I have been reading about this ancient town where the radiation is off the charts, supposedly, and I just want to know if there is any facts surrounding this ancient city or if its all myth? Also, if it is real, are there any other ancient cities that have the same radioactive properties?

I recently found out that China and Russia only have one aircraft carrier each. This sounded ridiculous at first, but I do not actually know how pivotal carriers have been/are to a victory. Can someone explain the importance of having carriers in the past and how that would change today?

I was reflecting on what I understand to be the common narrative of agrarian civilization--that we were at least semi-nomadic as a species until roughly 10-12K years ago, when some folk living around the Levant adopted agriculture on a societal level, either out of necessity or simple preference.

Of course, there are also plenty of Native American cultures that used agriculture, and some very complex, large-scale societies based on agriculture flourished at various times (Teotihuacan, the Aztec, Inca, Olmec, etc etc). Yet current understanding is that the last common ancestor between Native Americans and Eurasians lived roughly 20000 years ago.

To me, that would seem to suggest either (1) contact between those cultures and Africa/Europe/Asia [though wouldn't pre-Columbian contact be reflected in DNA studies?] or (2) that between the invention of controlled fire and the invention of agriculture, there was one (or more) essential (technological, cultural, genetic, ???) prerequisite to agrarian civilization; given that we were wandering around in our more or less current form 100K years ago, it seems highly unlikely that we'd spend the first 85% of that time not creating agrarian civilization, and then independently invent it in several places in the final 15% of that timeline--unless the first 85% of that time was spent slowly accumulating the necessary preconditions to that invention.

What are the popular schools of thought here? Did pottery (or something or multiple somethings like that) enable civilization?

Specifically, seeing the number of historians underneath a given topic, era, geographical location, or theme, can this be taken as at all representative of the saturation level of people within a given field? Meaning, there's a glut of historians here representing European history and a comparably very small group representing Middle-Eastern history.

Is it reasonable to expect that this generally reflects the "industry" as a whole? To be blunt, would it be reasonable to look at that as a rough guide to which areas of history would be easier to get into, career-wise?

I originally asked /u/commiespaceinvader this question via PM but he recommended me to make a thread about it here :)

So, the question is: were the Ustaše (Croatian fascists from WW2 and the interwar period) antisemitic from their inception as an organized group, or was their antisemitism and collaboration in the Holocaust more of a pragmatic move made to appease their new German overlords? This question popped into my head for two reasons: first of all, because some of the "founding fathers" of H(Č)SP (the nationalist party from which the Ustaše evolved) were ethnically Jewish - most notably Josip Frank - and some of the more prominent Ustaše members had Jewish heritage to some degree (Eugen Dido Kvaternik, for instance). Secondly, I've recently found documents showing that a distant family member got "honorary aryan" status in NDH, even though he was 4/4 Jewish as per the Nuremberg Laws and the Croatian race laws of the time. He was also a completely unimportant person (high school teacher), so that leads me to believe that Ustaše weren't as interested in "the Jewish question" on their own as they were interested, for instance, in destroying the Serb population of NDH. I should add that the man in question converted to Catholicism before WW2, so it could possibly mean that the regime didn't care as much about "genetics" as their Nazi patrons did?

Is there any truth to this? Also, just to be clear, in no way do I wish to tone down the role of Ustaše in the Holocaust or the suffering of Croatian Jewry in their hands, which left tens of thousands deported and killed.

According to "Kingmakers" by Meyer and Brysac, General Gouraud - upon defeating the forces of King Faisal, entered the Tomb of Saladin in Damascus and declared, "Awake, Saladin! We have returned!", as an obvious allusion to the Crusades.

Firstly, did this event even happen? And, secondly, how comfortable were the French and European publics with the Crusader allusion? And were Crusader-era aspirations common, or even encouraged, by various European foreign policies?

It's always confused me, you have Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, and on top of that Rock and Roll is gaining traction as more than just "race music", this song just seems soo out of place. It sounds like something from the turn if the century but it made it to #1 somehow. What is the story here?

[deleted]

I have always heard and just taken for granted that high ranking Soviet Party members and just important people in the USSR had a very different standard of living than the common folks. But I was thinking about it and I realized I have no idea what that may actually have been. Obviously, they can't live like the Nazi Elite in castles with stolen art work and so on, that would make everything the Soviets stood for look like a lie. But the problem is I really can't picture how someone important's life would look compared to a factory work other than I guess a nicer place to live. So my question is how was someone's life different materially if they were a big wig in the Soviet Union compared to just your average person?

They were nomadic and had no permanent shelters, so how did they deal with the unforgiving Great Plains weather? Tornadoes, blizzards, ice storms- it's hard for modern-day folks to handle these events sometimes. How did they do?

I had a particularly grim thought. In order to conduct their mass slaughter, the Nazis required coal to drive their trains. In order to guard and run the death camps, top soldiers were required, soldiers that could've been deployed elsewhere.

All the resources used in the extermination of Jews, Romani, undesirables, etc could have been used more "effectively" from a militaristic point of view to shore up the strength of the German armies.

Did the Holocaust diminish the strength of the Axis armies? Were there any angry generals annoyed that some of their top men were being sent to operate the camps instead of fighting on tnt battlefield?

I have a basic understanding of Richmond being one of the biggest manufacturing cities in the South and that being a main reason along with the fact to get Virginian support. But was placing the capital so close to the enemy when you could place it elsewhere farther a weakpoint? Or did this decision really even matter?

Wealthy plantation owners would have been ware that the 13th ammendment would apply to them if the union won the war.

Was there a bank run type dash to sell slaves and protect against losses? Were there farmers buying up cheap slaves in hopes of a large payout if the confederacy won?

Hi guys! My nan has a picture of her parents wedding photo hanging on the wall. Hanging from my great grandmother's wedding bouquet is a white floral swastika. It's quite big. My nan said it was just the fashion at the time but was a racist thing? Our family are german but my great grandparents were living in australia at the time. I'm not sure if they were born here but I think they were. Thanks for your input!

P.S I know that in hindu culture the swastika was considered good luck. I really don't think my great grandparents were hindu

I want to know what was the last unit since my uncle told me about few weeks ago that it was part of Croatian 369th inf. at stalingrad airfield like 14 or 15 days after Paulus. Is this true if not what was the last unit?

I am researching the evacuations that occurred in Britain during WW2, and cannot seem to find anything about what happened to children from ethnic minorities. Can anyone help shed light on their stories? Thank you.