Was watching a show on D-Day and they mentioned that when invading omaha, the US only used naval bombardment for a couple of hours at best. The air campaign was also lackluster and failed to destroy German defenses.

As a final blow, much of the armor trying to land sank. I saw video of soldiers repeatedly driving tanks off the landing craft, abandoning them and swimming to grab another.

In terms of casualties this beach topped the chart, everyone else did better. Am I wrong thinking that Omaha was botched? I can find all of the facts even on wikipedia but no one has actually said it.

A blog I very much like recently put up a book review of Albion's Seed, and so I might check out a copy soon. The book advances a theory that four major groups of settlers (Puritans, Cavaliers, Quakers, and Borderers) came to the US, and that cultural features of those groups explain many of the regional cultural and political differences in the US today. How is this perceived by historians, generally?

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I know that there is evidence that there was probably at least one woman who was a member of the Culper Ring that gathered intelligence on the British. What about the revolutionary forces themselves? Are there any records of women taking part in the militia units?

My history teacher told us that all we need to get out of Buchanan was that he did nothing to stop the civil war. Is this true? Did he actually do nothing or did he just try and fail?

Did they think the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires would try to take over France, Great Britain, Russia, etc.? Did they think they'd just take their colonies? Just try and reach a deal of peace since they didn't want a big war anyway?

On that note, what do the historians belive could have happened had the Central Powers won? Could they perhaps end up controlling most of Europe, Africa and the Middle East?

I've heard and read many stories of what life was like for Jewish people during the war, but what was life like for the average German on the street? Did they know that a mass genocide was being carried out? Did they go to work, school, etc and notice that their Jewish colleagues and co-workers were missing? Did they care? Were they in support of the war and Hitlers goals?

My wife and I got to talking and realized that we have never heard anything from this perspective. Can anyone enlighten us or point us in the direction of any further reading?

My family is Acadian on both my father's and mother's side, they're both from Nova Scotia. I've always been interested in my family's history, but unfortunately my sources are limited to a few discussions I've found online, Wikipedia, and what my great grandmother has told me. Thanks!

I’ve been reading The Sword and the Shield by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin. Chris mentions that in 1927, in retaliation for the discovery of a large Soviet spying ring, British MPs read aloud cracked Soviet transmissions to embarrass the Soviets. He says that the revelation that their codes had been broken quickly led to the introduction of one time pads by the Soviets, and that almost no high level codes were cracked until WW2.

How did heads not roll for this? To me it seems like a horrible breach of intelligence security to do that on the part of the British. Was there any fallout/punishments for this in Britain?

As a youngin' I recall learning in school how the American colonists were rebelling against the evil British who taxed their tea and stamps and were highly tyrannical!

In college I learned that the colonists basically provoked a costly colonial war, which the British won, expanding the land the colonists could occupy and that the taxes were reasonable and not even remotely tyrannical, but that the main point of contention for the colonists was that they were used to self governance.

Yet I have never read extensively on perspectives from the times on the matter, or scholarly opinions and I am curious. Can anyone suggest any interesting reading on the topic or care to their their own opinion?

I was researching an acquaintance's ancestors for her to help her find evidence of the family story that a couple born in the 1890's were Cherokee and Wampanoag. I traced the man back a couple of generations, and on the 1860 census in Massachusetts he lists himself as Mulatto. I understand that to be some mix of African-American and European-American, but it wouldn't refer to any mix of European and Native American, would it?

If I understand everything correctly, humans have been around 200,000 years, but we only came up with agriculture within the last 10,000 years. Within that time frame, many cultures have invented agriculture independently.

Before the deprivations of the war started to affect the Confederacy, would life in Atlanta or Charleston or Montgomery been much different from how it was before secession?

All religions have some sort of founding myth that I can imagine people being skeptical towards, but the story of exodus seems to stand out as particularly unbelievable to the people who must have first heard it. The myth of jesus resurrection is far fetched, but it was only ever claimed that a small group witnessed it. How exactly did a myth like exodus gain traction if it claimed that many many thousands of people witnessed an event that never happened? Weren't people suspicious at the lack of witnesses when supposedly thousands existed?

Wouldn't after a certain point it wouldn't matter if you had more nuclear weapons? Why did Reagan continue the production of nuclear weapons vs using that money to undermined the Soviets in other ways, like supporting anti-communism rebels, for example. Did it really make a difference if the US only had 15,000 while USSR had 30,000?

I know the American government and various agencies within it have produced quite a lot of statistical data regarding the Vietnam War however I'm looking for information originating from the DRV or other Vietnamese sources. More specifically I'm looking for statistics regarding the effects of bombing. Thanks

Slavery existed in ancient societies such as Rome and Greece and Arabian countries, but was it racially based? Is race-based slavery a fairly recent concept?

I have another question about the metallurgy of the bronze age. I was wondering how thick they could make bronze bars by the start of the iron age, or just before it.

A friend of mine reckoned any thicker than a quarter inch would be impossible for them. Other smiths have disagreed, saying it should be possible for them to smith thick bars even if their cooling methods aren't as good.

Thank you for taking the time to look at this question.

Today we put a high regard on the value of human life (Declaration of the Rights of Man, Geneva Convention, etc.), and we are noting a large amount of combatants suffering from PTSD following warfare. While I have no doubt that such things occurred in all times and societies, I am curious if the prevalence of such events is higher today in our modern societies that have placed such a high value in human life. [An example of a past society that jumps out to me is the Mongols]