With all of the famous and successful generals Rome produced, they must have had some pretty unique and skilled teachers right?

These generals didn’t just suddenly learn incredible military strategy, somebody had to teach them. Just trying to find out if there is anybody who had been recorded in history for their military teachings.

There is a lot of literature which describes how the indigenous people of North America suffered from disease which they didnt have immunity to once they were exposed to the Europeans. However no mention that the Europeans suffered from this. Any reason why?

I've been arguing with white nationalists who say that Dutch settlers were in South Africa before Bantus, therefore Bantus don't deserve to get any land from the remaining Boer farmers.

When I pointed out that Bantus were migrating to South Africa since 300AD, someone replied:

The actual bantu domination and assimilation/genocide of the natives took much much longer

Can anyone clear this up for me with sources? Thank you.

I recently listened to a pair of episodes from the podcast "1001 Heroes, Legends, Histories, Mysteries" about Operation Market Garden. (I wouldn't recommend them to be honest) In it, the host and a historian he interviewed made some claims that I hadn't heard before, and I was curious about their veracity. First, they make the claim that XXX Corps stopping for 18 hours on the Nijmegen bridge was totally unnecessary. According to them, a stubborn tank commander buttoned up in his tank overnight to wait for orders from his superiors after American officers of increasing rank came forward to push them forward, and a particularly colorful altercation with an American Sargent pulling his Tommy Gun on him. They claim that had XXX Corps (or 2 companies from it) were to have made the push to Arnhem, the Operation would have been successful because there was no additional resistance from the Germans between Nijmegen and Arnhem.

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They even go so far as to claim that this overnight halt, 82nd Airborne and the British 1st landing in useless areas, the Polish landing several days too late were all due to a Dutch double-agent and a compromised British commander who had been pushing Monty to do this. The intent of all of this was to delay the Allies long enough to allow Nazi commanders to send wealth to Brazil.

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I had a feeling that this was all pretty fantastical, but I was wondering how much truth there might be in any of these claims, or, how absolutely wrong they are about any part of this. (I love hearing you all rip apart bad podcasts)

Primogeniture didn't really exist among the Romans, Celts, or Germanic peoples, or at least was not the only way of dividing property after death. And even in the early versions of primogeniture, other factors like proximity of blood were taken into account instead of absolute primogeniture, allowing women to inherit or people to inherit through women.

What weapon is the mother of modern tanks?

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The tanks seem to represent the cavalry in their aim but matching with the power of the artillery. Is it correct to say that?

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What is the importance of Napoleon for the invention of tanks? since cavalry in its time was losing space for infantry with muskets and the mobile artillery already showed its potential in the field of battle.

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Thanks for answering me. If you can tell me small articles about tanks, Napoleonic wars and on the question I will be grateful.

Given Korea's access by land to the Silk Road, not too bad a maritime positioning, and exchanges with China and Russia going back centuries, the absence of both of these religions from Korea's historical record is kind of striking. Is there any historical or archaeological reason to think that Jews and/or Muslims were in fact present at one point, but were eradicated or absorbed and forgotten about after a regime change?

So often many people when learning about the second Punic war wonder why hannibal never led himself a siege against the city of Rome.

Upon learning about the battle of Metaurus, where Hasdrubal was supposedly coming to Hannibal's aid with siege equipment. Thus, why is it a mystery that Hannibal did not siege Rome? Isn't the answer right in front of our face?

So im doing research to settle and argument between me and a colleague on the size of the British navy in WW1. I dont even know where to start but i know the Grand Fleet was something like 160 ships. Im trying to get a grip on the total fleet size as well as construction during the war time period such as what kinds of ships were added, how many total ships did the royal navy have at the outset and closing years of the war that sort of thing. Any help you guys can provide would be wonderful. Thanks in Advance

I have seen many people, mostly in the comments of news articles, compare the Roman occupation of Britain with later colonial efforts by Europeans. They portray the Romans as brutal colonisers and oppressors, destroyers of the local way of life, who left a battered country in their wake.

For example, when one comment mentions the ‘dark ages’, another replies: “it’s almost as if colonialism is traumatising to a country’s growth and social structures oh my god...”

Another: “That's what happens when Colonialism leaves it's oppressive foreign religions behind.”

A third: “Which is what happens when an invading power utterly massacres all trace of the native cultural and spiritual leadership of a people, renders the populace forcibly into its own culture stamp, or else enslaves them wholesale, and then summarily implodes under the weight of its own tyrannical comeuppance.  For modern example, see Iraq post Operation Desert Storm, and the rise of ISIL.”

Now my first and admittedly uninformed instinct is to think that this reeks of an attempt to force a newer narrative onto older events that simply cannot be described that way. A false equivalency, trying to fit the Roman square peg into the colonist round hole. But then, as I mentioned, I don’t know that much about the history.

My question then is: can Roman occupation of Britain be effectively described as colonial, or colonial in character? Secondly, would it be fair to argue that post-Roman Britain experienced post-colonial trauma?

Forgive me if this long winded question is unclear.

The army and police were defenders of socialism and the USSR and then all of a sudden like a light switch they defend Yeltsin's 'reforms' that end it entirely? Was something else going on?

As it's almost 30 years since he passed away I've been thinking a lot about my grandfather. He was a huge influence on my childhood and I loved him very much yet actually know very little about his wartime service sorry from a few things.

He very, very rarely spoke about his time in the war, hatred all war films and always said that we (the British) did truly horrific things too when ever us grandkids brought things up (this was the 70's so not that long after the war)

He also refused all of his medals, sung that he didn't want to be rewarding for the shit he had to do, was demobbed 2 years after all the other men and some of the few things he told us was that he used to parachute behind enemy lines and wait hidden, sometimes for days to liaise with the partisans.

At some point he was shot parachuting and had the shrapnel in his leg for the rest of his life.

We know that he was in Tunisia and Italy and my grandmother used to have a photo of him riding a white stallion fun when he was based at some place that he did they had taken from Cossacks and had a stable of horses. Grandad said the horse was an Arab but it looked more like Spanish type breeds to me, more square and muscular. I know that the Spanish riding school horses were rescued from the Germans at some point but don't think that was it as I'm sure he would have mentioned it.

One of the things he brought home was a sword that he said he also took from Cossack in battle, after his death my uncle sent it to Sotheby's to be valued and identified, they said it was a Nepoleanic French officer's sword and quite valuable, however not long after that my uncle died in a car crash and we lost touch with his family as his wife remarried so have no idea what happened to it.

My ex husband was obsessed with military and the SAS in particular and believed that grandad had been in the early SAS, however my grandad insisted he wasn't but instead the secret service. He did not long before he died open up a little to my ex showed him his wings and told him a few things that I can't remember of the top of my head right now (long term CFS brain fog)

He also told us about Mussolini being hung from his heels and I'm a bit hazy about this but I think he said he was present either when he was taken or killed or maybe just saw the body, but I could be remembering that wrong. I told my history obsessed son when he was young and when they did some stuff about Mussolini in junior school he put his hand up and told the teacher he had been hung by his heels and was ridiculed by the teacher for it but a few years ago I googled it and Mussolini and some others were actually displayed, hung by their feet after death from a petrol station.

After grandad passed my other uncle sent away for his service records and medals. Most of the records were blacked out even then at that time but they did show that he had spent time in Lincoln too. Strangely after he died all my grandfather's photos and bits and bobs to do with the war went missing. The house was empty for a few weeks whilst my gran stayed with my parents. We don't know if my uncle that died took them or someone else but that is probably me with my tinfoil hat.

That's all I can remember for now, my memory is frustrating bad but if I remember anything else I'll add it here. Thank you for your time and getting to the end of this really long post.

I just started reading "These Truths" by Jill Lepore, which I think is very engrossing, but doesn't include the detailed military history from that time. I've found a variety of books that cover certain battles and events, but nothing comprehensive. Can anyone give me some worthy book recommendations? Thank you!

I was trying to figure out how to write stuff in runic and stumbled upon younger futhark runes that have a lower number of characters (16) compared to elder futhark (24).

"The Younger Futhark, also called Scandinavian Futhark, is a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, consisting of only 16 characters. The reduction correlates with phonetic changes when Proto-Norse evolved into Old Norse."

One of the words I was trying to figure out was Valkyrie which is apparently "Valkyrja" in old norse.

Here is my problem, how would "Valkyrja" be written in younger futhark, which was used when old norse was spoken, if the characters for V, J and Y are not there?

Were runes used in some other way than an actual alphabet, or were the missing letters replaced with something else?

I apologise if this is a dumb question, I just need help umderstanding how runes were used.