I'm often surprised by the stories that I hear, as much by the stories themselves as by the fact that I had never heard of them. Below I've listed some such examples that I feel like everyone should know, but the macro-image of history doesn't tell.Should education of history be so focused on just the big pictures? What place, if any, do stories like those of these men deserves? I'd add Richthofen, but he's fairly well known. Audie Murphy Audie Murphy was rejected by the military during the Second World War for being underweight and underage but after falsifying records he was able to enlist before turning 18. He became the most decorated soldier in American history, winning every medal and award available at the time. He was given a battlefield commission for his service, and awarding the Medal of Honor at 19. During one battle in France, an anti-tank vehicle was destroyed, and Murphy ordered his men to withdraw to the forest. He entered the burning vehicle and took control of the still operational gun and covered his men's withdrawal, holding his position for over an hour, fighting off a company of Germans all on his own. Wounded there, he afterwards led a successful counterattack while wounded and out of ammunition. He was later asked why he did it - his acts that day seemed suicidal. He only said, "they were trying to kill my friends." After the war he suffered from PTSD, and turned to drugs. To cure himself of his addiction, he locked himself in a room for a week, and never used drugs again. Witold Pilecki Pilecki was born outside of Poland (I've read both that he was born in Karelia and that he was born in Lithuania), but served Poland with distinction. When the Germans invaded in 1939 Pilecki founded a resistance group. He volunteered himself to be (intentionally) captured and sent to Auschwitz to catalogue the Nazi crimes there. Upon his escape, he created a report and sent it to the Allies and sought British aid to liberate the camp (the aid was denied and so the operation never carried out). Pilecki was a leader in the Warsaw Uprising, when the people of Warsaw and the resistance threw the Nazis out of Warsaw in 1944. They were promised and their plans relied upon British aid, but the British aid never came, and Warsaw fell to the Nazis again following a long bombardment that destroyed the majority of the city. Pilecki always supported Polish independents, and worked against the Communists as well as the Fascists, and was executed by the Soviets for his role in 1948.
I don't think history should be about heroes. While they may do something incredible, they really don't effect the outcome of the conflict they're involved in. Audie Murphy did not end WW II all by himself you know, as much as I respect him. History should be about the events and the causes and issues of the events so people can learn from history and at least attempt to acoid the mistakes of history.
This is hero-ism. Not to be confused with heroism. Why do you think heroes are better than the common man? Our veterans should check their privilege
You're confusing military and political history with cultural history. One underlays the other and neither can be fully understood by itself. You can't avoid history's "mistakes" as all events have causes unique to themselves and nobody can predict the future. "It seemed a good idea at the time" embodies a main truth of the ages. All people can be heroic sometimes and most people who are heroes because of risk are doing what they feel they must, not what they want to. Very few people do anything heroic with any consciousness of the fact. They are no less heroes for that.
I'm glad we agree that heroes are just some dudes who were forced by circumstance to volunteer for a mission into Auschwitz and that they are not any better than the average person.
History books are full of great personages [great in neutral sense, regardless their positive or negative value], more than heroes. Great personages are among the engines of history [think to post revolution France without Napoleon, that someone else would have done the same anyway ... it's still all to be proved], it's rare that heroes can act in a context allowing them to be the same. So, if history would focus on heroes, it would risk to pay less attention to the mechanisms, the processes of history. It's known that a common criticism to traditional history was just about this "mania" regarding great personages which covered the global processes [the industrial revolution with all the following social transformations should deserve well more attention than Napoleon, but we know that in low level education history books ...].
The problem is that emphasizing powerful men (what you're actually taking about) forgets great men, and these great common men are far from insignificant in the big picture. These what I call "great common men" were rallying figures, but also just fascinating and worth reading. I think both deserve a place. There is more to history than just Agamemnons. Our Achelleses are just as worth reading, but far more deserving of remembrance.
