I watched a YouTube video discussion Hitler's health and it said that his personal doctor gave him drugs for his illnesses and because of that he became an addict. Is there any truth to this?

I've read about India, and parts of it, being conquered by foreigners before, like Mughals and the British, but it doesn't make sense to me for such an old nation to have never tried to expand its territories. Have they ever tried to take over foreign lands? If so, how did that go, and how long did that last (and why did it end)?

For instance, did women serve on the witan? Did they counsel kings, give practical advice? Could they own property and if so, how much power could they exert as landowners?

I have a rather interesting mystery I’d like to solve.

During WWII, my grandfather was assigned to a vessel that sank, killing most if not all of the crew. He survived only because he assumed the early morning air-raid sirens were a drill, and didn’t bother getting out of bed to report to duty. As the story goes, by the time he figured out that it wasn’t a drill, as bombs were exploding in the street in front of his window, he made his way to the Harbor to see his vessel on fire and sinking.

He was presumed dead and the local newspaper even ran a story “First Hometown Boy Killed in War”.

If you were me, how would you research this? I’d like to know the name of the vessel that sank. There are no living family members that remember, unfortunately, and I would like to preserve this story for our family history due to its unusual nature.

**edit- I know the name of the vessel he was re-assigned to for the duration of the War- would this help my research?

I understand that it is running water and all, but how did water coming along Roman aqueducts not get filled with leaves, bugs, and any other things that could get stuck in the water, and how did the Romans clean the water after it got transported?

I think the title says it all. I realize that by and large, the United States doesn’t use the metric system outside of scientific use, but somehow it seems that even consumer-facing electricity-related products measure in units like volts, amps, Watts, and ohms. If you buy a lightbulb, phone charger, or even look at an electric bill, it seems to not use imperial measurements. Now, I realize there are some closely related exceptions (gas bills, horsepower for cars), but somehow electric has stayed out of this. Any reason?

Ever since I have found out about the Japanese soldier was left in a remote part of the Philippines, refusing to believe that the war has ended, I wonder if there are similar cases that happened to other territories occupied by the Japanese.

How long did they "continue the fight"?

Did they resort to guerilla tactics?

What was their life after they surrendered or were relieved from duty?

Between the 14th to 17th century England had the War of the Roses and the English Civil War; but did it also have smaller conflicts where two nobles might fight each other beneath the kings notice? And if so how were such things dealt with by the crown?

I was talking about the Vietnam War draft in a car ride and hit upon the topic of draft evaders from the USA who fled to Canada. Realizing that many of them may have decided to settle lives before the amnesty was issued, I am wondering what kinds of communities this population of American expats would have formed in Canada.

Did they just try to disperse into the general population or form their own enclaves? If they formed enclaves, are there "America towns" anywhere in Canada today?

Are they good books for reading about their experiences anyone can recommend?

Thank you for giving my question consideration.

I want to know what historical, geographical, political factors that lead the U.S to become a superpower while Australia which on surface has similar features like both being huge countries, both British colonies, disconnected from the most of the world for long period of time, etc.

Jacques Clement was a member of the catholic league, he must have known that the most likely successor to Henry III would be his cousin, the protestant king of Navarre (who did become king of France after the assassination). He was close enough to nobility to get close to the king and stab him.

The wars of religion were incredibly sectarian, not 2 years earlier the king of spain launched the spanish armada for the primary purpose of getting a catholic monarch back on the throne of england. European alliances at this time seem to mostly been catholics vs protestants, and whether your kingdom was friendly with another one was largely based on the religions of the monarchs.

Since Clement is described as a catholic fanatic, wouldn't it be extremely self-defeating to assassinate this catholic king when the most likely outcome is a protestant assuming the throne?

Xerxes commanded an army of 250,000 Persians while William the Conqueror took all of England with just 14,000 men. Why are medieval armies so small?

I’m a huge fan of royal history, I read anything about it so I was momentarily confused whilst reading an article on Edward III of England, surely he should be Edward IV since The Confessor pre-dates the Edwards I-III by about 311 years (not sure if I’m using the right maths, I just calculated the years between the death of the Confessor and Edward III, which is the period of 1066-1377) and yet he’s not known as Edward I “the Confessor” or whatever order it’d be in. Is there a reason for this?

P.S. I chose not to count Edward the Elder since it isn’t really until his son Æthelstan that we get the King of England title as we know it (as in the actual title name) but I could be wrong to discount him?

I'm a little confused as to the voting requirements established in the 1780 MA Constitution.

"Every male person being twenty-one years of age, and resident in any particular town in this commonwealth, for the space of one year next preceding, having a freehold estate within the same town, of the annual income of three pounds, or any estate of the value of sixty pounds, shall have a right to vote in the choice of a representative or representatives for the said town."

Does this mean you only needed an income of three pounds to vote? Or did you have to be a freeholder of the income of three pounds to vote? The language is kinda confusing.

In a discussion, someone stated that fascism was, at its heart, the mindset that "another group will overtake you [...] and you have to strike first, or else your people will be subjugated". In this telling, Hitler's conception that 'the jews' were responsible for the bad state of Germany was the root of Hitler's philosophies, and the overarching motivation for the bid for power by Hitler and his compatriots.

Is this an accurate account of the motivation or Hitler and his ilk?

Further elaboration:

From reading chapter 1 of Lorna Waddington's "Hitler's crusade" it definitely does seem like Hitler was motivated by a belief in a Jewish conspiracy that manifested itself in lots of evidently horrible things such as democracy, internationalism and pacifism. (and, to be less snarky, bolshevikism and capitalism) His development of his conspirational thinking seems to be around 1919-1920, which is around the same time, I think, as the kickoff to his political activism through membership of the DAP.

Where I'm stuck and would like some feedback is this: this ascribed motivation seems to conflict with the definitions of fascism by scholars such as Roger Griffin, Kevin Passmore, etc. And basically most of the definitions listed on Wikipedia. Passmore, for example, writes in his short introduction on fascism (p 62): "In Italy and Germany a movement came to power that sought to create national unity through the repression of national enemies and the incorporation of all classes and both genders into a permanently mobilized nation".

To me, national unity seems like a different "project" than the ending of international jewish/bolshevik threats. All the definitions of fascism seem to not apply to nazi germany once we define its mission as being solely to strike against these threats. Maybe they're relevant insofar they're associated with the ideology (ie to counter the threat mobilization is useful, as is national unity) but that's like saying propaganda is an important motivation of soviet communism: mistaking a tactic for a motivation.

So how do I resolve this seeming contradiction?

(my intuition is that underlying Hitler's motivation to strike against his perceived enemies is a certain ideology, which is what creates at least part of the opposition to those who are detrimental to it. Which would explain why scholars can describe fascism as having certain ideological tenets. By this account Hitler would be motivated by both this underlying ideology as well as his conspirational thinking)

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Everyone seems to agree that invading Japan at the end of WWII would have caused millions of casualties, but by mid-1945, wasn't Japan's navy and air force pretty much gone? Instead of using nuclear weapons, or actually staging an invasion, why couldn't the US (or the US and the USSR together) simply blockade Japan and starve it into submission?

Hi historians of Reddit, My question has to do with how war-gamers envisioned a european wide conflict in the early 20th century would have gone before WW1 started.

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I know that there have been dedicated communities of war-gamers in the echelons of European military society playing games like Kriegsspiel since at least after the Napoleonic wars. My question is how did these war-gamers envision pitched battle between modern, early-20th century armies would go based off their most recently updated editions with the most modern technology incorporated?

Were they accurate? If not, what were they missing? How did war-gaming change, if at all, after WW1?