I’m on a war movie/ war series kick right now and am currently watching a ton of WW2 stuff.

Every youngish American male is excited to go fight for his country. In “The Pacific”, a character is unable to go fight due to a heart murmur and he cries about it.

Based on pop culture, it seems that pre-Vietnam, people were excited and honored to serve.

I know we were pissed off about Pearl Harbor, but if the terrorists or North Koreans blew up my hometown and my bank and my family and my favorite Starbucks, I’d still do anything and everything to avoid sleeping in the dirt, getting shot at, carrying heavy shit around, and seeing my friends die.

I’m assuming most young men in the 1940’s had fathers who’d fought in the First World War? I’m assuming they knew war was scary and awful?

Historically was war welcomed? Were men excited to go? Is our current era (at least in the west) a weird aberration in the grand scheme of things? What may have caused this shift? And could it swing back the other way?

We studied the causes of the First World War a lot at school but there was nothing about why it ended, just that it did.

I saw something on Facebook about it being brought about by a mutiny of some German armed forces. Is there any truth to that?

To bypass French border fortifications and target Paris, it makes sense to go through Belgium initially. However, after the situation stale-mated in the north, why the Germans didn't try to outflank the French in the south? Terrain north of Lake Geneva is not as mountainous as in the south and seems similar to that of the Ardennes, where the Germans went. Also, if done before the Italian entry, they could have put some pressure on them to stay neutral, or ally with them. So the question is, were there any concrete plans to invade Switzerland, and if there were, why they were not carried out?

There are too many

Why are socialist countries generally poor and backward?

Is it because of the isolation of the Western capitalist countries, or because of the internal defects of socialism, which violates the laws of development and is impossible to develop and make people rich?

John William Draper was a scientist and a contemporary of Charles Darwin. In his influential book History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, he wrote: "Theological authorities were therefore constrained to look with disfavor on any attempt to carry back the origin of the earth, to an epoch indefinitely remote, and on the Mohammedan theory of the evolution of man from lower forms, or his gradual development to his present condition in the long lapse of time." Why did Draper associate evolution with Islam? Alternatively, in their attempt to malign evolution, on what basis did those "theological authorities" associate evolution with Islam?

From my understanding of history, the Spanish were able to team up with many Native tribes in order to overthrow their oppressors, but without any knowledge of Native Languages, how did they manage to convince the other tribes to join them against the triple alliance? To be more precise, how were the Spaniards able to learn those languages so quickly? This also applies to how different languages were able to be translated into other languages.

Which date does WW1 officially declared July 27 or 28?

THIS IS NOT POLITICAL IN ANYWAY. I’m just curious how the mind set in America changed so much from anti war spitting on service members to mass discounts at any chain store for service members. What has the US civilians mind set to the military been like throughout history?

Other than say Russia’s taking of the Crimea’s Peninsula or the breakup of Yugoslavia, are nations today relatively more stable in terms of continuity and borderlines than they were in the past? Would something like what happened in Crimea occur far more often or generally at the same rate as we see today?

I'm kind of curious about what the historical consensus is on mass murderers like the two mentioned in the title. I quite often hear that the charges brought against them were trumped up to the point that they were effectively innocent, the victims of medieval show trials by people wanting to destroy their reputations and seize their assets. Still, we know that serial killers really do exist and it doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that the power nobility of old could amass gave them a unique ability to indulge their sociopathy.

I don't know the ins and outs of cases like Gilles de Rais beyond a wikipedia page, and certainly its nearly impossible to really verify guilt considering the lack of modern investigative processes and the length of time that has passed, but what do modern historians make of the accusations levied against them, and can it be assumed that the justice systems of their time probably did actually manage to sniff out these grotesque criminals, or is it a surer bet to say that they were probably the victims of a complex stitch-up?

I know what I’m looking for but the page is blocked off asking for a subscription. I can link it or tell you what to search.

Precursor: I originally uploaded this to the history sub reddit but it got removed and they suggested I come here to post this, so this may seem more like a statement rather than a question. So feel free to interpret this however you chose.

This is something that's been floating about in my head for a few years and I've never been able to find someone who fully agrees with me, so what better place is there to find some like minded people apart from on reddit?

So my belief fully is that Hitlers body count should be risen from 6 million and throw the extra 80 million on top of it, why you may be asking? Well I've read theories that suggest if Hitler had drowned as a child, been debilitated by the mustard gas or got shot by the one soldier who decided to spare him then some other tyrannical monster would have been there to replace Hitler and would have probably caused a second World War anyway, and may actually have been more calculated and more trusting and reliant on his generals rather than make crazy plans that eventually became some of the many crutches the third reich encountered.

But how sure can we be that any of that would have happened well we can't be, but the one thing we need to stop doing is down playing Hitlers role in basically being the conductor of the worlds most brutal conflict. He seems to only be held responsible for the Jewish deaths whilst it seems to me that its only saying he played a smaller role (not demeaning the lives of the Jewish people that died I'm just saying there were many other atrocities that occurred on top of that) in the suffering and misery caused. In my honest belief history teachers, books and online information boards should make a change in Hitlers death count and hold him responsible for all that occurred during the 2nd World War, my reason being that Hitler was borderline insane if not fully he's the only reason the war begun and the reason it ended (talking in terms of his lack of actually being coherent and taking the advice that was pivotal) all of what had happened was for nothing and the people who still believe in his ideology are on a runaway train into failure and are very likely morons. He made the choice to break the pact he himself had signed that stated he wasn't to invade Poland or France, had he not done so its highly likely it wouldn't have happened and if it had I don't think it would have been half as bad as it was let's not forget most of what Hitler did wasn't to restore the glory Germany it was to give himself a platform to spread hate and gain access to the tools of destruction he needed to fuel to his reich. Although he was indeed patriotic and adamant on restoring the glory of the old Prussia it just wasn't as much of a reason as he had everyone believing and was most likely a front.

I think the chances of their being a more coherent and not mentally ill leader taking Germany into a second World war were a lot less likely than some historians may believe so, although of course Germanies anger and resentment for their defeat would obviously have come into effect at some point.

I'd like to hear your opinions and correct me where I'm wrong and why you think otherwise, Cheers!

I am somewhat aware that Ancient Greece men had boys “assigned” to them at a young age (probably only aristocrats and high profile people) and I assume it was very common. How long did this last? I don’t remember hearing anything on common pedophile from Ancient Rome. Was this just an Ancient Greek thing?

Also, yes, I know the Catholic church has keep on keepin’ on with them boys, but that doesn’t count in this context as it is done in “secret”.