Hi so does anyone know if it's possible to find out my grandfather's medals from WWII. He was in the German Luftwaffen and I live in Australia. He died when my dad was 12 so I've never met him. And his medals were lost/stolen. I'll be finding out my other sides (Australian) medals too so just looking for history really.

Thanks in advance.

There is a lot of talk of diseases that European carried to North America and which killed a large number of native Americans. This seems to suggest an image of isolated people, but native Americans lived all over the continent, and South America was settled also. Wouldn't there also be some diseases that were unique to North America (or the Americas) that settlers would not have any immunity to?

I don’t understand how Woodrow Wilson is ranked high on the list of presidents. From what I understand, Wilson was known to be wildly racist, and his highly anticipated “League of Nations” ended up failing. The problem is that it seems people rank him high because he tried to be peaceful, but that really doesn’t make sense, because the “League of Nations” ultimately failed. While he did establish the federal reserve, but I don’t feel like that is enough to warrant such a high score compared to the other 43 presidents. Are my reasons justified, or is there more to the history that I have missed?

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So recently was chatting with a friend who grew up in Poland. They casually said in convo “ well the reason Hitler invaded Poland was because of the Jews “. I was a tad surprised so I asked them to elaborate. “ Hitler’s drive to destroy the Jews caused him to attack all of Europe “. I have heard this before from own fam in EE, and utterly disagree. Wondering what thoughts are on this common idea ?

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This is a recurring claim by some: apparently Shaka Zulu ordered his men to soak their (cow?) leather shields before fighting the British since the wet leather could stop a fired musket ball from penetrating. The claim seems to be mainly coming from Trevor Noah on an episode of QI. I am not sure where he got it from. Does it have any historical veracity?

I have a pretty strong grounding in American history overall (I just finished a BA in it) but I have never studied the Black Freedom Struggle in its own right (only as part of the Reconstruction Era, 1920s, 70s Radicalism, the Labor Movement, etc.). I'm especially interested in secondary surveys which go from, say, 1877 to the present and talk about the major movements and intellectual influences so I can study other parts more in-depth.

Thanks for any help you can give me!

Was there sympathy with the Saxons on the basis of ethnicity? Or sympathy with the Franks on the basis of religion (as the Anglo-Saxons and Franks were Christian while the German Saxons were pagan)? Or any political alliance with either side?

I'm reading a biography of Napoleon. An awful lot of it is detailed descriptions of marches, battles and military life. His soldiers often endured terrible hardships - forced marches, poor food or hunger, sometimes thirst, marching or fighting with no boots, or no shoes, snow and cold and so on, not to mention the constant possibility of death or horrifying injury in battle. I'm wondering what motivated the soldiers to volunteer, participate, not desert, and then sign up for more. According to this biography, they were often eager for more, and sometimes happy and proud to participate in near-suicidal tactics.

This is not so easy to understand. I'm not sure the soldiers at the time would be able to explain it themselves. After all, most people, most of the time, have a poor understanding of their own motives. They may have said, honestly, that they did it for the greater glory of France, or "honor," or out of love for Napoleon, their commander, something like that, but that couldn't be the whole story.

I've got some educated guesses - I'm not a historian. I wonder if military life was the only occupation available to most of them, or maybe the alternative was to stay home and be a low-status, poorly-nourished, over-worked peasant. Maybe if they stayed in military service long enough, and survived, they could look forward to higher social status and prosperity after they left military service, because of military pensions, and high public regard for veterans. I wonder if they were motivated by occasional opportunities to pillage or rape, even though, in theory Napoleon disapproved of such things.

Other possibilities occur to me. If they were conscripted or volunteered when they were still teenagers, maybe it's just the only life they knew, and the only life they could conceive of. I wonder if they were preoccupied with competing with one another, as individuals, or as small military units, for status arising from valor, or at least success, in battle.

I'm only guessing. I imagine some historians know a lot about questions such as these, and I'd like to know what conclusions they have reached.

This could be a much broader question if applied to soldiers in general, in various times and places, so let's restrict my question to Napoleon's soldiers, or maybe European soldiers in the early 19th century.

Being a big fan of diesel motors and everyone knows they are used best fuel mileage, low end torque for heavy duty applications for big trucks, and heavy dirt moving equipment and a lot if not most armor today uses diesel other then the few GasTurbine engines. So why during WW2 did mainly the Germans, British, US and other powers use gasoline (petrol) motors to power their vehicles? especially the heavy armor late in war such as the tigers, panthers and the other big tank destroyers + the US and UK shermans and others also seemed to run off gasoline. The soviets did seem to have the idea of using diesels lower end torque to power their T-34s, KV's IS heavy tanks. I'm assuming this was majority due to what was available at the time? or just was not much of a thought and the technology wasn't there much as it is today?

It seems strange that the community asking about History would stop people from talking about history. what if a historian finds a better or answer or a historical untruth/inconsistency? it seems strange that the medium for them to show their research/discovery is taken. I think posts should be un-archived to allow the fixing of previous answers, the addition of new answers, or proof of a better answer.

In the Pirates of the Carribean movies, there's a scene where Elizabeth tells the crew to lower the anchor on the starboard side, and it ends up swinging the ship around to broadside the black pearl. Is this possible?

I had associated it with New Age beliefs from the 60s onwards, so I was surprised to find a fantasy story published in 1929 that featured a conspiracy of reptile-people taking the place of human leaders and secretly controlling society ("The Shadow Kingdom" by Robert E. Howard). Where does this trope come from?

Took place in 318 bce, but can't find a good analysis of the battle

Were the Roman Empire, Mayans, Persians, Carthaginians, and Chinese Zhou dynasty aware of each other? Did they have specific relationships or “foreign policies” towards one another?

Looking for reading material on this