Originally Posted by Krenshau
Well, I wasn't going to continue on here because it seemed to be more opinions getting stated that evaluation of the facts, but I thought that clarification on some things I stated that wasn't understood would be important.
The statement about words and actions was made because it seemed to me that, in general, there was the thought that an action and a reason for the action were given as fact, but, in my experience, looking at documents from 30 years ago, and then looking at documents incrementally up to today, we see the same or similar presentation of facts (such as events or statements that people made) however, what changes is the reasons that people give for those facts. 30 years ago people speculated (but stated as facts) the reasons that Japan surrendered, and reasons that Hitler did things that he did. Later, the same facts were presented, but the reasons for those facts changed. The culture of the people at a given time affects the perspective of the people evaluating the facts. If we were to have the advantage of going to interview people in Japan during WWII, we could gain a perspective of events that were occuring at that time. Wait 20 years and interview people about the same set of facts and the perspective will have changed a bit. Interview people now, and you get a different perspective. Add to that the difference of culture for various countries in the world and you get a wider variety of views about the same set of facts, thus where our coversation is today. So, my point is that the views and perspectives of the events are different than the events themselves. That is why I stated that the actions of the French, and the statements of the French government of the time, are the facts, to speculate about how or why other that what is historically documented is speculation. This statement was meant to encompass all the posts that relate to this statement. I didn't want to make a list of all the posts that fall within this statement, just point out that it was occuring. My statements are based on people I have spoken to that were in WWII, interviews of people that were involved in the decision making of WWII, statements made and things written by Winston Churchill, and others that were actually involved at the time. I, rightly or wrongly, give those much more weight than history books written by historians that try to speculate about reasons. They are, in my opinion, people acting like sports announcer for a sporting event that is a recording of the original game.
