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beth_joey's review against another edition
5.0
What was I doing all through my childhood?!
I'm 23 and this is my first ever Horrible Histories book... Which is just insane for someone who loves dark and weird history as much as I do!
First things first, The Frightful First World War.
I am significantly more knowledgeable about the Second World War than I am about the First - mostly because when I was a child, I went to Dachau and was horrified by that period in history and just desperately needed to understand how something like the Holocaust could last as long as it did.
So that took up a significant amount of my modern war learning, making the first half of this book almost entirely new territory for me.
I loved that every year of the year that was covered began with a timeline of the major events that happened in that year. I also thoroughly loved that the explanation of why Franz Ferdinand's assassination started the war in the first place was included, as I never really understood why his death was big enough to start a war.
The technology of WW1 was fascinating in its own right as it was a period of so many firsts. I also never understood the realities of the trenches, as there is no way that the mock trenches you can visit in Europe today could ever mimic the horror these soldiers had to face.
The inclusion of satirical comics around a lot of the storytelling helped take away some of the horror of the truth; a truth which I am so glad I have finally learned because, like the book suggests, our history books tend to gloss over a lot of these facts.
The last page of this book hit me hard... A young child asking which of the many wars was "the war to end all wars" just shows the level of sacrifice in countries all over the world every time we went to war.
Secondly, the Woeful Second World War.
Now this is something I knew a lot more about but this was so much more balanced than the history I was taught in schools.
As they say, history is often written by the victors. But this was a history of the atrocities committed on both sides of the fence.
Something that truly struck me was just how many soldiers were killed for deserting on both sides. If you think about how young these boys were and exactly what they were facing, who can blame them?! They didn't deserve the ultimate punishment they received...
There seemed to be a lot more in this book about the heroes of the war, both male and female, which I appreciated. It was nice to hear stories of Nazi soldiers who chose to do the right thing and save innocent people, even if it meant they lost their lives in the process.
Whilst there is nothing about the Nazi party that I agree with, the stories of these heroic individuals changed this radicalised group from a tsunami into lots of little droplets of water, some of which had no intention of causing destruction.
But that's not to say that the things I learnt about throughout the book weren't horrific, especially when I got to the chapter on the Holocaust. Every time I read about it, I learn some new horror that I am glad I read, only because the more people that know, the less likely this is going to happen again at such a scale.
Again, the quote on the very last page struck me (these books are good at this!): Why is it that the ones who most need to remember are the ones most likely to forget?
I want to read this quote in front of every borderline tyrannical leader in the modern world and convince them acknowledge the truth of it and their own ignorance to history.
Maybe then history will finally not be doomed to repeat itself.
I'm 23 and this is my first ever Horrible Histories book... Which is just insane for someone who loves dark and weird history as much as I do!
First things first, The Frightful First World War.
I am significantly more knowledgeable about the Second World War than I am about the First - mostly because when I was a child, I went to Dachau and was horrified by that period in history and just desperately needed to understand how something like the Holocaust could last as long as it did.
So that took up a significant amount of my modern war learning, making the first half of this book almost entirely new territory for me.
I loved that every year of the year that was covered began with a timeline of the major events that happened in that year. I also thoroughly loved that the explanation of why Franz Ferdinand's assassination started the war in the first place was included, as I never really understood why his death was big enough to start a war.
The technology of WW1 was fascinating in its own right as it was a period of so many firsts. I also never understood the realities of the trenches, as there is no way that the mock trenches you can visit in Europe today could ever mimic the horror these soldiers had to face.
The inclusion of satirical comics around a lot of the storytelling helped take away some of the horror of the truth; a truth which I am so glad I have finally learned because, like the book suggests, our history books tend to gloss over a lot of these facts.
The last page of this book hit me hard... A young child asking which of the many wars was "the war to end all wars" just shows the level of sacrifice in countries all over the world every time we went to war.
Secondly, the Woeful Second World War.
Now this is something I knew a lot more about but this was so much more balanced than the history I was taught in schools.
As they say, history is often written by the victors. But this was a history of the atrocities committed on both sides of the fence.
Something that truly struck me was just how many soldiers were killed for deserting on both sides. If you think about how young these boys were and exactly what they were facing, who can blame them?! They didn't deserve the ultimate punishment they received...
There seemed to be a lot more in this book about the heroes of the war, both male and female, which I appreciated. It was nice to hear stories of Nazi soldiers who chose to do the right thing and save innocent people, even if it meant they lost their lives in the process.
Whilst there is nothing about the Nazi party that I agree with, the stories of these heroic individuals changed this radicalised group from a tsunami into lots of little droplets of water, some of which had no intention of causing destruction.
But that's not to say that the things I learnt about throughout the book weren't horrific, especially when I got to the chapter on the Holocaust. Every time I read about it, I learn some new horror that I am glad I read, only because the more people that know, the less likely this is going to happen again at such a scale.
Again, the quote on the very last page struck me (these books are good at this!): Why is it that the ones who most need to remember are the ones most likely to forget?
I want to read this quote in front of every borderline tyrannical leader in the modern world and convince them acknowledge the truth of it and their own ignorance to history.
Maybe then history will finally not be doomed to repeat itself.
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