Italy was completely unprepared for war, being a minor power with relatively poor equipment and training that had many poor tactics.

Japan was only recently industrialized and spread thinly over the Pacific and Asia, with comparatively worse industry and equipment vs the US and USSR.

Germany had only recently bounced back from extreme recession and inflation during the 20s and fought 4 nations (UK, France, USSR, US) that each had roughly equal or greater economies and sized militaries at the time. In addition, its military was spread across all of Europe and had far fewer tanks, trucks, and aircraft, and a severely lacking navy. It was not as mechanized as the UK or US and was facing severe economic blockades with little to no outside help. It made many poor strategic decisions (operation Barbarossa) and had probably the most exhausted/untrained soldiers by the end of the war.

The Axis powers were all heavily outnumbered, and I've heard that most historians agreed that they were doomed by 1942 or even had no chance from the start...... So how did they last roughly 6 years from 1939 to 1945? And how did they inflict more total casualties on the Allied powers (specifically the USSR) than they took themselves?

Even WW1, in which the Central powers arguably had a greater chance in winning, lasted only 4 years.

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It seems like the m16 was a bad rifle, poorly made and prone to jamming with weaker rounds than opposing ak models. Why was it used when automatic m14s were around?

I am currently studying medieval Europe and was always confused by this seeming contradiction. Historically, many Popes defined themselves as spiritual leaders, and although they often did mettle in European politics, they tended to project to other kingdoms that the Church would not interfere with secular matters.

And yet, the Pope himself was the monarch of a large portion of central Italy: the Papal States. I understand that this rule was challenged by many kings and clerics, but how did Popes justify to the rest of Europe that they were allowed to rule their own kingdom?

Are there any cycles (repeating patterns, i.e. repeating patterns of events or something similar) throughout human history? Things that tend to happen or people tend to do over and over again?

I'm personally more interested in human history from ancient times up through the end of the middle ages, but I would love to hear about any sort of cycles that exist or have been noticed.

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Was there a dichotomy like which later emerged between hanging for common folk and beheading for royalty? Or were the Romans more egalitarian in their capital punishments?

Presumably a Typhoon pilot shot down while supporting ground forces during Market Garden, say, would be more likely to successfully get back to his own lines than a Halifax crew shot down over Berlin in 1943.

So as stated my dad remembers watching movies in the theatres such as the now Cadillac Palace Theatre in Chicago. In addition there were drive-in movie theatres. So when did indoor movie theatres take hold and what reasons did drive-in movie theatres decline?

Did the Zulus require constant war and conquest to supply the food necessary for their armies and (non-combatant) populous or were they similar to Sparta by employing a separate agrarian caste?

I am trying to write a story about this transition to using Iron in a fantasy world, and am curious what the real life parallels I should know are.

Did the founding fathers actually recognize a right to rebel against the Federal government via the 2nd Amendment, or is this a later interpretation?

Alsace-Lorraine switched its owner 4 times from 1870-1945. How would this affect my life (treatment from government, feeling of nationality, living in a cultural-divided place etc.)?

Apologises if this is an odd question...in Martin Meredith's The Fate of Africa: a History of the Continent since Independence, he concludes his section on Zimbabwe by commenting that major new diamond finds in the east of the country provided the government with an huge source of new revenue just as the economy as a whole was declining.

How important were these diamond finds for the government's finances; were they as essential as the author implies?

Also how unexpected was the discovery? What I mean is, was it just a chance discovery or was diamond mining already established in the east of the country (over the previous decade(s) etc) and this was just the most recent discovery?

Thanks for reading.

Hi Historians,

I've seen a lot of material on the events of the Sengoku Jidai, but there was very little I could find on the conditions and causes of the succession crisis that is mentioned that led to Japan becoming so fragmented. The most I have seen is the Ashikaga Shogun passed triggering a succession crisis in the most basic of mentions.

However, what caused so many different states to suddenly spring up as independent forces? How did it go from the death of 1 man to an entire nation shattering into warring states? Why was it such an unstable system?

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I'm aware that since the 1840s-50s, Liberalism has also changed substantially, but Nationalism, at that time, seems to have been strongly associated with classical liberalism. Now it seems to be a mostly conservative ideology. Does Romanticism have anything to do with it?

Romans are popularly portrayed as having disdain for a king (or is this only a popular misconception?) but they seemingly have no qualms with having an Emperor who had absolute power for life and whose heir was most likely to come from within his own family. The reigns of Caligula and Nero (and probably Tiberius before them) must have showed the Romans why absolute power is dangerous in the hands of one man. It almost begs the question why Republic sentiment did not flourish during the Year of the Four Emperors, but I digress. The question I mainly want answered is how the Emperor was not perceived as a king when he, practically, was? Was there a difference in how the Romans defined a king as to how we now define a king? Is it simply the Roman synonym for ‘tyrant’? I wouldn't put it past them to see it as a matter of semantics and have only disdain for the actual title of King.

Or is it simply that, by the reign of Augustus, the Romans didn’t really care?