Germany hosted the games in 1936, WW2 ended in 1945 and the first Olympics after the war was only 3 years later in 1948 in Switzerland.

Was Germany and/or Japan invited to those games? Did they attend and if so, what kind of reaction did they get from the audience? 3 years is definitely not a long time after such a destructive war and the wounds that people suffered were probably still very fresh. What was that time like?

I am wondering

a) why it is ethanol that seems to be the drug of choice for many cultures (as opposed to other substances, in the time the plentiful and complex methods of creating alcohol were developed, a way of safely preparing other stimulants like mushrooms probably could have been found)

b) and why it became used in first place. Alcohol has many obvious drawbacks and still humanity has spend loads of resources to create it. Why did societies that still had to struggle at times spend their time at something like that?

I'm not a mod or a historian, nor do I know how many other people I speak for when I say this, but I think there is a common problem in the answers I see on this subreddit: it's what I refer to as the "general appeal to specificity." It's basically where the answer to a question is "well, it all depends. There are too many specifics to speak in generalities."

Now, it's an unavoidable fact that often there are a lot of specific details in history and that history often defies easily understood general patterns, but that could be a starting point to an answer. Leaving that as a whole answer strikes me as rather unhelpful. To avoid making a General Appeal to Specificity myself, I'll give one example of an exchange on this subreddit (no offense intended to anyone involved in this exchange, if any of them recognize it):

The Western European marriage model was largely driven by economic factors, not the source of those factors. Later marriage by peasants was predicated on the need for self-sufficiency by a new couple.

What economic factors applied outside of the Hajnal line that allowed peasants to be self-sufficient in spite of earlier marriage?

The model of serf/peasant functioned differently. It is not an apples to apples comparison, and the differences were wide, but varied depending on the locale. A peasant in China at this time lived under very different conditions than a peasant in North Africa than a peasant in France than a peasant in Mesopotamia.

In my opinion, saying "it all depended of circumstances and there was a lot of variation" isn't very useful without at least talking a little about how circumstances and variation manifested.

Hey AskHistorians. this is a relatively simple question: How did Albania/Albanians get treated and did any opportunities become available for the Albanians? And how/why did Albanians convert to Islam? Was it because of the Ottomans or did they convert independently?

I've heard of the practice of noblemen (primarily in the 18th century, but also for some amount of time in the 19th century) keeping professional hermits on their estates. Where did it come from, what did it entail, and why did it stop?

I love everything about this war and this question has bugged me for a while.

I understand some knew long before others, I would love a few examples.

Thanks!

I was watching Ken Burns: The War and heard that Ford was rolling a Liberator off the Willow Run production line every 63 minutes. With this level of production going on across America, how could the Axis have been so successful for so long after America joined the war effort?

In another thread, we were discussing the potential ability of the British Empire to have re-conquered the United States during the American Civil War (but let's not discuss that here). In that discussion, other wars of a similar time period were mentioned, like the Crimean War, the Sepoy Rebellion, some colonial wars in Africa.

It appears that, during the Pax Britannica between the Napoleonic Wars (which saw the mobilisation of tens of millions of troops, and 6.5 million casualties), and the First World War (which also saw the mobilisation of scores of millions of troops and tens of millions of deaths), the largest war fought anywhere in the world was the American Civil War.

Is that right? Any war between 1815 and 1914 is fair game. I've considered the Boxer Rebellion, the Russo-Japanese War (1 million v. 500k), the Second Boer War, the Franco-Prussian War (900k v. 1.2 million), etc. etc.

The American Civil War was, all told, ~2 million on the Union side vs. 1 million on the Confederate side. 750,000 deaths, not even including civilians. Is this the biggest war of the Pax Britannica?

did everyone want a car because we had such a good road system, or did we build a road system because everyone had a car?

How much of a threat to Rome was Mithridates? Just a minor enemy to be crushed, or a real and serious threat to Asia minor and Greece?

I've just finished Gotham by Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace, and I would really like to read more books on the histories of cities. In particular I'm interested in the history of London since 1666, Hong Kong, and Singapore, but I'm open to reading any good urban history out there. I like the way you can see how the broad trends and big issues of the day have a specific impact on a particular place, so any book that captures or explains that would be really great.

Thanks in advance!

I'm wondering if submarines ever bump into whales or something.

How would one have gotten a position there? Were whole units seated or were men picked individually?

When the U.S. was expanding they took over part of Mexico (and fought a war to settle or border where it is now). Considering that it was considered "ok" morally back then, why didn't the U.S. concur Cuba and the Caribbean islands, eventually making them new states like they did with Texas?

By today's standards that would probably be the most valuable land in the country.

The Japanese, the Soviet Union, Germany, these countries were all hyped to pass the US in economic and political terms. My question, is why do they all fail historically?

What I meant to say in that overly contrived sentence, is the following:

Why is World War II called World War II? I mean, could it be so because the main reasons for the outbreak of the second one was the first? Like a movie, for example. Mission Impossible II wouldn't be called the second one, if it didn't have the same main characters in it. So, by that logic, is it named like a movie is named? Furthermore, if the second world war didn't have anything to do with the first, what would we call it? What will World War III be called? By my logic, it wouldn't be the third one, would it? It would just be The War or something. War: Resurrection?

I^feel^like^Jaden^Smith

But seriously, this is bugging me.

It seems clear that Stalin ordered the Soviet Red army to occupy - not just liberate - eastern Europe in 1945. It also seems clear that Stalin imposed communist governments on several eastern European countries without holding free elections, as he agreed to do in the Yalta Treaty. This to me was the start of the Cold War: aggressive Soviet expansionism that the Allies had a right to counter or at least contain.

But recently I read that some historians argue the US was equally to blame, or even more to blame, than Stalin for the Cold War. What is the basis of their arguments? Whose views are more accepted by modern historians?