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Only about a dozen years ago Bletchley was inviting former codebreakers back for an annual reunion. I used to go along to hear the talks, meet some of them and

Only about a dozen years ago Bletchley was inviting former codebreakers back for an annual reunion. I used to go along to hear the talks, meet some of them and get books signed, including by Betty Webb. I'm glad they eventually got the recognition they deserved. We have almost lost the chance now to hear personal testimony of WWII. I've met several Battle of Britain pilots too, but the last died in Dublin recently: https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0318/1502596-hemingway/ https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0318/1502596-hemingway/

andrepd 1y ago
It's insane how the largest conflict in human history is just now passing out of living memory. It's also insane how 1 in 4 Americans under 40 believe the holocaust is a fabrication or exaggeration.
- dylan604 1y ago
  the power of disinformation on social media platforms is apparently stronger than classroom teaching. it doesn't help that what is taught in classrooms is just getting worse for $reasons which is only going to get worse now that states are going to do whatever they want with schools now.
  - tehjoker 1y ago
    social conditions are deteriorating so people are reaching for alternative explanations. you want people to reach for true history? then you have to show them true history will benefit them. fortunately, there is a way to do this, but powerful people hate it and prefer patriotic history and disciplined workforces instead. then they blame minorities for the problems they cause.
    - kiba 1y ago
      It is rather lazy that people 'prefer' patriotic history and 'disciplined workforce'. I see no evidence of this. I do gather that some parents are rather sanctimonious and scandalized about their children learning anything but the most sanitized version of history. That seems so far to be the most presence in banning anything. Witness Harry Potter being listed as one of the most challenged book at the height of popularity. History as it was taught in my grade school years certainly wasn't whitewashed and they are rather explicit about some of the horror. Moreover, the problem is that history wasn't taught well and made 'boring'.
      - bruce511 1y ago
        >> Moreover, the problem is that history wasn't taught well and made 'boring'. This. 100% this. At school we got an extremely biased view of history, but even then it was taught soooo badly. History (regardless of viewpoint, correctness, or accuracy) could be an enormously exciting topic. It's full of things that would appeal to any child when presented well. But school history curricula for me was full of meaningless names, dates, actions - endlessly repeated with no enthusiasm at all.
        freedomben 1y ago
        Fully agree. My kids consider(ed) history to be very boring, other than when I teach them about it. I thought I disliked history after coming out of high school because the classes were always so excruciatingly boring and felt so irrelevant to anything "modern day." As I went through my early career I found myself constantly wondering "why is X that way?" Personal research including reading books written by historians who actually tell the story and also describe the many various links between events, and especially the "other side" of many of the issues (that's particularly fascinating regarding the USA "founding fathers" as they were far from a cohesive single-minded unit as presented in most history classes) many things started to click. When I've taught my kids about history using the same approach, especially zeroing in on the real fascinating aspects of it, they still don't love history but they have a strong appreciation for it. By way of example, "the founding fathers were Christians" is a classic oft-repeated phrase I continually hear, to which I love talking about Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, all of whom were clearly agnostic (at the time, they were "Deist" which was essentially equivalent to "agnostic" nowadays). Thomas Paine's phenomenal book "The Age of Reason" was utterly mind-blowing and extremely radical at the time, receiving widespread banning and igniting firestorms in the culture. It's still a great read today! Especially fascinating when you consider this was many decades before Darwin would provide one of the most important scientific explanations that massively shrunk the area for God of the Gaps.
      - tehjoker 1y ago
        Perhaps I wasn’t clear. Real history is much more persuasive. US elites love patriotic history and try to enforce it in schools.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- aaron695 1y ago
  [dead]
- louthy 1y ago
  > It's insane how the largest conflict in human history is just now passing out of living memory. Don’t worry, there will be another one along any minute now.
  - slg 1y ago
    It seems more than coincidental that global fascism started to rise as soon as the generation that last defeated it had mostly died off.
    - jwagenet 1y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generat... Definitely controversial academically, but the idea of a generational cycle has been considered.
    - hgomersall 1y ago
      It's much simpler to think that as a society we've manufactured a similar set of circumstances to the last time. That is, a growing proportion of the population that feel they have very little and no prospects or hope.
      - ArnoVW 1y ago
        I won’t enter into a conversation about inequality and social justice, even though there are indeed points to be raised. I would however like to point out that people are not only victims of society, and that they have a responsibility as a critical member of society and an elector. Historic awareness, understanding of economics, law and geopolitics. To give an example: Mr Trump was not just votes into office, but RE voted into office. His plan was public for all to see. More than 50% of American voters voted for him. I am having a difficult time to believe that 50%+ of the US are economically oppressed that had no choice but to vote for Trump. Inequalities exist but they do not justify everything, neither do they explain everything.
        1y ago
- wil421 1y ago
  Do you have a source or are you flamebating[1]? The myriad of trash google results on the topic aren’t even close to 1 in 4. Even an Israeli tabloid says it’s 1 in 10. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
  - chgs 1y ago
    Was widely reported but was discredited. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/12/07/one-in-five-young-americans-thinks-the-holocaust-is-a-myth https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/12/07/one-in-fi...
  - andrepd 1y ago
    I am not flamebaiting, but I was wrong. See the economist link in the sibling comment, which contains the original story as well as an explanation why the results are inflated.
- throw7384849 1y ago
  [flagged]
sys32768 1y ago
Two years ago my mother's memory care home had an American Battle of the Bulge veteran and Bronze Star winner who was sharp as a tack. He was 99 and said he just wanted to live to be 100, but sadly he didn't make it. I remember my late grandmother telling us they had made mittens for my great uncle, but he died in that battle before the mittens arrived. Crazy to think I passed up my chance to have a cup of coffee with a man who might have fought beside my great uncle.
zeke 1y ago
In 2001 in the small town of Hartsville SC, one of the youngest code breakers gave his last two public talks. He had been hired by Turing because he was one of the few studying both math and German at the start of the war. Besides being very interesting it felt odd to hear all this in such an out of the way place. Well after the war he collaborated on some books with a professor teaching at the college there.
nonrandomstring 1y ago
Most of them were told "Never, ever speak about any of this". And they didn't. Like the Zanryu Nipponhei [0], they were loyal to the last. Even my own father kept things about his airforce days way too tightly wrapped up long, long after the official secrets sell-by date. I have some admiration for this, but in the end it's a loss to historical record. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_holdout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_holdout
- DocTomoe 1y ago
  Consider it a blessing. Those orders were about controlling history much more than 'secrets': Many things done in war are later considered war crimes. Your admiration might have taken a hit had he started talking gleefully about the time he - just to pick a random example of things that happened - heroically shot fleeing "enemy" children on the ground.
  - nonrandomstring 1y ago
    You're absolutely right. I did hear a few of those. And there was as much shame as pride in the old stories.

andrepd 1y ago

It's insane how the largest conflict in human history is just now passing out of living memory. It's also insane how 1 in 4 Americans under 40 believe the holocaust is a fabrication or exaggeration.

dylan604 1y ago
the power of disinformation on social media platforms is apparently stronger than classroom teaching. it doesn't help that what is taught in classrooms is just getting worse for $reasons which is only going to get worse now that states are going to do whatever they want with schools now.
- tehjoker 1y ago
  social conditions are deteriorating so people are reaching for alternative explanations. you want people to reach for true history? then you have to show them true history will benefit them. fortunately, there is a way to do this, but powerful people hate it and prefer patriotic history and disciplined workforces instead. then they blame minorities for the problems they cause.
  - kiba 1y ago
    It is rather lazy that people 'prefer' patriotic history and 'disciplined workforce'. I see no evidence of this. I do gather that some parents are rather sanctimonious and scandalized about their children learning anything but the most sanitized version of history. That seems so far to be the most presence in banning anything. Witness Harry Potter being listed as one of the most challenged book at the height of popularity. History as it was taught in my grade school years certainly wasn't whitewashed and they are rather explicit about some of the horror. Moreover, the problem is that history wasn't taught well and made 'boring'.
    - bruce511 1y ago
      >> Moreover, the problem is that history wasn't taught well and made 'boring'. This. 100% this. At school we got an extremely biased view of history, but even then it was taught soooo badly. History (regardless of viewpoint, correctness, or accuracy) could be an enormously exciting topic. It's full of things that would appeal to any child when presented well. But school history curricula for me was full of meaningless names, dates, actions - endlessly repeated with no enthusiasm at all.
      - freedomben 1y ago
        Fully agree. My kids consider(ed) history to be very boring, other than when I teach them about it. I thought I disliked history after coming out of high school because the classes were always so excruciatingly boring and felt so irrelevant to anything "modern day." As I went through my early career I found myself constantly wondering "why is X that way?" Personal research including reading books written by historians who actually tell the story and also describe the many various links between events, and especially the "other side" of many of the issues (that's particularly fascinating regarding the USA "founding fathers" as they were far from a cohesive single-minded unit as presented in most history classes) many things started to click. When I've taught my kids about history using the same approach, especially zeroing in on the real fascinating aspects of it, they still don't love history but they have a strong appreciation for it. By way of example, "the founding fathers were Christians" is a classic oft-repeated phrase I continually hear, to which I love talking about Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, all of whom were clearly agnostic (at the time, they were "Deist" which was essentially equivalent to "agnostic" nowadays). Thomas Paine's phenomenal book "The Age of Reason" was utterly mind-blowing and extremely radical at the time, receiving widespread banning and igniting firestorms in the culture. It's still a great read today! Especially fascinating when you consider this was many decades before Darwin would provide one of the most important scientific explanations that massively shrunk the area for God of the Gaps.
    - tehjoker 1y ago
      Perhaps I wasn’t clear. Real history is much more persuasive. US elites love patriotic history and try to enforce it in schools.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
aaron695 1y ago
[dead]
louthy 1y ago
> It's insane how the largest conflict in human history is just now passing out of living memory. Don’t worry, there will be another one along any minute now.
- slg 1y ago
  It seems more than coincidental that global fascism started to rise as soon as the generation that last defeated it had mostly died off.
  - jwagenet 1y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generat... Definitely controversial academically, but the idea of a generational cycle has been considered.
  - hgomersall 1y ago
    It's much simpler to think that as a society we've manufactured a similar set of circumstances to the last time. That is, a growing proportion of the population that feel they have very little and no prospects or hope.
    - ArnoVW 1y ago
      I won’t enter into a conversation about inequality and social justice, even though there are indeed points to be raised. I would however like to point out that people are not only victims of society, and that they have a responsibility as a critical member of society and an elector. Historic awareness, understanding of economics, law and geopolitics. To give an example: Mr Trump was not just votes into office, but RE voted into office. His plan was public for all to see. More than 50% of American voters voted for him. I am having a difficult time to believe that 50%+ of the US are economically oppressed that had no choice but to vote for Trump. Inequalities exist but they do not justify everything, neither do they explain everything.
      - 1y ago
wil421 1y ago
Do you have a source or are you flamebating[1]? The myriad of trash google results on the topic aren’t even close to 1 in 4. Even an Israeli tabloid says it’s 1 in 10. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- chgs 1y ago
  Was widely reported but was discredited. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/12/07/one-in-five-young-americans-thinks-the-holocaust-is-a-myth https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/12/07/one-in-fi...
- andrepd 1y ago
  I am not flamebaiting, but I was wrong. See the economist link in the sibling comment, which contains the original story as well as an explanation why the results are inflated.
throw7384849 1y ago
[flagged]

sys32768 1y ago

Two years ago my mother's memory care home had an American Battle of the Bulge veteran and Bronze Star winner who was sharp as a tack. He was 99 and said he just wanted to live to be 100, but sadly he didn't make it. I remember my late grandmother telling us they had made mittens for my great uncle, but he died in that battle before the mittens arrived. Crazy to think I passed up my chance to have a cup of coffee with a man who might have fought beside my great uncle.

zeke 1y ago

In 2001 in the small town of Hartsville SC, one of the youngest code breakers gave his last two public talks. He had been hired by Turing because he was one of the few studying both math and German at the start of the war. Besides being very interesting it felt odd to hear all this in such an out of the way place. Well after the war he collaborated on some books with a professor teaching at the college there.

nonrandomstring 1y ago

Most of them were told "Never, ever speak about any of this". And they didn't. Like the Zanryu Nipponhei [0], they were loyal to the last. Even my own father kept things about his airforce days way too tightly wrapped up long, long after the official secrets sell-by date. I have some admiration for this, but in the end it's a loss to historical record. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_holdout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_holdout

DocTomoe 1y ago
Consider it a blessing. Those orders were about controlling history much more than 'secrets': Many things done in war are later considered war crimes. Your admiration might have taken a hit had he started talking gleefully about the time he - just to pick a random example of things that happened - heroically shot fleeing "enemy" children on the ground.
- nonrandomstring 1y ago
  You're absolutely right. I did hear a few of those. And there was as much shame as pride in the old stories.