What was taught in the 1960s about WWII in schools in America?

Question

Was the information about the war given to adolescence in public high schools in America in the 1950s and 60s specific or was it sugar coded? If kids weren't taught all of the facts, when did the schools start teaching the material like it's taught today?

Answer 1

I was in high school in the early 1950's and we were not taught about it at all. We remembered and our parents talked about what happened. It would have been like teaching about 9/11 in history classes today. We didn't need to learn about it in school, it had been part of our life.

Answer 2

I graduated high school in 1969

We didn't really get deeply into WWII, but there was certainly a lot of discussion of the Holocaust. I remember being shown examples of Nazi propaganda films, films showing the aftermath of concentration camps, etc. This was NOT sugar coated.

Of course a lot of material has been released since then. Read the book "Flyboys" by James Bradley. The book was made popular because it documents events that involved George Bush's squadron in the Pacific. Describes torture and cannibalism of US POWs by Japanese. This information was withheld from the public to avoid a huge outcry against Japan after the war by American citizens when the US felt it was important to build up Japan as a block against Soviet and Chinese expansion in the Asian Rim.

Answer 3

Frankly, I think you're wrong in assuming kids are taught the facts, today. I've read some of your history texts.

I started school in 1949. Most of my male teachers were WW II vets. I can't say everything we were taught was true, but I can say everything we were taught was true as best the teachers could fathom truth. Nothing was sugar coated.

A teacher who's carried a bomb load over, say, Hamburg, released it and watched the explosions and secondary explosions do their work, watched the flack knock down bombers around him, sees the plane stitched by fire from a fighter, might not know the truth about WW II. I'll grant that. But what he knows probably comes a lot nearer truth than the 'all the facts' version you're taught today.

A teacher who survived the Bataan Death March, who was hung by his thumbs for hours in a prison camp in Japan, who watched many of his fellow prisoners beheaded after Hiroshima has some piece of valid perspective to convey, whether it's the un-sugar coated truth you're taught today, or isn't.

Answer 4

I can only state what was taught in my high school in the 1950s. Let's just say...that I had to learn about the 'causes and effects' in college in the 1980s! [But, remember...we in HS in the '50s had been children during these wars and most had close relatives who fought and/or died in them]. This was one global war that was truly fought to protect and defend most of the world...both east and west.
The 'beginnings,' which began in Europe after WWI, the bankruptcy of the democratic gov't. in Germany and what caused it, culminating in a megalomaniac gaining control of the gov't.
The Pacific theater had a much different cause, primarily a need/wish for colonization, power etc., but also a negative perception by many politicians in the U.S.
This does not mean that I believe in any of the 'Aryan Race' tripe [the Aryans hadn't been 'pure' since ?BCE]. Nor do I approve of the wars, but the causes should be taught as straight 'history' without any 'sugar coating'.