In Ken Follett's WW2 spy novel Jackdaws, there's a point where a British agent para-drops into France. He has with him a codebook for a one-time pad to communicate back with HQ. However, he is captured by a German counter-intelligence officer who then uses his codebook to send fake messages instead.

Back in England, the protagonist becomes suspicious that this has happened and comes up with a clever way of checking his suspicion. He has the telegraph operator intentionally make mistakes (typos) in a response to the agent. Supposedly if it were a real agent, he would react with an angry message, abusing the operator for making mistakes. Since the German responds normally, he is revealed.

So, my questions:

• Would telegraph operators actually have been held to such a high standard for this kind of ruse to work? Would a spy really get angry at the operator over a few typos? Would this have been any different for German telegraph operators?

• Was this kind of cryptography commonly used by British agents?

• Didn't the British have any actual method for authenticating messages encrypted in this manner? It seems like just having a challenge/response system with different codes for "safe" vs "under duress" would work. A one-time pad is unbreakable, but not having any way to authenticate messages seems like a huge oversight, given the high risk of an agent being captured along with his codebook.

In a lot of things I read about the soviet union, I always hear about the long and never ending lines in the soviet union to get the bare essentials, and the excruciating waiting times to get some appliances or some stuff like cars.

My question is how accurate are these depictions in the Soviet Union? And if they are quite accurate, what was the purpose for them?

What Gods and Goddesses did the Tarascans worship and how did that affect everyday life?

Everything I've ever heard regarding the US motives to go to war with Mexico was focused around slavery. What other reasoning existed for the politicians of the day, as well as the citizens?

Scandinavia is a region for which I hold a particular interest, but I hardly see it talked about. The suggested reading list for the subreddit lists almost no resources regarding this region and I find it just as difficult to find scholarly research and studies about it online.

For someone seeking more in-depth insight into this subject, where should I look?

Is it just a naming convention? Is there a rule in the English language that dictates the order they are listed? Was one of the two more important than the other? What about other duos? Who decides the order of their names?

"Chauvet is unique for its grandeur and its individuality of expression. But from the western coast of Spain all the way to Russia's Ural mountains, images of horses abound. You could spend a year traveling from site to site and never see them all. Yet despite these vast distances in both space and time--it's impotant to remember that the phenomenon of Pleistocene art extends over a period of more than 20,000 years--there are a few universals. The images are usually peaceful. Violence is rare. A few images have been interpreted by modern researchers to show animals with hunting spears in them but such depitctions are unusual. Humans almost never appearl when they do, only a few are shown injured. And oddly, landscapes--trees, flowers, rivers, cliffs--never ever appear."

I really enjoyed the book but I wanted if this assertion is true, and if any of the historians have any why this would be the case?

I remember a story that Abe Lincoln didn't plan on presenting a speech when he went to the oration and was only giving a few hours to prepare. Am I misinformed?

On the podcast Revolutions (recommended by this sub, thank you) in episode 3.6 on the Stately Quadrille, Mike, the host discusses the long standing rivalry between France and the Habsburgs. I had never really heard much about this rivalry before. Did France consider the Habsburgs more threatening than the English? Where did the rivalry come from?

Since the first three movies were about a farmer boy helping rebels destroy and evil imperial empire, it could be very popular with communists, were the movies shown to the general public, a select elite or nobody?

Somebody on reddit today claimed that when the Germans invaded Poland, they tracked down Polish gun owners, using the Polish gun owner registry, and killed them. Is any of that true, and if so, what are the sources for this claim?

Complicated title, but fairly recently a well known exploration company found a sunken Spanish Gold ship. They put their claim in which was later turned over to the Spanish government (back room deal involving some art that I won't go into), but the country in South America where the gold originated from was barred from staking a claim. Why is that, and where do those exclusionary laws come from?

Need a simple definition of each for my notes.

It's for the English Civil War, in case that matters.

The Chinese diaspora is massive. Malaysia is almost 25% Chinese, and Thailand is reportedly 14% Chinese. The nation of Brunei has a similar percentage. Singapore is currently majority Chinese, despite being on the Malay peninsula. Vietnam has at least a million Chinese citizens, even after 250,000 fled during the Chinese invasion in the late 1970s. I'd love to learn more about this international community, but online information is unfortunately scarce.

When learning about Chinese migration, I'm most drawn to two parallels:

1. Greek colonies in the Classical Era
2. Jewish immigration to Britain and various colonies during the 18th-20th centuries

Greek colonists arrived as both merchants and conquerors, often living in small cities amidst foreign people. Syracuse, Marsailles, and Cyrene are all examples. Unlike the Romans, Greek colonists did not subjugate local peoples on any large scale, although they often took control of trade.

Jewish immigrants to the United States, Britain, or Latin America often came as refugees. While some of them were wealthy, they were largely desperately poor. While most American Jewish families languished in poverty for a generation or two, the community eventually became very wealthy. These people largely integrated into their new country but still kept a strong cultural identity. Today Before the foundation of the United States, individual wealthy Jews had international family banking operations. The Rothschild family is the best example.

Which of these two parallels best models Chinese immigration to Southeast Asia? Were they colonists who sought to live in independent settlements in Thailand and Sumatra, or were they immigrants who sought to live within established societies and make do with what they could?

Did any Imperial Chinese regime encourage merchants to go abroad to better-aid China?

Did Chinese immigrants to far-flung places like Indonesia arrive from mainland China, or were they largely born in other parts of Southeast Asia?

I'm aware that the Chinese Indonesians were slaughtered during the 1960s, but is there a long history of Anti-Sinicism in Southeast Asian, comparable to Anti-Semitism in the West?

Lastly, did the same factors that pushed wealthy Chinese to Southeast Asia also push them to North America, both historically and currently? Is there any continuity between early modern migration and modern-day migration?

In the West Christmas time is a capitalist's dream, with everyone rushing out to buy ever more expensive gifts for their loved ones, now more than ever.

But what about in Russia following the revolution? Did people still run about still buying lots of gifts, or is it more like people lining up at the Present Buearau to receive their identical gifts from the state? Or maybe they didn't celebrate Christmas as communism frowns upon religion?

Pardon the stupid question, I've been out of school for some years now and no longer actively involved in history other than self-study. Would a modern biography be considered a secondary or tertiary source for the purpose of this subreddit?

Example - Anthony Everitt's biographies of Cicero and Augustus cite both primary sources, as well as secondary sources. Secondary, or tertiary?