I've seen the clip of him saying "Tear down this wall" dozens of times, but I'm curious if the popular uprising in Berlin actually happened because he told them to. I realize that the fall of the Berlin Wall was largely caused by the implosion of the Soviet Union, which could definitely be traced in large part to the US arms build up during the Reagan years, but considering that the demolition didn't even start until two years after Reagan left office, did his speech have any real effect in Europe? Is that clip just a piece of hagiography for the conservative patron saint?

I would be grateful for some help in where to look for information about the Dutch Resistance, and Holland in general, In WWII

Is there any recording of which was the earliest organization/ body which served as a judicial center? A body strong enough to sentence, say a king, to death, if it found him guilty?

I know many native cultures without a written language relied heavily on a tradition on passing history orally. It has always struck me as an unreliable mess.

I recognize that ultimately, all history began as oral - someone told someone something who passed it on until finally someone wrote it down. And a lot of our ancient history has a decent amount of time between the event the written version.

And all of that doesn't even consider the reliability of primary sources of the history, their biases and what they didn't understand about what they were seeing.

So really, is a written history really more reliable then an oral one?

Based on the material I've read up to this point, Italy was a significant liability to Germany, at least militarily. In Greece and North Africa, the Italians got pummeled and required Germany to divert military forces to bail them out.

So what, if any, benefit was there for Germany to join forces with Italy?

I'm reading Battle for the Falklands by Max Hastings and Simon Jennings. It describes a bomb hitting the RN frigate broadsword - "a bomb entered the starboard side of the ship and bounced out through the flight deck, destroying the lynx helicopter but failing to explode" - and this happens (a bomb entering a ship and not exploding but causing damage, one badly damaged a missile magazine) a few times during the conflict.

I don't understand how a bomb can enter and then travel through a ship. I'm sure I'm missing a simple bit of information - do ships have big open shafts on the top deck? - but I cannot wrap my head around how this happens.

And then how does it manage to travel through a ship, surely it would hit a wall immediately and stop/become lodged in a corridor?

Also is the unexploded bomb destroying the lynx by simply smashing into it?

Thank you so much for any help, every time it happens in the book I'm left lost.

Seems like vastly increasing the taxing power of the government would be unpopular and/or controversial

It often seems that in the 1960's and 70's the middle east was very similar to western countries. Lebenon and Iran in particular appeared progressive, open and western. What changed in the middle east and caused the current chaos?

Like the somme had 58k casualties in the first day compared to just thousands on D-day for allies.

From my uneducated point of view charging head first into a line full of ships n seems like madness purely because they can fire a broadside at you and you can only fire your bow cannon.

How did Nelson pull it off?

What did skirmishers, such as Roman velites, do after they threw their javelins and fell back behind the infantry?

I have Hawaii by James A. Michener and Local Story: The Massie-Kahahawaii Case and the Culture of History by John P. Rosa on my list but I was wondering if there are any others.

And furthermore, what was an acceptable number of casualties that an army could stand at the time?

Just gonna put this up here to clarify:

I'm kinda of interested if Canada had any conflicts with the natives similar to something like the Black Hawk war in the American Midwest. History about the assimilation of first nations children(I believe that's what Canadians refer to them as right?) sounds interesting as well.

I love history, and I want to expand my knowledge. I want to start from pre-history, into ancient and all the way into World War II. It will be long, but it will keep me busy.

So I want to know what resources would be recommended for different eras/topics. What are the best books, essays, podcasts and documentaries etc. I should watch?