I'm reading Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and he often mentions God. Given that Romans had thousands of deities and that Marcus Aurelius himself prosecuted Christians, I guess it maybe has nothing to do with the modern concept of God. How was the original text? Was he referring to Jupiter? Was it changed by Christian translators? Was God as a metaphor, like the Supreme Good or something?

I've seen God mentioned by Plato and other philosophers and was also confusing.

As the question asks, were the Nazis just convinced the Soviets defended the Jewish religion? Did the average German believe the propaganda? Did the Soviets do anything to discredit that propaganda? Thank you for the answers.

Hi! I need a simple, to-the-point explanation of why soviet factories never went bankrupt. If a Factory has "X" Production but then they sell it at a fixed, subsidized price that didn't match the production costs, then how did enterprises, collective farms and factories remained profitable? (The first soviet factory to go bankrupt was in 1988, when the Federation was no longer Socialist). Was it because the production costs were also fixed or something like that? Thanks!

Hello!

I hope my questions make sense, but basically: why are there so many princes/princesses in Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, etc etc. and are they what the English would consider to be princes/princesses? Or are these royal titles just the result of translation to English?

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, despite intentional or unintentional information to the contrary, we know that the United States had a great superiority and reliability in ICBMs and other delivery methods compared to the USSR. Obviously it would be assumed that some damage in the US would occur in a nuclear war at the time, from a couple of destroyed cities to dozens of cities destroyed and tens of millions dead. However, ultimately this would not have been mutually assured destruction, since the US could eliminate virtually 100% of the USSR with high confidence. At what point (month and year or year) would it be considered that America could simply not survive a Soviet attack, and thus the two sides would virtually become equals in this scenario? Furthermore, forgetting the obvious moral reasons, and thinking about this in a strictly rational way, would it not have made the sense for the US, if they knew the stockpiles would grow to endanger the entire human race, potentially forever, to strike the USSR as soon as possible in that early-mid cold war time frame? You would destroy a country, but the threat of doomsday for the entire globe would almost certainly vanish. Again, from a purely strategic point of view, as if robots made the decisions, I'm not suggesting it would have been OK to do that.

The wikipedia article about the blue division mentions Hitler planning to replace Spain's dictator Francisco Franco with the commander of the Blue Division, Agustín Muñoz y Grandes. I looked for more information on it and, while I did find a couple of pages mentioning it, nowhere was anything said about it.

So how much do we know about this plan? How serious was Hitler about it and why was it desestimated?

When reading things by pro-Soviet communists I have run into claims that the Hungarian revolution of 1956 was caused by fascist agitators and involved anti-Semitic violence. With some quick searching I can't find any trustworthy sources for this. Is there any truth to either of these?

Additionally, I would be interested in how these things have become a part of the "official" version of history for (at least a part of) pro-Soviet communists.

This is always something I have wondered and been fascinated with more so than the discovery itself. It had to have been something that shook the community to it's bones (pun intended).

I imagine it would be similar to discovering life on another planet today.

Why was he not summarily executed after his first abdication? Was his execution deemed to risky based on the fact that he was a popular figure in France?

Is there a clear line between the two? Is it purely a matter of the age of the topic?

From Wikipedia: "Andrew Jackson did not listen to the Supreme Court mandate barring Georgia from intruding on Cherokee lands."

Was there a repercussion for this? Or did he find some loophole that gets around our whole system of checks and balances? I thought the power of the supreme court was equal to that of the president, as far as decisions like this go.

Edit: Wow! Thank you so much for the amazing answers! (And the upvotes that got us here) As you have all laid out, this is a MUCH more nuanced situation than I could have imagined, thank you again for your thorough answers!

Hi everyone, Granted, it was on Wikipedia but I remember reading about the rise of early christianity in the Roman Empire and about the polemics aimed at the figure of Jesus and christianity as a whole. There was a Greek philosopher who basically argued that "there already was a famous Greek man who performed miracles and other feats and we have proof of his existence, why not worship him if there is absolutely no proof of Jesus?". Not a direct quote by any means but that was the crux of it. Who was the author of that claim? Who was he referencing? Who were the biggest outspoken critics of the early christianity? Where can I read more? I am aware of the broad scope of the question so please forgive me but it sits on my mind for two months already and the unfruitful search for answers only ignited my interest further.

More specifically, would I learn the history of Great Britain, or would it just be world history, or something else?

When did people first discuss time travel? Is it a new age concept? Or would have an ancient Greek for example have thought of traveling forward or backwards in time?

I am American and have only ever been taught history by American professors in English. I've been wondering what it would be like to read a book (or take a class) on American history written by someone who is not American, especially if the book is not in English.

In addition, the global history classes that I have taken tend to look at the past 300 years of history as, "Europe and the United States are proactive, the rest of the world is reactive." How is global history approached in other countries, especially non-Western ones?

By that I mean fantasy roleplay that were based in groups, used dice or some other type of equipment? Anything remotely like that?