I guess I should have said what is the possibly that Octavian was able to forge the will given how politically convenient it was for him.

I'm probably wrong here and I DO NOT doubt the facts of the holocaust but I'm struggling with the number. 6 million from 1938 to 1945 is around 100 per hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for 7 years. That's staggering! Anybody care to comment?

This might be too general of a question, but I've always heard tons of stories about American and Vietnamese(North & South) forces in the Vietnam War. However, I hardly ever hear about other forces involved. Wikipedia lists South Korea, Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand as other forces directly involved alongside the US and South Vietnam. So I can't help but wonder what life was like for these other forces.

In particular I'm curious if Australian and New Zealander(?) forces were involved in any(or as many) atrocities like the US or if they simply had a vastly different experience all together. I've also heard some stories about how the Viet Cong feared Australian troops due to different strategies that they used.

Reading about Stalin, you get the impression that his fellow Bolsheviks thought he was uncouth and uncultured. However, he was the author of many written works and of course he outfoxed them all in the end (although, cunning isn't necessarily a substitute for intelligence). Is he considered by historians as a thinker of note?

Basically what the title says. Has everyone just been pronouncing Spanish incorrectly? Is the term Injun then short for indigen, which means our ancestors were even more pc than we are?

I mean, I'm from Indiana, nobody calls is Injiana. Something doesn't add up.

Is it an accumulation of rubble and building materials from past settlements which are deliberately or incidentally built upon? Was there likely to have been any deliberate advantage-seeking in this or was it more likely to have been unintended? And what's the name for it: tal? Tor? Something like that?

Hello Everyone!

Today's AMA covers the Home Fronts of the various powers involved in the First and Second World Wars. While the histories of war often focus on the battlefields, the commanders, the weapons, and so on, the wars' effects extended far beyond the front lines, be it the grizzled veteran drilling with a broomstick in the Home Guard, the woman working double shifts in the aircraft factory, or the farmer toiling in the field, not to mention the millions upon millions of people trying their best to enjoy some semblance of normalcy in their lives in the midst of rationing, air raids, and the economy of 'total war'.

With such a broad range of locations and experiences, we've assembled together a large panel that covers the major belligerent powers as well as many of the minor and neutral ones as well:

USA: /u/samuel_gompers, /u/TheShowIsNotTheShow, /u/the_howling_cow, /u/coinsinmyrocket

UK: /u/NMW, /u/CopperBrook, /u/TheShowIsNotTheShow

Russia/USSR: /u/tenminutehistory, /u/facepoundr

Germany: /u/elos_, /u/coinsinmyrocket, /u/Astrogator

Japan: /u/asiaexpert, /u/gyokusai_into_ships

France: /u/donaldfdraper

Austria-Hungary/Czechoslovakia: /u/k_hopz

Canada/Newfoundland: /u/TheShowIsNotTheShow, /u/TheRGL

ANZACs: /u/crossynz

China: /u/asiaexpert

Sweden: /u/vonadler

Finland: /u/Holokyn-kolokyn

Do keep in mind that our panel is an international one, and not everyone will be around at a given time, so do have some patience in the speed that some questions may be answered, but we'll certainly do our best to get to them all!

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In other words, was it perfectly normal for West Germans to enter DDR territory by car, train, etc? I guess I am in need of a little run-down of what life was like for both West and East Germans living outside of Berlin at the time of the wall.

State sponsored detectives, tracking criminals etc. Vigilante groups would be ok if it was a community conception and not just a random mob of people.

A book I'm reading states that the term barbarian came into being because the Romans, as they were being invaded by these nomadic people, could only make out these people's languages as "bar, bar, bar" sounds. Is that true?

Non-American here. From what I understand, initially, judges in the USA had the power to send people to indenture servitude for a term or occasionally for life.

Judges are supposed to be wearing the mantle of morality and conscience. It is very disturbing to see that people who are supposed to be the best example of morality, rationality and conscience, are running afoul to it. They must have had given a very rational argument for that time, for their rulings to be accepted by the legal community.

So, when judges started ruling that chattel slavery was legal, what rationale did they give in their judicial opinions?