[deleted]

In light of all the comparisons being drawn between nazi Germany and the US, I'm wondering if something similar happened when Hitler was in power.

This is a two-fold question. I've always loved the age of sail and wanted to learn more about it, but most of my information comes from fantasy novels and games.

Beyond just my curiosity about this age however I am trying to blend the age of sail with another of my hobbies, table top games role playing games. However it only took about 15 minutes worth of work before I realized, I have no clue what most of the crewmen on a ship do. As such, I have to ask, why did ships need such large crews? How many men did it take to properly run the rigging, and what else needed doing?

Reading through a thread in r/WorldNews I noticed a reference to Hitler and the rise of the nazi party in German in the post-WWI era. I am not trying to make any comparisons to current events or start a discussion about that. I am curious if Historians can look back now and point to a time, whether it was a specific law, or policy, or action by the government, where you could make the argument that the tide of power shifted irreversibly away from the citizens of Germany. I know this might seem like a dumb question because the rise of Hitler was dependent on support of the people at the time (and now as I think about it, maybe the citizens of Germany never really had any power) but I'm wondering if there were incremental steps taken that took away the people's ability to change course if they had decided to do so through other movements.

[deleted]

My mother was upset that, in Google's definition of Fascism, it only states that is a right-wing system of government. She insists it can be both right, and left wing. Is this true? How many cases of "left-wing fascism" have popped up in the past? How does that number compare to known cases of right wing fascist governments? Thanks guys!

A link to the Lysenkoism article on Wikipedia elsewhere on Reddit led me to read about it, but the long term effects aren't mentioned. Did the purge of geneticists have any effect on progress after Lysenkoism fell out of favor? What about other field? Did similar purges occur in those, and if so, were the effects similar or different?

One of the top posts on r/all is a picture purportedly from the U.S. Holocaust Museum which lists 14 characteristics of fascism. It seems to be drawn from a paper by Lawrence Britt called "Fascism Anyone?" in the Spring 2003 edition of Free Inquiry. I don't have access to the article, and couldn't find much more information about Britt or his reputation as a historian/scholar. Can anyone give some insight?

The characteristics are:

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism
5. Rampant sexism
6. A controlled mass media
7. Obsession with national security
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together
9. Power of corporations protected
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
12. Obsession with crime and punishment
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption
14. Fraudulent elections

There have been quite a few world superpowers but which is the most powerful compared to its size?

Would ideally like 1-2 recommendations for both categories but anything's appreciated.

As I played medieval 2 total war, I noticed all money was counted in "florins". Seeing that not every country had the resources to produce their own currency, would merchants traveling across countries use the same coinage to avoid confusion? And if not, who decided the exchange rate of the money?

Especially considering the humors theory, it doesn't seem far-fetched in my opinion that some physicians might have considered semen another "humor" that needed to be expelled from the body, in the same logic as bloodletting.

Now that I'm writing this out, I suppose I'm asking if "blue balls" has ever been considered a legitimate medical syndrome.

[deleted]

I have been an atheist for a long time, but was raised in a Jewish family and I generally find myself more attracted to Jewish philosophy than to that of other major religions. The one argument that I have often heard brought up for God's existence is based on the Jewish claim of a mass revelation at Sinai. The argument goes that a hoax on such a massive scale would be impossible to pull off; either people would question the lack of eyewitnesses if it was supposed to be a recent event, or people would question why such an extraordinary story was never passed down before if it is claimed to be something that happened in the distant past. Furthermore, if such a massive hoax was somehow pulled off, some other religion would be sure to copy it, especially since it would provide the most solid possible foundation for their beliefs.

There are examples of claims in other religions that have some similarities, but nothing that really seems quite equivalent. How do historians who do not hold the Bible as truth respond to this argument?

With religion, people hundreds of years back thought that they were the "chosen" people of god/gods, but were there any cultures that thought of any other intelligent species beyond what was human? If so, who and when was this idea thought?