To be exact: -When was the period of time in which Precussion Cap Firearms replaced by other metal cartritge? -When did shakos fall out of fashion? -When did redcoats/colorful coats with white straps fall out of fashion? -when did line formations/marching on the field of battle and volley firing fall out of fashion?

Thanks

Would it not of made more sense to redirect the vast resources from an eastern front to an existing war in Africa with the aim to capture the Iranian oil fields which produced 8 million tons of oil and was vital for the Anglo war effort. It would of resulted in a triple win, direct control over their own supply of oil, denial of a key supply to the allies and change the tide of an active engagement on the African continent.

After Germany declared war on the Soviet Union (SU), the SU and UK declared war on Iran defeating the country in days and taking direct control over the oil and the supply route to the SU. so I am making an assumption Germany would of had similar ease in taking Iraq and then Iran.

I hope the question doesn't revert too much to "Why didn't Hitler redirect the resources to Africa" so perhaps more simply: do we know if it was ever a choice between the middle east and the SU and if so why was the SU prioritised?

I have a casual interest in WWII and Nazi Germany and while I've read a few books on both subjects they've never really been what I would consider "Primary" source material. Mostly salacious "nightstand" books or coffee table books. But my wife posited the question of whether or not Hitler was a "puppet" and might have had someone (or a group of someones) maybe manipulating him from behind the scenes.

This is a pretty compelling subject but in all of the documentaries and books I've read I've never come across anyone claiming that there was someone "behind the throne" so to speak. I know there were elements in the German army between WWI and the rise of the Nazi party who were happy to give some unspoken support to the Nazis but I've never heard of anything more or less "formal" like some cabal of businessmen and industrialists, or something like that, acting behind the scenes.

Is there anything in the historical record to shed even a little light on this? Or was Hitler sort of the "Top Dog" who was more or less calling all the shots? I get that there were more than likely elements within his government that he didn't know about but my question is at the end of the day did the buck stop with him?

EDIT someone responded with a now deleted comment but I kept part of my response and I'm putting it here to sort of better illustrate where I'm coming from with this question:

Though it is no secret that the industrial complex of the time provided their support in the fascist regime

This is more what I was wondering about. Where these people maybe manipulating Hitler in any way in order to fulfill their own agenda? Or where they simply "along for the ride" and took advantage of Nazi policies rather than trying to shape those policies themselves for their own gain? Personally I feel like it's the latter because I have no reason to believe it was the former. But I'm extremely curious.-

I learned in middle school that the Native Hawaiians migrated in canoes from the Marquesas Islands 2000 miles to the Hawaiian islands in the year 400. This has always blown my mind. It's super hard to believe that someone could travel that far in canoes. It makes me wonder if maybe they actually found some way to construct larger boats with sails like the Europeans did. They were intelligent human beings after all. How do we know they traveled that far in just canoes? If they did, how could they store enough food and not have it go bad? How did they deal with weather? What about the need to sleep and their bodily needs? I know this is the accepted story, but is it possible it's wrong and they really built bigger boats?

I've been asked to teach a middle school history elective course for the last hour on Fridays for 7 weeks. This is a supplement to what their "normal" history courses cover in their curriculum, so I'm trying to either deep dive into something that gets glossed over in the usual curriculum or is a subject that isn't covered at all. By chance (or elective), I've ended up with 12 middle school boys in the course. These guys are more interested in covering conflict so I'm trying to tailor the last few courses toward that.

So far I've covered:

The History of Rock and Roll (covering the African/southern roots/blues/Elvis/Beatles/Hendrix/Led Zeppelin/Hair Metal/Alternative/etc.)

Assassins: A quick history of political/religious assassination (covering the background on the word itself to Caesar, Lincoln, Archduke Ferdinand, JFK/MLF/RFK and even touching on drone strikes)

Walls: covering forts, castles, trenches, defenses, and how they evolved. Went from palisades, to castles, to fortresses, to trench warfare, to bunkers in short order.

Gettysburg: I took a deep dive into the battle of Gettysburg as it was an area that I have some background from college and there were some local tie ins to the history of it.

I have one more "in the can" so to speak covering the history of the Space Race as it likely won't be something that they will get to in their courses.

What are some other things that fellow History fans think would be great subjects that you feel these students should know? My main goal is to get a few of these future historians excited and wanting to continue into higher study of History.

Esteemed historians, for no reason having to do with recent news, if I wanted to learn more about the Spanish Flu what would you consider a good introductory book?

Other than putting a cup on it and watching it slide off?

I've heard that the spirit level will be invented by Melchisédech Thévenot in the 17th century, but how can I tell today?

Hello all,

My great-grandfather was fighting in Austria-Hungary army during WW1 on Italian front. He died somewhere between 1917-1918 and was buried in Italy. Partly because 1917 movie (lol), family story about him on war and because of my uncle tried before (but not successfully) now I'm trying to localize his grave. Do any of you know sources to search? Casualties lists/ deaths/ lists of buried in Italy? I would be grateful for any help ;)

So I've heard before modern sanitation and germ theory people used to drink things with very low alcohol contents because they were safer than the water supplies nearby. How true is that and how did places that didn't drink alcohol (like most Muslim communities) cope?

In movies, they speak in front of massive armies that soldiers past a 50m radius would not hear. Where soldiers beyond that looking on in confusion? Or were there other soldiers relaying the speech?

I posted on r/askreddit and got a pretty interesting theory that this is mainly due to superstition, but I am still wondering was there any other reason besides that one

Historians of reddit, I have a question concerning the first crusade of the holy land. How was the gate of St. Stephen involved? I’ve tried looking into it and I’ve come up empty. Thanks in advance.

Did literally anyone care? What were the thoughts of people outside the states?

I know that some Chinese visitors, like merchants and maybe students, were allowed to enter the US even under the Chinese Exclusion Act. Similarly, despite the Tokugawa Shōgunate's policy of barring foreign entry, Dutch merchants were allowed to visit an artificial island in Nagasaki. So did similar policies allow for Jewish visitors to England between Edward I's Edict of Expulsion and Oliver Cromwell's reversal of that policy?

Say a commoner manages to somehow locate a iron vein or abandoned salt mine, and immediately reported it to their lord. Would they be awarded anything for this act? Or would they just be swept aside with a pat on the back?

Has this ever happened before in history that we have record of?

Any answer at all is appreciated!

I'm not talking about Generalplan Ost or Lebensraum here. I'm wondering what the Germans expected to happen after they took the key cities of Stalingrad, Moscow, and Leningrad. Did they think Stalin would ask to negotiate? did they think Stalin would be assassinated/overthrown with a leader more amenable to peace like in 1917? Did they expect the Union collectively to give up and collapse into breakaway states like it would in 1991? Finally, how close did the Germans come to getting their desired victory?

Fair/pale skin is often a signifier of beauty in Asian cultures, but I want to narrow the scope to East Asian countries (Korea, Japan, China, etc).

One of the theories to the prevalence of this standard is the influence of western imperialism and association with caucasian/european beauty standards. I want to know whether this beauty standard was present before contact with Europe. I also want to know whether this social "bias" was exacerbated or otherwise transformed after contact with the west.

I know the US economy in the 1930's sucked, and the economy after the war was in great shape. I would imagine that WW2 would damage the economy because money has to be spent on making military equipment instead of consumer goods and developing the economy further, but it seemed to have the opposite effect.

Germany had started using there first Jets in 1939 and America developed some later on as well as the British. As fast as they where and good at taking out propeller planes why weren't they mass produced?

Just going by naval ships, planes and tanks as well as other things which country had more powerful and advanced machinery?