As a bonus, what was SS training like as compared to the US elite forces, such as the Airborne and the Marines?

According to Wikipedia, the initial cause was thought to be human error, but a 1991/1992 report suggests widespread systemic failures. Is the 1991/1992 document the definitive document on the causes of the disaster or have there been further revisions?

My dad is going to Alsace in a few weeks, and will be spending some time in Germany. He mentioned offhand that he'd like to learn more about German history so I want to get him some sort of book on German history. In particular I'm looking for something readable (as opposed to scholarly) and about German history pre World Wars. It can be about any subject but in particular I think he'd like to read something on either the medieval HRE or Prussian Germany.

Edit: I think I got what I was looking for, thanks for the suggestions!

I was curious whether nobles/royalty ever went for runs? I like a good run myself but I'd be remissed if I was acting like a peasant.

Why, instead of saying, the Winsdor family, or the Hasburg family, we say House Windsor, and House of Hasburg?

The Jie were a nomadic tribe that briefly had much power in Northern China due to Shi Le, who became the most powerful general, then ruler, in N. China during the Early 4th century CE. Yet the Jie language is only known from two brief sentences given to Shi Le by his advisor, the Buddhist missionary Fotudeng. Why would Fotudeng, a Kuchan, know any Jie? and did this indicate a failed effort by Shi Le to Jie-ize the state, akin to Manchu efforts during the Qing to make China bilingual?

They seem to speak pretty definitively about stuff like civilizations that existed long before the Sumerains.

Rome was in a constant state of war during it's existence, did the Romans usually wait for a justified reason to declare war or did they feel no need to do so?

edit: For clarity

EDIT: TY /u/Kegaha Mankind, bad choice of word. To be more precise, the change from the Egyptian/Roman/Greek/Northern Gods to Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

Examples:

• Abram and Sarai --> Abraham and Sarah

• Jacob --> Israel

• Simon --> Peter

• Saul --> Paul

I realize that each of the names mean something (Petros = rock, and Jesus said he would "build" his Church on him). But, is there more to it than that? Something more along the lines of new identities or the fact that the new names came from God/Jesus himself?

Thanks!

We hear all the time about Germany's military actions in Europe, North Africa, and the Soviet Union, but I'm not sure I've ever heard anything about the Nazis in the Pacific.

Edit. I'm putting this edit at the top because it's bothering me so much, but did should really be do (in the title.) Hopefully if we did know that stuff we still do...

I'm interested in this idea in general, especially if there is a different answer for depending on when you joined either war.

I have been really really really into world war one ever since listening to dan carlin's hardcore history. Blue print for armegedden. I highly recommend it. Dan Carlin really describes the combat in world War one as brutal, blood bathish, and almost like a death sentence. And his descriptions of the combat involve the word meat grinder. So when he paints these awful images of people running across a field just to be mowed down by a machine gun.

So what rate of survival makes world war one a meat grinder? I mean, when you describe these charges as suicide missions and then tell me 1 million people on one side of the war died in a single offensive. How many people were actually invovled?

We're the first people over the top of the trenches in these offensives just doomed to die? Did they know that? I imagine the survivability of each wave of soldiers went up as time went on because maybe the previous waves make some headway.

I'm talking a lot about world war one but I'm equally interested in world War two statistics.

There's a lot of questions here. But really just anything we know about this would be a really great insight on the wars I think.

I'd be stunned if I learned like 90% of people who joined the French army in 1914 were dead by the end of the war. But I'd equally be surprised if it was like 15%.

Is there any historical or archaeological evidence to lend credibility to Biblical accounts describing the Israelite conquests of Jericho, Ai, and other Canaanite cities?