I’ve seen plenty of memes regarding a supposed “uh oh” type of reaction from Hitler in response to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Is there any documentation as to what Hitler thought about Pearl Harbor, both publicly and privately? Thanks!

After watching the most recent GoT episode (no spoilers) I noticed there were some soldiers who were slowly walking through a possibly hostile castle, and they were taking corners and finding cover like how I imagine a SWAT or special forces team would clear a building. Did actual Medieval armies have tactics for clearing buildings or castles once they got past the walls? Did the tactic boil down to "storm the building and overrun anyone left"?

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For example, the Medici lion. To my knowledge, there were only lions in Africa during that time so it made me curious. Were Africans responsible for those statues?

Even today there are people who say Pokemon are devil's or that harry Potter should be banned.When at a time when Christianity was arguably at it's height.Would stories about pagen God's be tolerated.

Both through independent research and yes playing Battlefield 1 I’ve realized that Britain seemingly did far less weapon experimentations than other nations, as by the end of the war most of the major European powers, namely Germany, France, and Italy but Austria-Hungary, the USA, and Russia as well to a smaller extent had gone though trials and even small scale adoption of Semi-Auto Rifles, SMGs, and Automatic pistols while the closest the British got was the Farquhar-Hill Rifle, even that was pretty much the most modern British infantry weapon design of the war. Was this lack of adoption and research due to the fact that other projects such as tanks took up too many resources or was British high command generally satisfied with Enfield Rifles, Lewis Guns, and Vickers guns? Sorry if the formatting is bad I posted this from mobile

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My good friend has a great grand uncle who was in the CEF’s 85th Battalion, the Nova Scotia Highlanders, and was killed at Amiens on August 10th, 1918. Though it would’ve been little consolation to his widow, would he have been technically posthumously awarded the British WWI Victory Medal and any campaign medals he would’ve qualified for assuming he survived the war?

Is there an official policy on this, i.e. all war dead were awarded the victory medal? Sort of the same way all war dead automatically receive a posthumous Purple Heart in the US military?

Thanks in advance!

Karl Ove Knausgaard goes through a lengthy review of Hitler's life in the sixth and final volume of his "My Struggle" series. One of his written reasons for writing the series was as a reaction to the elimination of individuality he perceived in Nazi propaganda. He wanted to express his own individuality. He also seems to want to humanize and individualize Adolf Hitler, again to put an "I" where the Nazis described a "We." Knausgaard's discussion is primarily based on the text of Mein Kampf and writings by Kershaw and Kubizek. At least so far - I'm not done reading it yet.

Are Knausgaard's thoughts based on an accurate portrait of Hitler's life? Are his sources sufficiently reliable or complete for the presented facts to be accepted at face value?

I read/saw in news reports that Notre Dame cathedral housed artifacts such as a crown thought to be part of the crown of thorns Jesus wore on the cross, or a nail and a piece of wood from the cross. As a former Catholic, now atheist, I have always been skeptical of the authenticity of such objects. Is there any effort to make historical documentation of these artifacts? For example, was the crown taken by someone whose name/identity was established and is there a “chain of custody” in any way?

It seems like so many religious artifacts are of dubious authenticity. They always seem to “appear” in the Middle Ages with a vague backstory. But that’s just my amateur opinion.

I'm currently writing a historiographical paper over immigration in the United States, and after debating upon different sources for doing three paradigm shifts have hit a dead-lock on the subject, as this is the first time I have ever written a history paper. I've been mainly focusing on demographics, but realized that they may not be what I should be focusing on as the topic of my paper was too broad when at that stage, when I was there I was going to use the following literature,

The Atlantic Migration - Marcus Lee Hansen

Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism - John Higham

The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity. - Arthur Mann

Old World Traits Transplanted - Robert E. Park & Miller A. Herbert

Letters from An American Farmer: And Other Essays - St John De Crevecoeur

Immigration Reconsidered: History, Sociology, and Politics. -Virginia Yans-McLaughlin

After reading these works, I realized that they were too broad for the work in general, and now I am struggling to find books from orthodox, revisionist, and post-revisionist views to support the idea of why America closes its doors. If someone could help out in any fashion, or just in general point me in a good direction, you would have my eternal thanks. Or even suggestions on differing topics that could be easier, as my overall topic is "immigration" for the United States.

And how has this impacted their culture post apartheid?

I just came back from a holiday in Croatia, and it seemed like every city along the Dalmatian coast was touted as having the biggest/oldest/best-preserved Roman something-or-other. Are these just exaggerations by the Croatian tourist board?

If not, why does this stretch of coast have so much more surviving Roman architecture than other areas?

I'm doing my undergrad dissertation on the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis - winners vs losers - how would you phrase the title, without it sounding ridiculously basic? Any help would be really appreciated :)

I hear this phrase used a lot in books and the movie We Were Soldiers but I was wondering if anyone can clarify what this phrase means?

Presume that this person was drafted into a war, and showed excellent capabilities rarely seen. Could such a person ascend to a higher title like that of a knight?

Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!

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Come share the cool stuff you love about the past! Please don’t just write a phrase or a sentence—explain the thing, get us interested in it! Include sources especially if you think other people might be interested in them.

AskHistorians requires that answers be supported by published research. We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.

For this round, let’s look at: Oral Literature! What historical stories, epics, poems, histories have been preserved through oral tradition, long before they were ever written down?

Next time: It's party time!

I’ve been looking around for this answer and I’m not sure if I can’t find it because it doesn’t exist or because I’m not asking the right way. So-

In early humans, when did they go though puberty and start successfully producing children? Was there a big latency period between the two as with modern society, where people go through puberty around 13 but don’t have children for about another decade? I would imagine not as if there was no desire for/knowledge of birth control, once sex drive was created during puberty, children should soon follow?

Were women born more ready to have children? Like if puberty were the same as it is now, and they started having kids at 14, the -4 year old mom isn’t close to being finished developing physically even though she’s able to carry children. Would that have further increased child mortality?

In some sense, I am talking post Tizard Mission, pre cavity magnetron because it still applies. However, I’m more talking about the late 30s, when Hitler had dreams to split Poland and eventually the USSR, knock out France, and had delusions of the British joining him. I think the misguidance rests on his idea that Britain would join him, thus depriving the U.S. of a proper staging ground to invade Europe. I don’t think the notion of the U.S. being powerful but not powerful enough to take Europe by its own, without Britain’s help, are mutually exclusive. It’s pure speculation, but perhaps he was dismissing the importance of the U.S. because he didn’t think it would be able to do anything without GB? In any case, he had to have thought about the industrial capacity (Albert Speer surely mentioned it), and realized it was basically an out of reach factory. Just bizarre he didn’t ask Japan to strike East, but that can be blamed on the inter-service rivalry Japan had. Obviously, hindsight is 20/20 and Hitler didn’t know the U.S. would turn the Atlantic War as quickly as it did, I'm just wondering why he didn't plan for a U.S. intervention.

Let's say a Roman citizen has to pay his taxes. How would he pay them? How would he know how much to pay? How would the tax office make sure he paid the right amount? And if there is a mistake, let's say the citizen mistakenly paid too much or not enough, how would this be sorted out?