After Germany reunified in 1990, I was wondering if there were any prosecutions or any form of retribution to the members of the Stasi that committed acts that gave it its reputation. Or did everyone just try and pretend it didn't happen to move forward?

I'm writing a play right now where there are several sailor characters. The setting is supposed to be up in the air so whoever stages it can do whatever, with it generally being sometime between 1945 and the present. I've watched a lot of MASH in my life, and I vaguely remember some characters having a small device resembling a jeweler's loupe, but with a closed end instead of a lens, containing a small pin-up poster or similar piece of visual erotica that would be magnified by looking into it. A character having one of these is relevant to the plot (zombies are involved). Were these a thing, and if so what are these specifically called (colloquialisms are fine) and were they popular?

I'm in the middle of reading Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, which I realize is fiction, and fantasy/magical realism at that. In the book, the United States government has gone into the slave owning business, having accepted human property in the form of "inventory" liquidated from plantation bankruptcies. The individuals in question, who are still enslaved though given a degree of personal freedom (a work week, days off, access to education, etc), are hired out as workers, paid a wage, and live in much the same conditions as a free urban industrial worker of the time might. Now, having read some antebellum history, this seems like it's probably one of the more heavily fantasy-based elements of the story. As a reader, too, it seems clear to me that this part of the story is a metaphor for the larger themes of the nature of slavery vs. freedom and not meant to describe specific historical events.

But it got me thinking. The White House, Capitol Building (the building of which is referenced in the novel, even), and other major federal building projects were (apparently?) undertaken using slave labor. How exactly did this work? Did the federal government contract it out? If so, with whom? How was it administered? What were working conditions like? Beyond things like Michelle Obama's famous quote "I live in a house built by slaves," is it widely known exactly which government projects used slave labor, and in what capacity?

My daughter (11yro) has a profound interest in WWII. She asked and has been invited to chat with my grandfather (96yro) about his time in service. He has previously been fairly silent on the issue, but we don't have him for much longer so this is special. What are some sound questions she should ask him that are unique and may be you wish you could ask? Also are there topics we should avoid? He was drafted, army, involved in Normandy, and purple heart awarded. Thanks for your help. Edit: Spelling

I've only heard of how the steppe nomads interacted with China. How did they interact with Korea?

I’m trying to find a navy manual from the 1870s for a small project of mine. I specifically need some ironclad manuals, American or otherwise.

We often think of everything between the Roman Empire and the Renaissance as "The Dark Ages", hence the name Renaissance. The question then is, did the people living in these so called Dark Ages realize that there was such a thing as the Roman Republic with pseudo-democracy, or the Roman Empire? What did they think of it? I of course realize that only a very small percentage of people were literate, so knowledge of the Republic would hardly reach the peasants to cause an uprising.

I'm doing History GCSE and I was wondering how Clemenceau could be so stubborn, couldn't Wilson use the threat of the debts owed to make him less harsh on Germany?

I've seen supposed 'biological' explanations for southern Italian poverty and crime (apparently, we evolved to be more nepotistic and clannish while our northern brethren evolved to be more exogamous and altruistic; I know, right?).

What is the historical explanation for the modern state of southern Italy? Does the inequality with the North extend back to before the Risorgimento?

Given the momentum behind a charge, is my lance likely to be stuck in or through my opponent? If so, how to I get it free? Can I get it free and circle around to charge again? Or is the lance a one-use weapon that must be dropped after a good hit? Would I expect to only get one charge out of it before having to switch to a side arm?

I recently remembered a passage from Roger G Kennedy's "Hidden Cities" (1994), in which he claimed that the Hopewell earthworks at Circleville (including the 1000ft wide circle it was built on) indicated a permanent settlement of tens of thousands of people, suggesting that it might've been comparable to Athens or Rome in the third century BC. Kennedy wasn't a crank, he was director of the parks service and the Smithsonian for a while, but our understanding of Hopewell/Adena culture has changed a lot since then. Was this idea ever taken seriously? What's the current consensus on these earthworks being part of "cities"?

The Japanese were conducting signal intelligence during WW2 and so did the allies. America had a lot of immigrants, so I understand how the US could find fluent Japanese speakers for their signal intelligence. But how did the Japanese manage to find enough fluent English speakers within Japan to translate English speaking communication during the war?

This was all prompted by reading about the creation of the legal terms: "Crimes against Humanity" and "Genocide". Obviously, such things had happened before throughout history; and my gut reaction was that it seemed unlikely for habitual enemies to get into the habit of perpetrating gross crimes against one another because they might lose the next war and be the victim instead.

However, I have no evidence for this and no idea where to start gathering it (hence the lack of a specific area or time frame - sorry about that). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

where did so many jews, in their opinion, disappear?

I have been watching Michael Wood's excellent In Search of the Dark Ages series on Youtube. It was made in 1979-80 and he often refers to the great scarcity of extant written sources. I was wondering if anything new has come to light since then? I'm specifically interested in the discovery of any new texts (rather than archaeological finds).