I really want to avoid coming across as an armchair general, but the process of bombarding an island from the sea and then sending in an amphibious assault seems wasteful to me.

For example, when the US wanted to capture the Japanese airfield on Pelelui, from what I understand they bombarded the island for about three days, and then sent in Marines who encountered heavy resistance as soon as they hit the beach. The fighting over the next two months resulted in about 8,000 US casualties.

Assuming the US had naval superiority (because they were able to bombard the Island for days), why didn’t they just “besiege” the island. If the US was able to form a naval blockade and prevent the Japanese garrison from being resupplied, wouldn’t they eventually be starved out? Just like what would happen to a besieged city in medieval and ancient warfare? Pelelui doesn’t seem like a very large island, and I’ve heard that the Marines who fought there experienced severe problems due to the lack of fresh water. How long could 10,000 Japanese soldiers expect to maintain a worthwhile defense without any incoming supplies?

I feel like this would be even more so with Iwo Jima, which seems to be essentially nothing more than a volcanic rock with little to no resources.

Wouldn’t this strategy have saved thousands of American lives? I’m assuming the answer is no because it’s not what happened, but I’m curious for the reason why.

What are the causes of the Albanians being predominantly Muslim, while all the other countries in the Balkans predominantly Christian? They converted to Islam willingly just like the Turkic-speaking nations back then.

Or would I have one? Was there a political figure whose name was shorthand for “a real evil piece of shit” whose invocation would be generally understood to mean the same thing?

I a) have read far too little and b) really need to get better at reading - my concentration span is low and I can seldom manage more than a few pages per hour (something which would be a severe prejudice come September).

If anyone wants to give specific suggestions, I'm fixing to work on the Post-Roman World, Merovingians specifically (I started Wood's Wood's Merovingians and it was a bit complicated and long to get through, got a quarter of the way through, am now trudging through Halsall's Barbarians).

I can't find any real good sources about what happened to free black Americans who came under Confederate occupation. I saw a post that said they were deported and sold into slavery during Gettysburg and Bull Run, but couldn't find anything that backed up those claims. Generally when I searched that, I only found what happened to slaves who came under Union control.

As one of the most powerful houses of human history, I'm quite surprised at their complete absence in history after the 16-17th century. Are they still alive?

I know that’s a big time period, and i’ve found one, empire project, but that only covers 1830-1970, so if you know if a book that could fill in the early part it would be much appreciated

For example:

-The Baltic Sea

-The White Sea

-The Sea of Okhotsk

-The Sea of Japan

-Barents Sea

-Bering Sea

It sounds terrible to say, and I know humans can find meaning in any kind of suffering, but if at any moment a viking could pillage your town, or a terrible disease might take your life, or you might starve - why bother with life?

I know I can also die unexpectedly in 2021 as much as I could in Ancient Athens. But now at least there aren't any slave lords outside my city halls. It's very likely I won't die of starvation. Or that my house won't be pillaged. I can get insurance for many things in my life, so financial ruin through a drought or a house fire is unlikely.

Things are safer now than they were before, so it's relatively smart to plan for the future. In Viking era Britain or Renaissance era Italy, life was so uncertain. So I wonder - were people more nihilistic before than now? Were people more likely to "live for the present" and make YOLO decisions just because of how uncertain life was?

And what about other world leaders?

You always hear about wars or political backstabbing, but when they aren't off playing soldier out hunting with their buddies, what do the heads of state in the middle ages actually do? Is there an expectation that they have day-to-day responsibilities to the state? Are they more pre-occupied with their own personal economic gain? I assume they have some source of wealth otherwise they wouldn't have been powerful enough to become kings in the first place. I've read that feudalism is overstated, but to what extent are kings (and queens!) actually engaged in domestic policy?

Considering the rush to enter into Europe. Why didn’t the allies just sent their forces into Russia. Wouldn’t it made more sense that way. They wouldn’t have to fear losing their men lives in a beach landing into enemy territory, since they’ll be entering through ally territory.

I have occasionally heard two diametrically opposed ``attitudes'' towards the modern day state of Israel:

1. The view that Israel is aptly described as a settler colonialist project (in the bulk of its territory), carried out by an essentially (ethically, culturally, etc.) European population that happened to be followers of (or descendants of followers of) a particular non-European religion. (Much like most Europeans were followers of another non-European religion.)
2. The view that Israel is the recreation of an ancient state by some subset of (or all of) the literal and cultural descendants of its ancient inhabitants who have been living in a forced diaspora for two thousand years.

My general feeling is that the second view is quite common among Jews and many Christians, but some version of the first view is fairly common as well, especially among Muslims. My question, generally, is whether or not the situation was similar a hundred years ago, when the Zionist project was first being proposed and implemented.

Obviously, part of the dispute is the precise relationship between Ashkenazi Jews and the Jews of antiquity, and we now know a lot more about this than we did a hundred years ago. For example: we have, according to my understanding, solid genetic evidence that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from a mixture of converted European women and mostly Levantine men with some additional (possibly Eastern European) admixture along the way, rather than e.g. Khazarian converts. Part of my question, then, is regarding early views on the idigeneity of Ashkenazi Jews to Israel/Palestine, before the advent of genetic evidence.

In case the formulation above is too broad, here is a more specific version. What did (I) early Zionists, (II) European gentiles, and (III) Arabs (and Turks) think with regards to cases 1 versus 2 (say during the early and middle phases of the Zionist project)?

You know, as opposed to putting billions toward the Israeli military so it could continue its illegal occupation of Palestine territory?

Some more questions!

a1) I know that the Jewish (soon to become Israelis) community felt a religious claim to Israel, but was there any Jewish land to that was not occupied?

a2) Supposedly, Jewish political figures in Britain aggressively expressed their desire to reside in Israel to British leaders, but how much power did Jewish citizens actually have in Europe around this time? Were they not navigating the aftermath of WW2, living in ghettos, and continuing to be treated like second-class European citizens?

b) Why continue to encourage and fund Israeli establishment in Palestine if the Palestinian leader (Amin al-Husseini) was openly antisemitic and supposedly encouraged another Holocaust? Did that not guarantee issues would arise in the future?

c) Is there anything to be said about Britain political gain in regards to Middle Eastern territories, etc.?

I understand that this sub-reddit requires questions to be about historical happenings that date back at least fifty years, so let’s just focus on Israel from 1947-1971. In any case, it’s inevitably connected to the present day, but I’m not confused in regards current happenings.

It’s the end of the civil war, and the north won. Slavery in the southern states is now deemed illegal. So all slaves are to be freed. Now what? Did the slave owners receive official letters explains the situation? Did all of them comply? What happened if they didn’t? And how were the now former slaves informed about their rights as free men and women?

Did the Ottomans force a sudden change or was it more gradual?

I was just thinking about a segment from Robert Hoyland's Seeing Islam as Others Saw it where a Chinese visitor to Baghdad describes the Caliph as leading Friday prayers and I wondered whether this was an institutional thing.

My grandma was telling me a story about visiting Russia in the mid 70' and remembered that in GUM (the main shopping mall in Moscow) tracksuits cost more than confectionary suits. Even more that they visited a spa and that they would wear them there too. She hypothesised that it could have been the price of man amde materials, but couldn't say for sure.

Have they been a status symbol? And how did they stay popular till today?

Also, how were these men convinced to fight for their former enemy, who often killed and abused POW's?