Why Study History?

Although I wrote this book primarily for history buffs (first and foremost those specializing in history of the Third Reich), I still decided to include into this chapter a short section on why everyone needs to study history. Yes, everyone.

Obviously, you study history to obtain (“mine”) knowledge – relevant, comprehensive, accurate and well-structured information – about historical persons, events and organizations.

Who did what when how and why; what was the desired outcome of decisions made and actions taken; what was the actual outcome… and if they were different (they often are) than why?

Who exactly were the historical persons (i.e., Reinhard Heydrich) – and why they did what they did? What exactly were historical organizations (i.e., RSHA) and why they behaved the way they behaved? What exactly were historical events (and projects), such as the Holocaust and why they happened the way they happened?

Why mine and accumulate knowledge about history? Because knowledge is not only the power (more on that later) – knowledge is wealth.

Knowing something of general interest (history is) makes you genuinely wealthy, because – unlike financial wealth – it commands respect, admiration and importance… and these are the only things that really matter (according to Dale Carnegie with whom I wholeheartedly agree). In any society, experts (and knowledge of history makes you one) command far higher respect than even billionaires… just ask Elon Musk.

Now let me elaborate on the irrefutable fact that knowledge of history is power. Genuine power. In my (actually, not-so-humble) opinion, the most compelling case for studying history was made by a prominent British historian Robert Crowcroft in his article “The Case for Applied History” published in History Today :

“In An Autobiography, published in 1939, R.G. Collingwood [British philosopher, historian and archaeologist] offered an arresting statement about the kind of insight possessed by the trained historian.

This philosopher of history [he authored the classic “The Idea of History”] likened the difference between those who knew and understood history and those who did not to that between ‘the trained woodsman’ and ‘the ignorant traveler’ in a forest.

While the latter marches along unaware of their surroundings, thinking ‘Nothing here but trees and grass’, the woodsman sees what lurks ahead. ‘Look’, he will say, ‘there is a tiger in that grass.’

What Collingwood meant was that, through their familiarity with people, places and ideas, historians are often equipped to see how a situation might turn out – or at least identify the key considerations that determine matters.

Collingwood’s musings implied an expansive vision of the role historians might play in society. Their grasp of human behavior, long-term economic or cultural processes and the complexities of the socio-political order of a given region of the world meant that they could be more than just a specialist in the past. By being able to spot the ‘tiger in the grass’, historians might profitably advise on contemporary and future challenges.

Historians writing thereafter often see themselves as not only piecing together the details of a specific event, but offering their readers conceptual tools with which to understand other situations in the world around them – and in that to come. For centuries, statesmen and thinkers used history as a tool to shed light on their own difficulties and to suggest courses of action.

The Victorian historian J.R. Seeley went so far as to declare that history was no less than a ‘school of statesmanship’; a bold assertion of what the discipline might offer us.”

However, to get value from studying history, you must study it the right way. In other words, to follow the creed of genuine historians (which, obviously, is my creed as well).


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