My dad watched a documentary about the Germanic tribes and hasn't stopped talking about it for the last 2 hours. I know that there were a lot of tribes, but how many people lived in one tribe? Was a tribe like a big city or more like an entire state? Or how many people were considered to be germanic back then? I couldn't find any information on Wikipedia and googling for 'germanic population size' just yields a list of the different tribes.

I'm also interested in learning about the bronze age itself, from the cultures and civilizations, economy, and way of life.

This is a question that has crossed my mind a couple times but I can’t find the answer on the interwebs. Did this living in the past, let’s say 1800’s, refer to decades as we did in the 1900’s e.g. the 40’s the 50’s or the 80’s?

I have an Ike jacket that I want to wear properly. It’s the version one (button up, with inside pockets, pull tabs to cinch the waist) before the update sometime in 1950. Was it its own field jacket? I’ve heard that it was meant to be an insulating later (and this is why the Army Quartermasters dripped insulating pile liners to the ETO), which means that an M-43 would go over it. Thoughts? Thanks reddit.

I remember reading that Neo-Assyrian Empire was unusualy brutal, even for the period. That they would revel in their brutality, with their art depicting scenes of violent subjugation.

I also remember hearing that this brutality was the ultimate reason for the fall of the empire, as they were despised enough by their neighbors that they united and took the Assyrians down.

Is it true, or is it the case of victors writing history and the coalition that destoyed the empire depicting them in negative light?

I'm not a historian or anything - yet - and I've been watching lots of Crash Course World History by John Green.

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One of his statements is that "The Vietnamese were not fighting for Communism, they were fighting *for Vietnam* - They were never going to surrender," Effectively stating that the U.S. had a fundamental misconception of the process which caused them to lose the war: That the Vietnamese fought for freedom and survival, using Communism as an ideology to do so, not as a group of evil people spreading communism across Indochina.

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However, that is only the narrative of the North. What about the South? What did they feel about the French imperialism? Can the North Vietnamese be blamed for the crimes of the Khmer Rouge?

I was watching the Mythbusters testing out a myth related to tree cannons, and I'm seeing them struggling to drill out a barrel with a spoon drill. This made me wonder; how were barrels drilled in historical cannons?

And what are some good books on the topic?

I'm very interested in the various systems of government and society that have been popular throughout history: tribalism, feudalism, democracy/capitalism, and the transitions between them.

I'm interested if there are any newspaper articles, letters, books, etc. that discussed these revolutions and new systems of governance. What was the overall reaction (criticisms and praises) to what would become our current system of governance?

Was it like, 'join the SS, participate in genocide!' or did they appeal to more traditional forms of honor? How would the average person have found out about it as a possibility? Wouldn't many people have been turned off after the holocaust ramped up in 1941? Did they tend to appeal to people with already racist beliefs or attempt to radicalize new recruits?

I was rereading Tom Sawyer the other day and Tom trades a fish hook to another boy for something. What would they have used as line in that age?

Obviously a huge number of people died due to the Black Death but why didn't it leave a more lasting impression?

When i was taught about the black death in school we learned that people died and then we quickly jumped on towards the next event. The black death was just... there, somewhere in the middle ages. You can talk about a before and after the french revolution, a before and after Martin Luther, and a before and after the fall of Rome, but I've never heard someone talk about a before and after the Black Death. How can a plague that wikipedia says killed 30-60% of Europe's population not change the structure of societies? Half of the population have died, whole villages have been wiped out, and and there was no big push from any group to grab some more power in this vacuum that must have been?

If i look at the political climate today and imagine a plague that wipes out half the population i would think different (surviving) groups will try to seize as much power, land, property, wealth, etc. as possible. This would mean changes in laws and governments and even habits of ordinary people. Was there something like this that i don't know about or, if there wasn't, why didn't it happen?

That part of the movie always seemed unrealistic to me - or was the US government that desperate for recruits?

As Nazi Germany had a policy of killing the mentally and physically handicapped, what did they do with their soldiers that became such? For example if a soldier lost a limb or two or more? Did they just not try to save him or her? Did they make an exception?