In the USA we saw the Vietnam War as a proxy war against the Soviet Union and/or China, a battle of ideologies. I know that the Vietnamese saw it instead as a war of independence and liberation from European influence. But how do they contextualize it within their broader history, e.g. with relation to China? Is it something that starts with Ho Chi Minh or does it go back much further for them? Is the Communism aspect essential to how they see it or incidental?

I am aware that evolution is an ongoing process and this question is probably anthropological in nature and possibly subjective. I wasn't sure whether to post it in askscience instead, but figured for a mutation to be "widespread" it would have had to be a historical question. Edit: If the answer lies in the last 10,000 years ago, it probably differs by race also, so please don't answer entirely subjectively with racial bias!

Apologies if this isn't a suitable question.

I have done a good bit of googling, and also checked out the archives of /r/norse and this sub, but haven't found anything definitive.

I so far have the three main groupings of people as Thralls (slaves), Karls (farmers), and Jarls (aristocracy) - with a "Kongungr" or king at the top of all of that, but I have found various suggestions for occupations/classes within the three strata, including (with my understanding of what they are)

Thralls / former thralls:

• Thrall (slave)
• Leysingi (freed Thrall)

Karls:

• Bondi (tenant farmers)
• Hauldr (landowners, hereditary)

Jarls:

• Landsmann (junior aristocracy, army raisers etc)
• Jarl (senior aristocracy)
• Bryti (royal steward of some sort?)

I've also found these ranks/roles in my travels, which seem to be more military than social

• Drang (some sort of junior warrior/soldier)
• Thegn (Thane? either a senior solider or a landholder of some sort)
• Skeppare (Skipper? Of a ship?)
• himthiki (another sort of solider, but seems to also be a karl?)

All of which I'm perfectly willing to believe is completely misguided...

Can anyone help me sort out which of these are valid terms, ranks, roles - which, which, if any, intersect with each other (can you be both a leysingi and a bondi, for instance?), and perhaps order them in some sort of order of importance?

Since, ship travel was the only alternative to land traveling. Was it considered safe and reliable by the ancient Romans? Which form of traveling was more preferred? And I am asking about normal civilian travelers here, not cargo or military.

I'm talking about western Europe or the USA for that matter.

Between 1945 and 1949 there was no German government, yet there were immense challenges from (re-)integration of returning POWs and refugees to (presumably) keeping the coal mines working so trains could run at least occasionally in order to move people and material. How much was managed by the Allied administrations? Did the German administration function without a central government?

Did they emergency drop them all? Let them go down with the plane? Were the bombs even designed where a crash would set them off? What about during a crash landing where the crew planned to ride the bomber to the ground?

Side question: Is there precedent for bombs being shot while on the wings of fighters or bombers and exploding?

(Remade post to fix typos)

I've been reading a lot about WW2 recently, and as far as I can tell

• Roosevelt distrusted De Gaulle
• Churchill openly despised him
• Stalin distrusted the French for their early defeats/losing all of their equipment to the Wehrmacht (used later in operation Barbarossa)
• They played little role in the major battles
• The Vichy state still controlled the colonies, and openly collaborated

Given all of these facts, it seems to me that France really lucked out in being considered a victor, and governing 1/4 of the allied occupation zone. Can someone tell me how it came to be that the French were given the same victors rights as the other Allied nations?

So I'm quite intersted in WW2 and nazism, and I take a history and philosophy class where people like Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche (Übermensch, I do know this was not anywhere close to what Hitler had in mind, but it is still linked as a potential inspiration) are brought up so I'm wondering if you can give me a broader or more detailed view.

I guess what I'm asking is what was the founding stones for nazism? What inspired Hitler and his likeminded?

If this topic is unsuitable for /r/AskHistorians do let me know / remove.

Traditionally, after any post-war occupation, there has been a notable risk of revolt. Technically speaking, Japan remained an independent state after WWII, yet they were almost completely subjugated by the USA to my knowledge. After being subject to such an extreme ideology and subsequent pacification by the USA, what was the mood in the civilian populace of Japan? What repressed any fallout of rebellious attitudes towards the occupying USA?

I know there were other gold rushes in different parts of the world such as Australia, but in some things I've read and watched it seems like there might have been a general viewpoint of Americans that peaked around '49 towards Americans as being just lucky and having the good fortune to live in a place with the resources it did.

Is there any possible truth to this or did the gold rush not really even get noticed by other countries?

While it may seem that by the time the war was turning around (42 and 43) and that after the failure of Stalingrad/the 6th Army, as well as the Northern African front/Afrika Korps, the war was coming back to the German Third Reich. With all of the bloodshed spread on two fronts, and an obvious need for new soldiers to go out and fight, why didn't the Nazi's use prisoners within the Holocaust?

I don't mean every man, woman, and child be forced to go out, that would be bad strategy. But why didn't they do examinations of each man, and if they were able-bodied, instead of being forced into gas chambers/camps, be suited up to the battlefield? Of course nobody would expect them to last, but why not just be used as meat shields for the "real" soldiers?

For example you know how we have potato chips, cookies, etc for snacking what did the colonists of British America enjoy as their snack food?

Sources in answers please.