"The Nazis improved the economy", "Clean Wehrmacht", "The Wehrmacht had the best tanks and was a highly mechanised army" ... are but some of the popular history falsehoods that seem to just not want to die.
The Nazis built an economy on debt and theft of Jewish property that was close to bankcruptcy before the war, yet it is a very popular belief that "the Nazis werent 100% bad, they also dis good things, like build up the economy!"
The Wehrmacht was deeply involved in the warcrimes, yet it is a popular belief that they were mostly clean of sin and just apolitical draftees that didnt do nothing.
The Nazi tanks that get the most praise, such as the Tiger and the Panther, were overengineered and had many mechanical problems, yet somehow are seen as the best tanks of the war. The Wehrmacht is seen as this highly efficient and mechanized force, despite being largely horse drawn (to a higher percentage than most of their major adversaries even).
Most of these false beliefs stem directly from Nazi propaganda and the fact that Nazi generals were allowed to have a large influence on the post-war perception on their, and the Wehrmachts, performance during the War, because their memoirs were used as the primary source.
Of course, for decades now much research has existed that busts all these myths. Yet thanks to the Internet these myths are more popular than ever and just dont seem to want to die.
For every video there is on YouTube debunking this stuff, 10 more videos peddling the same falsehoods pop up.
And this is not just in relation to myths about the Nazis. This can be seen in many other areas of history, too, such as "The Roman Empire fell due to cultural decadence" or "the Civil War was about states rights". Its everywhere.
How do historians deal with that? How do they combat this spread of misinformation? What do they think about the chances of ever successfully eliminating most of the popular history falsehoods? Do they think its hopeless?
From my personal experiences (read: frustrations) with the peddling of such myths and falsehoods, it's a constant battle between telling someone a detailed, boring truth vs. a short, quippy, and wrong falsehood. People who are willing to dig deeper will eventually find the source of the claim and why it's wrong and stop believing in it. People who will take the quippy wrong fact and just leave it at that without looking any deeper into it are the ones who'll continue to peddle it, likely in your "well, acktually" tone as per classic Reddit.
People who are willing to dig any deeper to find out why German tanks are considered the best will do so and find out that stats written on paper and the reality of combat are two different things, people who want to know how the Wehrmacht stayed out of that whole Holocaust business will read and find out they had an essential hand in the process, and people who want to know which states rights the Confederacy were fighting for will find out just which right meant the most to them. For the vast majority of others, they'll take their quippy fact and go about thinking its true uncritically, and is the source of much of its continued peddling and aren't interested in the hows or whys. For the minority of people who continue to peddle such myths though, they know the truth, but do so to make their repulsive political beliefs more palatable to a general audience, and they count on those people who'll take their quippy line and run with it in order to view their repulsive beliefs in a slightly more positive light.
For historians or even just well-read laymen like me, it's a treadmill of informing people how these myths sprung up, why they're still perpetuated, and to think critically about the claim and why it's wrong. To educate people that books written by German generals after WWII wrote books like Lost Victories to absolve themselves of blame for the crimes they committed and blame it all on a conveniently dead man as a scapegoat, while at the same time distracting you from those crimes to instead look at the cool rockets, supertanks and jet fighters, those are way cooler than industrialized mass murder. Those who want to dig even deeper will find out that most, if not all, of those post-war books written by German officers were coordinated in the content they contained by German General Franz Halder, in order to create a consistent narrative to support the Clean Wehrmacht myth through multiple supporting accounts, and so on.
At the end of the day, it all boils down to whether people are willing to dig a little deeper when it comes to what they hear or read. Sadly, most people would rather take their short, easily memorable, and easily repeatable wrong phrase over a critical thinking about the hows or whys of that claim, and it's up to historians and those who did take the extra effort to find out how or why its wrong to dispel such harmful myths to others. It's not an impossible task. I've seen society go from using the phrase "wow that's gay" as a universally negative descriptor in my middle school days to the phrase pretty much disappearing from people's vernacular entirely. If that can go away through teaching people better, than phrases like "the civil war was about states rights" and "The Wehrmacht had nothing to do with the Holocaust" can too.
Speaking only from my personal experience, but it seems to be working as I'm seeing myself cited more and more when the various falsehoods are being stated and then disputed, I think it's 'fight on their turf' and 'have acolytes'. Here's what I suggest and have been doing:
/u/quiaudetvincet is quite correct at the 'quippy wrong fact and just leave it without looking deeper' being, in at least what I've seen, the most common cause of the egregiousness. However, I am not so sure I agree with the premise that the counter to a 'short, quippy, and wrong falsehood' must be a 'detailed, boring truth'. Why must the truth be detailed and boring?
Absolutely, a lot of the substantiating documents, as it were, are going to be detailed and boring, but look at the nature of the problem. Quiaudetvincent identifies two types of purveyors of falsehoods: Those who are 'honest' in their misbelief, and those who know damned well they are misstating, but are spreading the data for their own purposes. We can't do anything much about the latter, but they likely don't outnumber the folks who are getting it right. The first group are the 'folks in play', those who don't take the time to research in depth, and are susceptible in two ways.
Firstly, it's winning what the PsyOps folks call "The Battle of First Truth." Basically, what it means is that the first person on top of the hill doesn't have to do any work to become king of the hill. However, anyone which comes afterwards has to knock the first guy off. There is nothing to 'challenge' before the first truth becomes imprinted. If you can get the 'truth' into them first, then no matter how 'quippy' the falsehood is, then the falsehood has to have the legs to replace the truth.
So where are they getting this false truth from in the first place? Mainly places where respectable historians often don't hang out. Even here on Reddit, this fairly-well-regarded sub... How many historians do you know, and how many are not on here?
Secondly, of those who are in those areas of mass media, be it Facebook, Youtube, or wherever, how many are 'on the offensive' instead of merely reacting to other output? Even if you were to respond to every single of the ten videos about "X" out there, such as "Panther tank good, Sherman tank bad", and a word of approval for that one good one out of eleven, that's still not getting first truth in. Put simply, we're not doing a good job of fighting on the important battleground.
So, you need to get a first truth out there, and it needs to be on the same level that the current 'imprints' are happening. Why are people 'clicking' on that link to get their information? Catchy title, click-enticing image, that sort of thing. I was at dinner with British historian Dan Snow a few years back, and I had mentioned to him the very surprising traction I was getting with one of my videos, blowing everything else out of the water that I had put out. "Myths of American Armor", it was called. Well, that was exactly why, he said. You put "Myths" or "Top Ten" in the title, and it's going to take off. And he's not wrong. For example, go to Youtube and look at the feeds by your favourite 'serious' channels, and see which videos are attracting the most attention. The Museum of Flight (Massive museum up in Seattle area) has 17,000 subscribers, and the typical video, a couple thousand views. A talk by a USAF fighter ace, on their channel, has 1,260 views. Yet one talk by a doctorate-level historian has over a third of a million views. Both have basic thumbnails of a man at a dias with a big screen behind them. One is entitled "Col Ken Cordier speaks at the Museum of Flight", the other is entitled "Myths of the Luftwaffe".
As another example, the US Army's Heritage and Education Center also has a little under 20k subscribers on their Youtube channel. Again, your average video, less than a thousand views. There is the occasional particularly interesting one like "Falklands 1982: The challenge of Expeditionary Warfare" which does well. The most-clicked video that I can see is "The Soviet-German War, 1941-1945: Myths and Realities" by David Glantz. Zaloga's "Smashing Hitler's Panzers" is coming in a close second if one looks at how long it's been up for.
There are plenty of articles and videos out there which explain the psychology behind what attracts attention. Most of us, and I include myself in this, are probably too busy researching and writing to do the best possible job of meeting that psychological demand, but on occasion, we get it right. At the least, it doesn't take that much work to come up with a catchy title.
Then, once you have their attention, you need to keep the basic information short and engaging. So, for an example from my field: "Panzer doctrine was developed under the stewardship of Oswald Lutz". You don't need to say "according to the research by Mary Habeck and published in her book "Storm of Steel...." Punctuate with incongruent one-liners, such as a video clip of the Panzermuseum director in an entirely different setting saying "Guderian was the genius at suggesting he was the genius behind the Panzers", then cut back to yourself to give a couple of lines as to the backstory. Don't try to eat the whole elephant at once. Just get the initial message out. You can get the long boring details out at another time or place, but do try to make them less boring.
Then, once you have the initial 'salvo' of information put out there, you are reliant on those people you have reached to take up the fight for you. Nowadays, if I check out a video or see an FB post on something which is in my lane and likely to repeat false tropes, I'm not surprised to see that there are multiple commentators commenting on it. As Pashahlis observes, there's so much coming out, we can't keep up with it, but The People can and are now doing our work for us.
Better yet, I'm noticing a greater percentage of new videos or articles are 'getting it right', so obviously the traction is holding. Maybe, in a couple of decades, the myths can finally be put to rest.
I and at least one other flair already posted several of these but figured I'd do them all at once
Clean Wehrmacht: Just how much of the Wehrmacht was dirty? written by u/commiespaceinvader
Mechanized Wehrmacht: Why did the wehrmacht rely so greatly on horses as a primary means of transportation? written by u/[deleted]
German Tanks: What is the origin of the German WW2 tank superiority myth? written by u/The_Chieftain_WG
Nazi Economy: has a whole FAQ section
Fall of the roman Empire: How accurate is the popular view that "uncontrolled immigration led to the fall of the Roman Empire"? written by u/Iguana_on_a_stick tackles 3 different works to try and tease out an answer to the question of the Fall of the Roman empire (if a "fall" occurred at all)
Civil War causes: Causes of the American Civil War written by u/Borimi and Was the civil war about states rights or slavery? written by u/freedmenspatrol
I don't know if this follow the rules of the sub, but is there any way you could link me to something that explains the falsehood of "the Roman Empire fell due to cultural decadence" in detail? I'm not well versed in Roman history, but my understanding has been that Rome was weakened for a long period of time due to infighting etc, and that cultural decadence had maybe a role in the continued decay before the Gothic sacking of Rome?