More than 75 years after V-E Day—the German surrender on May 8, 1945, that ended the physical fighting on the Western Front in World War II—myths and misconceptions about the war remain.
TIME asked the Senior Historian at the National World War II Museum, Rob Citino, which myths he has spent the most time debunking in his career as a professor of military history and author of 10 books.
“Historians owe it to the millions of people who participated in this event, and unfortunately, the millions of people who died in World War II, to delve as deeply as possible into why this all happened,” he says. “Often when you delve into the why, you bump into those myths of history. When you try to dig as deeply as possible, you’ll often peel back the layers that you did not even suspect were there.”
Here, Citino explains, in his own words, the five biggest myths he sees:
Myth: President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor in advance
President Franklin D. Roosevelt (wearing black armband) signing declaration of war as others look on, following Japanese bombing of
The big one and the one I get asked all the time and the one I’ve spent most of my career debunking is the notion that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor in advance and let it happen anyway, and is responsible for the death of nearly 2,500 American servicemen in cold blood. I label it the biggest myth of World War II. People are willing to entertain the craziest conspiracy theories. There are no documents that come anywhere close to saying that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor in advance.
