyone through; the indomitable courage that still keeps our spirits up in times of peril. We know the speeches by heart, and posters of the era decorate our offices. When terrorist attacks or pandemics encroach on our lives, we tell each other to \u201ckeep calm and carry on\u201d.<\/p>\n

Many Britons persist in fundamentally misunderstanding the Battle of Britain <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
The Battle of Britain<\/a> is a cracking story \u2013 a sort of 20th-century David and Goliath but with cups of tea, air raid wardens and Spitfires in place of slingshots, Philistines and stones.<\/p>\n
But many Britons persist in fundamentally misunderstanding it.<\/p>\n
For a start, Britain in 1940 was barely held together. It was a global superpower, capable of pulling on vast resources and men. And while Dunkirk was a disaster, we were never really in any imminent threat of invasion.<\/p>\n
At the start of the Battle of Britain, the RAF and Luftwaffe were fairly matched \u2013 by July, the British were outproducing German aircraft by two-to-one. The British had the first advanced integrated radar system in the world, and \u2013 courtesy of code breakers \u2013 were capable of reading Enigma decrypts from August 1940 onwards. They also had the benefit of fighting in their own skies and lost half the number of pilots suffered by the enemy, many of whom were killed or captured.<\/p>\n
8 reasons the Luftwaffe didn\u2019t stand a chance against the RAF in the Second World War<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>
As for a German invasion of Britain \u2013 well, even Hitler never really considered it feasible. The Royal Navy was the most powerful maritime force in the world. The idea that a seaborne invasion made up of converted barges could slip beneath the nose of the Royal Navy is something akin to fantasy. Indeed, German military commander Alfred Jodl said it would be like sending men into a \u201cmincing machine\u201d.<\/p>\n
Wartime propaganda exaggerated the level of threat and, subsequently, millions of us have continued to buy into the story. Unfortunately, that has bolstered British notions of self-reliance and exceptionalism; the idea we \u2018stood alone\u2019 in 1940 so we don\u2019t need anyone else now.<\/p>\n
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