300 wasn't about the battle of marathon, that's why. Same reason why Hitler is the cultural touchstone of an genocidal dictator, in spite of both Mao and Stalin having dramatically higher bodycounts within the same decade as Hitlers; people simply go with what's familiar.

Because Thermopylae was about a small force (a few thousand) of a few Greek states performing a delaying tactic on the Persians to give the rest of the Greeks time to prepare. 300 is specifically ahistorical because it's being told in the form of a story by a Spartan to the united Greek army later on as an inspiring tale, so of course the Spartan's did everything all on their own and the Persians had monsters and so on. So the Battle was specifically about the Spartans sacrificing themselves when the goat herders exposed the path that led behind the Spartans in order to try and delay the Persians as long as possible. It's about sacrificing yourself for 'the greater good' type thing.

>>65079963
Thermopylae is distinct and easy to remember. A marathon is every time I go to the toilet.

>>65080000
To prepare? The battle of salamis happened at the same time, it was just setup for the athenian and thebian navies doing all the actual heavy lifting

>>65079963
We do, it's literally considered foundational to the western world.

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>>65079963
>Why don't Westerners talk about the Battle of Marathon like they do Thermopylae?
Marathon is blatantly more well known than Thermopylae (we run marathons), what the fuck are you talking about?

>>65080332
Hardly anyone knows why marathons are called marathons. I learned the story in grade school in the 80s and I've never heard anyone mention it since or even thought about it myself until just now.

>>65079985
This is generally right, but I'd also note that Hitler became THE genocidal dictator because his regime had the express goal of exterminating one particular ethnic group. That's why the term got coined, to describe something that, while not new, hadn't been attempted in such a workmanlike, industrialized fashion before.

Stalin and Mao had higher body counts, but I don't think they were as targeted. Their slaughter was indiscriminate, just a step above "anyone who looks at me funny." Hitler was a man with a plan, which is what makes the Holocaust so unique and so morbidly fascinating.

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>>65080332
>we run marathons
I've only met a handful of western people in my life that have ran or were training for full marathons (part marathons or walking some of it doesn't count). Must of the time the winner is some African guy.

>>65079963
Thermopylae was more kino, and Salamis was more important.

>>65080444
>hadn't been attempted in such a workmanlike, industrialized fashion before.
every civilisation did that
and in Europe, the Romans arguably were at least as systematic as Hitler was, if not more
and in the 20th century, there is the Armenian and Rwandan genocides, and various other tribal squabbles in Africa which only lack scale but were just as thorough as Hitler was
the main reason why Hitler is shocking to Western minds that an advanced white European civilisation formerly a League Of Nations member could regress so far so fast
like, imagine an West EU nation pulling a Carthage nowadays for example

>>65080397
>I learned the story in grade school
Along with literally everyone else in the western world, that's why no one bothers to bring it up.

>CTR+F Plataea
>no results

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>>65079963
I would argue the battle of Marathon is more widely known than the battle of Thermopylae

>>65080397
> I learned it in grade school
> no one knows what this is

Truly the deepest lore

>>65080444
>Hitler became THE genocidal dictator because his regime had the express goal of exterminating one particular ethnic group.
The Bolsheviks killed 13-15 million Christians, a higher number than Hitler.

>>65080448
You must be a fat faggot without a gym membership. I know countless people who run marathons. Some even do ultra marathons. Skill issue.

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>>65080781
Not according to the Steam charts.

>>65080801
I knew I should’ve purchased Thermopylae

>>65080484
That's a fair assessment. Personally, I still think there's a qualitative difference based on the way it was conducted. Lining people up in front of a mass grave and shooting them is, as you point out, quite common. Steadily improving methods of mass murder to kill as many of the hated class as possible as quickly as possible is pretty unique.

>>65080444
>Hitler became THE genocidal dictator because
Jews made him into it. It's all Jewish propaganda. All of it.

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>>65080885
Nobody wants to put it this way, but obviously the Germans themselves were squeamish about doing it. You don't see Africans and Arabs and all the other genociders of antiquity I listed above being squeamish about systematically killing all the men between 12 and 40, raping all the females, and enslaving all the rest, because until Christians came up with rules of war, that was simply how things were done.

>And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai. For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the word of the Lord which he commanded Joshua.

So what was shocking about the Germans is that they faffed about with Zyklon showers and slow starvation, when they could have gotten it all over and done with using firing squads, or with swords and knives Japanese- and Arab-style, if they had some backbone.

Nobody puts it this way because Nazis refuse to believe that they would do this, and the anti-Nazis (for lack of better word) refuse to believe the Nazis were anything less than the rabid caricatures of movie portrayal.

>>65079963
A heroic last stand is more interesting.
>They actually succeeded in driving away the invaders and did it a decade before
Well gee anon, if they came back a decade later it couldn't have been that successful.

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>>65079985
Well this thread sure fell to shit quickly didn't it.

>>65082028
wheres the lie tho?

>>65081912
An interesting theory, but I can't say I buy it. How does this explain the Serbs and their rape houses? Sure, we meme about them being subhuman Slavs, but they're really not that far from Europe. I acknowledge that the Einsatzgruppen, which were not just firing squads but mobile firing squads and thus by your rationale probably the optimal approach, were replaced with the death camps in part because of the toll it took on the trigger pullers involved, but inefficiency was also an issue.

I suspect that again, some of the distinction comes from differing approaches. The old way is a byproduct more of, as you say, old methods of war, where pillage was common. Thus, the mixture of murder, rape, and enslavement. But while it may have been systematic for the Assyrians or the Romans, it seems decidedly less so in your typical African fuck-fuck circus. That seems to be more just bandits doing bandit things, but they operate at such a scale that it takes on genocidal proportions. The Germans, meanwhile, were groping their way throughout the war toward an answer to "The Jewish Question," with moderates favoring ghettos and deportation and hardliners favoring extermination. The hardliners won out, but too late in the overall history of the country as far as they were concerned, but what's noteworthy to me is that the whole thing is a policy debate at the highest echelons of government. That strikes me as different to the events of, say, Serbrenica, which seemed more spontaneous despite its awfulness.

But perhaps it supports your point. That there was debate at all over whether a hated minority should be wiped from the face of the Earth, or merely sequestered and dispatched somewhere out of sight is perhaps a sign of civilization, even in a brutal regime. But then, the Soviets did the same thing, only with the more indistinct category of "dissident."

>>65082228
>Serbs
Slavs barely count as European, culturally
when we say "European" we usually mean "West European"
>we meme about them
in exaggeration, but that is the serious reason why

>it seems decidedly less so in your typical African fuck-fuck circus
only because of positive racism, I submit, and scale as I mentioned earlier
in tribal terms they have been genociding each other since the dawn of humanity

>That there was debate at all over whether a hated minority should be wiped from the face of the Earth, or merely sequestered and dispatched somewhere out of sight is perhaps a sign of civilization, even in a brutal regime
I think so, yes
hence the gradual boiling of the frogs. first the Jews and Poles* were, as you say, placed in ghettoes, then concentration camps, then starved, and only then finally eliminated.

whereas cultures and tribes more accustomed to genocide, whose people at the grassroots and rank-and-file had never really internalised** the idea that genocide is wrong, find it much easier to just shoot them and be done with
which, overall, is so much faster

the Africans, Arabs and Romans made a grand business out of the whole thing, as you know. the Ottomans, Babylonians, and Chinese even came up with the great idea of castrating the leadership and professional class, instead of killing them all, so that their skills could be used by the conquerors
waste not want not, eh?

*(mustn't forget them, they were intentionally genocided nearly as much as the Jews because Hitler explicitly said they were to be worked to death and then the land given over to the German people)

**Arabs to this day still think it's fine, because the Prophet says so

>>65080444
Maos death toll is mostly down to him being a colossal retard and no understanding shit about anything other than 'revolution'

>>65080794
Same here, even the dumb blonde Stacey I know announced she was doing one on social media and actually did it. Multiple people at work and their wives have done one, and I know another guy who must have something wrong with him because he does ultra marathons for fun, half marathons are just his usual weekend jog.