A few years ago Dan Baum published in Harper's that John Ehrlichman (who died in '99) told him the following in the mid-90s:

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

At the time, it made quite a stir, and I recall a journalist remarking on Twitter that the story was absurd, because if Dan Baum had such a "thermonuclear quote" he couldn't possibly have sat on it for two decades.

What do historians think about the truthfulness of the quote? Does it seem to have been an accurate reporting by Dan Baum? Is it consistent with other evidence on the origin of the Nixon Administration's drug policy? Were there any other similar statements from Ehrlichman himself?

I'm looking for a book that examines pre Columbian america in a larger context. Long distance trade, Spiro mound builder cities, major tribal conflicts. I would even consider a fact inspired fiction as well. Thank you

After Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo why didn't one of the powers of the Coalition have him shot?

It has seemed strange to me that they allowed him to return to exile considering what happened after his first. Even if it was a killing done "unofficially" if that makes sense.

Any insight would be appreciated!

(To be clear I'm not saying he should have been killed, it just seems strange to me that they wouldn't)

I’ll be first to admit here that I’m not all that educated on the Omaha beach invasion. Most of the knowledge I have on it is from movies, docs, video games, and briefly learning about it in school. Which is why I come here with this question.

What exactly happened here? This invasion was either poorly planned or it just did not go as planned. When we hear about this horrific battle we think of entire waves of infantry being mowed down by heavily fortified machine gun bunkers and artillery. Why were waves upon waves of infantry sent in like that? No air support or tanks? Just charge in on the beach until we make it up? That just doesn’t seem logical. Did we actually plan on having more resources for this battle or did we solely bet on the infantry making it up the beach? Something had to have gone wrong before the infantry landed...

Hi I hope this is the right place to ask and I'm not breaking any rules, I have a school assignment where I need to make a travel guide about prague in the middle ages, I need to list important places in the era and explain about their purpose.

Searching the web I struggled to find much information about those and even wikipedia was bland in detail, I'm looking for help to find where I can get this information or hear about them from you.

Thank you.

Hi, I am planning on reading Rubicon and Dominion by the author Tom Holland. However I can see there is some disagreement about his historical accuracy. Therefore I'd like to know:

A) Is Rubicon historically accurate and if not is there a better book that covers this period?

B) Is Dominion historically accurate and if not is there a better book that covers Christianity's influence on Western society?

C) Are any of his other books worth checking out or conversely, making sure I avoid?

Edit: I've stricken through parts that have been answered as I can see that the consensus around Holland is that he's not particularly reliable and that I should avoid Rubicon.

I can understand that "elections" are used to present a "credible" claim to be a government of the people for the people, to bestow favors and as a way to gauge support among ordinary people.

However it seems pointless to have a parliament which assembles once or twice a year, has no power to do anything and yet gets a fancy building and presumably social benefits for its members. It seems like you could simply have "presidential elections" every few years and be done with it.

Who decided that there needs to be a kind of national assembly?

Hello my Name is James and I’m junior in high school and for my final history project I chose to do it on the Warring States Period of Japan. I have looked all over the internet for information on this and I’m not finding any reliable information because most of the sites say one thing and then another site says different. If anyone knows anything about this time period of Japan and would be interested in helping or knows any reliable sites please let me know. Thank you for your time

India didn't even have nukes at that time, they were more towards the side of the USSR during the cold war and Portugal who was in NATO was attacked by India, yet there wasn't a response from NATO. I am aware the USA wanted European countries to decolonize and Goa was a colony but India who was an ally of the USSR was the one who would annex it. And as far as i am aware the reason the USA and USSR wanted the Europeans to decolonize was so they could have more influence in newly independent countries. Goa wouldn't even be a new country for the USA to ally with, the USA had a habit of launching coups in countries that weren't behaving in their interest. Am i missing something? So why didn't the USA and the rest of NATO help the Portuguese? And what was the public reaction of the people in the USA, Portugal, the USSR and India? Thanks

How many people did it kill (and what percentage of the population)? What effects did it have on Chinese society, both in the short-term and in the long run?

When sailors arrived on the island of Mauritius what was their reason for hunting dodo birds? Was there something inherently valuable about them, was it for food, sport? What human reasons led to their extinction?

Besides Leif Erikson...

(I use the term old world to refer to any place that is not the Americas, I believe this is accurate) I’ve always speculated that there might have been other people from the old world that might have found their way to the Americas.

The first and least likely I think of my ideas is that there were just other European explorers that ended up in the Americas that were just less documented. They could have been other Norse explorers or less known Spanish or Portuguese sailors.

The second and more likely I think of my ideas would be interactions across the pacific. One location I though of was between Siberia and Alaska. It’s how people originally migrated to the Americas, and the Bering straight isn’t very long and could be crossed when it freezes or with rafts. The areas are culturally similar so I believe there is some truth to this concept

The other location would simply be Polynesian sailors ending up eventually reading the pacific coast. While I personally doubt this as the distances seem so far, I do believe this might actually be true.

So, are there any recorded instances of these ideas actually happening? If not, how likely is it that each still happened? What might have these interactions looked like? Thank.

I heard somewhere that Hitler had originally asked Chamberlain to join his side under the pretext that British people were Aryan too and had a Germanic bloodline so I was wondering if that caused the Germans to treat the English a little better in comparison to the soviets or French

Specifically, I want to know if hospital bills in 1969 had the ability to sink a middle class family into crippling debt. It’s for a story I’m writing.

Edit: please avoid making responses about WHY healthcare in the U.S is so expensive. I’d like to avoid making the comment section political lol