All I know about it currently is there was an extreme wealth gap and the standard of living for the poor was horrendous.

Please cite academic sources.

In many forms of media, they depict the military of Nazi Germany was this well-coordinated and very elaborately crafted military force which may be the case when looking into its successes in the early years of the warlike the occupation of France, Norway and a portion of Russia.

And there is a lot of credit to Blitzkrieg as it was one of the most advanced version of modern military tactics and an upgrade compared to that of WW1.

But in the later years of the war, the Nazi forces kept on being pounded with failures like the British campaign in Africa, the Axis' failure to conquer the island of Malta, Greece being liberated and the Red Army pushing against the Eastern Front while the Allies pushed from the West.

Was this portrayal of the Germany Army being this well-oiled machine actually accurate or was it a form of German propoganda?

Hello historians!

I'm currently writing a novel set in the Victorian era, Melbourne, AUS.

Wondering about social attitudes to suicide in this time and place, specifically;

In 1850, would the Catholic church hold a funeral for a woman who committed suicide, and what might this funeral include?

Thanks for any info!

What was the silver 'wine bottle' shaped object that falls from the sky between two armies in Plutarchs Life of Lucullus?

In The Parallel Lives, The Life of Lucullus by Plutarch 8,5-7 it states

5 With these words, he led his army against Mithridates, having thirty thousand foot-soldiers, and twenty-five hundred horsemen. But when he had come within sight of the enemy and seen with amazement their multitude, he desired to refrain from battle and draw out the time. But Marius, whom Sertorius had sent to Mithridates from Spain with an army, came out to meet him, and challenged him to combat, and so he put his forces in array to fight the issue out. 6 But presently, as they were on the point of joining battle, with no apparent change of weather, but all on a sudden, the sky burst asunder, and a huge, flame-like body was seen to fall between the two armies. In shape, it was most like a wine-jar, and in colour, like molten silver. Both sides were astonished at the sight, and separated. 7 This marvel, as they say, occurred in Phrygia, at a place called Otryae.

what on earth is he describing here? that doesn't sound like anything i can imagine? hallucinations maybe?

I don't know where else to post this as google searches didn't really help. so shakespeare wrote like an impressive amount of work in only 30 years. 39 plays, 150 sonnets and many other works, dude was cranking them out like crazy, and most are masterpieces, revered throughout the world. So my question is: was he just THAT fucking insane that he could pump out plays with minimal effort one right after the other like it was easy for him? Was he naturally that gifted? Or did he labor over his work and put extreme effort into being so good at it, where it consumed him? on average how much time and effort did he put into a play was it comparable to other playwrights? is he an example of hard work, commitment and dedication pays off ,or an example of ya gotta be born with a gift?

Everyone would know what season, and probably days and months, it was, but did the average person ever reasonably not know what year it was, whether by the current common calendar, or the Islamic, Hebrew, Chinese, or what have you?

If the Union lost the war Lincoln would have let the slave states rejoin the union without ending slavery. But why, what would have been so bad about the slave states keeping to their own confederacy. Why was keeping the Union together more important than ending slavery when slavery was the reason they were at war in the first place.

Some conservative Christian religions teach that heavy metal and rock music have close affiliation with devil worship or demonic influence. Is this linking of the devil and demons to certain types of music a modern age practice or is there a long history of some music styles being associated with devil worship (either in practice or in accusation)?

I know that prior to WWI and during the war they were easily had the number one Navy in the world. And if I had to guess maybe around the thirties they started dropping off, but does anyone know when the British Navy was no longer seen as THE NAVAL FORCE in the world? Thanks for your help

Hi, I’m looking for information about what a typical person would likely be doing in a mid-to-large sized town around 1920, in the US. So, what kinds of recipes would they be cooking, what books would they have read or be reading. Did most towns have electricity by this time, were roads being paved to allow for faster travel by car...what about radio, was it finally catching on? Was ice still delivered to them and what jobs would up and coming young men and women be talking about?

Anyway this kind of information or where to get at it would be greatly appreciated thanks!

This seems like a particularly important question right now, given the massive amount of disinformation and conspiracy theories. And if there were a series of steps one could walk through involving weighing evidence and asking the right questions, well, wouldn’t we want that to be widely taught?

Any good documentary/book/resources about the history of the American civil war to recommend, for a non-American?

Obviously, people knew about the legend of Lief Ericson and his mysterious "Vinland" at the time of Christopher Columbus as well, as it is mentioned on the Piri Reis map of 1516.

But this was only one of myriads of stories circulated around the old world of claimed Pre-Columbian transatlantic travel, also including the stories of Brenden the Navigator and Lucian the Satirist, Hanno of Carthage and Abu Bakr of Mali. Over the years many claimed accounts, spawning either from dubious archaeology or ambiguous historical documents, have associated dozens of different civilizations with Pre-Columbian America, ranging from the Romans to the Egyptians to the Jews, or in the Pacific Ocean including the Polynesians, the Jomon and the Ming.

With all these stories in circulation, it seems remarkable that the Vikings alone have succeeded in graduating from mere legend to accepted historical fact. And I'm pretty sure there was some length of time, sometime between the beginning of critical history and the present day, when the story of Vinland was assumed to be a myth just like all the other Pre-Columbian theories. What exactly was the turning point that convinced historians to pay more attention to the Saga of Ericson specifically, over all the others? Was there some pivotal archaeological discovery or historical document that changed their perspective?

I understand the only evidence for Mons Grapius itself is a single roman source, Tacitus, and as such the very existence of the battle itself is contended, but what is true is that around this time Agricola left Caledonia, and over the proceeding years the Romans removed themselves entirely from the area, building the Antonine and Hadrians wall, and then eventually abandoning the Antonine wall. The question that puzzles me is, if Mons Graupius actually happened, and the Romans were victorious, why would they abandon the area only a few years later? I've heard it suggested that they held the Caledonian grain stores and therefore figured the tribesmen would starve, but if so why leave?! Ive also heard there was nothing there for the Romans to stick around for, but that makes even less sense since the land itself is there, the territory. Obviously something is missing right?

Definitely a gory medical history question, but hey maybe people wanna know. In the American Civil War, weapons advances like the rifling Minié Ball made muskets much more accurate and deadly from longer distances; hence, the unprecedented carnage on the battlefields that medicine was not prepared to handle at that time. Most historians and resources say the only way doctors could handle the sheer mass of injuries was to amputate serious wounds to the extremities. You hear the stories about doctors being able to saw off a limb every 5 minutes and see the terrible pictures of arms and legs just stacked up in hospital tents. It seems like the surgeons finished the "operation" and just tossed the poor guy into a barn or some hospital bed. The question is, how did these heal without further surgery or attention? I feel like blood loss and infection from a leg cut off with a dirty saw would be just as likely as that from a gun shot wound, especially if they were re-using bandages and just covering up the bone and flesh. So, was the human body capable of healing these brutal amputations on its own with little further attention, and if so how?

I'm in my last year in high school, and I need to start thinking about what to study next year. I was thinking of a PhD in history, but I need to know whether it's worth it. I am namely in an engineer's class, so most students go to engineering, programming, science, architecture, etc. (though students went to study history (and biology, med school, psychology, etc.) before).

I want to know if there's a job I could get with a PhD, and if there is anything I can study that still involves science or programming of any sort (though it isn't needed).

It's also worth noting that I live in Belgium, but don't mind moving to England for a job (or studying in England).

I am passionate about history, and I don't want to regret not studying it later in my life. It is the rest of my life I'm deciding on.

Whatever I may choose, history will always be my passion.

Maybe I'm wrong, but lifetime appointments, regardless of how they are brought about, seem to be antithetical to representative democracy.

From what I'm aware, the Soviets largely steamrolled over the territory in short order, sweeping the much-vaunted Kwantung Army aside in the process. But why was this? Was the Japanese Army weakened by the years of war in mainland China and the Pacific, were they simply unprepared, or did the Soviets just bring a force too strong for them to stop?