the soviets lost about 1m rifles during the second world war, so i'm wondering, did they actually do that? or is it just some bogus info

Obviously there's the recent events in DC shining a light on the intensity of conspiracy nuts in the US, but conspiracy communities in the US have most famously formed around events like the moon landing and JFK assassination. Then while reading through the first several volumes of the Oxford History of the United States, I was struck by the prevalence of conspiracy theories in the politics of the early US as well. Daniel Walker Howe points out that by the 1830s, Americans' "long-standing suspicion of conspiracies against them" had included such targets as the British, the slaves, the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and the banks.

Is this long history of political conspiracy theories unique to the US, or is it a more general phenomenon?

I deliberately chose a broad region to enable a wide variety of possible answers. I know that one possible reason for the fall of the large kingdoms of the bronze age is that iron enabled poorer people to make weapons, which disrupted the structures of power.

While iron is widespread, it seems likely that it took a while for knowledge of how to mine and forge it to spread. Was lack of basic metal tools a problem?

So I'm watching the show Vikings and I'm fully aware that it takes A LOT of liberties with its historical accuracy but there are two things that are unclear to me and that's why I'm here. I already did my own research but it didn't bring up much.

1. In the show, everybody is so extremely surprised that there is land to the West. However, Aethelstan seems to speak the Norse language. Now whether or not Aethelstan was real, it implies that there was some contact before. Either that Aethelstan has visited the North or has had some contact with Norsemen. In this instance they would have confirmed each other's lands and existence and it wouldn't be such a mystery.

2. This question is somewhat linked and I believe it's based on factual also.

In the show, both King Aella and the Norse people seem to never witnessed a boat that can travel up a river or across a sea? This one really didn't make any sense to me because number one, how did boats get back up rivers before then and number two - hadn't the Romans already crossed seas and such? I feel like by the year 900 we had already done stuff like this.

This is my first time posting in this subreddit so please excuse any transgressions and I'll fix them retroactively if you let me know.

Thanks!

I saw a fight video where one guy hits his neck really hard and I thought about fights back in Rome and how many people must have seriously injured themselves. Without modern medicine or even public builds like ramps for wheelchairs, how would someone live a day to day life? I assume it depends fully on which social class you belong to, but I can’t believe they would just kill paralyzed people? I specify paralyzed instead of losing a limb because I assume losing a limb would have been way more common given swords being a common weapon of the time. Would love articles/papers or even just your thoughts.

When the Chinese republic sent laborers, what did they do, did any every see combat, or were they just given to help. Also, to which side of the war where the sent off to, the entente or the central powers?

So according to Wikipedia, the Three Percenters’. (a gun advocacy group) name derives from the claim that only 3% of American colonists took up arms against the Great Britain during the American Revolution. Is this claim true?

I know that Germany loved their captured tanks during the World Wars. During WW2, they seemed to use whatever they could get their hands on, even though they had a robust domestic tank program. Looking at WW1, however, Germany struggled to produce many tanks at all and used mostly captured vehicles, but I've only been able to find examples of British tanks being used in this role.

Was there some reason, logistical or doctrinal or else, that captured French tanks don't seem to have been used, even though they were a more numerous adversary? Is this just a bias of available photographs and accounts?

I've heard claims on both sides of this, that people in all eras found stories of their parents childhoods strange and quaint and had nostalgia for bygone fashion, and conversely that the 1650s and 1690s, or the 1320s and 1360s, or whatever, were so similar to eachother that there was no equivalent notion of the previous decades as we have today.

TLDR: What book would you recommend to someone interested in the archeological record of the Viking era? I'm particularly interested in women's experiences.

In the last couple of years, I've seen some really interesting Viking era artifacts. Particularly, Sutton Hoo in the British Museum and a small but spectacularly curated traveling exhibition from Uppsala University in Sweden.

Since those whet my interest, I've been reading. Vikings - a History by Neil Oliver was a nice light general intro. I enjoyed one very unusual book called The Far Traveler - Voyages of a Viking Woman, which is supposed to be a biography of a historical woman, but spends equal time as a travelogue about the authors experiences on an archeological dig in Iceland.

I don't mind subjectivity and speculation, but I'd like to avoid stereotypes like horned helmets and Bernard Cornwell characters. I am particularly interested in anything focused on women's experiences.

Was there a type of Godwin's Law back in Nazi Germany? We wring hands over becoming "like Hitler" or "like the Nazis" - who did they say they were becoming like?

I got curious about this, because it's no fact that Turkey denies the Armenian genocide. But has it always denied the Armenian genocide? Did people like Mustafa Kemal Atatürk deny the genocide, and if so, why? It seemed as though the new Republic of Turkey was trying to shun away from the Ottoman Empire, so why deny the Ottoman genocide of the Armenians?

I’ve recently came across Vasily Grossman’s some works of literature, I also know of Band of Brothers and The Old Breed from HBO shows. I’d love it if anyone could share some memoirs, or nonfiction/fiction books on either of the world wars. Maybe something a little more diverse than the usual American works of literature. But either way, I would appreciate it if anyone can recommend some for me, thanks.