I remember reading that during the Winter War Stalin was paranoid that northern Russians would be too sympathetic to their Finnish neighbors, and sent troops from the southern areas of the U.S.S.R who were consequently less prepared to deal with Finland's grueling winter weather.

Unfortunately I can't remember where I read that. Would anyone be able to find any sources? Thank you so much!

If you are an historian that focus on a specific topic, and not a specific time period (like weapons, transportation, sports, etc, rather than e.g. "medieval England"). I can imagine that you sometimes identify current events as something that will probably be important and of interest to historians in the future. Do you ever help documenting the present?

For a concrete example, I can imagine that the electrification of cars during the last 10 year and the next ten or so years will be interesting in the future because it is a big change. Probably there are other similar events/changes in more niche topics that the general public is not aware of.

Often it appears sources are a problem, to some degree, for historians. Is there anything a historian today can do to help historians of the future?

I've been wondering about this and wondered whether people thought it would be similar to previous periods of violence, like that during and slightly after partition, as well as the IRA's Northern and Border campaigns, which didn't last that long and didn't have nearly as many casualties.

This question got into my mind when I realized that the earth is full of naturally occuring radioactive materials. That made me wonder about if there were ancient civilizations on earth that could have stumbled upon radioactive materials.

What would they have thought about these radioactive materials at the time? And what would they have thought was happening when people got radiation poisoning? Would there have been historical records of people discovering what would nowadays be considered radioactive materials?

I was wondering about early English/Norse history. Do we know who the first Norse was to raid at lindisferne? Do we know much about Ragnar lothbrok, Rollo, and the great heathen army? Finally any good books/authors/podcasts that go in depth in this time period

I mean sure Normandy is obviously closer to the giant navel base that is England, but the Atlantic Wall was there in response, all of the Germans’ attention was focused on the North coast. Why not island hope across Corsica and Sardinia from North Africa so you could use them for the same purpose? It just seems like they could have liberated France a couple months or a year earlier and without walking into a potential meat grinder. Also why were Operations Overlord and Dragoon carried out so far apart from another and not in conjunction?

Sorry if this is a dumb question or if this has been touched on before.

The Huns, GokTurks, Seljuks, Xiongnu, and Mongols have pretty big empires but why why not the Scythians, Alans, Sogdian or Sarmatians?

What made the Turkic and Mongolic Peoples so different compared to the Pre Turkic and Mongolic peoples of central asia?

I was wondering which popular history magazines (if any) I could feel comfortable enjoying without having to worry whether it's accurate or not. Some examples:

National Geographic

Smithsonian

American History

History Today

BBC History

Dolphins, orcas, and all sorts of whales are pretty intelligent. Have people who interacted with them always known this, or is it something that has only semi-recently become common knowledge? I imagine seafaring peoples had to have had some interesting run ins with the creatures of the deep, but was their incredible intelligence ever noted? Thanks for any information you might provide!

How did public attitudes to prohibition differ by region (ex. North vs South) and for what reasons?

so i was in an anthropology class and my teacher talked about the fact that many Native American groups have a circular view of time. this got me wondering about how the Greco-Roman religion does not seem to have a Ragnarok-like conclusion nor does it have a cyclical view of time like a lot faiths in the Vedic tradition.

so did the Greco-Roman world have an apocalypse and if not did Greco-Roman writers make any sort of predictions about their future

I have read this anecdote countless times of how Dean Rusk asked De Gaulle if his demand to have american forces removed from France also included the WW2 dead and how De Gaulle couldn't answer and simply left the room. However after doing some digging the only source to this claim I could found was Rusk's autobiography. Is there any other sources on the event or could it just have been made up by Rusk ? De Gaulle's reaction really seem out of character to me on that one.

Short version: How do modern historians use the term "black" (as in "black people")?

Long version: At a glance, I feel like the term "black" is pretty self-explanatory (I have sub-Saharan African roots and consider myself black for example), but the more history I read the more complex it seems.

I realize that what we consider "black" or "white" are fairly modern constructs and that they don't necessarily mean the same things to people of the past. Even in modern times, the term means different things in different places – a person who's considered black in the US may instead be identified as mixed in Brazil or Arab in Sudan.

Moreover, the term "black" seems to be designed for an American context (perhaps due to the one-drop rule). After all, a person from Ethiopia doesn't have much in common with a Nigerian when it comes to culture, language, and customs. It doesn't make sense to group them, yet most people, at least outside of Africa, would still consider both people as black.

I've seen other terms used instead: Sub-Saharan Africa(ns) for example. But that seems to play into the old stereotype of "merging" North Africa more together with Europe and/or Asia and downplaying its connections with the rest of the continent.

I feel like whatever term you use is inherently flawed. Let's say I would like to study the history of black people (both on the African continent and in the international diaspora): is there a way to accurately describe this? Is it more "correct" to say "I would like to study the history of black people" or are you better suited to say "I would like to study the history of sub-Saharan Africa and its diaspora"?

The more I think about it the more confused I get.

I just finished Kyle Harper’s The Fate Of Rome, and in it he argues for the Justiniatic Plauge’s widespread reach and crippling mortality. After finishing his work I read some reviews from academic journals which seemed to agree with the book’s thesis, though they thought he was prone to some exaggeration. Today however I came across an article by Lee Mordechi and Merle Eisenberg called “Rejecting Catastrophe: The Case of the Justinianic Plague”. This article cites Harper, several other historians and “recent scholarship” in its account of how historians have drastically over emphasized the devastation of the justiniatic plague. The article goes on to claim that “Any direct mid-or long- term effects of plague were minor at most.” Where is the status of current scholarship on this issue? Do they accept the “maximalist” position of over 33% cumulative mortality, the “minimalist” position of no or almost no impact, or somewhere in between?

Sorry for format issues I had to write this on mobile

During WW2, why didn't the americans just bomb the beach to smithereens? Wouldn't that make it easier to land and take less casualties?