I'm studying for a history course in university and I was wondering what were the reasons for the many failures the Italian army faced during WWII. One of the reasons I think was the poor gear given to soldiers, another should be the fact that Italy's tanks were basically made of butter, but what happened exactly? Italians did't fare bad in the first WW, what were the differences?

Who served for the British? Was it conscripts? Were the officers secondary Empire choices from India?

Did commanders not say "We lost 30,000 men in the attack last night, maybe it's time for a change in tactics"?

I am especially concerned about whether Figes is a reliable source since he had a bizarre incident of getting caught writing pseudonymous bad reviews for the books of rival academics and aggressively threatening to sue the academics when they called him out before eventually admitting to writing the reviews when the evidence mounted.

One of the reviews was an academic that had critisized another of his books for dubious scholarship and I've ran across some mentions that A People's Tragedy might also contain some similarly dubious scholarship but not much detail as to exactly what is wrong with the book.

Any insight on the book from Russian historians of Ask Historians would be greatly appreciated. I am very much enjoying the book and wouldn't want to throw out the baby with the bath water.

Namely, the subjugation of Greece (well, most of it).

My german history teacher brought up that the Vatican helped Nazis escape post WW2 punishment etc. I've read conflicting opinions on this as apparently the Vatican hasn't released their records.

All depictions of the Nazi enigma machine have an English keyboard. Why was it an English keyboard and not a German one?

Perhaps it's just a bias to my personal experience, but a lot of my African American friends have last names like Jefferson and Washington. Was it common for freed slaves to change there last names, and did they often pick the last names of prominent Americans?

I'm a 1st year PhD student at a University of California school, but it's not Berkeley or UCLA, so I have zero chance of getting a professorship anywhere, according to everyone I've ever spoken to. I'm hyper-aware of the outlook for TT professorships.

However, I've done some very cursory research on the high school teacher job market for History, and it appears that the situation is - well - not as bad. I really don't want to commit my life to this PhD anymore, knowing that I'll never find work. But I want all of your opinions first.

(spoilers ahead if you aren't familiar with this play)

First question: How shocked or otherwise affected were audiences by all the death and mayhem at the end of the play? Were they blown away, like current audiences were at the end of, say, Scarface or Chinatown, or was the level of violence and extreme behavior in Hamlet considered typical for a production at that time?

Second question: Did audiences consider Gertrude's marriage to her brother-in-law Claudius as shameful an act as do today's audiences, or did they just assume that was normal behavior for royalty? In monarchical societies, weren't royal marriages more about politics and power than romance? If so, wouldn't Gertrude's decision be seen as just a way to maintain her position as Queen?

Thanks!

Since he was limited to 10 battalions and no planes, tanks or artillery by the treaty of Versailles, and had to hide his aerial and armoured forces in secret factories, how did he manage to train pilots and tank crews without notice?