Given the cost (both time and money) of hand-copying books prior to the invention of the printing press, would/could there have been bookstores in antiquity, or is the entire concept of 'a store dedicated to selling mainly/only books' a completely modern one?

Secondary/additional question: Why is there so much interest and what are the main drivers behind the coverage of, investigation, and interest in this facet of WWII?

This question has been something I have ruminated on for a while, but an excellent response to a question about a dodgy historian in another thread and a YouTube video about "the German Tank Meme" this week prompted me to ask it.

Since 1945, how has academia investigated and popular culture depicted the German military during WWII? Are there significant differences between how it was portrayed for instance during the 1950s compared to the 1980s compared to the last 20 years?

Overall, I have noticed that there are several threads running concurrently in the last 20 years regarding interest in and framing of the history of the Wehrmacht during WWII. There is enormous interest in the German Military in WWII, which seems to radiate out from German tanks and "wunderwaffen" out to other areas. There are of course the academic investigations into the Wehrmacht generally and in specific subject areas and campaigns (The Most Dangerous Enemy by Stephen Bungay is one of my favourites). But there are of course multiple threads of popular culture and media coverage. One of the things that has always concerned me in this space (and is clearly seen in alternate histories, particularly fan imagined ones) is an image of an incredibly military machine that is efficient, brilliant, and superior in multiple ways. The concern is because it seems so out-of-place as there is of course patriotic/nationalistic interest in the US, UK, and what was the former USSR into their own nation's efforts in WWII, but there doesn't seem to be any reason why Germany has so much focus. Compared to interest in the German military, there is almost no interest in the Italian military, there is some interest in the Japanese, mostly centered around the Yamato class battleships, and absolutely no interest in the Hungarian, Romanians or Bulgarian military. Why is this?

I am unsure about how much this interest can be correlated with Wehrabooism and neo-nazi sympathies. However, it seems to me at the same time that the Wehrmacht has been somehow separated from the Nazis in popular culture through an active effort to pretend the Wehrmacht and the Nazis were somehow separate.

Is this an accurate assessment? If so, when and why has this current fascination for the Wehrmacht developed and why is it separated from the atrocities of the Nazis during WWII? We know that there was not a clean line between Einsatztruppen and SS units massacring civilians on one side and Wehrmacht soldiers just politely invading the USSR without committing any crimes. So is this an effort by people that are just fascinated in the Wehrmacht but don't want to think about the atrocities? Or is it a thinly veiled way for people of far-right and pro-nazi ideologies to discuss this openly? Discussions about German tanks is a good example, does the popular culture image and the people that argue about it the result of the media they've consumed or a result of propaganda driven by people with an agenda? Is it completely divorced from the academic discussion or linked somehow?

Additionally, we do not refer to French tanks as "Chars" or aspects of the Russian military by anglicised words, so why do we refer to German "Panzers" instead of tanks? Or "Wehrmacht" instead of German Army? Or "Luftwaffe" instead of the German Air Force. Is this related to the overall popular culture fascination with Germany in WWII?

Thanks so much to everyone on this subreddit and the mods for maintaining such a high standard here. I tried to find any answers about this but struggled to find any threads that directly spoke to this query.

Was it commonly brought up? And how did perceptions of it evolve from the time it occurred in 1804 to the end of the Civil War? Side question, was it used in Confederate propaganda during the Civil War?

I don't know much about this topic, but I know that soon after the Nazis took over, they started writing laws legally discriminating against Jews. How did the international press, the public and the governments of various countries react to this? Was there indifference or outrage or something in between?

The economy of the Song Dynasty smelted a LOT of steel and harnessed the power of coal. They had money, the ultimate commodity that exchanges different use-values with each other, suggesting they had commodity production. Yet despite features of industrialization and commodity production, China was quite late in terms of capitalist development centuries after the Song Dynasty. Why is this so? Why did capitalism not develop in China a thousand years ago despite the existence of industrialization and commodity production?

I’ve always wondered what the goal of this was and why Japan became isolated, It’s hard for me to think that not allowing trade with other countries could be beneficial to japans success. What this a good foreign policy choice for japan? What was the goal of isolationism?

Why is Athens still around today but not Sparta even though sparta won the Peloponnesian War?

When my Mother was a child, she had a neighbour and family friend who was Croatian who said he had fought for Croatia in WW2 and was a 'displaced person', he had numbers tattooed on his arm. Is it likely that he was a former partisan and had been caught and sent to either Auschwitz or possibly another concentration camp?

A friend just randomly brought up the idea of Abraham Lincoln being a slave owner. I found it pretty implausible, and I have never encountered any legitimate sources backing that up. Have any of you heard of anything even remotely similar to that where they might be getting that? I suspect some historical revisionism somewhere is to blame.

Like it’s supposed to have started when “Christ” was born, but why did people suddenly start counting them? Most people in the world would have been totally unaware of Jesus if he did exist, and it took a really long time for the general consensus of him being holy to actually gain traction. And when it comes down to it, why would he have triggered people counting years?

Do Historians have to specialize in a field/one specific time period or can they just learn as much as they can about all different times and places?

Hello. Does anyone have a list of the best, most immersive fiction (no POV shifts or excessive time jumps or flashbacks) and non-fiction (preferably fiction for more leeway in plot and unexpectedness) WWII escape books that are mature in tone (no vampires, cheesy romance, or self-insert type characters, i.e. no John Wayne escapes camp and woos Nazi officer's wife), historically accurate (but preferably not too indulgent on showing off such fact), and that contain genuine emotion that fits the theme of escaping an occupied country?

I only know of "I am David" by Anne Holm but I'm seeking something more mature and serious and that doesn't shy away from tough subjects. I also have in mind the escape phases (after mission completed or compromised) of Operation Frankton and the covert behind enemy lines actions of the female Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents who parachuted alone into Nazi occupied territory to conduct espionage.

I prefer fiction only for the fact that what may be a relatively ordinary, real-life escape summarized in Wikipedia may be dramatized to heighten tension and the feeling of escape or death. I also have in mind Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk where the Nazis are faceless and not shown to give them more terror in their obscurity. Lastly, I imagine a character/escapee who is truly despised by the enemy or a specific person in the enemy side who truly wants to harm or kill the escapee, i.e. not a high ranking Allied officer who would simply be put in a well accommodating POW camp if captured.

I understand there would be widespread disillusionment and disbelief in Soviet communism with the stagnation and repression in the 1980s. I get that communism would also be associated with foreign domination in much of Eastern Europe and central Asia.

Yet it's still hard to grasp that, in nations like Germany, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, that had communist governments that pushed communist ideals for some fifty years, there did not seem to be any significant or influential communist groups in the immediate post-cold war

The sole exception I can think of is Zyuganov in Russia, and even he barely captured a fourth of the nation's votes. And in the SSR that benefited most from communism too!

For example, in the 1990 parliamentary elections the KPD in Germany got.... 1,200 votes. Sure them losing is expected, but that's a dramatic difference from total control of the nation!

I had read once that, in the aftermath of WW2, denazification took decades to take root, and that for the generation that were schoolchildren under Hitler it never truly succeeded and pro-Nazi sentiment remained quite strong in this cohort.

So why didn't this occur with schoolchildren growing up under Marxist doctrine? Why was disillusionment so total?

I’ve been wondering if the collapse of the twin towers was just an “effect” of their plan to fly the planes into the buildings or they did that to make the buildings collapse. I’m just really curious and please know I have no intentions to offend anyone. Thank you!

I came across this well reviewed book on Amazon, but it seems filled with rather dubious arguments and claims that massage facts to fit the "not about slavery" narrative.

I was wondering if there were any Civil War historians familiar with the book that could point out what might be valid (if anything), and then where the author is stretching or bending the truth or outright lying to create arguments to support his dubious assertion that the war was not about slavery.

As well, I was wondering if their were any historians familiar with this Author and his work in general who could shed light on what (if any) reputation he has in the Civil War Historian community.

Most of the long form reviews, all positive, seem to be highly conservative sites couched in the idea that this book is "anti-PC"...I wasn't really able to find a review that seemed impartial or remotely critical (which seems odd regarding a historical work about the largest conflict in American history), which lead me to ask here.