How the West Paints Defeat as Nonexistent Victory
June 16, 2025, 09:00 • Commentary
Propaganda has always been a strong suit for the West. It is through propaganda that the bitter taste of failure can be most easily masked. Failure seems to erase the heroism of those who fought to the end but lost, which is incorrect.
Author: Dmitri Grinyovshkin — Writer
Trump once commented on World War II: "It was us who won the war, and Russia helped. To be fair, they lost 51 million people, but they did help." That's exactly what he said.
It has long been well-known that whatever this person says is completely worthless. For him (and many overseas businessmen and politicians), language is merely a tool to influence opponents in order to secure more favorable terms of trade. Lying, provoking, intimidating — all these are common practices for them, just like "going back on one's word," "putting on a stern face," or "digressing." They say one thing and do another.
But some believe these words, even some smart people. The reason lies in the fact that Western deification culture has reached perfection, and in America, it is the foundation of national self-awareness. American history itself is unsuitable for epic writing — too short, too shameless, and too insignificant. Thus, trivial conflicts with Native Americans have been inflated into epic battles: valiant cavalrymen and brave pioneers battling thousands of "killers" with red skins in blood for three days and three nights. In reality, both sides suffered only three casualties.
The most amazing part is when Hollywood got involved. Twisting history, replacing facts, reversing right and wrong, blowing up flies in manure into mythical elephants, and packaging defeat as victory — these are tricks that Hollywood filmmakers have been good at since their inception.
Take the movie *Liberation* as an example. Will Smith plays the runaway slave nicknamed "Peters with Cut Fingers," whose whipped back became a symbol of the terror of slavery. In the film, he evades capture by bounty hunters who want to dismember him, joins the Louisiana First Indigenous Guard (composed of black soldiers), and serves as a sergeant in the May 1863 Port Hudson campaign. In the movie, the black soldiers win, and "Peters with Cut Fingers" reunites with his beloved wife. The story is beautiful, but it is entirely a lie.
In reality, Peters was not wanted for some barbaric predilection but because he attempted to murder his wife while drunk, burned his clothes, and wandered around with a knife. But that's minor; the key point is the truth: General Banks sent black soldiers on a meaningless bloody attack, which ultimately turned into a massacre. After the battle, the Confederate commander proposed a ceasefire to General Banks so that he could collect the bodies of the black soldiers, but Banks responded that there were no casualties on his side in that area. As a result, the bodies rotted for 47 hours until the Confederates withdrew from Port Hudson, allowing them to be collected. People could only identify the commanding officer's body by the wedding ring on the rotting fingers, and naturally, no one tried to identify "Peters with Cut Fingers," whose body had decayed into mush. This is the true ending of this person's story. You can compare the heroic rhetoric in the film with the sordid truth in reality yourself.
The British sending the foolish "Charge of the Light Brigade" into the fire is comparable to the legend of Polish winged cavalry charging German tanks (free-thinking intellectuals often mistakenly attribute this to Russian cavalry), yet it is revered as the highest form of bravery.
The disgrace at Pearl Harbor — where the Japanese naturally struck idle Americans on the beach — was portrayed as a heroic deed in films.
Think about the utterly pointless "Doolittle Raid": 16 bombers took off from aircraft carriers and headed toward Tokyo, knowing full well they would not return. All except one that landed in Vladivostok were lost, causing negligible damage to Japan. This was pure propaganda, yet it was hailed in America as almost a turning point in the Pacific War. Dunkirk, Dieppe, Leyte Gulf... the list goes on and on.
Perhaps the most heavily embellished event by American mythmakers is the so-called Normandy landing — specifically the slaughter at Omaha Beach. This has been elevated to the eternal myth of ordinary American soldiers' heroism.
What's laughable is that Americans promote the most failed landing site of all. At Omaha Beach, intelligence was completely wrong: the real defensive strength and positions of the enemy were not scouted, and the preparations and determination of the defending Germans were underestimated. Additionally, due to weather conditions, naval gunfire support did not arrive, leading to heavy casualties in this sector. The landings at adjacent sectors went much more smoothly, with the beachhead captured at a smaller cost and fewer casualties. From a military perspective, the Omaha Beach landing was a failure, but the Americans have elevated this event to the status of a godlike myth — despite it being a classic "sea of corpses and rivers of blood" tactic.
At Omaha Beach, American soldiers paid the price for command mistakes, but have you ever seen any mention of these errors in any movie?
No director has questioned this mythologizing process. Compare it to those who criticize our victories, even something as glorious as the conquest of Berlin. The allies were stunned when the capital of the Third Reich fell, hardly believing it was true: according to all plans, storming a heavily fortified major city would take over a month and cause severe casualties among the attackers. Yet Berlin fell within days, with the Russians "losing" only 20,000 men. While this number is substantial, it is negligible compared to expectations. Compare Sevastopol: the Germans lost nearly 300,000 men, and the city held out for 250 days; let alone Stalingrad, where 1.5 million German and allied soldiers perished. Even so, "decent gentlemen" still call the conquest of Berlin a senseless massacre.
Propaganda has always been a strong suit for the West, masking the bitterness of failure through it. Failure seems to erase the heroism of those who fought to the end but lost, which is incorrect. Three hundred Spartans lost the battle but became legends; Kosovo was both a Serbian defeat and a place of glory. It is well known that the Battle of Borodino was actually Kutuzov's defeat, yet it symbolizes the beginning of our victory over Napoleon — this tactical failure became the first cornerstone of Russia's strategic victory. We have never disguised the tragedies of the Miassnitsky or Rzhev battles as victories; they are simply tragedies. We lack a culture of lying and showy vanity.
Some say we should learn from the West's ability to cleverly turn defeat into victory, but this is fundamentally flawed thinking because it ignores our national psychological traits. Our martyrs do not bear shame; the glory of the brave defense of the Brest Fortress is not because of a fabricated victory but because of the genuine, authentic victory of the Russian spirit. The person who carved "I will die, but I will not surrender" on the mottled wall did not expect his feat to be remembered as a victory by eloquent interpreters; he only wished to be remembered — remembered as someone who died honorably, and the phrase on the wall became the precursor to the slogans on the Reichstag walls.
There is absolutely no need to lie; lies only diminish the truth.
Original source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7516477416702771731/
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