Obviously the Allies didn't expect to have East and West Germany, so it would't have been a problem to have Berlin occupied partially by the Allies, but why did the Western powers want to have occupation zones in Berlin anyway?

Was there ever any discussion of the United States potentially helping or supplying the Latin Americans? did any prominent political figures ever share their thoughts about it or wish to support it? say, Thomas Jefferson, who was still alive at the time.

Irish-Catholics and British-Protestants have always been at odds with each other but how did Religious differences play a role in the formation of countries and cultures in the British Isles.

Sorry if this question sounds stupid/ignorant

I'm learning about the Holocaust in English right now and we got to talking about how lots of things we know about the human body came from the experiments they did. So I got thinking, how many lives did that knowledge save? Could the knowledge we gained from the experiments possibly have saved more lives than all the people killed during the Holocaust?

EDIT: A response I thought was great by /u/Mablun

I had a mostly typed up answer but figured askhistorians isn't the right place for that type of answer. A more proper thread might be askeconomists. In that field, sacred values and taboo trade-offs [1] are sometimes looked at. Someone like Steve Landsburg would probably enjoy tackling the question in detail.

Short answer is probably not. I think the biggest reason is you comparing apples-to-oranges. From a utilitarian framework, you'll get people that will argue that putting a dust speck in a large-enough-number of people eyes is worse than torturing someone for 50 years [2], so along that lines, at least in principle enough long-term benefit would outweigh any short-term cost. But the holocaust didn't just have short-term cost. You also need to consider the long-term cost of all those lives lost. All those scientists, poets, teachers, parents, doctors, etc., etc. etc., that won't ever get to give their gifts to the world. We'll forever be without those long-term positives and surely weighing that against the meager benefits is lopsided enough--without even having to throw in the mind-boggling huge short-term costs of it.

And even if you restricted the question to comparing short-term costs to long-term benefits, when judging far off benefits you typically discount. A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. A long ways out, that discounting compounds and so distant benefits weigh almost nothing today. So when you stack that up against the absolutely enormous short-run costs of the Holocaust, it's unlikely they'd ever outweigh it.

I heard today (from a friend, please enlighten me if this is not the case) that Church Latin has/had distinct differences in pronunciation and/or grammar than the Latin spoken by the Roman populace. Would the Romans have understood Church Latin?

I know some of them travelled to Europe to borrow ideas from European countries. But what about the rest of them?

Where would you recommend someone start? I mean... I live in America. Minnesota to be more specific. There were people here right where I live now bootlegging. It's crazy to think that these things were going on. When my day to day life is so.. small.

It's humbling. You know? I really want to learn more. How do you find what is interesting? How do you study more?

It all seems so overwhelming. I want to learn more. Specifically about the characters and the people. Less about weapons. I want to learn about the women and the movers and shakers.

I'm a woman, so... I want to learn about the women I guess. Could I get some help narrowing it down or even some books or movies just to dip my toes in?

Thanks... In some ways I'm just venting and expressing my excitement. Please forgive my rambling. And also help me out just a bit. Please.

I am working on a song with a theme of kamikaze pilots, and I would like to mix in some audio of authentic kamikaze engines, or pilots speaking about it, or even something related or similar.

If there is a better subreddit for this question please let me know.

Thanks in advance

pretty straight forward question, how did Norway come to be in it's current shape? specifically i'm curious as to how Norway maintained control of the northern tip that wraps around Sweden and Finland. I find it odd that neither country tried to conquer those areas AND that the population of those areas don't ethnically identify with them as well.

Edit: Let's say that I am a Captain and I am captured at Dunkirk and liberated from a German POW camp in 1945. In that five year period, would I be entitled to five years backpay, plus any pay raises that might have accumulated in the mean time?

Today I learned of the atrocities committed by Mao Zedong for the first time. I had heard the name a couple times before but had no idea who he was or what was significant about him. I polled a dozen of my friends (seniors in high school and college students) and very few of them really knew anything about him as well.

Why are Hitler and Stalin such huge names for their atrocities and this man isn't? Is it just because they were involved in World War Two and he wasn't? It just seems strange to me that so few people seem to know about a man who is believed to have killed more than both of the them combined.

In various texts about the spice trade in Venice during the medieval era, the price of spices are given in ducats per cargo. The value of ducats are easy to convert to modern day currencies using their gold content, however I have found no records on the weight of a cargo. Can anyone shed light on this?

I saw a documentary years ago that I only vaguely remember, I'm fairly certain it was about Caesar's conquest of Europe. At one point it talked about a surrendering chief or king (possibly from Gaul, but my memory is hazy) who said something along the lines of "I stand before you a great man, defeated by an even greater one" or words to that effect. Anyway, I've obviously misremembered something, as I can't seem to find any reference to it, I had thought it might be Vercingetorix but can seem to pin a line like that to him. Any help?

This is something I've always been curious about. Following their successful fight for independence from Spain, why did the various Spanish colonies not form one sovereign nation? As I understand it Bolivar and other figures aspired to this goal, but it obviously never came to fruition. So, what factors prevented something akin to a USA forming in Central/South America?