I'm just interested in the social forces and fashions behind the American mid-century preference for blondes in actresses, models, etc.

I know that the USA has some sort of plan to survive after nuclear war but my googling has brought me nothing. I am mostly curious about the USSR though.

The story you always hear is that battleships were made obsolete by aircraft and carriers. I saw this argument develop on twitter phrased as "did an aircraft ever sink a battleship?"

I looked into it, but only a little. It seemed like a lot of battleships sunk by aircraft were, like the US battleships at Pearl Harbor; sunk while at their moorings. Or they were "sunk" at sea, but managed to perform successful damage control and were refloated without too much trouble.

Am I misunderstanding? A tiny amount of Wikipedia-ing makes me think that battleships, as a class; were too tough for aircraft of the time to be much of an existential threat. Are they obsolete because they are vulnerable, or because carriers and aircraft do their job of shore bombardment better, while also being faster and better at controlling the seas?

And if this isn't too far beyond a question of history: how much have the facts of life changed today? Would a massive, heavily armed ship lose to a carrier? I.E., without aircraft/drones; could a big, tough platform with lots of missiles/guns/torpedoes win? Or would it lose?

What if we got more science fictional, with functional railguns and lasers and ???

(*I am aware that ship sizes have changed a lot as well. For instance, a modern destroyer in 500-some feet, where the destroyers of WWII were under 400. If, based on length, the hypothetical battleship got a similar upgrade; I think it would be 1000+ feet. I realize length doesn't mean as much as displacement, length just works easier in my little brain.)

I ALSO realize that "effective in a fight" is different from "an efficient use of funding, manpower, resources." This may be a bad hypothetical.

That treaty is mentioned as one of the primary causes of WWII, and it caused a lot of hardship on the German population. Could a lighter version of the treaty been possible?

The Jewish population is fairly small compared to Christianity and Islam. Christianity has a huge lead in Islam which I assume can be attributed to the Missionaries which helped spread the religion at an insane pace. And I think Islam was spread by merchants and conquest (based on my limited knowledge).

Could any historians here give me an idea of why similar things did not happen for the Jewish population? The religion has persevered for a very long time.meankng there has been a dedicated populace for a long time. So what prevented them from becoming bigger?

Lately I have been completely sucked in the game CrusaderKings 3. In this game in order to wage war you need to have a claim on a county, duchy, kingdom, or empire title. When the war ends you only annex/vassalize the counties you were pressing a claim on. For example you could be occupying the whole of england in a war but when signing peace you only get the county of kent because you only had claim to this county. There are some exceptions to this but for the most this is true. For example tribal rulers have a 'conquest casus beli' option and can bypass the claims mechanic.

I have also been following a few medival educational youtubers, they sadly tend to focus mostly on 'the art warfare' not the politics behind them. I saw a movie a while back, cant remember the name for it wasnt particularry good, in which one scene was dedicated to a court of clerics argueing wether the king of England had claim to the throne of France and thus could go to war.

All this has made me wonder, how important/prevelant was this institution of claims/casus beli during the medieval period? Could a ruler not 'simply' conquer as the colonial powers later would do to the new world?

I do not have a particular time period in mind. But if I must give one I shal pick somewhere in 1066-1456 because crusader kings 3 takes place in this period.

I was listening to a podcast a few days ago (24th December) called Secret Societies. The episode was about the Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade. Among other things, I learned that some historians and sociologists (including the person who coined the word "genocide") consider the Albigensian crusade as the first indeological genocide. Mark Gregory Pegg writes that "The Albigensian Crusade ushered genocide into the West by linking divine salvation to mass slaughter, by making slaughter as loving an act as His sacrifice on the cross." He equally considers the Spanish Inquisition genocide as it mainly targeted Jewish conversos, and that the actions of the Catholic Church constitute an important precedent for later genocides, including the Holocaust.

I guess what I am wondering is, is this a view shared by most historians and is the Catholic Church as guilty of genocide as the Nazis ?

It's a common point that the different rail gauge size proved an obstacle for the Germans advancing through the Soviet Union in the Second World War. But there is little (that I have seen) on any difficulties the Soviets faced in having to convert them back from the European standard, or converting them whilst advancing through eastern Europe and Germany.

Did they not face this problem or was there some way they overcame it that the Germans were unable to?

Is there any actual evidence Maria Orsic existed or is it all just made up by conspiracy theorists?

I have only been able to find tenuous at best sources, but it seems with such a talked/written about character there has to be some basis in reality.

So far, I could not find an exact answer, many of the well-known empires were actually ruled by a king/queen instead of emperor/empress (British/Spanish empires). So what is the line that separates between those two?

Additional question: some Lithuanian historians claim the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was actually an empire at its peak. While it never had that title (kingdom title was also held only for a brief period of time) they claim that Lithuania actually fit the description namely:

1. It was a sovereign state

2. It was much larger than any other country in the region

3. Carries out large-scale territorial expansion

4. It was a hegemonic state

5. It was heterogenous in ethnic and cultural terms and had politically dominating ethnocultural minority

6. At some point its area reached so called "necessary" 1 million square kilometers

Do these claims have any basis or are there any better aspects that define an empire? Thank you and sorry for poor formatting

I've just finished reading Victor Davis Hanson's The Western Way of War, and while he does a detailed job of describing what these battles were actually like, there is no discussion of the political outcomes of these battles between two infantry phalanxes. I just don't understand the stakes.

I presume that the battles were often about territory, and so the winner presumably took some territory from the loser (or took unchallenged ownership of previously-disputed territory). But were there other typical changes to the status quo apart from borders moving?

And how were the "consequences" decided? Were the stakes somehow agreed-upon before the battle commenced? Were there post-battle surrender negotiations? Were there ancient Potsdam Conferences?

My question is what was seen in a better light by the American public trough out the early to mid 20th century and why?

Like what would a person from that time be more likely or more easily able to accept and why?

I have tinnitus from a shooting incident when I was younger, and as I sit here watching the old HBO show Band of Brothers about WWII paratroopers I realize just how many of these men would have been deafened by these experiences. I have to imagine leaders saw the problem immediately, but when were the first efforts undertaken to lessen it?

White supremacists seem really angry at the idea of them being anything but blonde and blue eyed but we know they sailed all over and had contacts with other cultures. I'm eager to know the truth.

Is there any significant difference between slavery as was practised in the United States and serfdom as was practiced in the middle ages of Europe? Not legal technicalities or theoretical differences, but in terms of the day to day reality of life for people with status such as "villains" in England?

I have seen conflicting information in educational sources with some saying that serfs are a form of slave and some sources (typically American ones) saying there is a difference. But it seems the basic principles are the same on the face of it, such as ownership of the person, and the treatment i.e. peasants being killed with impunity after revolts. Is there any definitive answer or is it subjective and shades of grey?

Hi, I’m a Turkish guy interested in this topic or these topics. Since my position on these issues is probably going to be asked, I would say what historians around the world are saying is probably right, these genocides probably did happen. I cannot say more because I feel like I shouldn’t say more without doing more research. That being said, I have some questions:

1. Is it agreed upon and proved by historians that Talat Pasha’s “controversial” telegraphs are authentic? IIRC, some of them were published by an Armenian man, and I’m only talking about these. Can we see these telegraphs published by this Armenian man like we see Testimonium Flavianum of Josephus, a controversial but nevertheless authentic piece of history?

2. Do Turkish archives provide any evidence for Armenian Genocide? Do they provide enough evidence for the genocide on their own?

3. How significant is evidence of Armenian Genocide from German sources, since Germany was allied with Ottoman Empire during World War I?

4. Did Armenians rebel first, or did genocide start happening first?

5. How would you answer the “no genocide took place” camp’s question about no Armenian mass graves being found?

6. Correct me if I’m wrong, but historians say Greek Genocide and Assyrian Genocide also happened around World War I. They were done by Ottoman Empire and/or some other Turkish forces. Why do we not hear about these genocides as much as we hear about Armenian Genocide?

7. Turkish politics portray Sevres Treaty as the ultimate plan of some things, including the push for the acceptance of Armenian Genocide by the Turkish state. Did these genocides get used against Ottoman Empire as an excuse for Sevres Treaty?

8. Why did Greece pay Turkey reparations for what she did in Anatolia when she invaded Anatolia (in Lausanne Treaty), but Turkey did not pay any reparations? Is it simply because Turkey won the Turkish Independence War?

9. What are some resources (books, videos, podcasts etc.) on these topics?

I've seen this headline on many news sites, reddit, and 4chan. The research that generates these headlines seems to be from Juliet Schor at MIT.

She seems to have a very anti-capitalist world view, and her research begins with "One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil.", and that before capitalism, people lived "lives of leisure". I'm not trying to make this political but I think many people on the left and the right agree that life was worse before modern capitalism. Personally, I remember learning about the daily life of a Puritan Colonist in US History Class and it seemed extremely exhausting.

Also, what is "work" to a medieval peasant in these studies? Is sewing clothes, chopping wood, cooking food, buying and selling things considered work? Or only tending to the farm?