After watching the new Wonder Woman movie I was reminded that the British Empire extended to India by a large number of soldiers and dignitaries walking in the background of London. Were there a ton of colonial troops from the UK and France in the Western European trench fights, or were colonial units mostly used to defend/attack the region they were raised in?

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In video footage every people shot seems so willing to just stand and be killed, were there none that turned around and tried to fight back? If not, why?

In places like France, did they eventually plan to Germanize everything, or let people keep their national dialects? And what about regional dialects, such as Breton?

I used France for my example as I presume they saw the Slavic languages as "sub-human and animalistic" in their ideology, in much the same way as they saw their people, but I believe there was always a sense of appreciation for the culture of France.

I found a book called "Engineering in the Ancient World" by J. G. Landels.

In his book under wind power he states, "Although the Greeks and Romans harnessed and used wind power for sailing ships, they do not appear to have developed the rotary windmill as a power source. This is strange, and no satisfactory reason has yet been offered."

He goes on his assertion by describing their apparent knowledge and mastery of using sails for boats, but says there is no evidence for any sail-mill machine.

The book I found was published in 1978. My question is, is this claim still accurate, and if so, is there a satisfactory answer describing the discrepancy as of now?

I was helping my father clear out the attic the other day and came across a box of old books, one of which was "The Secrets of the Hohenzollerns" by Armgaard Karl Graves. The book was old, and in German, with a note written to someone in my family in German (have not translated it yet).

A quick Google search showed me that Mr. Graves was a German spy who played both the Germans and the British during WWI, but that was mostly what I could uncover. I'm looking for an English edition to read.

I'm intrigued by this book. Has anyone come across Mr. Graves in their research? Does anyone know any details of the book? And lastly, what kind of person would own such a book?

My understanding was that Zeppelins would fly at an altitude where they'd be out of reach from conventional planes, and yet there were apparantly multiple occasions where Zeppelins were shot down by aircraft. How was this done?

I mean, they went deep into Scotland, Mesopotamia... why did they stop at the Rhine-Danube line northeastward?

Is it due to the Disaster of Teutoburg?

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So, by way of background, I began my adult life as a painfully earnest member of a Trotskyist wish tank. The version of Soviet politics I learned back then was: Testament of Lenin - Lenin Dies - Something Something - Oh Noes! Police State! The Forces of Reaction have prevailed! - Trotsky's Exile - Icepick. The implicit assumption in this chronology is that Trotsky had the correct revolutionary program and would have won his rightful place as leader of the Soviet Union had it not been for Stalin's underhanded machinations. As I got older, I heard other partisan accounts of this that suggested that Stalin actually won an honest victory, an honest majority of the CPUSSR because his political program was a more appropriate response to the domestic and international realities of the mid-20s. So where can I go for accurate, reasonably objective accounts of their post-Lenin power struggle and the politics involved? I am looking for material from actual historians, published by academic or commercial presses. I am not looking for material published by newspaper cults or anyone with an axiom to grind. Thank you for your time and assistance.

Would they think our everyday quality wine is better? Would we think their best wine was better than our best wine?

Nanzhao came up as a footnote in an article I was reading about the Tang Dynasty in China, so now I'm really curious to hear what historians know about the short-lived kingdom based in Yunnan. How did governance work? How did it differ, culturally, from Tang China?

Just asking out of curiosity. I feel as though this is not often mentioned, and can't help but wonder.

Recently I came across this quote from John C. Calhoun:

I consider the tariff act as the occasion, rather than the real cause of the present unhappy state of things. The truth can no longer be disguised, that the peculiar domestick [sic] institution of the Southern States and the consequent direction which that and her soil have given to her industry, has placed them in regard to taxation and appropriations in opposite relation to the majority of the Union, against the danger of which, if there be no protective power in the reserved rights of the states they must in the end be forced to rebel, or, submit to have their paramount interests sacrificed, their domestic institutions subordinated by Colonization and other schemes, and themselves and children reduced to wretchedness.

I always assumed that while the civil war was mainly about slavery, legitimate grievances related to tariffs and what have you did exist and also played a part, but this quote seems to suggest that even the tariff issue was really about slavery at it's core. Are there any other contemporary sources to that effect? Or modern histories that give a good overview of the role slavery played in the nullification crisis?