Fascist Germany and Stalinist Soviet Union had many things in common: an authoritarian government with a cult of personality regarding the leader, suppression of civil liberties, brutal police forces, no political party pluralism, extreme nationalism, fear of criticizing the authorities, etc. So how do you distinguish authoritarian communism from authoritarian fascism?

As a follow up, I believe the consensus is that agriculture in the Middle East and the Americas obviously happened independent of each other. Did the farming in Asia occur independently of the farming in the ME? Is their any discussion among historians on the statistical anomaly that both cultures developed farming around the same time independent of each other? Or is it due to a direct consequence of the Ice Age ending and therefore giving opportunity for humans around the globe to farm?

Nowadays every map I've ever seen has the north pole at the top, antartica and the south pole to the bottom, so that if I point to a part of the map, going "up" is going north, going "down" is going south, going left is west and going right is east.

Did ancient societies have maps where it was the different, where another direction was their "up" on the map and their "North" would have been our "east"?

Was it just called India? Bactria? Or did they have a specific name for it? I'm specifically speaking of the kingdom founded by Menander. Or was it something similar to the Seleucid Empire where it was named after the ruling dynasty?

The lever action was invented in the 1860s, so how come during world war one they were opted out in exchange for older bolt action rifles? They could fire much faster, and (at least to me) would seem like a great weapon for raiding the trench due to the high-intensity, close-quarter combat.

Anything about the revolution would be good, I'm open to any books on the subject.

I have a kid learning chess right now through pawn games, but I know others have famously focused on studying openings. What sort of movements have there been in the theory of chess education?

I find it interesting that Rome, Athens, Carthage and the Etruscans all transitioned to a republic or democracy (loosely) around the same time and they all were in close proximity to each other and had various interactions with each other.

Is it just chance that they all developed a similarish form of government around the same time? Did they happen independently or were they related at all?

As a follow up - the story of Rome transitioning to a republic is almost a direct replication of the story of Athens transitioning to a democracy. In both stories, a tyrant rapes a female and then is overthrown by the female's followers to form a new government. In fact, according to legend they both happened within 2-3 years of each other (509 BC vs 506 BC). Is this just coincidence or is it accepted that the Roman's borrowed the Greek myth?

Since the many Pompeii's graffiti have a, let's say, "popular" nature, and the authors are brothel goers, bakers, legionaries (not exactly upper class) what can we say about the literacy rate of the first century romans?

If it was comparatevely high, where did those medium/lower class citizen learned to write and read?

I’m not saying they had to love the idea, but was it tolerable?

The concept of a final prophet being referred as the "seal" of the prophets is oddly specific, and yet it seems that it appeared first in Manicheism only to appear later in islam, how did this happen?

Japan is often seen as an environmental leader. Despite having been very densely populated throughout its history, it has 67% forest cover; the fifteen countries with higher proportions of forest cover are all significantly less dense in terms of human population. Today, Japan tends to play a leading role in global efforts to fight climate change. Of course, Japan's environmental record is not perfect, and there have been many missteps. Generally though, it has a strong history of sustainable practices since well before such ideas were prominent in Europe and the US.

I know that there are many reasons for this, from Japan's lack of natural resources to decisions made unde the Tokugawa Shogunate. I want to focus specifically on the role Japan's native religion, Shinto, plays in this process. Though Shinto is hard to define and varies from place to place, the core belief that defines the religion is the kami, spirits that pervade the world. Shinto is variously classified as animist, nature worship, or even pantheistic; at least superficially, it seems like such a belief system would lend itself to respect for the environment. Has Shinto actually significantly influenced conservation in Japan?

I'm curious about both Japan's role in the modern environmentalist movement and the sustainability practices (especially forestry) of pre-Meiji Japan.

In the West (at least in the US), there is a common stereotype that Chinese culture is very uniform. What's more surprising is that I have met a number of Chinese people who have a similar perception. They generally claim that all Chinese people speak different dialects of the same language, point to the common writing system, and argue that ethnic differences among the various "Chinese" ethnic groups are fairly superficial. Seemingly counter to this, many linguists argue that the Chinese language varieties have more variation than Romance languages, and they point out that the shared writing system does not work well without modification for non-standard varieties. Additionally, my superficial understanding of China is that there is pretty large cultural and ethnic variation across China. Where do these ideas of uniformity come from? Are they grounded in reality, or are they perhaps intentionally constructed?

I'm reading a book of Jean François Cavanna, a caricaturist, writer, journalist who created Hara-Kiri (who would became Charlie Hebdo).

In his youth he was sent to the STO (French slave workers in Germany), and tells about Berlin that he would go to on Sundays. He says at some points that (after being duped for money and finally treated like slaves) female volunteers would often end up prostituting themselves in Berlin, most of the time their pimps being frenchmen who evaded the STO or jail; he says that some of these men would even put their hands on brothels, bars, and be forgerers of papers etc.

Is that possible? Wasn't the Nazi tough on crime?

I guess that they were bribing the Gestapo and French milices that were in Germany?

Hello history buffs. I'm an 11th Grade US history class, when the class i was covering for 10th grade Global 2, a student pointed out a line about pre-ww2 Italy. The text read that prior to the war, there were people who dressed up on three kinds of face paint, but it was vaguely described. I wasn't sure what it was in reference to: did the anti fascists color their faces, did those targetted by the facists have their faces marked.

Has anyone heard of this? I couldn't find it anywhere on google.

Mussolini was in power for longer than Hitler was and his troops had experience from the Second Abyssinian War, yet Italy had barely won any battles

The bow and arrow was a weapon/tool used in many cultures all across the world. did it originate in one place and travel through cultures as they intermingled or did different cultures/regions "invent" the bow and arrow independently?

I have googled this extensively and only see results for the demand(s) that Serbia did not meet causing the war to start, but no where do I see a list of the others. Thanks for your time!

As we know, the Mongols were a largely nomadic people during their conquests and subsequently lived in yurts, called gers in Mongolian. I am curious as to what the yurts of Genghis Khan and other high-ranking Mongols were like. Were they mobile palaces, filled with jewels, carpets, and other luxury items from their victories? Or were they simply utilitarian living spaces?

I'd imagine that the rising popularity of Buddhism would have brought a bunch of people into temples, both in the West and as tourists to Asia. Was there a clash between recent converts, who might have a very different view of Buddhism, and those who grew up in the faith? Buddhism in the West is often presented as a sort of "alternative religion," focused around meditation and esotericism. Would the counter-cultural trappings of a lot of popular Western Buddhism have alienated more traditional Buddhists?

I was reading a comic book about ancient Rome that had some focus on slavery, and was wondering if there was any kind of anti-slavery movements or activism in ancient civilizations.

As far as I know, slavery was common everywhere in ancient times, and it was possible for a slave to become liberated. But I never heard some someone advocating against slavery in that era.

I heard this somewhere, is it true? What did that look like exactly?