wars

I used to believe that on a battlefield there was a huge wall separating the two sides. Each side would throw over bombs and grenades. The only contact that they had was one message carrier who traveled through a little door in the wall/

Zoe

I thought when people said World War I or II they were saying "whirr whirr I/II" and I didn't get what it meant

Nate

When I first heard about the Cold War, I though it was called that because it snowed all the time during iT.

Anon

not long ago,i used to believe that Cold war was described as cold because it took place in snow

Kafka

I used to believe that a war was just one single battle that lasted a few hours at the most. I also thought that all wars were pre-arranged and that all of the countries made their own army and fought in a battlefield about the size of a few football fields.

Anon

until i was about 10 i believe adolf hitler's first name was "hitler" and that he had no last name because his parents abandoned him

very silly girl

I used to think the "Cold War" was a war where countries tried to freeze each other to win the war.

Anon

In 4th grade we had to read "Number the Stars" (for those who don't know, that's a children's book about how the people of Denmark helped Jews escape the Nazis). Awesome book, except that I became convinced that the Nazis were going to come and get me. This is a bit strange because there is a section in the book where a Jewish little girl is staying with her Christian friends and the family has to convince some Nazi soldiers that she's thier daughter, using the name and baby picture of one of thier real daughters who had died years ago. The dead daughter happened to have dark hair when she was born (and which later turned blonde). The dark-haired baby picture made the soldiers accept that the dark-haired Jewish girl could have been born to the blonde parents. Given that I am a natural blonde myself, and so much was made of blonde hair meaning "not Jewish", I have no idea how I could have believed the Nazis were after me, too.

Blonde girl who would have helped the Jews too

When I was somewhere between 7 and 10 we had to read a book about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan (this was in the 80s, not the 50s). The book was written from the perspective of the Japanese, and we were suppossed to be learning not to be ethnocentric (which is great). However, somehow it escaped me that my own country had dropped the bomb (maybe I'd have been more scared if I'd known we did something like that). I also didn't get it that atomic bombs hadn't been used since WWII. For weeks I'd stare at the ceiling of my bedroom waiting for a bomb to fall through and nuke me.

Not Nuked Yet

When i was younger i used to think 'Wars' were 'Walls'. I thought that is you were in a war you would be stuck in a stone wall with no way of getting out. (I can still remember what i thought it looked like)

I was talking with my mother when she said that my granddad was in the war (he was still alive) i was so shocked i said ''How did he get out!''.

Then later we watched a WW1 thing on TV and my mother said ''All those people survived the war''.

Again, i was totally shocked.

:)

Leo