A LOT of attention is given to the Louisiana Purchase but I have heard almost nothing about reaction to the land acquisition of northern Mexico apart from US and Mexican politicians.

Sorry for the awkwardly worded title. I was looking through a book that my grandfather brought back from Germany ( Hitler im Polen ) and wondered if any of the soldiers in those pictures, or their comrades made it the full length of the war.

It seems kind of strange to me. When I read about the principles of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, it's like "Since Raphael, art has become too idealized and stylized, and lacks vitality and realism. We need to ditch over-idealized representations and get real." Then when I look at a Pre-Raphaelite painting, it's like, an amazingly beautiful maiden in a gorgeous diaphanous dress our of some Arthurian romance or something.

So I'm like, "what?"

Maybe I'm a bit of a philistine, but it seems to me that what the Pre-Raphaelites wrote and what the Pre-Raphaelites actually painted are almost the opposite. Am I missing something? Maybe missing several somethings?

I just watched some heartbreaking footage of soldiers going 'over the top' of the trenches and storming into no-mans land, then getting mown down. Surely some kind of shield, even a rudimentary wooden one, would provide a degree of protection from incoming bullets?

Edit: As /u/Historyguy81 points out, metal armor on vehicles and naval craft is of course not obsolete. I meant metal armors on humans.

In the Second World War, the UK began a bombing campaign against German cities, with the aim of damaging the 'morale of the enemy civil population'. The US later joined in the bombing campaign (though maybe not with the same explicit aims?), and began its own bombing campaign in Japan. Firebombing of Tokyo killed up to 100,000 people, and the two atomic bombs killed over 150,000.

It seems - and correct me if I'm wrong - that attacking civilian populations like this was deemed acceptable by the US and UK, even if it remained controversial.

Today we live in a world where this sort of indiscriminate attack on civilian targets is usually judged unacceptable both morally and legally. The 1949 Geneva convention put in place some somewhat vaguely defined(?) protections for civilians. The 1977 addition makes these protections more specific, prohibiting "indiscriminate" attacks, and giving some detail on what this means.

So I have two related questions.

The broader one is: how have we got from there to here? When did Western militaries accept and start teaching that this was unacceptable? What resistance has there been to the changes? How was the discord between this norm and the doctrines of nuclear war managed?

The more specific question is: what instances after 1945 are there of Western militaries attacking civilian targets with the explicit or implicit aim of coercing the civilian population?

I am seeking information on the secret/super weapon programs conducted by Nazi Germany. I have a few questions I wish to ask.

What were the major programs that were successful and that were failures?

I am guessing many of you know how certain TV shows are popular on the history channel. The ones that try to explain Nazi UFOs and the "Bell." What are the historical inspirations for these mega-secret-weapons?

I believe the question on a German atomic bomb has already been answered on here. I just wish to make sure the general consensus is that they were not very close to an atomic bomb.

Did Hitler specifically favor any weapon programs over others?

Overall, what were the favored weapons among Germany's top generals and top scientists?

I would appreciate any answers to any of the questions above.

TS

Did they attempt to after the US did so? If so, what were their shortcomings? If not, why did they not prioritize that as a symbolic loss in the Space Race?

I find medics in war fascinating, however haven't found much about medics for the Roman army. What would a common medicine kit look like? Were they considered part of the middle or upper class when they weren't going off to war? Did they use medics as "general practitioners" or did they bring different specialists when the army went off to war? What was used for pain or to sedate for surgery? What went into the training to be a medic for the army? Anything else that is interesting about these medics would be great!

You would think that PTSD or other types of after shock would be common when soldiers would kill, club and stab people right in front of them.

When Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake", to what was she referring? I realize it is not cake as we understand it; was it some sort of lowly bread product? I also realize that she probably didn't really say that...

I'm trying to learn about anarchism and capitalism. Anarchism is very confusing to me because of different understandings of things like personal property vs. private property. But I think the biggest hang up I'm having is due to how I view capitalism. I personally believe capitalism has been around for a very long time, as long as people have been hiring laborers and selling products for profits, but anarchists seem to think it has only been around for a century or two, seemingly applying only the characteristics of finance capitalism to the general idea of capitalism as a whole.

I would think that the US would have been weakened by the conflict between its own people fought on its own soil. Is there evidence that any foreign government considered taking advantage of the situation?

I'll apologize in advance for the relatively trivial (and probably unanswerable) nature of the question .... but I had the pleasure this evening of chatting to a Danish gentleman, late fifties to early sixties, who stated that he was taught that Vikings in England "invented football" after cutting off the head of an English king and playing with it. He thinks the king was called Edmund (or possibly Edward). He thinks it occurred around or before 800AD. I don't know of any English kings called Edward before The Confessor and I don't know if there were any Edmunds either. My initial Google searches haven't produced any real results except that the Vikings may have kicked heads around. Does anyone have any evidence that his tale is maybe true or just a legend or just his history teacher having a laugh?

I know that they would disrespect the Church of England by playing games and just being overall boisterous. When James I said he was "responsible only to God" they started riots and takeovers of churches. It seems like they were trying to just attract attention for no real reason.

Hello everyone! After a few months of individually running down these types of questions, we have come to the conclusion that it is a fairly popular topic among you all. This being the case, we thought we would do this AMA, and allow you all to ask questions to your hearts' content about the nuts and bolts of medieval military equipment and its use. My only request is that, in this AMA, you exercise some discretion by limiting the discussion to what we have set out to cover and not asking about things that are clearly beyond our purview. Let's meet our panelists, shall we?

• /u/idjet: Is a post grad medievalist who studies heresy, politics and religion in the middle ages. He has an interest in French warfare in the early 13th century, in particular siege warfare, stemming from studying the Albigensian Crusades against the 'heretics' of southern France.

• /u/vonadler: Specializes in Medieval Scandinavia and arms and armor more generally.

• /u/ambarenya: My chief area of interest encompasses the development of the technology, tactics, and organization of the Byzantine military from Late Antiquity, through the Macedonian Revival, and up to the end of the Komnenian Restoration and the Sack of Constantinople in AD 1204. I have heavily studied the development and use of Greek Fire on both land and sea, Byzantine siege equipment, Byzantine arms and armor throughout the ages, and the Varangian Guard.

• /u/GBFel: I got a minor in general history with my BS and then got an MA in Ancient and Classical History with an emphasis in Ancient and Classical warfare. My thesis was a handling of the stirrup controversy, countering White et al's theory with classical accounts of mounted combat as well as modern equestrian reenactor experiments/observations. I am somewhat removed from academia at present with little free time, but I try to keep up on classical to medieval warfare, mostly the Romans and logistics in general. My passion is reconstructing period equipment, mostly Imperial Roman to early Medieval, and doing full-contact reenactment in it. I find it greatly aids in my understanding of period warfare to take hammer to metal to recreate armor and then put it on and vie against others in their own recreated kits.

• For this AMA, I would be most useful answering questions about metalworking using period and modern techniques, fitting and using period harnesses (and comparing it to modern military armor), the stirrup and mounted combat before & after its introduction, early gunpowder, and general equipment questions about the Romans through to Medieval Western Europe. I don't have access to my print sources since I'm on vacation but I will do my best to point folks to specific books even if I can't cite pages.

• /u/MI13: Late medieval armies, especially the longbow archers of the Hundred Years War.

• /u/Valkine: I am currently in the final year of my Ph.D. on bows and crossbows in medieval Europe c. 1250-c.1550 looking at the weapons from a technological perspective. I'm most qualified to speak on medieval weaponry and the technology of war, especially later medieval, with a primary focus on ranged warfare. I have a good grasp of the major battles and sieges of Edward I's wars, The Anglo-Scottish Wars, the Hundred Year's War and the Crusades as well as the transition to infantry warfare from the fourteenth century onward.

• /u/Rittermeister: Your most gentle prince and officially designated cat-herder of the day. I am a university student plodding drunkenly toward the weak light at the end of the tunnel. When I'm not wasting my life on /r/askhistorians, I read a great deal about the Anglo-Normans in the 12th century, aristocracy in the High Middle Ages, and western Christendom more generally. I will be covering swords, axes, armor, and anything else that can't be answered by one of our far more qualified specialists.

Egyptians are famous for their populist and flawed interpretation of Dendera Light Bulbs - the claim used to say that the pharaohs had invented light bulbs. Such flawed claims have a history of their own.

Where do I find flawed historical claims used to support nationalism, in various countries across the world. For example, what are the flawed histories propped up by Mexicans or the Inuits or the Vietnamese to prop up their own corresponding historical exceptionalisms. For example, Indians sometimes subscribe to false history that several of the mosques were reconverted temples.

tl;dr: Global Inventory of false historical claims used to prop up nationalistic fervour, or ethnic superiority.