A friend of mine has started a slide into some radical ideology. One of their key points is that Fascism comes from the left historically. They think Hitler and Mussolini's policies were similar to communism. Which to my understanding is the exact opposite.

I'd like to try giving this person a book or DVD that really dives into the policy side and not the war side of these ideologies. One of my fears is that this person doesn't really like reading difficult material and but doesn't trust sources like wikipedia. Is there something with a complete lay person in mind? Video and audio is probably better than a book, but a very approachable book might work.

Thanks for your time. I tried looking at the subreddit rules to make sure something like this was ok, since it seemed borderline to me. Sorry if it's not.

What if you brought someone back from Arabia in 600 AD and you spoke Arabic? Would you be able to understand them? How much have languages such as Hebrew and Arabic changed over the last 2000 years?

Someone's been working on Gen. Patton's journal ?

The handwritten version is very difficult for a foreigner to read.

There is a transcribed version available on the Congress library website.

But who made it ? Patton himself ? US Army ?

I get the impression it doesn't match perfectly.

thanks

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I recently found out that the Norse vikings discovered and settled Greenland and North America. Later, that it was the Native American warriors who chased the Vikings out of their villages in North America and the defeated Norse went back to Greenland.

However, after this point in history, no one really knows what happened with certainty. The Norse in Greenland just simply dissappear without a trace or clear cause, around the 1400s. In 1721, Denmark-Norway sent an expedition to Greenland to reconnect with their forgotten settlers but to their surprise they only found the ruins of their countrymen villages.

Historians, what really happened to the Viking settlements in Greenland?

I need these informations for an assignment in the context of church history. Any recommendations and sources are welcome. Thank you very much!

I just read a ghastly article on the horrors of the Battle of the Somme and it got me thinking — why didn’t Britain mount an aquatic invasion of Germany in WWI? Britain had already decimated the German fleet at Jutland, they knew German forces were spread thin across the fronts, and the hopelessness of trench-based offensive were already quite obvious. Was there anything stopping the British / French from landing ships behind enemy lines and attacking from behind?

Has there ever been a publication of Tczarevich Alexei's diary and writings? I've found full publications of two of his sisters and mother's writings and some snippets from Alexei on Helen Azar's site, but I can't find a full publication of his writings, if it exists. In my free time in quarantine I've developed a fascination with the family and Alexei in particular as a tragic figure. I want to learn more about what they were like as people and what they were thinking at the time, but Alexei's personal writings mostly elude me. Were his diary and other writings destroyed like a couple of his sisters' were or does it exist somewhere and I just can't find it? Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Hello historians,

Y'all are heroes, first and foremost. You provide the context for our identities, our histories and hopes. Magical shit, and I hope you view it as such!

As a layperson, I've only been taught this "great person" theory of history, in which Alexander the Great does a bunch of stuff, and then later Napoleon does a bunch of stuff, etc. History has been presented to me as a sequence of the successes of the most impressive (generally Christian, straight, white and male) people. This feels out of sorts with reality. Sure, Steve Jobs accomplished a lot, but does anyone think we don't end up in a similar space without him specifically?

To present a motivating example, I'm a huge Golden State Warriors fan. At the end of the 2014-15 season (2015 NBA Finals), the Warriors were down 2-1 to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Head coach Steve Kerr decided to forego starting a traditional Center in favor of an additional Wing player-- an unprecedented move. It succeeded, and today, the traditionally dominant Center position has been upended by a new prioritization on Wings.

But Kerr did not come up with this idea. Then 27-year-old video coordinator Nick U'Ren did, and passed it up the chain, where it eventually reached Kerr. This idea changed the sport. And yet using the paradigm with which laypeople such as myself use to understand history, U'Ren will be forgotten; it doesn't matter that they initiated the historically significant event in the first place.

How can I gain an understanding of history beyond the Kerrs?

What translations of the Bible would have been used in 1870s/1880s in America? Where there any obscure ones? How did these texts affect the political sphere? America was highly religious during this period but was very divided in political beliefs; did they have different bibles with different transition or just different interpretations? (both sides we're driven by the same religion but came to radically different ideas, how) sorry if this is a lot, any info or sources would be good ☺️

The main character was talking to another one who quipped that when he was younger, he believed the stars were made by the gods to guide them. The main character revealed his theory that, when he was a kid, he believed that the stars were suns that were very far away. A third character then said “you’d be surprised by how many share your theory”.

The game is set in 422BC, so I’m curious as to how accurate this is, or if it was just the devs taking some liberty with history

So I'm at a bit of a dilemma here, and wanted to get some advice from those who already have advanced degrees in history: History has always been my favorite subject for as far back as I can remember, but in undergrad, I was always under the mindset that history isn't a 'safe' major- because of that, I double majored in biology along with history, not because of an interest in science, but because I wanted to have some type of experience in a STEM field. Long story short, my biology GPA (3.0) has dragged my overall GPA down, while my history GPA (3.916) is basically keeping it afloat. If I were to commit to studying history post grad, could I realistically get into a top rated grad school, with a high history GPA but below average overall GPA? And secondly, do top rated history PhD programs even make a difference for historians in the job market? I know that the overall market for history PhDs is abysmal, but is there truly no silver lining at all?

Thinking how ancient Rome there was an importance of hygiene to a degree but in the Middle Ages and even after it seems to be a hygiene less waste land in many part or Europe. Or was it that the dominant cultures prevailed in their stinky ways over time?

Am I offered a job in the military, and if so am I given a rank based on my status within the Shogunate's hierarchy? Does the Imperial government take away my lands if I had any? Can I hold some kind of political office?

Can someone explain to me how spherrical lead balls become sharp objects when the artillery shell explodes?

After reading a few books about the French Revolution it looks like the common narrative that Robespierre was basically the ultimate power in France is...wrong? It looks like that pretty much every major movement in the revolution was driven by radical Parisian commoners.

Like the Committee, the levee on masse, the purging of the Girondins, the purging of the Fruellians, none of them were originally, maybe I'm misremembering, forced through by the committee or Robespierre or Saint-Just but were instead demanded by the radical Parisian citizens.

It feels more like the committee and Assembly were basically hostages of crazy Paris people, and then implemented that radical crazy agenda across the rest of France for them, rather than their dictatorial overlords.

Is this actually correct? Or not?

This is a very specific question. I was reading The Uncle's Dream by Dostoyevsky where this mother wants to marry her daughter to an old, supposedly rich, senile prince. The mother argues that her daughter could finally leave their dirty town and go abroad. And the prince also talks about foreign countries a lot. It's like he doesn't even live in Russia.

What was the Russian nobility's situation in this regard? Did they just travel a lot? I'm a bit confused.

I add a short part from the novella:

""You would leave for ever this loathsome little town, so full of sad memories for you; where you meet neither friends nor kindness; where they have bullied and maligned you; where all these—these magpies hate you because you are good looking! You could go abroad this very spring, to Italy, Switzerland, Spain!—to Spain, Zina, where the Alhambra is, and where the Guadalquiver flows—no wretched little stream like this of ours!”"

Edit: Oh, and I should add that the time period I ask about is the second half of the 19th century.

Thank you!