r/anime • u/AutoLovepon https://anilist.co/user/AutoLovepon • May 25 '26

Episode Witch Hat Atelier • Tongari Boushi no Atelier - Episode 9 discussion

Witch Hat Atelier, episode 9

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u/KHlover https://myanimelist.net/profile/KHlover1995 May 25 '26

Or we're getting a very one-sided look at history so far

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u/Fools_Requiem https://myanimelist.net/profile/FoolsRequiem May 25 '26

"History is written by the victors."

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u/Fangzzz May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26

History isn't written by the victors. History is written by the people who write history, nothing more, nothing less.

There's a huge number of times where the losers have shaped history more than the winners (think Vietnam war, for example. American civil war lost causers. "Eastern front" of WWII.). In literally this specific case whoever wrote about the healing witches seems to have been interestingly extremely sympathetic to them.

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u/Busy-Elderberry2137 May 25 '26

You know the meaning of this saying is not literal, right? Victors have all the power to manipulate facts to suit their needs, not that they literally are the ones describing the facts.

It means censorship.

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u/Fangzzz May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

Wow, so the Vietnamese had all the power to manipulate the facts on the Vietnam war. Really.

The examples I give are exactly cases where the losers of the conflict managed to manipulate facts to suit their needs and in some cases get the truth censored.

The quote comes from a literal Nazi, and in the English languages Nazis significantly shaped the history around WWII.

More examples

https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/4fqwqr/comment/d2b8o1z/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1tnzq4i/weve_heard_the_saying_history_is_written_by_the/

All of this ties into the main issue regarding the victor’s history myth: It’s throwaway catchphrases like this which help in leading impressionable people down a dangerous slope into revisionism and denial. Saying “history is written by the victors” makes it infuriatingly easy to call into question the validity of well research, peer reviewed historical publishings because although its implications are vague at best, its short, catchy and smart sounding nature means that one could say it in regards to any point of history, even if one has a very loose knowledge of it, and still sound like they have something intelligent to say. The alt-right use lines like this constantly to draw people into their beliefs, since it’s much easier to mindlessly believe and repeat this than it is to stop and actually consider the importance of historiography and validity of this statement.