This has bugged me for 25 years.

I used to know a woman, a German immigrant to the US, who worked in the headquarters of the German Army in World War 2. I recall that she worked in a clerical capacity of some type. I do not know if she worked in OKH or OKW headquarters. She married a US officer after the war, which is how she got to the US, so she must have been relatively young during the war. This woman insisted that, when she worked there, she had no idea that the Holocaust was happening. By “Holocaust,” she meant the systemic murders in concentration camps. We never talked about the death squads. At the time, I found that implausible. I still do. I moved away, she died, and I’ve often wondered since then how likely it was that she was telling the truth.

So...how likely is it that she was telling the truth?

I'm about halfway through what must be my tenth viewing of this film (I'm a sucker for a Kiera Knightley period piece what can I say) and I've got a question about the etiquette of the day. There's a scene where Elizabeth is dining with her sister and her new brother in law, Mr Collins, at Lady Catherine's estate. Just before they all sit down to dinner Lady Catherine demands that Mr Collins change seats because he "can't sit next to his wife." My question is why would it be bad form for married couples to sit next to each other at such a gathering?

I don't know how to begin to explain this... have you heard of Schroedinger's Cat?

Well, my question is... was this a similar case with the Iron Curtain? In that a country could equally have ended up Socialist or Democratic but it depended on the particular moment the boundary was drawn. I appreciate that the curtain didn't fall overnight. But surely once a country had decided to go Socialist, there was no turning back...

Greece - so close to Russia - and so anti-Nazi - and yet it became 'Western'

Romania - so strongly Latin - and yet it became Communist

Turkey - socialist ideals and anti-religion [much like SSRs in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan etc] - and yet, it became 'Western'

Czech Republic - Eastern

Finland - Western

Hungary - Eastern

Sorry I don't even know what I'm trying to prove here or what I'm trying to argue. I just cannot get my head round the fact that the throw of the 'socio-historical dice' at that particular point in history for a country, could utterly change the destiny of it forever...

Thanks in advance!

When learning about battles I often hear alot about the setting, preparation, engagement/tactics and results of said battle. What I don't know much about is the condition of the battlefield after the result. Take Cannae for example, I can assume after the rout of the Romans there were tens of thousands of bodies all over the place. And given the limited lethality of stab wounds is it safe to say the many of those on the battlefield were not actually dead but just wounded and/or the process of bleeding out slowly? What did the Carthriginians do with all the bodies? Was there ever a post-battle edicate of tending to wounded men from the losing side, or respecting burial rites? Or did the victors just patrol around skewering the dying and looting? Was there an advantage to pretending to be dead so that when the enemy army leaves you have a chance to escape?

Was there ever a Japanese plan to do this? It seems like a much easier way not only to put enormous pressure on the Soviets (fighting a two-front war), but also to gain and hold resource-rich territory than attacking the U.S. Pacific Fleet three years later.

I can't seem to find a clear answer online. I recently found out that 5%-10% of Palestine's are religiously Christian and the question popped up into my head. If the question has been asked can someone link me the answer. This tread is full of so many questions about the conflict that it seems impossible to find niche questions.

First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

20 days before the speech, the US had only just sent its first American on a suborbital flight into space. How did the US have enough confidence in their ability to land on the moon despite no human doing more than orbiting the earth at that time?

Was the success measured in just the attempt at a moon landing, even if it didn't turn out to be physically possible for humans to reach or land on the moon? Did we know enough through science and the technology available to know for certain it was an achievable goal at that time, or was Kennedy hoping we could just figure it out in time?

Most if not all of the Indian Wars were fought by the army, but did the US Navy ever engage Native Americans? The natives had no war ships and the like, but was the navy ever ordered to fire upon natives on the shores or something similar?

I've been wanting to learn and understand how society and the planet has developed the way it has to the current state it is in now. To start off, I had heard about this book literally everywhere on the internet. With all the buzz about certain authors writing inaccurate and wrong history, I just wanted to know if reading this book will be helpful.

Thanks. :)

Were they assimilated into the natives, enslaved/raped, or were they just killed?

I am an Israeli who is descended of German Jews. One of my great grandfathers was born in Strasbourg, though to him it was Straßburg, in what was then the German Empire and what is now France, in 1899. He certainly considered himself German, in 1915 he joined up to fight and he was wounded at the 2nd Battle of Champagne and after the war he moved to Frankfurt am Main. My grandfather and his two surviving brothers came to Israel in 1947 to fight in the war of independence but my great grandfather intended to stay in Germany and he only came to Israel in 1952 after my great grandmother passed away and so everyone he loved in his country was dead. I never knew him, but my grandfather says that he continued to speak German, see himself as German, read German literature etc which was extremely taboo in our country at the time; and really until very recently. It seems that German identification was not simply something that he had, because his father who was born 1869 when his home (originally the village of Guebwiller, near Colmar) was part of France, was named Friedrich, not Frédéric as you would expect from a Frenchman. Is my family an anomaly, were most Alsatian Jews preferential to France, or did they see themselves as Germans?

What really gave my interest about this was an old recorded lecture that I saw, presented by French historian Henri Guillemin, about the Dreyfus affair. Of course, the fact that Dreyfus was a Jew was part of the reason his loyalty was brought into question, but I wondered if part of it wasn’t that he was an Alsatian Jew, and that many of his compatriots preferred Germany to France, which made him even more susceptible to the accusation of espionage for the Kaiser.

Also related , did the qin dynasty recruited soldiers from its newly conquered territories ?

I know this question was asked here before but I didn't get a straight answer. Some say Rome fell in 476 when Western Rome fell or 1453 when Eastern Rome (Byzantine Empire) fell. Yes, the fall of Western Rome was a major turning point in history. But was it the end of Rome? Some think that the Byzantine Empire continuation of the Rome of the classical era.

My History Professor gave us this example in class: Imagine if half of the US was conquered and Washington DC was sacked and occupied. Many people living in the remaining half of the US would consider it the conquered territory still part of the country just under enemy occupation.

So was the Byzantine Empire still Rome or a separate entity?

Specifically, differences in pitched battles, formations, sieges, equipment, etc.?

Edit: Whoops, I meant 50BC, so back when Julius was alive. Or maybe I'm fighting for the Second Triumverate in 40BC. It doesn't really matter, just something roughly in that first century BC to something 10th century AD.

In this sub, and in r/badhistory, Tom Holland does not seem to have a good reputation as a historian, why is that? What did he do that makes him untrustworthy as a source for knowledge on history?

Whenever the Great Divergence is discussed, it is usually done with regards to China, India and sometimes Japan.

Where does the Ottoman Empire figure in all this? When did Ottoman incomes diverge from the West?

Thank you