Hitler would've won the war if. . .

[joea]

Originally Posted by Type XXIII

First of all, that exact quote can't be overly repeated, since I made it up. :P Of course, others have said the same thing with different words before me.

Secondly, it is not gibberish. Even if those academics are doing the hard research, it is their perceptions of history that is accepted as history. And those perceptions is influenced by their idea of 'good' and 'bad', and by those archives that you mention, which is the documents that have survived, and, in many cases, are written by the victorious.

I'm not saying that historians are making up or concealing events, but that their interpretations of those events are necessarily based on the historioans' personal experiences. History is a soft science, and nothing can be proven beyond all doubt.

Simply put, I agree but it does not follow that the "losers" were "right" (whatever that means) as some people who repeat that are trying to make "their" side look better. Another example, Cold War revisionism started in the USA, and based on new interpretations to show (according to this school) the Cold War was provoked and drivine by the US with the USSR in a reactive role. Agree or not, this came out of one of the main protagonists, who ended up winning, albeit at a moment (late 60s and early 70s) when the US had lost in Vietnam. Today the field is in flux, can't really say what trends will emerge, 10, 20 or 50 years from now.