Plausibility for coincidence is elastic to a degree, far better to use magic if the plot demands a lot of fantastic coincidence than to use science. There is little point to not wanting to live in history though, because you are living it and making it as your live out your life…

@ Anonymous: Wasn’t Hood a pre-Jutland design? If my memory on that is correct, in retrospect her explosion isn’t too odd a coincidence – not that this would necessarily be brought up in an animated adaption of the battle. So yes, it would be pretty hard to believe. And I’m not going to offer any convenient explanations for the jammed propellor.

I seem to recall that Forester wrote the Bismarck’s voyage up, and that his book was filmed.

@ Dorne: I didn’t know the History Channel did things like that. Nice imagery, though I wouldn’t say I liked the narration.

@ LillePer: And coincidentally, Wikipedia’s article on Johnny Horton has a ‘Coincidences’ section . . .

“The Hood found the Bismarck and on that fatal day
The Bismarck started firing fifteen miles away
We gotta sink the Bismarck was the battle sound
But when the smoke had cleared away the mighty Hood went down”

Indeed. I’m sure if someone animated the Hood and Bismarck clash, I reckon Anime fans would probably consider it a bit unrealistic.

After all, what are the chances of the Hood literally blowing up instantly, the Prince of Wales jamming most of its main battery, and the Ark Royal jamming the Bismarck’s propellers with a dud torpedo all in the matter of a few hours/days.

All in all human history is filled with some rather strange moments and colorful people. Russia will have to deal with the issue of their own deeds on the most savage Ostfront sooner or later, even they could not escape the fact that war is hell.

Fiction usually has to follow its own set of rules of plausibility with instances like Code Geass pushing plausibility to the limit or out right breaking it in some cases. History on the other hand is filled some rather fantastic accidents and happy coincidences. It was after all a French Army Engineer who discovered the Rosetta Stone, and not an archaeologist. Hannibal the Admiral sucked hard compared to Hannibal the General.

@ Crusader: Fair point on the clearing effect of time; I’ve read a few of Antony Beevor’s books and from reading his introductions I’ve received the impression that he wouldn’t have been able to write much without access to those Soviet archives. That said, it sounds like he hasn’t avoided controversy. Vietnam’s a pretty obscure subject to me, as I’ve missed out both on a lot of its presence in popular culture, and on a lot of its history, as the UK wasn’t directly involved. Which may be why I found Kummen so interesting.

I was thinking more of the way that academic history has been affected by the arrival of Theory with a capital ‘T’ in recent decades: it’s hard for me to find a liberal/left-wing historian who’ll admit to writing about facts. Military historians are a bit of an exception, either because they tend in the UK to be connected to the Establishment, or because it’s hard to be excessively postmodern about death. There’s been a retreat from grand historical narratives into things like microhistory, which does help to dampen down the problems that come with having a grand narrative (the Geoffrey of Monmouth kind of problems), but doesn’t help if you’re writing about a period of history which might actually have a grand narrative to it. But this is all rather disputed, and technically not my business as I’m not a History student.

As for the superior interest of actual history, I suspect that’s something we disagree on. My father’s fourth career was as a historian, so the subject has always been something I’m meant to rebel against.

-The issue is not that the events are forgotten but that in the present remain charged with human passions, even when the participants are all dead so long as there is nostalgia for the lost cause, like in the case of the American Civil War with regards to the South, an objective analysis of the event will remain slightly out of reach.