You'll tear my image of Leonidas and Co. as ripped, oily, bare-chested men in capes and speedos from my weak, vapours-suffering arms!
For another myth--That of German 'invincibility' or even military superiority in the first years of WWII. The
Wehrmacht won against Czechoslovakia thanks to the fact it was barely 20-year old
Czechoslovakia and every defensive position the Benes government had was gobbled up thanks to Munich, and they won against Poland because it was
Poland and the Poles forward-deployed along an entire border--something which might've helped if their allies had done jack-diddly shit to help them (oh yeah, and then Uncle Joe kicked in the back door). Then a large part of the victory in France was wrapped up in French leadership (both political and military) being incompetent, older than crap and literally slow (I forget who, but I recall hearing of one French commander who
refused to use radio), or set against each other just as or even more-so than they were the Germans. Seriously, French leadership and society in 1939-40 is like some kind of...terrible, Monty Python-esque stereotype of lazy, incompetent, scheming Frenchmen given life as
actual Frenchmen.