Why don't they rule the world right now? they used to be huge, but i guess something happened.

Specifically, was there any indication that the Arms Industry would have difficulty maintaining the Wehrmacht, Waffen SS and Luftwaffe during the earlier French and Polish Blitzkriegs? In comparision to the Russian invasion, that is.

For extra points, could someone provide a English-Language source of production output for the industry? In terms of spare-parts and vehicles in particular?

Why "pale" and why "Saracens"?

Anyone who's been in a fight will tell you that if you have your opponent on the ground, they aren't going to just sit there and wait for you to make a move. Nor is it a simple task to keep them still and preventing them from getting out from under you.

However, in movies and TV shows, it seems like at least 1/3 of gladiator fights ended with the downed foe sitting and waiting while the audience made their choice.

How often was it actually?

Hey all,

I was reading about the Völva, an Old Norse occupation some women held wherein they practiced shamanism, prophecy and sorcery. That led to me reading about their burial sites, in which a number were found with hensbane seeds (which cause a sense of "flying" because of their hallucinogenic properties when thrown into a fire) and cannabis seeds.

Firstly, I'm surprised the Vikings had access to cannabis in the first place, and if anyone knows why they did, I am looking to be educated!

So my question, simply enough, is what other hallucinogenic substances did shamans use in the Viking Era? Although I've phrased it as a Viking-centric question, I'm not just talking about Norse shamans - if you know more about Byzantine sorcerers, or any sorcerers around in approximately 600 AD - 1100 AD, I'm interested in that too!

Hey /r/askhistorians I'm a Russian born in Kyrgyzstan currently living on a US Air Force base in Japan. My family lineage has always fascinated me and I'd recently started digging into it. My mother and grandmother can trace back my family lineage for at least 8 generations. I have recently been talking to them and they told me that our family (Moiseyev) originally came from noble birth, however after the Soviet Union came into power they were stripped of their wealth and forced to move to Kyrgyzstan. As far as I'm aware a fairly large percentage of Russians living in Kyrgyzstan originally came from a similar situation. I do not have a large amount of knowledge on this subject, because it was dangerous to talk about your old family during this time. I was wondering if any of you could provide information to me on this topic? I have numerous medals and several documents that I could provide if they could help at all.

Queen Elizabeth's realms are always involved in war and it doesn't affect her at all, because she has no power. The same role as the King in WWII.

Hello, and thank you for any answer you might provide.

This is a question I've wondered for a bit and not been able to come up with a reasonable answer. For land vehicles it seems an easy progression. Armor gets bigger. Gun gets bigger. Armor gets bigger still. Gun becomes unreasonably big. Gun develops chemical energy warhead to defeat silly steel armor. (And later armor develops ceramics and other things, but that never happened for naval vessels afaik so we can safely ignore it!)

So on the naval side of things you already have huge, absolutely huge warships with plenty and plenty of armor that you need to dedicate a very large gun to beating. It seems obvious that you could, should, or would, develop a capability for smaller weapons to defeat it in some capacity, either so that your enemy's pocket battleships need to be worried when engaging cruisers in the atlantic or simply that you can put more guns on your own battleship. Yet that never seems to have happened. At all. (As far as I know.)

Why is this?

During World War 1, Russian military gear seems to have lagged significantly behind other major powers. However, by the end of World War 2 Russia had designed and built a very effective tank and air forces, and would eventually produce large rockets, nuclear weapons, advanced aircraft and surface-to-air missiles after the war.

Not only that, but I see a trend where Russian gear tended to be effectively designed versus other countries gear. The T34/85 was simpler and easier to build/maintain than German tanks like the Tiger, while still being formidable. The AK-47 (and derivatives) has a reputation as being much more reliable than the American M-16 in Vietnam. Russian rocketry upstaged American efforts until the moon landings, and they were able to master staged combustion earlier than the US as well.

How did Russia go from lagging so far behind in weapon development in World War 1 to having world class engineering after World War 2? Why wasn't that talent evident in World War 1?

Israel had decisively won all these wars but Im curious what the "plans" were had Israel completely lost these wars.

Systematic deportation or the Jews? Another Genocide? establishment of a small token jewish state under arab supervision?

What was the end game plan for the Arab and Islamic Alliances for the wars? these were some of the largest conflicts in the middle east and Im curious what the end game plan for a defeated Israel was.

EDIT: still havnt gotten a definitive answer to this question, if anyone here is an expert of middle eastern politics and history I hope you can help me with this question, its very fascinating to me.

They don't share a border, and both are non-Arab/non-Sunni Muslim countries in a largely Arab/Sunni region. I would have thought that they would be allies, but instead they're like cats and dogs.

I am most interested in the time of WW2 on, but even before that, who did he meet with? What reasons did he have to travel? How much did he personally make decisions on?

I did a little research on it and found that the anti-communist forces had way more soldiers than the communist. How did North Vietnam defeat South Vietnam?

I get that the Abbasids brought on an era of multi-ethnic inclusion throughout the Middle East and steered the caliphate away from centralized Arab rule, but why is Khorasan considered especially important to the revolution?

Has anyone here watched 'Che', a series from 2008 starring Benicio del Toro? I want to know how historically accurate it is.

EDIT: It is currently available for streaming via Netflix.