So I've been playing Yakuaza 0 recently. Doing so has really got me interested in post war Japan and it's economy. Particular the boom in the 80s and the bust in the 90's. Are there any good book on those subjects? Particularly some some that are pretty accessible for a layperson?

How was it decided who would be on the front line in the revolutionary war and other older wars? Seems like a death sentence so I had to guess it would be the poor and maybe even convicts making a freedom deal in court. Or was it just random lower ranks/volunteers?

I have just heard about there being a word for "the day after tomorrow". Now I wonder why it fell out of use, since I've never seen it before. A quick google search yielded no results. I mean, it totally makes sense that it exists though! My native language is german and this word has a direct german translation. But not only german, also the french dictionary includes it. I suppose that other roman languages have it too. Now I'm left wondering how the simpler expression fell out of favour for a more complicated one.

There were plenty of high profile Soviet defectors to the Western world: Mikhail Baryshnikov, Boris Spassky, Svetlana Alliluyeva, etc. But as far as I know, this seemed to only go one-way. The only American defector I've heard of was Lee Harvey Oswald (and my understanding is that the Soviets didn't want him, because he wasn't important or interesting at the time he sought to defect).

Presumably the Soviets would have welcomed defectors from the United States, like the artists, athletes, and government officials that seemed to defect to the U.S., but that never seemed to happen as far as I'm aware.

Did it happen? If not, was it just a function of the economic situation in the United States being more favorable? I would have thought that a high-profile American defector would be a sufficiently useful propaganda tool that the Soviets would have paid a substantial amount of money to get one.

EDIT: This flair seems very inaccurate.

Is there a clear historical distinction/definition between a skirmish, which I understand to mean small-unit action with forces up to approximately a modern company in size, and a battle?

My grandpa worked on the Manhattan Project, and while he died decades ago, he always maintained that his role on the project amounted to pencil pushing. But after the war, he immediately transitioned to a civilian career where he was highly sought after as an airline weights and balances engineer and was something of an expert in how to cram dangerous shit into a plane without things going awry. Supposedly, according to family lore, Grandpa was one of the masterminds who figured out how to get the bomb off the ground, into the air, and back onto the ground. But he was a notoriously tight lipped man with a litter of children with overactive imaginations, and I think he was probably telling the truth when he said he wasn't much more than a pencil pusher. I can't imagine, just based on the fact that he was in his late twenties when the bomb dropped, that he had any real responsibilities. But he was also highly educated before being recruited for the project and immediately found employment that a pencil pusher would seem woefully unqualified for. Are there unclassified employment records, or something else that would help me figure out what Gramps was up to?

I was a soldier in the US Army and understand how chaplaincy worked within our Army. One chaplain per battalion, usually a captain/O-2 and then a brigade chaplain who is a Major/O-3. How did the Nazi's have chaplains within their ranks? Was it by battalion? How they fare knowing that Nazi Germany was anti-christian? Were they treated badly by the higher military ranks who were probably brainwashed to hate religion also? Were they officers like in todays militaries? Were soldiers allowed to openly disrespect them because the Nazi's did not care for religion? I know the German military/Wermacht was filled with "normal" Germans, many of them not completely brainwashed that probably believed in religion but what about the SS? Did the SS have chaplains even though the organization was one which brainwashed its members to hate religion?

I'm currently trying to study this but a lot of info I am finding doesn't explicitly say an area was majority Shia, only had significant Shia schools. Only areas I can find confirmation for are Northern Iran and Azerbaijan.

I only ever see people talk about the Black-White segregation, but where were the Hispanics, Asians, and other ethnicities during segregation?

In the movie "War Horse" the Regiment Cavalry Commander (Benedict Cumberbatch) advised his subordinates "from Waterloo to Omdurman, to Pickett's Charge to the Battle of Mars-la Tour, the first attack is decisive".

What lessons or insight did Europeans see from this battle or subsequent battles from the American Civil War?

Did either sides have plans of what to do if they won? Did Japan trust German and vice versa? If Russia and the US could enter a Cold War right after being allies, I’d assume the alliance between Japan and Germany could have been fragile too. Did either have plans on how to handle each other?

I often wonder whether or not the the notoriety of Caligula is rooted in reality, or is a result of political propaganda. What contemporary documentary evidence exists to substantiate the claims of historians who call him a villain?

[crossposted from /r/ancientrome]

What are those other things he was referring to?

Assuming that I did not make any bone headed math errors (all values rounded):

A 45 slug has a weight of 15 grams, with a muzzle velocity of 150 m/s and a kinetic energy of 169 Joules.

A Roman lead shot hurled from a sling has a typical weight of 30 grams, and a velocity of 45 m/s (160 km / hour) has a kinetic energy of only 30 joules.

Not even close.

So where does this claim that a lead sling shot has the same impact as a 45 come from?

Or is kinetic energy the whole story?

Hello r/askhistorians! I've been doing some research on Mesoamerican Cultures in my spare time, and I've noticed something odd about Aztec Myths compared to the myths of the rest of the world and even compared to some other Mesoamerican cultures. Why does it seem the Aztecs/Nahua seem to be lacking heroes in the vein of Heracles, Sun Wukong, Nezha, Karna, Arjuna, Beowulf, Cu Chulainn and the Hero Twins of The Maya? Is this just a cultural difference? Were records of these heroes destroyed by the Spainards? Or am I missing something?

Sometimes as I read through it, I find answers that are several years old, occasionaly from before the sub's current standards of quality have been implemented. I'm curious if there is some ongoing/regular effort to curate posts for inclusion in the FAQ.

My grandfather grew up in Czechoslovakia, and was drafted to fight in WW2 with the German’s. My grandmother grew up in Hungary and was taken to a labour camp.

By the time I was born my grandparents we separated and my grandfather died when I was still young, so I really don’t have much information on him. I grieve losing the chance to get to know him as a person and listen to the experiences he had.

My grandmother died when I was 10, but I know she grew up on a farm, because she told me they used to dye their chickens so they wouldn’t get mixed up with the neighbours. I also know that while she and her siblings were in the labour camp they would give their rations to the younger sibling because they were growing. Since her passing I also grieve not being more interested in hearing her stories when I was younger. I’m sure I could’ve learned so much about life from her.

I would love to be able to retrace their lives but because they’re both gone and I don’t know if any records would exist, I’m really looking for any sort of guidance towards textbooks, videos, novels etc that could give me more of an understanding of what their lives could’ve been like.

With my limited European understanding of Vietnam's revolution and the wars, I have understood the Catholic church played a role in opposing communism and supporting the Southern regime. I have lately befriended some immigrant people in my country who come from the South Vietnamese community, are all Catholic, and tend to be very conservative and opposed the current (North based, and to what extent still socialist?) regime. They claim to be an example of the majority of Vietnamese people, however statistically Catholicism seems to be a minority religion in the country.

I would appreciate especially an internal view to this: To what extent did the church side with the South in the Vietnam war? Has it been more influential in the past, and diminished since? Are the official figures of religiosity in Vietnam accurate? Has there been a cultural shift concerning religious values in Vietnam since the country became socialist, or are they incorporated in the state's agenda and actually the norm?

I would like to know what different scenarios would put a Sicilian person in jail if they were not Jewish. Did Mussolini agree to have his political opponents rounded-up and taken with Jews to concentration camps, or was it Germans on their own who met resistance from opposing non-political groups and put Italians in Jail not with a direct order by Mussolini, or was it a combination of both? Were political prisoners of war brought to separate camps?

I am aware many people were put into concentration camps for being a number of things like disabled, a Gypsy, gay, non-Aryian, etc. But I know Mussolini did not share the same ethnic views as Hitler, and actually, ideologically opposed sending Jews to Germany since he considered them Italian being the fascist he was. I mean, he's still awful and still allowed it, but my point is a lot of what he did was for political gain. So it would seem like he would have had an extra incentive to put political prisoners in war instead of picking out ethnic groups, disabled people, and the LGTBQ+ community.

So I'm assuming Mussolini let German soldiers organize who they wanted to take while he only actively searched for political opponents and their groups, but they were sent to concentration camps all the same. I'd like to know about these political prisoners going to concentration camps. Were they Communists? Were they bandits? Were they anti-Nazi or anti-fascists or both? Why were they fighting?

Apologies for any ignorance I'm perpetuating.

Why do I ask? I found Dachau records with my family's last name who are all from the same town my great-grandfather was born. I'm trying to figure out more about them.

Thank you!

I recently learned from the musical Six that when Katherine Howard, 5th wife of Henry VIII, was 13, she had a sexual relationship with her very much adult music teacher. My first thought is that by 21st century standards, 13 year olds are children and this would be considered child molestation and a serious crime.

What about her contemporaries though? Would she have been considered unacceptably young, or would the issue just have been that they weren’t married? If 13 was considered too young (or for cases with prepubescent children,) were there consequences for adults who sexually abused them?

I saw reference to this idea in a comment by u/restricteddata and I was wondering if there was any research or commentary on this?

Surely when Truman was asked to give the go ahead he would have wanted to know something about the target? And did someone expressly tell him that it was a military base? Wouldn’t they have been in major trouble afterwards?