An example of when National pride and patriotism has influenced the way historians writing objectively is the First World War. According to David Thomas few American textbooks “acknowledge the achievements of the allies in standing against central powers for three years” but they leave the reader with the “impression that the war began with the arrival of the American troops in 1917.” Then he goes on to state that the English textbooks only really give the events up until 1917 any real coverage and that they play down the Unites States contribution stating that it was “too negligible to deserve extended mention.” Thomas also suggests that the authors in each country believe that their “own men and materials outdid the central powers” (Thomas, 1969, pp28-30) This is a perfect of example of historians missing out facts as evidence to support their argument and in turn the truth is ultimately lost. The same could be said about how the Germans were portrayed in history as the loosing country in the war, everybody seems to trust the victorious countries accounts of what happened and rarely take the time to examine the defeated countries version of events and even if they do they are often discredited.
It is impossible to have a totally objective history of an event the only things that can be one hundred percent correct are dates and these can from time can be challenged, but if it is recorded and people state that something happened on a particular day then it can not be questioned, for example the armistices for the First World War was signed on the eleventh of November 1918 and nobody can dispute this, but the events of the signing can be questions because they are recorded by people and these people had their opinion and political stand point in the matter and these factors eventually effected their account of the situation.. As Le’vi Strauss once said “History is never only of: it is always for” therefore suggesting there is never a history just for the sake of having a history but a history is always recorded for a purpose, an example of this would be of Stalin changing art work and other records and in turn re-writing history in the USSR to make his role look more important prior to Lenin’s death, he did this to re-affirm his leadership and to avoid people challenge his supremacy as he would be seem as Lenin’s choice.
Although the general consensus is that most historians tell a fairly accurate account of historic events whilst leaving out or making up the odd fact or figure either by accident or on purpose, there are some people who believe that historians make up whole events to suit there own purposes. For example the people who deny that the holocaust took place at all and that victorious Allied countries made it all up in order to make Germany look evil after the war. These people back up their claims that the was no Holocaust by saying that the concentration camps were “resettlement camps” and that they were like “resorts with educational facilities.” (Perry & Schweitzer, 2002) When the question of how come there were so many people were found dead or starving to death they say the Americans were “misleading” and if there was any hunger they blame the “inability of the Nazis to transport food into the camps because of the Allied Bombing. (Perry & Schweitzer, 2002.) There also people who believe that the Holocaust did happened but not on the scale that it is told of today, these people suggest that it has been greatly exaggerated. Deborah Lipstadt asserts in denying the holocaust, 1994 that these deniers do not “deny that there was a Holocaust” but they deny that there was a “plan or an attempt to annihilate the Jewish people” and she goes on to state how they also say that the “real crimes” during the war were “committed by the Americans, Russians, Britons and French against Germans.” It is not just the Holocaust that people deny happened there are many events in history that people believe are made up or greatly exaggerated, this is probably true in some cases as it has been suggested above there is always a purpose to a history being written and if a certain ‘fact’ is required to be invented to strengthen an historians case then they will not hesitate to make it up. But it is completely wrong to say that an event like the Holocaust didn’t take place when there is so much evidence to suggest that it did, but it is fair to suggest that maybe the whole of the history of the Holocaust is not entirely objective and one hundred percent the ‘truth’.
Marc Bloch in ‘The Historians Craft’ 1963, asks the question is history a “science” or and “art”? He suggests that historians would like to be thought of a scientist as they believe they follow and exact science and are meticulous when recording a history but he suggests they are really artist make up history to suit there causes. This claim is supported by Claire Rayner, The Sunday Times, 1993. She suggests that history is “reporting on what they [historians] believed happened in the past interpreted in the light of their own prejudices and opinions.” There is also the view that the longer the event took place the less reliable the ‘facts’ become. This is because people may forget how things really happened and tell it as they think it did and also when there are no survivors of the event to challenge historian’s claims as to what actually happened it becomes easier for the historian to invent ‘facts’ it has been argued that “Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.” (R.W. Emerson, Essays and other writings,1907)
In conclusion it is impossible for anyone claim to be the owner of “truth” in the writing of history, as everybody has there own version of history, everybody sees events differently and will undoubtedly disagree with other peoples events. The only bits of history that a historian can claim to own the truth about are the dates of events that there are records of and people have given accounts of when they happened, for example everybody knows that the terrorist attacks on the world trade centres took place on September 11th 2001 and no one can deny that so you could claim to own the truth about when an event happened. It is impossible to claim to own the whole truth about and event no matter how hard any tries as they will not be able to write or record it completely ‘objectively’ there are to many factors that get in the way of this: one being the authors biased, the sources the author uses biased and the shear amount of material the author would have to go through to get everybody who was at an events opinion bit are bound to be missed out. Although it has been suggested that nobody can write an ‘objective’ history it is important that people still write history and try as hard as the can to be ‘objective’ and the reader must not always take everything at face value and be aware that not every thing they are reading is the whole account or completely true and if they want the truth then they should read several historians accounts and go for the middle ground like a true historian.
Bibliography
Books
John Bounre, The great world war 1914-45 who won you lost?
M. Brown, Imperial War Museum Book of he Somme, 2002
E.H Carr, What is History? 1990
Collins National Dictionary
Davis Thomas, The aims of History, 1969
Berverley Southgate, History: What & Why? , 1994
Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, 1963
R.W. Emerson, Essays and other writings,1907
Newspaper Articles
Claire Rayner ,The Sunday Times,1993
