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Hey everyone, I'm over 400 pages into Ulrich's Hitler: Ascent, which is the new door stop biography on Hitler. The problem is, it's almost TOO much Hitler and zero cultural, political, and economic context. Hitler went to X, then Y, and he demanded Z, and got Q, is the entire narrative. There's nothing like 'given the way inflation was working against population X, they were drawn to a man who could state Y with conviction, and so they voted for him.'

So can anyone recommend a book that details more how the National Socialist Party was able to take power, from a cultural, economic, and political point of view, and less from a day to day individual's point of view? I'm of the more Marxist and Zinn school of history, that seems structures and large swaths of unnamed individuals as being the real agents of history, and individual people in power was reflections of facts on the ground.

Thanks!

Most Islamic civilizations never had heraldry, and were also split into various nations. How did they distinguish who was on whose side?

I would like to ask whether the Romans found or invented anything that has an impact on agriculture? It could be a tool, a construction, a new crop, or a new method.

A while ago, I asked this sub why Alexios Komnenos was considered so great. I got a brilliant answer explaining that he was a competent administrator and skilled leader but it was the fact that his rule (and the restoration on the whole) broke a long standing trend of incompetent rulers.

Why did this trend happen in the first place? Surely the competition between differing people within the empire for the throne should have ensured that only people of great skill and ability managed to actually become emperor?

In some cases, I imagine an attempted total lack of bias is frowned upon such as a book on the holocaust or the subjugation of Amerindians. After all, history is what has been done by people and to say that an author will not judge something that every non psychotic person would consider wrong is wrong, him or herself.

But how far does that go? I also understand that historians who write books make arguments for a point and provide evidence for such and such works may be scholarly and peer reviewed, even lauded.

But how extensive should this be? How biased should a history book be? What about textbooks for students? Are they allowed to have a strong bias?

I was just wondering how the historical community views different levels of bias and how they are or are not viewed as acceptable. Is an author who admits a bias beforehand considered better than an author who does not?

In reading some of James Madison's notes and commentaries on the Constitutional Convention and other discussions such as the Virginia Ratification Debates, it seems like there was a preoccupation with the need for a well-regulated militia to counter the threat of a standing army. This particular clause is seemingly conjoined in the 2nd Amendment with the right to bear arms.

• Was the intent of the 2nd Amendment primarily to provide firearms to the people for use in a professionally trained public militia, or was it primarily to allow for the unrestricted ownership of guns?

• Why do we not maintain a public militia today when it was of such importance to the framers of the Constitution?

I'm a college student, who's not studying history. I'm interested in the history of warfare, and particularly it's importance to the politics and economics of America, but also eventually I'd like to learn about its impact around the world. I doubt I'll take a class about this and I'd love to be a lot more informed and knowledgable about the subject. Can anyone recommend a good book or two?

I'm not really familiar with the timeline of the evolution of western society so I really don't know what preceded what. But someone told me that western society was basically the same as Islamic society before communism. Women were oppressed and had little to no rights. Homosexuality was illegal and people generally had little individual freedom. And it was only after communism that western society progressed greatly leaving everyone else behind. Is this claim accurate? Did communism really cause western society to modernize?

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AS far I've been taught, When the plague arrived in Europe it killed around 50% of the European population in matter of years in the 14th century. When European brought their diseases to the America's I've heard that up to 90% of the native population died. Both events ended millions of lives in a relatively short amount of time and were only separated by ~200 years. However the catacombs of Europe are pretty famous, and I've heard they still unearth mass graves from the time period on occasion. I've never heard such a stories from the America's, which is odd because if anything they ought to be more common. The Great Dying killed more people more recently, so we should be digging up bones all the time, right?

I don't doubt the event happened, I just want to know if I'm just ignorant and they find Aztec catacombs all the time or if postcolumbian civilizations did something different from the Europeans and left less of a trace.

I'm assuming that not every immigrant was allowed into the United States during this time period. I'm also assuming that many of these migrants probably couldn't afford passage back to their motherland. What happened to these people that weren't allowed into the U.S.?

From my knowledge, the Mark I tank first saw combat at the Battle of the Somme. Like the title states, how, if at all, did the Mark I tank affect the results of battles at the Somme after its introduction? Did it significantly shift the tide of battle to the Allies' advantage?

Admittedly I'm asking this because it's related to my IB Internal Assessment. Not trying to trick anybody into doing my homework for me, I swear.

Links to reputable, detailed sources about the tech specifications and real-world performance of the Mark I tank and any other possible tanks used at the Somme would be nice as well.