Hello Historians,

Hopefully this is an appropriate question for this subreddit. My father has many decades of experience in pharmacy, and I am keen to document his memories and experiences 'for posterity' in a video. My question is fairly simple, are there any guidelines or suggestions for structuring an oral history recording like this (or do you just plonk down a camera and ask the subject to talk about their memories?)

Thanks

Much of the traditional commentary from the western world seems to focus on the conduct of the Soviet forces, Cold War and such. It is sometimes said that the Mujahideen were, in part, successful because they were more popular with the local population than the Soviets, who were seen as outsiders and invaders. I don't doubt that, at least in rural villages, the Mujahideen had a much greater base of support than the Soviets, but given the nature of the militant groups that the Mujahideen were/became, I also find it hard to believe that they did not have at least as great a capacity for war crimes.

Having looked at the Wikipedia article on the conflict, it has an "atrocities" section that only discusses Soviet atrocities and uses a noticeably limited number of sources. Accounts of war crimes by the Mujahideen are conspicuously absent. Were the Mujahideen during the Soviet Afghan war genuinely more humanitarian than their later counterparts, or was terror as much a part of their strategy then as it was later? If it's the former, what caused the shift?

As we all know, the SS was the paramilitary component of the Nazi party and committed crimes against humanity, most notably the Holocaust.

But exactly how fanatical were the volunteers who made up the SS? Do we know of any who became disillusioned with Nazism during or after the war? Did any of the foreign volunteers simply see Nazism as the lesser of two evils compared to Communism? Or were all of them Nazi fanatics until their last dying breath?

I'm not necessarily thinking of a class-based distinction, but was there any difference in how they were perceived as bands/who they were for? For example, I would guess the the Beatles were seen as more clean-cut and the Stones for edgy - is that true?

Why was it them that colonised the Americas in the 16th century and later Africa in the 18th-19th Centuries and not vice versa? Was it a result of their geological position from the civilisation’s beginning? Was it religion?

Before answering this and wondering what is a Sami, let me give a quick info. The Sami is a Finno-Ugric tribe that lives fringes of Finland, Sweden and Norway. Despite being consider to be close related to the Finnish and Estonians, their cultural distinction and sometime even their physical appearance remains somewhat foreign unlike their Finnic-speaking cousins in Scandinavia who were already been Westernised throughout the centuries.

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Now for this question, during WWII when Scandinavia was under occupations by the Germans, what did the Nazis, you know, the same people under Hitler who viewed Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs as "inferior vermins" and must be exterminated viewed the Sami?

Much is talked about the Chinese Civil Services Exam itself, and of course it is interesting, but I want to know what someone would do after they had passed it and were appointed as a civil servant. What were their roles and responsibilities? What kind of power did they have, and how would they exercise that power? Is there any comparison with modern government service or working in middle management for a large company?

E: I know I've stated Song dynasty, and that's the period I'm most interested in, but if you know about any other dynasty better I'd be interested in knowing that too!

From what I gather, England was relatively weak and not very populated during antiquity and through much of the Middle Ages. I feel, as an American, what we often view England as being very powerful for a much longer time than they actually were. Can someone please put England’s historical power and wealth in context with Europe’s history?

The simplified grammar of modern English, relative to other Germanic languages, is usually explained by English arising as a creole between Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, Norman French. But the Scandinavian languages, likewise, used to have accusative and dative cases, and in some cases a separate dual number. Why did they lose the cases, that modern German still has? Unlike England they weren't successfully invaded by speakers of a foreign language. Can we identify some other process, that applied most strongly to English but affected Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish more lightly, and German not at all? Noting that the Scandinavian languages still have grammatical genders, lost in English but kept in German, so they are as it were in a middle position - English lost accusatives, datives, and genders, Scandinavians kept genders, German kept all three.

I don't really know if this is the right place to ask, but it's something I see often. So did it happen?

Organizations included:

a) The United States Navy, which considered the re-capture of the Falkland Islands to be a Military impossibility.

b) The Ministry of Defense in Whitehall, which generally regarded the whole idea as far, far too risky.

c) The Army, which considered it to be ill-advised, for lack of a ‘proper’ advantage ratio in land force numbers.

d) The Royal Air Force, which, seeing little role for themselves on account of the vast distances, and no chance of a Navy surviving in the face of an Air Force, was inclined to agree.

Is this really possible and what would happen in that event? Would they be given a severance package or pension?

I've heard the term Byzantine Bureaucracy tossed around frequently and so I'm curious what the actual bureaucracy was like. Was it really as cumbersome as people describe it to be?

I know that many middle eastern people arrived in Mexico in the 50's and 60's because of the civil wars and other factors.

But it just dawned on me that although I know plenty of mexicans of middle eastern ascent none of them are muslims, and in fact I've never met a mexican muslim.

Was it that all the refugees that arrived in Mexico were christian to begin with?, did they convert?, or is it simply that I'm biased?

I have read a lot of older history books lately and I'm curious if I'm filling my head with mumbo jumbo. Today I read "Bronze Age in the Celtic World" (1923), I've read The Story of Mankind - Hendrick Van Loon (1923), and Boys of '62 (contemporary-ish civil war novel by a journalist)... And while, especially The Story of Mankind, they tend to be full of absolutely terrible historic facts, they address things in a matter that I find a lot more palatable. I dislike the whole "EVERYTHING IS SUPER EXCITING!!!" or the modern morality brigade on everything before 1980 (like, "then [tribe A] enslaved [tribe b] (which was terribly wrong and they're terrible people)" (way to make a stand...)

So, if early 20th century really has a great underlying philosophy about understanding history - but absolutely terrible understanding - is it worth my time if I can read it contextually? Or is it so very dated that I'd end up misinformed.

I guess, is reading bad history for the philosophy of understanding history a good thing or a bad thing?

I've seen more than one early medieval-era map of the world in which the Red Sea is colored red rather than blue like all other bodies of water. Is there a reason for this?

During an Imperial Spain course I took last semester I remember my teacher briefly mentioning that one sign that the inquisition monitored in order to find heretics was if they cooked with olive oil. While there were other, more obvious signs that they would look for, this one stuck out to me. Why was it that, at that time, using olive oil to cook indicated that someone was not true to the Christian faith. Also, was this an actual thing that they looked for or was this something baseless that my professor threw in?

You’d think that a city as big as London with hundreds of thousands of people living in it would have more than one bridge across the river Thames. Why was that? Did no one plan to build a second bridge until the 1700s? Was there no need?