Watching the week by week series of WW2 on youtube, during the invasion of France it gives the impression that the allies had very poor cooperation and communication, at least compared to the Germans. How much were the allies outmatched in terms of manpower and weapons, was there a chance of the allies maintaining the war in France?

During World War 2, the Soviet Union and The United States were both members of the Allies. I was thinking about the Battle of Midway today and was wondering if the Soviet Union had provided any support to the United States in the Pacific Ocean theater, in the war against the Empire of Japan?

With the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and attack on the Aleutian Islands, did the Soviets feel Japan to be a threat to Eastern Russia?

Wouldn't it have been helpful for the United States, and thus the Allies, for it to have had a staging base in Russia, on Sakhalin or across the Sea of Okhotsk from Japan, even if the Soviets didn't want to have direct involvement in that theater of the war?

The Wikipedia page states that Nigeria was supported by the USA, UK, AND USSR and that the Biafra Separatists were supported by France, China, and West Germany. Why did both sides have a mix of support between 1st and 2nd world countries when most conflicts of the era fell under a clear communist vs. capitalist division?

This is regarding the political alignments of the countries of europe after the war ended. The story has long gone that in pushing back the Germans the USSR was able to occupy the eastern parts of Europe and install communist puppet regimes without free elections. While this narrative is largely true I've found recently that it's a good deal more complicated than this. Yugoslavia and Albania effectively liberated themselves and subsequently were ruled by communist parties which came to power largely independent of the USSR. Similarly (at least from my understanding), the communists came to power in Bulgaria largely on their own through a coup at the tail end of the war. So that means three countries "behind the iron curtain" that at least to some extent became communist of their own accord.

My overall impression of Eastern Europe throughout the cold war was that they were forced to become communist countries against their will. While I'm sure it's near impossible to get actual data/polls on opinions, I would like to know: to what extent, if any, was there popular support for communist movements in eastern europe (particularly Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, Hungary, and Germany)? How did these movements factor into the soviet post-war plans?

I've just started watching the TV show "The Terror" which is what seems to be a fantasized theory of what happened to the crew of both ships although no one really seems to know what actually happened.

It seems that Korea is much more Christian in its history than the rest of east Asia. Christianity didn’t have a lot of success in China before the CCCP went state atheist and Japan outlawed Christianity in favor of Buddhism and Shinto which it seems they continue to practice outside of seemingly western/Christian style marriages. In the US I’ve seen specifically Korean Christian churches but never the same for Chinese or Japanese Christians.

I feel like I have a black hole of knowledge in WW2. The way I was always taught plus what I later picked up on my own was, the Battle of Britain wasn't ever really going to get Germany anywhere, but they fought it anyway, and lost pretty comprehensively (even if neither side fully appreciated it at the time). This was ~75% of the way through 1940.

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About halfway through 1941, Germany launches Operation Barbarossa, which ultimately completely changes the trajectory of the war. But between those two periods, there's about nine months which was basically never accounted for in any class I ever took, nor ever saw anything about. I know Germany mucked around in Greece and the Balkans for a short stint bit because Italy was woefully unready for war from the getgo, and I assume they were generally preparing for the invasion of the Soviet Union in some indeterminate fashion.

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But absent in that summary is what was the UK doing? At this point in WW2, they must know they basically have the Isles secured, and they had already rejected peace at least at that stage. So their only remaining needed goal is to figure out some scheme to actually, actively defeat Germany. But I have no idea what their plan was? What was their thinking? What were they trying to do at that point?

I'm currently working on a research report and want to use the song 'Wade in the Water' from the slavery years as a primary source. How exactly do I annotate the source apart from highlighting lyrics and stating the obvious meaning without any supporting evidence? Any help would be appreciated :)

I imagine there aren’t universally accepted answers, but I’m taking anything

That’s pretty much the whole question, for some detail on what I mean specifically is. How did political parties talk the American people into believing that putting more money into rich peoples pockets would eventually benefit them? The whole thing just seems like a scheme if I’m honest and I’m wondering what made people back then think that if a rich man got richer that they in turn would become better off.

First off, I'm sorry for my lack of knowledge on this topic, and want to note that I almost asked this in /r/NoStupidQuestions but decided an educated answer would be better than a flamewar. And before anyone says it, sure, maybe prehistoric tribes can be labelled "communist" and maybe didn't operate this way, but I am referring to the myriad 20th century communist countries that made up the "second World".

It's hard to get a clear answer without devolving into "communism bad" "no, communism good". From what I can tell, it's not necessarily required for a communist state to have a single authoritarian leader, yet all real-world examples I can think of had very consolidated power arrangements into a single position? There are free-market dictatorships and free-market republics, but it seems that any Communist state went down an authoritarian route of some kind-- Stalin, Tito, Mao, Castro? I'm familiar with the concept of the Vanguard of the Revolution, but surely this is not the only way to proceed forward?

Some hypotheses I've had on the matter include:

• Maybe I'm saturated in propaganda from an American public school system and actually the dictatorish nature of Communist societies I'd heard about is exaggerated/didn't hear about the examples where this didn't happen?

• Or, if it was accurate, it was a "fruit of the poisoned tree" situation, where since the Soviets went down a dictatorial Stalinist path and assisted the other communist countries in setting up, they imprinted this system onto them as well?

• There's also an issue of post-revolution political disarray generally giving rise to tyrants, which, when combined with Communism often being instated via revolution, yields a high risk of a tyrant seizing power.

Am I feeling around on the right path, or am I way off the mark?

I just ran across this paragraph in The Gods of Prophetstown, by Adam Jortner (p. 69), concerning the events that led up to the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe:

Numerous legends grew up around the Battle of Fallen Timbers. One American soldier with the unfortunate name of Robert MisCampbell had the greater misfortune to die of his wounds, and over the years historians and folklorists began to report that a "Miss Campbell" had been killed in the action. Andrew Coffinberry extolled the mythical female lieutenant in his 1842 poem The Forest Rangers: "Tears distilled from may an eye, / That saw the beardless hero die. / Wrenching apart the bloody vest, / Lo! They exposed a maiden's breast."

I obviously couldn't just leave that lying there, so I did some Googling. The soldier with this name is corroborated in other sources, and, indeed, others have born the same name all the way up into the 20th century, at least. From what I've found in my quick search, it sounds like our Robert MisCampbell may have actually been a captain of dragoons in the battle who allowed himself and some of his men to be cut off from support, a mistake which cost him and his men their lives.

I have never seen this prefix, and my (admittedly limited) Googling skill has failed to turn up any reference to such a patronymic prefix -- if, indeed, that's what this is. Because of the main element of the name, "Campbell," I'm assuming it must be Scottish in origin.

Is this a Gaelic patronymic prefix that goes along with Mc, Mac, Fitz, and O', or is it something else? Many thanks for any scholarship you feel inclined to lend to this question!

Did they know of each other? Did they establish trading relationships etc?

Did they just return home or go sleeper cell until they got new instructions?

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I was wondering this exact question. If the balkans were a specific region of interest for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with the Treaty of Berlin enacting in 1878 the administration of Bosnia-Herzegovina by the Habsburgs and the following Bosnian Crisis of 1908-09, it was clear that any war involving Serbia in 1912 would be watched closely by the Austro-Hungarians. Why dind't they join the war to weaken the serbian position in the balkans? What was their foreign policy objectives when they decided to remain neutral?