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In Brief: Discrepancies of History

Omar Alansari-Kreger

A critical observation of history will generate innumerable apprehensions about its depth,
scope, and complexity. What we are able to reconstruct in our own minds is just an analytical
perception that does not really reflect the way in which historical events actually transpired. It
becomes all too easy to reflect on a historical event and question the rational plausibility of what
happened, but when push comes to shove none of us and fewer of our own contemporaries were
actually there to experience the event in question. The unreliability of first hand recollections of
historical events are not very lucid because the individual reflecting on their past has the
tendency to constantly change the original story; that is why a firsthand recollection will never
qualify for something that can be treated as airtight historical fact.
Any historical observation into Weimar Germany paints a picture of chaotic disorder
combined together with a humiliated nation that had suffered from a harsh economic depression.
When families are forced to cart around wheel barrels of currency to buy a single loaf of bread a
nesting ground is produced for reactionary extremism of the ideological variety. That indication
alone is one of the reasons why Weimar Germany served as a virtual battleground between
Revolutionary Marxism and Absolutist Fascism. Standing generations are seldom masters of
their own time. Why? The human experience is based on what we are able to learn from our past
mistakes and that goes on to explain why civilization is a constant work in progress.
The aftermath of the First World War forged the Treaty of Versailles on a defeated
Germany which was just as humiliating as it was heavy handed. On that note it is quite plausible
to contest that the reason why Weimar Germany couldnt provide the German people with their
own national survival derives from the actual decrees and statues of the Versailles Treaty itself.
Of course under the alias of an Allied victory against the defeated Central Powers, thirst for
revenge was in the air and every victor that triumphed over Imperial Germany wanted to enforce
its own form of restituting punishment. When will human civilization ever learn from that grave
miscalculation? Treaties and the governing policies behind them fail to mend anything when
they are designed under the auspicious of punitive vengeance.
Overall, we are often our own worst enemies whenever we try to interpret history for own
our elite purposes. That approach attaches a bias on any spearheaded attempt of historical
inquiry. Similar to the quest for free and unaligned enlightenment, when staring down historical
tunnels of daunting proportions it is best to approach that endeavor assuming that not a single
element is entirely known for certain outside of the universal generalities that made the historical
event in question. When an ideological interest or an individual party tries to discover history for
its own interests the inquisitor has already forfeited the purity of the pursuit. That leads to
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another question which states: how is it possible to achieve an open ended realm of independent
inquiry when approaching the arena wearing preconceived blinders?
Doesnt that block out chances for open ended resonations of historical truth, depth,
breath, and analysis? Civilization itself is built on the backs of reoccurring slates of time. Each
generation that emerges into the center stage has the opportunity to write the terms and
conditions of human civility, but that is all derived from what we can and cant understand about
world history in its purest and simplest forms. As an emerging generation we must decide what
we will do with the realm of history and how those extracted derivations of nonaligned fact will
work toward the posterity of human civilization.