I have just finished reading Jean Edward Smith's biography of FDR one if the things that intrigued me was the involvement of the emperor, in the events leading up to the beginning of the war.

• on September 5th 1941 the emperor reprimanded the army chief of staff for his false estimate of the war with China (Konyone memoirs quoted in H. Feis the road to pearl harbor)
• on September 6th 1941 the emperor chaired a privy council meeting that put a hard timeline on negotiations with the USA
• The emperor directly intervened to make Tojo PM
• on Dec 1 1941 the emperor was at the privy council meeting that pted for war

The emperor was a central figure in Japanese life and in a governmental system that borrowed a lot from Bismark's imperial German system the emperor had a lot of power (and i direct line to the army). Thus my questions are

1. is responsible Hirohito for the course that the Japanese empire took and the brutality (i.e. Nanking) that was perpetrated by Japanese forces?
2. Could he have stopped the march to war and could he have reigned in the armies brutality, if so why didn't he?, if not why couldn't he?
3. How does modern Japanese and foreign historiography deal with emperors role in the conflict?

I was just thinking about the wars and how they're labeled "world wars" but obviously the whole world wasn't at war, just Many of the super powers. That's not to say the countries that weren't directly involved in combat weren't involved. I'm sure most of them suffered indirect consequences. So my question is this, were there any countries that weren't affected by the world wars at all? If the wars had or hadn't happened, their place in history would be unchanged . Thanks in advance for all insight!

Couldn't the iron be transported to the Swedish coast by rail and then by boat to Germany? Why was it so much better to transport it through Narvik?

I just spent some time in the Caribbean and was curious if the Jolly Roger (Skull and Cross bones, or Skull and Crossed swords on a black field) was actually flown by Pirates or if it's a common misconception.

Also, how exactly did one become a Pirate (not a Captain, just a regular pirate)?

Is this just a coincidence? Did kings with other names take the name Louis after a certain point? Or did the French throne just happen to have a great deal of turnover?

I was interested in reading A Short History of Byzantium by John Julius Norwich, but it was released almost 20 years ago (1997) and I was wondering if it's considered to be dated, and if there were other more recent and complete books about the Byzantine empire.

It's weird how Vichy France was allowed to exist, when Hitler could have easily taken all of France. Why didn't he just occupy all of France instead of just the northern part?

Let me start myby admitting that this is for a research paper, and I could use some help. My paper will be about how Russia wasn't really our full ally during WWII and how that manifested itself in Russian anti-German propaganda.

In order for this essay to work, I must first establish to what extent Russia was actually our ally. After asking some friends and history buffs on campus, I managed to pool together some interesting facts that would indicate that Russia wasn't really interested in victory for the allied powers as much as victory for just itself:

• Near the end of the war, during the "race to Berlin" to see who (Russia or US) could liberate them first, Patton suggested that the US should project power over Russia to assert US dominance (source?)
• German soldiers tried to escape into US occupied zones after the collapse of Nazi Germany – they knew they would get better treatment from us. This shows the ideological gap between the US and Russia.
• There was a Nazi movement to surrender to the US and attack Russia – they perceived us as having such different objectives that they could make us turn on our "ally"
• Russia only fought against Japan maybe 2 weeks after the war ended, only scrapping up some of their Chinese colonies for their own benefit.

What do you guys think of this? Do you agree or disagree? Was Russia sort of a pseudo-ally?

If anyone has any recommended readings or sources that I might be able to use in a paper for this, please let me know. I'm seriously struggling with research right now.

Thanks so much /r/AskHistorians! I appreciate your guys' input very much.

Was life in Islamic Iberia that different from the rest of the Umayyad Caliphate? What sort of evidence is there of real cultural peace among the three abrahamic religions, and not just relative safety because of the jizyah?

Am I crazy, or is there a theory about a world ideological struggle between communism/socialism, capitalism/democracy, and fascism which argues that these three systems are at odds, and that over time one will win against the other two? I feel like I read this somewhere before, and that WWII was cited as the defeat of fascism in this three sided struggle, leaving communism/socialism left at odds with democracy/republicanism/capitalism, explaining the Cold War. I've got this idea stuck in my head that I've read this before, and that someone credible wrote about this, but for the life of my I can't remember who wrote it, or where I read it. If this theory actually does exist, I need it to help contextualize my senior thesis topic. If it doesn't exist and I made this up, I'm not qualified to make such a large argument just to contextualize my thesis. Thanks for any help, even if it's that I am indeed crazy!

I know they were essentially personal servants to officers, but how far did that go? Did the participate in offensives?

specifically soviet Russian education

I heard an argument recently that at the start of the suffrage movement, the majority of women did not want suffrage. The argument stated that the suffragettes were working more to convince women to vote in referendums than for lawmakers to vote for an Ammendment.