I know they played a role in World War 2 but I’m not sure what they did.

Like were Yemeni Jews reading Rashi's stuff when it was fresh off the quill, or did it take a while to percolate through the communities?

I’m a high school student and am pretty clueless about the two movements. Is there a link between the two or is it just a coincidence who I am researching?

Hi r/askhistorians,

I'm a recent history graduate currently working in the legal field. For most of my college career, I wanted to go to grad school for Assyriology. I thoroughly enjoyed my coursework and even got to intern at a prestigious museum. But toward the beginning of my senior year, I got cold feet after realizing I'd likely be better off burning the $100k I'd spend on an Assyriology degree to warm my house this winter.

The job I'm in now is okay. It pays the bills and all things considered, I could be doing less with my degree. But I'm finding out that I don't love the law like I love history. While in school, I took a wide variety of classes, but especially loved studying political, cultural, and intellectual history, and premodern India, China, and West Asia (specifically the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Iran).

Thinking about it now, pursuing a graduate degree in any of these fields seems like it would be immensely rewarding on a personal level. But is the job market for a scholar in any of these fields any better than the job market for an Assyriologist? I'm fully aware that premodernity isn't exactly a field people are throwing money at and that to get a graduate degree in any of these fields, just as with Assyriology, would require significant financial investment, and plenty of difficult language work. But are any of these fields unlike Assyriology in that upon getting my degree, I can be relatively confident about the possibility of getting a job?

Any guidance you kind folks can offer would be extremely appreciated, since I don't think i can see myself practicing and enjoying law for a living.

PS. If there are opportunities in related disciplines like philosophy, literature, or religious studies, I'm game for those approaches as well.

In Frank McLynn's Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy, it states that Mongol soldiers were required to take 5-6 horses with them per soldier. How was this practically feasible? Did they tie the horses together? I understand that the Mongols often took their families with them on campaign- did their families ride the horses? How were they able to logistically cover such long distances and move with such haste while carrying all the supplies necessary for this great host of horses?

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The Nazis were known to have taken an explicit interest in arts and aesthetics- from the utilisation of Arno Brekker’s sculpting skills to display Aryan ideals, to the destruction of “degenerate art.” The Nazi uniforms were well-designed as well, with decorative awards, the usage of leather, and cuts of cloth that are much more fashionable than the blousier uniforms of the allied powers. This is evident when Major General Victor Fortune surrendered to Erwin Rommel, or Victor Klemperer’s quote from “I Shall Bear Witness” on viewing allies uniforms for the first time: “They are not soldiers in the Prussian sense at all. They do not wear uniforms, but overalls or overall-like combinations of high trousers and blouse all in gray-green. The steel helmet is worn comfortably as a hat, pushed forward or back, as it suit them.”

From this evidence, I am of the opinion that the Nazis used uniforms as another vector of propaganda. Himmler himself, in “The SS as an Anti-Bolshevist Fighting Organisation” said, “I know there are many people who fall ill when they see this black uniform; we understand that and do not expect that we will be loved by many people.” The care and attention to detail to look better than other nations and armies, particularly by the SS’ black uniform, both at war and during peace is very evident. Even the wearing of the iron cross whilst at battle shows a pride in the German uniform internalised by the average soldier.

My question is: does anyone have any further scholarship on this topic? Are there memoirs, or quotes like Himmler’s that show an explicit attention to the usage of Nazi uniforms as propaganda? Or, from allied memoirs, are there impressions of Nazi uniforms that are enlightening of their effect on foreign forces?

When the Library was burned down, are there any accounts of what was lost? (I.E. writings from Socrates, or a map of Atlantis.) Or did all of that quite literally go up in flames leaving us with only theories and speculation as to what the Library held.

I know that Russians smuggled jeans into the Soviet Union from Western Europe. However, I've heard there were bands who were doing this systematically. Once Brezhnev found out, he had their leaders executed.

Can someone actually confirm this?

I am looking for examples of letters sent by knights, or people during medieval period, informing their receiver of a death. Sorry its kinda specific, but if anyone has anything close to that, thanks in advance.

Also, was wondering if there’s a bot like for r/translator collecting stats. Actually I think r/translator has a lot of useful tools that would be great for this sub like !page and !identify and all of that. I’d be really interested to see data from this subreddit as well.

My grandfather was stationed at Pearl Harbor in 1940 in the 64th Coastal Artillery Regiment, Battery C. In the months following the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor the War Department decided to take the fit, fighting soldiers from Coastal units and attach them to Marine units and sent them to fight. We know that he saw action in Guadalcanal and Bougainville and may have spent some R&R in Fiji at some point before returning home in '44. Is there any way to know what unit he was reassigned to or establish a timeline of his movements without those crucial documents that were lost? I imagine not, but worth a shot. His experience, like many, was not one that he liked to talk about so we only have small bits of information to go on.

Say there was a battle and in the aftermath I found a dead knight with his arms and armour intact. What would stop me from stealing it and impersonating him? Any notable cases in history of this happening?

Did they see it as a step towards communism?

I feel it is obvious enough that there was a very general awareness that some sort of project was underway. The Germans were trying to do so themselves, even if they were way behind, and they knew the Allies had scientists who would be able to do the same thing, but what did they know about the project itself, rather than just supposition?

It might be a slight exaggeration, but Soviet penetration might as well have made the project out to be Swiss cheese it feels, but was there anything close to that degree in comparable espionage by Germany or Japan? The former case as far as I'm aware was aided by ideological motivations, Communists, sympathizers, or fellow-travelers who felt they were doing the right thing in providing the USSR with information, but it feels to me at least that Germany, let alone Japan, wouldn't have had access to that kind of motivated, pre-exisiting cadre of potential moles.

So in short, what did they know, how did they know it, and when did they know?

I'm far from any sort of history buff so I apologize if I get some of this wrong. So the general consensus is the "Viking Age" started with the raid on Lindisfarne in 793, and ended with William the Conqueror of Normandy attacking England in 1066. But after everything I've looked up, it seems the Normans didn't consider themselves viking at all. I understand the history of Rollo and that the vikings had settled on their gifted sects of land in Normandy, but is it really accurate to call them Vikings when they apparently were Christian and spoke French and saw themselves as northern Frenchman as opposed to the pagan Danish and Norse we all know and love?

I've tried using the search here and looking it up on the web, but I only get answers telling me when the Viking Age was and telling me the history of Normandy, but not why we consider them "vikings" when they themselves did not.