Quoth Wikipedia:

A tank destroyer or tank hunter is a type of armoured fighting vehicle, armed with a direct-fire artillery gun or missile launcher, with limited operational capacities and designed specifically to engage enemy tanks.

and

Except for most American designs, tank destroyers were all turretless and had fixed or casemate superstructures.

This makes me wonder: how could a vehicle which mounted its cannon within a turret be differentiated from simply a tank? What other design features qualified the American "tank destroyers" to fall under the definition of "tank destroyer" given in the first quote and excluded them from fulfilling the - rather broad - definition of merely a "tank". Was their classification as tank destroyers purely from the perspective of battlefield role - i.e. these vehicles, even if falling under the technical definition of a tank, were intended to engage enemy armor because their design, though not qualitatively excluding them from the "tank" category, quantitatively made them a more economical choice for engaging enemy armor than other combat vehicles? (Compare how the German Tiger II, a "heavy tank", would mostly be assigned to operate against enemy armor, rather than infantry and lighter vehicles, making its role that of a tank destroyer - but its design was still that of a tank.)

I know very little about monastic orders, but I know that Cistercians founded new abbeys by sending out "teams" of 12 monks and an abbot to a new "daughter" abbey, and I know they would have to secure a land grant from a secular ruler before anything could happen, but how did they decide where to try and build an abbey? What makes for a good location? And who decided it?

As far as I understand, it seems Belarus was always part of other countries before (Lithuania, then Poland, then Russia). So it seems to have come a bit out of nowhere. And then, shortly after being declared, it was conquered by the Soviets. Why was it not reincorporated into Russia, but instead became the Belarussian Soviet Republic? Just to get the support of the local people?

Modern infrastructure breaks apart under some hurricanes, so I am intrigued how the native americans dealt with them. Also, when the europeans arrived, did the natives warn them about hurricanes? Did the europeans take them seriously, or consider them superstition or hyperbole? If so, how did the europeans react to their first hurricanes?

He'd turned schools into death-camps, he'd had everyone and everyone who looked too smart killed, and he'd had people worked close to death and then buried alive, Pol-Pot's reign of terror was without a doubt an insane and dangerous one but what did he want to gain from doing it all?

I've been wondering about what kind of infections or illnesses existed in America prior to Columbus, and how did Americans respond to and deal with these diseases? Did they also notice that alcohol made water less dangerous, or did they boil water to make it safer? How did urban centers deal with disease outbreaks? And I guess the biggest question would be, why weren't the Europeans equally ravaged by alien diseases from the native population?

Thanks!

Hey, AskHistorians. I'm working on a novel which takes place in Egypt (largely Cairo and Giza, though that could expand) during WWII. I'm looking for sources of inspiration and stories I can draw upon for setting and authentic feel.

I am reading Out of Egypt, a memoir by Andre Aciman, which takes place in Alexandria somewhat during that time period. Do you know of any other memoirs or even fiction novels that might also hit the mark? Movies could work. Straight up history obviously works, too, but I need somewhat more than the facts of what happened when and to whom. I debated as to where to post this, but AskHistorians seemed like a decent shot. If you can think of somewhere better, please point me to it!

Hello historians, unfortunanly these days I cannot watch any conservative meaning video or ww2 related video on YouTube without encountering barious comments proclaiming that the holocaust was a hoax, at first believing that it was a troll, seeing the replies made me realize these people were serious. Any advice as to leave these people just blaming Jews and not being able to counter my response?

Herman Lehmann was kidnapped from his farm by Apache Indians in 1870 when he was 10 years old and then raised and assimilated into their tribe. I don't understand why the Apache did this. What purpose did it serve them? Why would they want another child to look after and feed, especially a white one? It's not like they killed his family and took pity on him either. They seem to have just grabbed him and his brother when they were alone and taken him away and then treated him as an equal member of the tribe.

Can someone explain why they may have done that? And more generally what was it about Native American cultures that made them open to adopting outsiders since I know of many other accounts of natives adopting (usually adult) Europeans from the 16th-19th centuries?

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I read this quotation by Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi in Marx's "The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon." Marx is disputing a comparison between the rise of Caesar and the rise of Napoleon when he uses the quote. What did Sismondi mean in relation to the Roman "proletariat" (which seems like an anachronism), and is it accurate?

After the gauls were conquered the germanic tribes were a constant troublesome nuissance. On the civilization scale to me it seems the germans were greatly outmatched and ununified so why didnt the romans conquer them all?

What exactly happened? How did the public react? Also - the famous illustration of the event shows Brooks holding a rather slender stick - was this a cane as in a walking stick, or a cane as in a switch? Was there any symbolism in his choice?

Could a titled French noble sell his title and/or land to settle debts? Also, could a titled noble be sentenced to debtor's prison for inability to pay debts? I'm wondering about gambling debts in particular. Thanks.

I keep reading in literature references to small excerpts of speeches I like and I want to read the whole thing. But I can't find them online, and Amazon wants around 1000$ for it...

A friend of mine made hyperbolic statement that was basically "that'll cost more than WW2," and that's what got me on the topic.

For starters, what's the methodology of deciphering the "cost" of a war?

I've often heard that the United States was brought out of the great depression because the war economy but I don't really know what that means. My assumption would be that allied governments were "buying" goods from us like Steel or Ammunition. But I doubt they were interfacing with Standard Oil's VP of Operations for these deals.

With that in mind, does a war inherently suggest that everyone lost money? Or is it possible to deduce that someone like the United States gained a lot of money whereas another nation, like France, lost a lot of money.

Maybe I'm daft but the answers are not obvious to me.