I am reading William Shirer's rise and fall of the third reich. Over all the book has been tremendously informitive. The majority of the sources in it are derived from the nazi archives seized after the war. And while that may give great insight into the internal workings amd history of the Nazi regime, I don't know if it will provide the most accurate picture of the war in the East. I ask this because I have heard it said we (America/the west) did not have a very complete or accurate picture of this part of the war until the soviet archives were opend up after 1991. Given that the book was written in the 60s this means the author had no access to these records. So is it an inaccurate picture of the war between the USSR and Nazi Germany?

tldr: is a book primarily composed of Nazi recordes without access to a soviet history accurate?

I am an avid lover of Mad Men, which has a reputation for its attention to detail but occasionally misses the mark.

I've noticed that most of the women, when talking on the phone, remove and replace the earring on their dominant side in one swift movement. To me this implies that most upper-middle class American women in the late '50s and early '60s wore clip-on earrings, but I can't seem to find confirmation.

Can anyone confirm the most common types of earrings worn by women in the upper-middle class before the counter culture movement of the '60s?

I saw a post on twitter that was basically a meme about issues with viewing the scientific revolution as revolutionary. I was wondering what exactly is wrong about viewing it as such?

To give a few examples: Hudson Bay Company, British East India Company, Dutch East Indies Company, Swedish East Indies Company...why not direct control of colonial territories and trade by their respective national governments?

In the US today, a lot of people really support the government and capitalism. Was it normal for people to really believe in communism in the USSR? Would lots of people have read Marx & Lenin?

By "Western European Nations" I am referring to France, Britain, Spain, etc. Like I mentioned, many nations in the world were equally or more advanced than European nations before about 1500 CE. I would presume that the rise in European influence would have something to do with Colonialism, but at what point did this Eurocentric power ascention begin? Also, why couldn't nations like China or India keep up with Europe as they had done for years prior?

I feel like I might be underestimating how hard supply and logistics could be in the ancient world?

I've been watching The Bible Reloaded recently, and the more I watch, the more I notice how strange Jesus's relationship with this father/mother/brother(s?) is. What they do/don't expect from him in a given situation seems odd, and the way he responds to them is also vary odd. From this I get the hint that these strange qualities arise from him living in a vary different family structure than I, but I can't find any information about it and I'm just curious if any of y'all could educate me on this a bit. Educate me on how people in Jesus's culture organized themselves.

This may not be the usual kind of question that gets asked here, but it does strike me as fitting.

I'm a history major myself, and I figured I should put mine forward first.

For me, history is the grandest story we have. Not even ever told, because it is told by many and noone. It is interpreted by many, but there is no singular teller. It cares not for story convention nor expectation, but as something crafted by humans, creatures of story and song, there will always be those flurishes. The gay irish nationalist who, in his trial called for the freedom of not just the irish, but everyone of all races, harkening back to his work to free the Congo from King Leopold's rule. The baffled chain of command unable to comprehend that there was no ring leader of the 50 drafted british pacifists in world war 1 who refused to fight or take orders.

It is utterly fascinating to delve into our species storied past on this planet, and for me that is what I find engaging.

So, tell me about you.

Why was it specifically the Siberian divisions that were the elite army divisions of the Soviet Union, and what made them elite? Were they simply stationed in Siberia or were they recruited locally? If the former, why were the elite forces stationed in Siberia and not elsewhere?

I feel like viewing history temporally adds distance between two events that are actually the same, but only different in terms of WHEN they happened. I’m wondering what would be accomplished by grouping global historical events together in terms of relevant phenomena as opposed to creating a timeline, but after some initial digging I wasn’t able to find anything along these lines.

Ive always known Julius Ceaser's phrase before crossing the Rubicon to be "the die is cast". Thats popular history. But recently I've started reading more historical works on Ceaser. In Dando Collins Ceaser's Legion he has him saying "the dice are in the air". Different but similar in meaning. But today while reading Adrian Goldsworthy's book on Augustus he has him saying "throw the dice high". Which means less the writings on the wall and more if you're going to go, go big; or something to that effect.

I wasn't aware of a difference in opinion amongst historians. Is there really a big one or did I just read contrarian accounts? And do the differences all fall in the translation of Ceasers writing from Gaul? If thats where we get the phrase from at all.

Preferably non-biased. I'm interested in learning about why so many people have bad opinions of Israel.

My friend told me about the Úlfhéðnar, and they sounded cool, I looked further into them, and they seem interesting. I was wondering if there are any sources/resources (aside from Wikipedia and the History channel) about them.

What percentage ( more or less) of the roman legions would be composed of people that weren't from the italian peninsula? I suppose it would depend on the legion in particular, but what would be the normal percentage?

I read that Pope Clement VII personally approved Nicolaus Copernicus’s theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun in 1533, a century later, Galileo was put on trial for heresy for similar ideas. Did Pope Urban VIII make any mention of Clement VII? By trying Galileo, he basically said that Pope Clement was wrong, how was that received? Is it common for a pope to disagree or undo previous pope’s decisions?

Think Omaha Beach in Saving Private Ryan or Stalingrad in Enemy at the Gates. Explosions happening randomly, all across the battlefield, planes above dive bombing your positions, artillery shooting from behind, bullets flying, noise, constant movement and events. But was it really like that? If you look at more modern battle footage, you see soldiers shooting and the occasional explosion here and there. Sure it's noisy, but it looks nothing like the explosion-bullet-fireball buffet that Hollywood makes it to be. So how did a WW2 battlefield look like in reality? Was, for example, Omaha beach as hectic and dangerous as it is portrayed in Saving Private Ryan?