One of the original plans for Paris was to destroy it.

• Specifically, to what extent did Hitler want to execute this?

• I have heard that General Dietrich von Choltitz, either refused or convinced Hitler from executing the plan. Was it a divided consensus within the Nazi regime? What were the interests of the powers?

Thanks for your time

I read somewhere that thumbs up actually meant kill, in the Roman times and that thumbs down meant 'sword in the sand' meaning the gladiator got a second chance. Can somebody once and for all put this question to rest and if you have sources to back up the claim that would be lovely. Thanks in advance!

I am studying the La Tène era Celts and it seems that although they had all of the cultural similarities and trade relations of a unified people, they remained a patch work of waring tribes eventually overtaken by the more efficiently unified Rome. It seems to me that the formation of a state requires more than cultural and economic influences, but I cant figure out what.

Did they have singular governors who had all the power? What other positions of office existed in the government structure of such cities? Was it a copy of the governmental structure in Rome?

I keep thinking how fascinating it would be to be able to physically travel to where your gods are believed to reside.

Were the Ancient Greeks ever able to reach that peak where they believed their gods lived? If so, were they disillusioned to discover nothing there? If not, when did the Greeks (or others?) finally scale that famous mountain?

I've heard that ships during the Age of Sail often carried long oars called sweeps, and was curious as to when they would be used. Could a ship add to its speed and just use them all the time? Did every ship have them?

I always feel like I'm missing a good chunk of Roman history between the city being founded and them suddenly being an imperial power. What happened in between? When it was just the city of Rome, not the empire or the colonial power, why did they start raising armies, how did they pay and equip them with just one city's resources, and why did they start their wars of conquest to begin with? Do we even know the answers to these questions?

In a semi-related question: when and why did they start using the famous tower shields and shield wall formations? Did they pick it up from the Greek phalanxes? Did something happen that made them reorganize the army into the now-famous formations?

I have made a map of of a township/section/range and color coordinated each land patent for the state of origin the grantee. With a few sections completed I have noticed a trend. The early settlers for North/Northeastern Alabama came from three main states. Tennessee, South Carolina, and Virginia. These three states make up around 95% of the early settlers following the Creek War (1814), to about 1823. After that time the makeup is of different states.

I can understand why the early settlers came from Tennessee. I have looked at several names and have found out that they served in Jackson's or Coffee's army. So they saw the land firsthand. In the other Tennessee cases I have come to the conclusion that the settlers are either neighbors of the soldiers or people that heard the news of a new land.

What I'm having trouble finding information on is the settlers from South Carolina and Virginia. Some of these settlers would be considered economically challenged in a new sense that coming to Alabama would make for a good starts. However, more than half of these cases are fairly wealthy individuals that are buying over 120 acres or more of land at a time. In one case I found where a settler sold his entire South Carolina farm to make the move. From the description I read, the farm was quite sizeable and well established. After the sale and move to Alabama I could not find anything on the settler so I assume this move did not have the same success as his original farm.

What was the draw for these Virginia and South Carolina settlers? I have done some searching on my own and the Panic of 1819 seems to explain some of it (mainly the poorer settlers looking for a fresh start) but it doesn't explain the well of settlers and the overall trend of Virginia and South Carolina. Hoping for some insight on this.

I'm currently reading "By Honor Bound: State and Society in Early Modern Russia" by Nancy Kollmann, and she tends to try to explain the Muscovite notion of honour through the lens of functionalism and not much else. However the ideas of functionalism in general just seem too much like simple answers to complex questions to me. In your opinion, how important really are these factors?

In a broader sense, the question could be phrased as "what was Disney's actual contribution in fairy tales for today's collective mind"?

We all know that Disney softened many stories to sell them, but was it an actual pioneer of how fairy tales are viewed today or did it just follow a trend?

I'm sorry if this isn't the right subreddit, but there are already a bunch of questions about Disney here, so I thought I couldn't be too wrong.

Edit: werd

From what I understand, the Nazis believed that an Aryan nation was made up of superior genetics and it was "inevitable" that Aryans would one day rule the world because of their prowess.

So when the Soviets started thumping the German military in battle after battle (especially from 1942 onwards), how did the Nazi propaganda mill explain this to its population? Wouldn't German losses require admitting that somehow, even the supposed untermenschen seemed to be doing something right - even better - than the Master Race?

I feel like this time around there are no scapegoats; they couldn't blame it on the Jews, considering that there were no free Jews left by 1942.

Hey guys

Im searching for some good books or websites about Krupp and Mauser and their efforts in WWI. If you know something about that topic let me know :)

Thank you

Basically a reverse of Middle East ----> Europe?

Welcome back to Monday Methods. Today's topic was inspired by a discussion between /u/jschooltiger and /u/monkeypulssse.

To quote /u/jschooltiger, todays question boils down to "[how do] historians identify how and what factors lead to events and assign meaning to them?"

Growing up fishing in America, I was always taught that carp were "trash fish" and bottom feeders, but I am under the impression that carp are highly sought after as sport fish in Europe and were brought to the US from there.

Are American carp really the descendants of European carp? What accounts for the difference in how they're perceived by anglers?

♥ looks nothing like a real human heart.

Or is the above WW1 bit of trivia a myth? I can understand drilled troops with high quality rifles having a somewhat higher ROF, but I have doubts about the enemy genuinely thinking it was machine gun fire.

To further expand on this, whether the MG thing was genuine or not, were British marksmanship and drills that noticeably better?

Were they able to consistently provide a tangibly greater and more useful volume of fire as a result?

Or is it something a select few were capable of doing in "laboratory" conditions, but had no practical effect on combat?