I'm thinking specifically of movies like The Great Escape or Patton, made in the decades after the war. Some of the actors were in the Wehrmacht according to their wiki bios. Others I haven't been able to find much detail on, but would have been old enough that conscription would have been hard to avoid.

Were the pasts of these actors the topic of much discussion? Did they provide insights into the inner workings/day-to-day life of the German/Axis forces? Were people reticent to cast actual former soldiers as Nazi commandants, and were they reticent to take up those villainous roles?

Was the era particularly dangerous in terms of women’s mortality, either through disease, overwork or childbirth? I saw an explanation online about how the widespread wearing of corsets contributed to medical issues, which is clearly a misunderstanding of why and how corsets were worn. Did the morbid themes of the literature of the Romantic Movement popularize the image of malingering lovelorn protagonists in Victorian pop culture?

When you read about certain conflicts, like Romans invading Persia, or the Cruzades, there are many mentions of wells being poisoned to deny water to their enemies, but no one explains in detail how this was done, what kinds of poison they were using, and if this process was reversible

I imagine there must be a way for wells to become safe again, otherwise this practice wouldn't be so common because all the wells in the world would already be poisoned, but I have no idea how long it takes. Do you just wait?, do you add other substances in the well to neutralize the poison somehow?

I am trying to discover the history of an aircraft my grandad may have been involved, it is a Handley Page Hastings with the registration TG616. I have a photo that my grandad may have taken in which the aircraft is lying on a runway missing one of its landing gear (it had crashed) but i haven't found any records of the aircraft anywhere and certainly no records of it ever crashing.

Any help would be very much appreciated, Thanks

The Condottieri companies fascinate me, but how did they recruit people, was it with propaganda, or did they recruit people as they passed by a city or village?

Also, what was the usual number of men that a company like this could field, was it on the large side or the smaller side?

Hi all,

I'm reading the book (almost finished), and I was wondering if Tolstoy's description of the events was correct. I'm talking about the fires of Moscow, the fact that the French stayed there too long and couldn't get the troops to behave correctly and thus letting chaos bring disorder pretty much indefinitely in their armies, the battle of Borodino, Kutuzov's trying to hold back the armies to let the French flee without useless battles, him being the only one "knowing" the war was won just after Borodino etc

How close/far was Tolstoy's depiction of the campaign to today's academic view?

(Non native speaker, on mobile too, sorry)

I have always thought that Brittany was one of the last Celtic remnants, along with its people and language. But recently I did some research on the "Langues d'oïl" in France, and I noticed that Breton only appears as a majority language in only half of the duchy. A language called Gallo (from the Gallo-Roman branch) with similarities to Norman French occupies the other half. And according to Wikipedia it was the mother tongue of the Dukes of Brittany in the Middle Ages. This left me with this doubt, were they more French than Bretons?, they also had several conflicts, marriages, relationships and alliances with French nobles, could we say that their culture was French?

We were taught in school about the bombing in very jist. I googled and watched a bit of documentaries and still unsure of facts. It was response to attack on pearl harbour but pearl harbour had military ships.

When I learned about European settlers from Spain, Portugal and the rest of Europe entering the New World (read: the Americas, my grasp of historical terms is poor), a main reason why I hear that they were able to conquer the native populations so quickly is the fact that they brought over diseases that the natives did not have natural immunities to and thus killed/weakened the natives enough to be conquered. My question is, were there such diseases of similar potency in the New World, and if so, why did that not then cripple the Europeans just as much as their diseases did the natives?

If I remember correctly, there was one instance of some settler bringing over syphilis or some other STD, but from what I understand, that was an isolated case.

Sorry in advance for incorrect terms, again.

If any part of this premise is wrong, please correct me.

The constituent States of the Confederate States of America submitted a variety of declarations of succession/independence to explain their rupture from the Union, and to oversimplify just a bit, it was because they thought Abe Lincoln was gonna kill slavery and they weren't gonna stick around to give him the chance. That's pretty well supported, yeah?

Well, the constituent States and the constituent population are two different things, whose interests did not always align. The governments of those states, and later that of the CSA, were in many ways beholden to the rich plantation owners and other wealthy interests; poor Southern whites did not own slaves, and though undeniably better off than Black Americans, they often lived in brutal poverty. Why therefore did average white men fight for a government that did not have their interests at heart?

Is it really as simple as LBJ suggested, that a white man will let you pick his pocket if you convince him he's better than the best Black man? Pick his pocket even of his life? Or were there more complicated motives for the average private soldier in the CSA's army?

(Please understand I in no way endorse the Lost Cause myth; the CSA was a racist monster that deserved to die.)

(I understand the line will be blurry and of course different dialects will affect this)

Also, are there modern dishes that are headed that way but people may not realize it?

Listening to a podcast with Malcom Gladwell about his new book "The Bomber Mafia". He was talking about how inefficient US bombers were during WW2.

How accurate is this claim? If it is accurate, was it a problem exclusive to the US or did other nations struggle with it?

My best guess was that it was due to culinary differences and the design of the utensil simply made it easier. However, I doubt the answer is strictly this.

I’ve seen Roman gods and primordials with Greek equivalents, many of which only play a role in Hesiod’s Theogony. Such as Ouranos(Uranus) and Gaia (Terra) so, is there a Roman equivalent of the Theogony, or a similar source?

It has just recently clicked in my head that the British had colonies in nowadays Canada and could very well have intervened during the war at the behest of the Empire, but as to my knowledge, they didn't. Why is this? Or if they did, why not make more of an impact?

I'm just wondering how much of this is propaganda (from the religious, or anti-religious angle) and how much this is factual.

I've always heard about the nazis being obsessed with people's hair and eyes color, and how they considered the ideal Aryan to be tall, blond and blue eyed. But did this really matter in the everyday life of Germany at the time? Did people think bad of you if you had brown eyes? Would it affect your job? Would you have a better job or social position if you had blue eyes?

In many aspects of culture Salamanders are associated with fire, this makes no sense to me at all and I can't understand how this even came to be