I've always been interested in history but often fell into the trap of thinking I understood how things happened because I knew a couple of facts about an event that most people hadn't heard of. I've been trying to approach the topic more seriously.

Right now I'm reading "Battle Cry of Freedom" to learn something from a different perspective than my Lost Cause supporting high school history teacher. Other books I have read recently are Robert Caro's "The Path to Power", Edmund Morris's "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt", Ibram X. Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning", David Halberstam's "The Fifties", Joseph Ellis's "Founding Brothers", Arthur Herman's "Gandhi and Churchill", Stephen Ambrose's "Nothing Like it in the World".

I feel like I have at least some historical perspective up until the end of the 1950s. After the 1950s I feel my knowledge is all through cultural osmosis rather than actually reading anything that tries to grapple with events from a more rigorous perspective.

Under the guidance of the 20-year-rule, what would be a good modern history to start with. I'm curious what the community might consider to be the best preamble to the present. The rise of conservatism and Reagan? The Clinton years? The fall of the Soviet Union? The creation of the internet? Thoughts?

I am interested in both ideological and pragmatic reasons. I've heard from a few sources that Marxist-Leninism wasn't "supposed to work" in a country like China that was still so agrarian... is that accurate? And why?

A lot of the work I have been going through about Occultism/Esotericism in Britain has been taking a maximalist position, where Occultism is supposed to be extremely influential in certain periods of time. All of it assumes the historiography before downplayed its significance beyond niche or specialized areas of society and culture, but I am having a hard time finding such older research on the subject. Are there any old works on Occultic/Magic currents in Britain (and the Western world in general) that argue this minimal approach?

My impression was after the war ended (1945) and the concentration camps were discovered - is when Nazi’s were seen (globally) as a racist/prejudice.

Why was there no military use of chemical weapons by the Nazis?

I’m aware that Hitler had an understandable personal aversion to the stuff (sadly limited to soldiers), and that the Nazis presumed the Allies to have formulations as nasty as Sarin (when we didn’t, pace Op Vegetarian), and that the battlefield utility of chemical weapons is often less than their theoretical lethality would suggest...

But, I just can’t get my head around the fact that, in 1945, chemical weapons were not deployed against military targets by the Nazi Germans.

This was no ‘regular’ war fought over contested territory or what have you - the Nazis wished to wipe out the Jews and the Slavs, and were not all that fond of the Western Allies, who had been turning their cities into charnel for years.

Many (including Hitler) had assumed a Wagnerian, ‘end of days’ mentality, where they were happy to see their nation in ruins and fight on, because there could be no ‘post-war’. Children and the elderly were being sent to the front. Hitler even ordered the bombing of German infrastructure, though ‘cooler heads prevailed’.

They’d clearly lost the war, but had done so at a point at which they still maintained an integrity of command and a certain freedom of action: i.e, if given the order, the chemical weapons would surely have been able to be used?

A particularly convincing point is that use could have been restricted to the ‘barbarian’ Soviets (who they already planned to murder en masse c.f. Generalplan Ost), in order to buy time for the Western Allies to capture as much of Germany as possible.

Whilst this may not be the best form of historical analysis... if the Second World War were a fictional story, would it be believable for the regime which had morphed into a bottomless pit of evil (having not started out all that nice), aware of its facing utter defeat, not have used the one weapon (at least against their most hated enemy, who they viewed as subhuman) which could stall the relentless advance of their foes?

To top it all off, they’d been using chemical weapons against the Jews etc. for years. You can only be hanged once...

There will be good reasons I’m sure, and I’ll be very grateful for them being revealed to me, because what happened just doesn’t seem very plausible.

During the Second World War there was obviously a need for a domestic military presence at training camps, bases, shore defense and the like. Was this duty seen as lessor or cowardly? Would a man get looked down on for enlisting in the Coast Guard instead of the Navy? Would a Marine assigned to training at Parris Island through '44 be ridiculed by other Marines?

Hello,

I'm making an essay about the Enigma machine for school. I'm currently working on the chapter about the work of the Polish. The Polish broke the code however the British later had to do it again, so the Germans must've improved the machine so that that method didn't work anymore. Now I can't seem to find anything on what the Germans excactly did to do that.

I would love to get an answer to this. Of course, as it's for an essay, they would like to see some sources, so I would like some sources.

Thanks already!

Not to say other things haven't but I've noticed that bows and arrows are like a staple weapon and have seemingly (to me) evolved in completely separate cultures continuously. But maybe I'm just noticing something that's not as prevelent as I'm thinking 😅

Even just a conquest of Korea was a large task (one that the Japanese did not manage to accomplish). Did Hideyoshi really believe that he would have been able to conquer the whole Ming Empire?

Black pepper seems to be a staple spice across much of the English speaking world, to the point that pepper dispensers (salt and pepper shakers) are pretty standard kit in any household. I don't think I'm alone in adding pepper to almost every meal (at cooking stage or after it's prepared), and it seems kind of bizarre that I consider this one spice essential to almost every meal. Why? How did pepper gain this place of prominence in our kitchens and meals? Were there other spices that had this special place in the past? Are there other spices that have this status in other parts of the world and if so, what are the historical reasons for this?

A lot of contemporary African cuisine prominently features ingredients native to the Americas. West African dishes like jollof rice make heavy use of tomatoes, potato samosas are common in East Africa and Maize is used for porridge in South Africa. All around the continent, chili peppers of American origin are massively popular. How, if at all, were these dishes eaten before these new world ingredients were introduced? Was African food spicy before Columbus? Was the only source of heat black pepper? Have wondered about this for a long time.

My question: How was America’s military involvement compared to other countries? Lots of people online like to push that America was the almost the biggest contributor to winning world war 2, but I don’t think this is entirely true. Which of the allies did better relative to their effectiveness? Thanks!!

This question courtesy of the movie Greyhound, in which air cover from either the American or British coasts seems to be a foolproof defense against U-boats. That being the case (was it the case?), having aircraft carriers accompany the convoys seems like a no-brainer. Did they do this? If so, I think I've never heard about it; if not, why not? Was air cover not all that effective against U-boats? Was the Pacific theater's demand for aircraft carriers so high that none could be spared for the Atlantic?

This came to my mind because I recall that the Soviet Union often pointed to segregation and racial injustices in America as evidence of the failure of Capitalist society. It seems at least some people were more than happy to make the USSR's argument for them...

I found corius that a country with so much influx of western and european ideas and fare share of their own intelectuals can't seem to accept the ideals that spread thought the rest of the western world, no matter what regime they are under (absolutism, communism, oligarchy). I know they had short periods of a more democratic style government, like the provisional government in ww1 and in the aftermath of 1991, but both were just attempts that either lacked popular support or where filled with corruption.

Does the name mean something that could pertain to both areas? Were they populated by related people?

Did the kingdoms and empires of Central and Western Europe (try to) placate the mongols, so they won't invade them? Did they fear that the mongols will continue to conquest further west and that they might conquer large portions of Central and Western Europe? And did they plan a (possible) campaign to fight the mongols and liberate the territories under their rule?

So I started watching vikings of Netflix and I found about that the characters on the show did actually exist but how true is it.?

Was it based on some founding year like Rome's?

I’m beginning to write historical papers, but my background is in more narrative style writing since my major was in another field. In undergrad, it was DRILLED into us not to put our opinions or ideas into papers so I’m having the hardest time knowing how to analyze a primary source without feeling weird about it. Any thoughts?? Am I right that this is feels different because it IS different?

Was it based on skin color?