I have just read The Last Lion: Visions of Glory, by William Manchester. In Part Four Cataract, the Galippoli Campaign (more specifically the forcing of the Dardanelles) was presented as brainchild of Churchill. From my reading, the plan was to force the Straits with older ships (so as not to take away from the British naval forces around England), and was first introduced as a low risk gamble with Winston first claiming it could be done with no supporting ground troops. At the time, millions of men were dying on the western front, which had developed into a stalemate. The Galippoli Campaign would also develop into a stalemate, but how much of this was due to Churchill's actions?

Manchester laid out reasons for the "Forcing the straits" plan's failure, ranging from a Judas Sea Lord in John Fisher, land troops withheld without reason by Kitchener, shoddy leadership in first Sackville Carden, followed by John de Robeck (who feared removal and halted engagements instead of pushing through the strait), and the Russians insisting that they would take Constantinople (Istanbul) instead of the Greeks.

The success of the Galipolli Campaign may have saved millions of lives, ended The Great War years earlier, and changed the course of history. The failure was largely blamed on Churchill, leading to his loss of the position the First Lord of the Admiralty and subsequent political exile. Was this exile deserved? Was Churchill the main component of Galipolli's failure? In short, did he deserve the blame and reputation that followed him the remainder of his political career, and has endured since his death on the 24 January, 1965?

Does anybody know where I can find copies of old empire’s constitutions? (The German Empire, December Constitution, etc). I have been interested in reading these yet I cannot find any PDF’s or other ways of viewing them online, can anyone help or tell me a better place to look? Thanks!

Suppose a Senator was found dead in his bed. No one saw who did it. Who would investigate his death and how would they go about it?

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We all know of civilizations in America because of European diseases but did any Europeans suffer from American illnesses?

History of chocolate in other European countries would also be interesting but Switzerland seems an anomaly among chocolate producing countries compared to say Belgium, Germany, and the UK

I'd like to vent a little about my dissatisfaction with historical comparisons, but I'd also love to hear if other people feel differently than I do on the matter.

I'm in the process of doing a lit review for my dissertation, and there's a sizeable number of books that discuss my topic--the War on Terrorism--through historical comparison: How does it compare to, for instance, to the Korean War/Vietnam War/WWII/anarchism in the early 20th century? I've realized that, while there are certainly similarities between the War on Terrorism and those other conflicts, I'm not too sure that those similarities are inherently significant. Do they actually tell us anything substantive about either of the conflicts under consideration?

I know that discussing the War on Terrorism violates this sub's 20-year rule, and it's not what I'm interested in with this post. I'm simply using it as an example to get at a larger question: Is there any utility to historical comparison? What is the value in comparing and contrasting distinct historical events or eras?

I've noticed that many historians have qualms with comparative history. Alfred McCoy, a historian of U.S. foreign relations, has called it "the most tendentious" form of historical analysis. And Joseph Margolies has argued that all too often the only thing that historians do in comparative studies is change the pronouns.

My own critique of comparative history is that it doesn't allow for any analysis of development over time. Historians essentially pluck two events out of history to compare and contrast, and in doing so they decontextualize both events. To use an analogy: it's like trying to chart the path of a rock skipping across the water, but only by examining the ripples it left behind.

I'll expand on that analogy a bit. Imagine that the rock is the historical phenomenon you want to examine--let's say that it's unilateralism in U.S. foreign policy. We can point to the ripples in the water and say, "Ah, we can see the rock's impact at these locations." But what remains unclear is how the rock got there--in other words, the path the rock took that caused it to hit where it did. (I hope this analogy makes sense).

Am I being too harsh? Are there merits to comparative history that I might not be thinking about? I've only discussed the comparison of different historical eras, but historians can also compare different locations within the same time period. For instance, some historians have compared the post-WWII development of social democratic governance in Western Europe and the United States. Do these geographical comparisons perhaps have more value than temporal comparisons?

Hey guys.

Currently working on a school-project, where i'm going to speak upon the transatlantic slave trade.

All I need is, a primary source, where i'll be able to use the source criticism method.

Besides that, a movie, song or even a tv-show that's related to the transatlantic trade would also be helpful. Which I'll be using to make a basic analysis of.

Forgive me for the vagueness of this description, it's possible multiple scenarios like this occurred within the gap bridging WW1 and WW2. I was at a lecture where the speaker was talking about some assumed peacemaker in the aftermath of WW2(who I think was a German national? I might be wrong.) who went out to various European countries and implored their leaders to abandon their weapons of war to prevent a tragedy like WW1 from ever happening again.

To every country he went to, he decried the inhumanity of war and basically convinced these countries to destroy/disable weapons and maybe military capabilities. Though, he never got Germany to disband. For all of his talk of peacemaking and no more brother wars, he essentially got Germany's rivals to give up their own weapons as Germany began re-militarizing and expanding. Basically a peacemaker who claimed to operate with benevolent intentions likely helped set the groundwork for WW2.

The speaker talked about this allegory as part of a larger narrative, but for the life of me I can't remember the peacemaker's name. I assume he was a big enough deal to justify citing him, I can't for life of me remember who he was. He might or appealed to the league of nations but I'm not sure.

I hate how open ended this question is but if there are any infamous/famous peace initiatives that involve disarmament between the the two world wars, can anyone cite them fitting the description above?

Of course most of the vikings' lines either perished or converted to Christianity, but for those who didn't convert to Christianity, how long did they carry on their viking traditions?

Whenever you watch a show like Game of Thrones or some Robin Hood variant, every regular citizen is always portrayed as a giant asshole. Everyone is ready to beat you up and steal your stuff. Murder is portrayed as almost common place. Were people during this time actually this mean or is this just total fiction?

When I see images, I dont see any machine guns on the body or wings of the plane. One thing I have noticed, however is that there are 8 holes in the front of the wings. Surely those arent big enough for a machine gun, correct?

I was recently in a discussion about morals in society throughout history and eventually came to this question: was there a specific time or event in history in which people collectively agreed that sacrificing your life for another was considered a virtuous act? I think most people today would agree that it is, but has it always been viewed that way? Can this idea be traced back to an original source, or is it just a unique quality of human nature?

So atleast in all the movies and pictures, the planes around the ww1 era, pretty much close to when planes were invented were open and had no covering for the pilot. So I’d imagine fighting in them made it 10’times harder to fly, but just a stupid question, was it like freezing up there in the sky in a winter in Europe flying open with no covering?