This may be a dumb questions, but I'm curious. First, for World War I, obviously today it is called that as well as the Great War, but after its immediate conclusion was it only referred to as the Great War or were other names used to refer to it before the start of WWII? Then comes WWII. At the very start was it referred to as the second Great War, was it called WW2 and then The Great War was started being referred to WW1 or were there any other names? And my final question when did WW1 and WW2 start becoming mainstream to refer to them? Also, I'm sorry that this may be difficult to interpret it was hard to word this question.

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I have gotten lately into late antiquity history and through some books i have come across this particular quote about the sassanian palace in the capital:

" Inside the audience hall there were said to be three thrones kept permanently ready for the other three great rulers of the world - the emperor of Rome, the emperor of China, and the Khagan of the Turks - ready, that is, for when they should come to submit to the Sasanian emperor"

so i want to ask if anyone knows the original source for it, thanks.

It always struck me as weird that Nazis were able to convince Germans that the Russians/Slavs were inferior when they had a similar technology and social level. Russians also created lots of famous writing, composed music, and scientific advances. Did the Nazis just pretend those never happened?

It sounds laughable, were these people not aware they lived in a dictatorship?

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Studying 19th century warfare strategy and tactics I have noticed the transition from wars decided by single battles, like Austerlitz or Trafalgar to wars decided primarily by logistics and multiple campaigns starting with the American Civil War. With few exceptions (the Battle of Tsushima comes to my mind), this seems to be the rule of modern (20th century) warfare, where strategy is the primary deciding factor: proper management of human and material resources shadows de importance of battlefield tactics, reflected in the change from the napoleonic frontline commander who managed all the tactical details to the strategically minded "desk commander" of the 20th century who left most tactical details of battle to subordinates, commanding from the rear (Two models that clashed in the American Civil War in the form of Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant). The most obvious factor contributing to this is the technological development, specially in the area of transport (the train being the key up until WW2), but also in firepower, that lead to a great expansion of the operational theatre. In the case of naval warfare, the replacement of the sail by the steam motor opened a completely new capability of avoiding the engagement if desired, opening a window for limited engagements instead of the "all or nothing" battles of ships of the line. I am sure this is not the only factor, and that I currently understand just a fraction of the implications of the referred changes. I would deeply appreciate any help in understanding the causes of this important transition, or any commentary about the topic. Feel free to correct me if necesary, needles to say. Thank you.

When the Umayyads captured Spanish territory did they make Arabic the official language? Or did common peoples largely keep their languages?

As I understand it, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is often treated as a history, much like his Richard and Henry kingship plays. However, it seems to me (from the little research I've found) that it is more likely a heavily fictionalized tragedy along the lines of Macbeth or Hamlet. Or is it somewhere in between, a mixture of semi-accurate history and hyperbolic or even outright fictionalized drama?

I'm currently an undergrad in a class about the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. We've briefly discussed the world wide influence of the Soviet state in the mid-late 20th century and I was hoping some experts could give me some further readings on the subject, particularly with respect to Latin America (my main interest is in Cuba, but I'm looking to get a broad reading list).

This will contain several questions:

1)Would a hippie be given their equipment, or would they purchase it themselves? If it was provided, would the money for this come from taxes, and was military spending very different from modern nations (ie the UK) in terms of the percentage of tax money which was spent on the military?

2)What age range was there for most hoplites?

3)Did hoplites tend to be from 'regular' families, instead of especially rich ones? Was the wage of a hoplites good enough as to warrant it being a 'good' career path to take?

4)What view did the public have on hoplites? For instance, in the US, soldiers are very highly praised and seen as hero's. Is this the case with Greek states?

That's all for now, I may have more questions later. My knowledge in ancient Greece isn't great, but it's certainly an area I'm interested in researching, so thanks in advance for any information.

I mean time capsules are a thing, but is there anything historians do to leave behind a good, reliable idea of what was (is) happening in their present world?

Like is anyone collating sources on this year's presidential election, or are hisotrians just leaving it up to journalists to record it, and to future historians to determine what sources are good?

A few years ago, a literature teacher I had was lecturing a boy in my class who was acting pretty childish and defended himself with some excuses about being still a child, so my teacher started saying that in the middle ages he would have been seen as a man, and that little children were seen as retarded adults. I've been wondering about the accuracy of this, but all I get when I try to google this are some clickbait articles about people who didn't shower. Can anyone tell me more about this, or link me something about this? By the way, I apologise for any mistakes, I'm still learning English.

Even just a 100 years ago, it seems like every culture wore their own culture's fashion, even in Europe. When and why did most cultures seem to adopt a similar style (shirts, pants, shoes, etc)

Obviously not everyone adopts these fashions but it seems like more than ever, people generally are wearing the same style.

quick trick

I'm talking about holding my KQ of the same suit [horrible, horrible bridge joke]

Essentially you can search the comment sections of all subreddits directly by adding a /comments to any sub's URL (thus reddit.com/r/askhistorians/comments).

it's not a perfect solution but it does help you find posts that have answers especially when not on the front page. I often use a mixture of skimming frontpage and skimming through /comments to get the most out of this sub.

it also helps answer /u/ProbeOne concern on the rules round-table

This is especially pertinent to the discussion at hand as most threads end up clogged with deleted replies. A thread with a quality reply and five followup questions looks identical at face value to a thread with six deleted spam posts advertising mens hair gel to hapless hairless historians.

the spam posts will not show up in /comments but the followup questions will and will help the answered question stick around a bit and for highly upvoted posts to distinguish between ones with answers and ones without them.

Thoughts?

the downside is you can see when submissions have been removed and a mod comments on that removal but those comments are short and easy to breeze past.

I know Rome did, but Rome would be large even by modern standards

There seems to be a trend that the French military establishment focused mainly on reactionary tactics in the prelude to both world wars, with the focus being on morale and massed charge in the prelude to World War 1 and the focus being on defensive forts in World War 2. In both cases the battles showed these tactics to be inefficient because of modern developments in tactics that rendered the old tactics useless, with the difference being that France managed to innovate its tactics (Pétain being one innovator) and win World War 1. Because of this, there seems to be a trend of a focus on reactionary tactics in the French Military during the time period, which I assume is related to some underlying factor in the culture of the French Military during this time period. This poses the question of what such factors were, and how they differed from Germany and England?