What were the main reasons that anti-semitism arose in Germany before WWII

It seems that even before the rise of the NAZI party, jews were widely regarded as inferior and unclean by the population of not only Germany but neighboring countries as well. Jews were the largest demographic in the German army in WWI (I read that somewhere) so what are the main reasons?

1 Answers 2020-07-12

During the Age of Sail, could a Master eventually become captain if he was not born a gentleman?

Say it’s 1816 & there is a young sailor (the son of a lighthouse keeper) could he eventually work up the ranks to captain or does he peak at Master because he is low born? Could he even reach Master?

Thanks in advance for any help! I’ve had no luck finding any good resources on this.

1 Answers 2020-07-12

Why wasn't Qing China colonised by the British?

2 Answers 2020-07-12

Why is it that, apparently, the Medieval West African and Nubian states wrote so little about what was going on in there?

I know that those places did write stuff down, but apparently the vast majority of sources come from Arab travellers. For instance, there this civil war between Mansa Musa's brother and his queen that we only know about because Ibn Battuta was there to see it. Similarly, according to Wikipedia we don't know much about why Kush broke up, and don't know much about the fall of its descendant kingdom Alodia either.

1 Answers 2020-07-12

In Medieval Europe, how much does it cost to get properly fed and/or drunk at a restaurant? Can common people afford the cost?

1 Answers 2020-07-12

Why did the banjo remain synonymous with old timey minstrel style and country music while other instruments transended into new styles.

Why did the banjo (and the fiddle to a lesser extent) remain associated with country/folk music and the minstrel image? Is it a regional oddity (product of the antebellum south), or structural issue ( difficult to electrify), or is it connected to it's enormous popularity in the 1900s?

1 Answers 2020-07-12

What did very young children eat after breast milk hundreds (or more) of years ago? When would they move on to other foods?

I'll gladly take answers from any timeframe or general location as I'm curious how long kids were fed breast milk and what they eventually moved on to. As a parent to a toddler, the recommendations are formula/breast milk until about 6 months then expanding diet but surely before modern times, kids stayed on milk longer?

1 Answers 2020-07-12

What did Europeans think of the Mongols?

Given the Mongol westward expansions into Ukraine, it seems like Europeans had to have been well aware of them. This work mentions that they spurred Marco Polo to travel East.

In the West, the account of the Mongol Empire in China by the Venetian traveler Marco Polo set off a wave of curiosity about the cultural and economic resources of other parts of the world that continues to this day.

Do we have contemporary accounts of Mongols from Europeans?

1 Answers 2020-07-12

Sunday Digest | Interesting & Overlooked Posts | July 06, 2020–July 12, 2020

Previous

Today:

Welcome to this week's instalment of /r/AskHistorians' Sunday Digest (formerly the Day of Reflection). Nobody can read all the questions and answers that are posted here, so in this thread we invite you to share anything you'd like to highlight from the last week - an interesting discussion, an informative answer, an insightful question that was overlooked, or anything else.

5 Answers 2020-07-12

When did a 40-hour workweek become the norm? Why and how did we evolve to work this amount of hours during the week and have weekends off?

1 Answers 2020-07-12

Rules Roundtable XX: The 'No Homework' Rule

AskHistorians is a place to learn. It is a place to come with your questions, and a place to get often incredible answers to them. But it isn't a place to do your homework. It can be a tool, just like many others out there, to help you do the work, but that is an important difference!

As stated in the rules:

Our users aren't here to do your homework for you, but they might be willing to help. Remember: AskHistorians helps those who help themselves. Don't just give us your essay/assignment topic and ask us for ideas. Do some research of your own, then come to us with questions about what you've learned.

Questions which violate this rule will be removed. There are a few important things to keep in mind with all of this, which we'll go over below.

What We Won't Do

If you are coming to the subreddit with a homework prompt, or something similar that needs to be done for school, we aren't going to do it for you! We see at least a handful every week where someone posts that they need to know this for school, can someone please explain it to them. Many of the moderators and flaired users are instructors in some capacity themselves, and simply put, we aren't going to undercut our peers by helping you avoid the hard part of your assignment! Learning how to find and evaluate information yourself is a crucial academic skill your instructors will want you to demonstrate, and asking people on the internet for the answer doesn't count.

Similarly, if you are coming here asking for a suggestion of a topic to write on for an essay, while it might feel like that isn't much, we also will remove that. Aside from the fact that an essay topic should be what you enjoy, as you are the one who has to write the thing, picking a topic is part of the assignment. Topics don't arise fully-formed, but rather are something that reflects your understanding and the preliminary research you have done on the topic.

What We Can Do

We're always happy to help people understand better research methods, and if you need help on how to do research, not only is this the right place, but we have a dedicated resource for you! Additionally, your school/college/university library almost certainly has resources and modules dedicated to explaining how to find things using its specific facilities and resources, which you absolutely should be very familiar with.

We're also happy to suggest books and other resources, but we do expect to see more than just "I have an essay on this, what books should I use?" A good question of this nature would talk about your thesis, and what you have already researched, and maybe mention a few books you have already consulted. We're happy to be a later stop, but this isn't your first stop.

Similarly, if you have specific questions that have come about from your research, and you're having a devil of a time nailing down, coming to us for help is okay, but just as with source, we expect more than simply "What is this?" Explain your assignment, show us what research you have done, demonstrate what you already know and place what it is that you are trying to find out into context. When it comes to homework, /r/AskHistorians helps those who help themselves, so make sure you have put in some of the legwork first!

In The End, You are Cheating Yourself

Yes, we are aware that users no doubt bring homework prompts here that they simply don't tell us are homework. Sneaky!!! Sometimes, it can be pretty obvious all the same, and we'll remove it anyways, with a pretty high accuracy rate, but no doubt, some get through us, and some get an answer the question didn't deserve.

In the end though, the poster is the one who suffers the most for it, as they are really just cheating themselves. There isn't too much we can do about it, of course, but unless this is the last project of your senior year, just remember that you aren't developing the skills that you're going to need on the next project, and even if it is the last one, the skill-set of the historian is one that is quite transferable to many fields! So we totally are getting the last laugh. Right guys?

Everyone Can Access The Internet

A story. Years ago, when the subreddit was much smaller, a student asked a question which we didn't notice. They got an answer which was great. A little too great, since even though they did some rudimentary changes, their teacher's bullshit detector went off, and they ran it though Google. Lo-and-behold, the first hit was the very similar text they had liberally borrowed from on /r/AskHistorians, because it is a website which is indexed by major search engines. The student didn't have a very good time of it, but the subreddit did gain a new flair of a history teacher who inadvertently discovered a pretty neat online community to contribute to.

Moral of the story is that if you copy stuff from here, you might get caught. Many institutions use plagiarism checkers like Turnitin, and you better believe such checkers can find /r/AskHistorians. The consequences of getting caught are a lot worse than having to just do the damn assignment.

But I'm Not a Student, I Swear!

If you literally called it homework in your post, we aren't going to believe you, but if you had a removal because it seemed like homework, please, take it as a compliment! It means that you wrote a very well put-together question that sounded like a homework prompt.

The only thing that you shouldn't do is just say to yourself "Well, they were wrong, so I'll repost it!" This will get it removed again, and you will get a temporary ban for ignoring the Mods. If you believe the removal was in error because you're a 54 year old truck-driver (not that you can't go back to school later in life!), please reach out to the mod team! If your post history shows that you are in fact most likely not a student, we'll probably reapprove it. If you aren't an internet addict so don't have any posts which suggest your current life status, we might not believe you. Also, please remember it's not personal - we'd prefer to make errors because we're over-zealous on avoiding homework questions, rather than not zealous enough. In any case, with such questions, we do allow it to be reposted the next week; the assumption being that if this is homework, it is time-sensitive. In contrast, if you are just interested in the question, you'll probably still be just interested in the question in a week!


You can find the rest of this Rules Roundtable series here

2 Answers 2020-07-12

What Would Happen If A Member of The British Royal Family Committed A Crime in 19th Century London?

Hi, I'm curious as to whether or not there would be an investigation, how it would be handled, or if it would be swept under the rug entirely. This is for more severe crimes like assault and the like.

And what would the response of commoners likely be?

1 Answers 2020-07-12

Can the Harrying of the North be considered a genocide? How intentful and extensive was the mass-killing of the populace and were there any groups specifically targeted?

I came across this question on the pinned genocide thread and am really interested and looking forward to any answers. Thank you in advance to anyone commenting!

1 Answers 2020-07-12

I was talking to a friend and he said that Majority of German people who followed the Nazi party didn't know about concentration camps, How much truth is in that sentence?

1 Answers 2020-07-12

From a historical perspective, is it acceptable to label the Ku Klux Klan as a “Christian Extremist Group”?

Hi All. I’ve recently started doing a historical investigation for one of my school projects, and I decided to investigate the impact of the Beatles on the landscape of the 1960s. When I researched their religious impact, i found that the KKK threatened reprisals for their “More popular than Jesus” statement. Yet, when I go on their Wiki page, it says they are both anti-Catholic and “Christian Terrorism”. With this in mind, is it still acceptable to call them a Christian extremist group, or is there a better term to label them with religious connotations?

1 Answers 2020-07-12

During the 1930's and 1940's, what did Americans think of the Confederacy?

Were their veiws of the Confederacy comparable to our contemporary feelings about Nazis? What was the popular zietgeist at the time regarding confederate history and soldiers?

1 Answers 2020-07-12

What happened if a Monarch gave birth to twins? Is there an example of this happening and who would be first in the line of succession?

I've always been interested in monarchies across Europe and I've always wondered what happened to the line of succession when Monarchs gave birth to twins.

I assume it was a rare occurrence but surely it has happened before?

If it did happen, did it create rivalry over the succession of the crown, maybe even conflict?

Would the first twin to come out the womb be first in line, or would the Monarch pick their 'favourite' to succeed them?

1 Answers 2020-07-12

Zhuge Liang's Southern Campaign makes mention of "poisonous marshes." What were they, and why were they so devastating?

For reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuge_Liang%27s_Southern_Campaign

1 Answers 2020-07-12

"On Liberty," the most famous treatise on the freedom of speech, was published in 1859. How did people understand freedom of speech before, especially in regards to the First Amendment?

1 Answers 2020-07-12

How did Indonesia become predominantly Muslim?

Since most other nations around it are Buddhist/indigenous/Christian, I was wondering why and how Indonesia has a majority of the population following the Islamic Faith.

1 Answers 2020-07-12

Why did the soviets in ww2 never invent a rocket launcher?

It’s something i have been thinking about. All the other major nations in Europe had their own AT launcher of some kind. Americans with the bazooka, British/commonwealth with the PIAT and the Germans with the panzershreck or panzerfaust. I know that they had the PTRS AT rifle as well as AT grenades but wouldn’t it make sense to try and make their own rocket launcher to fight such a Mechanised foe? Did they just feel that their tanks, and AT grenades were enough? I do realise that they used allied weapons but what led to the decision to not invent their own until much later?

1 Answers 2020-07-12

How could the the soviets move the factories to the Urals during ww2?

Every time i read about the german invasion of the soviet union, there's always the comment that, immediately after the invasion the soviets moved the factories to the Ural region/mountains to prevent them from getting captured by the germans and to continue the production of vital war material like tanks and airplanes, but they never explain how they actually accomplished this and is something that always gets glossed over as if it was something easy and unproblematic, like as far as i know creating factories is something complicated, even if you are just "moving them", not to mention that, we are talking about massive and complex factories of tanks, engines, airplanes, etc.

i have seen some photos of those factories like this one and i can see that they had concrete floor and everything, but how could they do it so fast? concrete takes some time to dry, not to mention that they had to cut an entire forest , level the soil and dump gravel and everything.

my point is, it takes YEARS to make ONE factory, but apparently the soviets made HUNDREDS of them in just months, in 1941, all the while they where:

- in the middle of nowhere.

- while losing millions of tons of equipment and food to the germans.

- losing millions of manpower to the war

- just a overall state of crisis.

- they had to make houses for thousands of people, what about basic services like drainage, electricity and drinking water

i just can't understand how they did it, every time i think about it a logistic nightmare forms in my mind, my small brain can't comprehend how they did it, and i hope someone can help me understand how they did it.

thanks and sorry for any grammar error, english is my second language.

1 Answers 2020-07-12

In "The Patriot," Mel Gibson and his sons successfully ambush a British platoon. During the initial ambush, the platoon basically stands around and lets the kids reload.

Did the British not know how to react to an ambush? I feel like they'd been at war enough in their history to learn that you should at least take up covered positions. If this wasn't a well-known battle tactic, when did armies start to institute now-common battle drills?

1 Answers 2020-07-12

So I'm a standard peasant in the "middle ages" and my lord or whomever raises up his levies to fight against whoever it is this time. Am I payed? Am I compensated? If I die will my family be told?

1 Answers 2020-07-12

How did Hamilton steal cannons off the hands of the British?

I am aware of efforts that armies have made to neutralize their opponents' artillery, if not outright even turn their guns towards them in the course of battles throughout history. Yet, I feel that less heard of are efforts to outright steal such pieces from being deployed by one's opponent in battle in the first place.

A notable example I did find is from the song "Right Hand Man" in Hamilton - where Alexander Hamilton stole cannons from the British down in New York. But, even knowing that they defeated the soldiers protecting these guns, there remains the problem of transporting them out of a hostile camp back to friendly territory.

How exactly did Hamilton steal cannons off the hands of the British and successfully get away with it? (The added weight of those guns would not have helped, I think)

And perhaps more broadly, how were similar operations carried out throughout history?

1 Answers 2020-07-12

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