Paradoxically, people can only ask questions about what they know. This can happen through knowledge of past persons or events, such as asking why Rome fell; or it can come by extrapolating from their own life, such as asking how homosexuality was viewed in a specific time and place.
If it seems like most people have the same questions about Jesus, American slavery, and Hitler, it means historians need to get better at letting the world in on the awesome "secrets" that we shouldn't be keeping!
Yes, but each question is a new question to the person asking it. That makes it important.
This subreddit's purpose is educate people and answer questions. Doesn't matter if we flaired users have seen a question a million times, it's the first time for the person asking, and that's what matters.
Yes. The issue is that most people aren't really exposed to much history. I've often mused that unlike say math or biology, which have the good fortune of basically building on, in higher education, what people have learned in high school, history has to deal with the fact that what most people think of as "history" bears relatively little in common with what historians are actually doing and writing about.
Another way of stating this, that is closer to what you are asking is that it isn't just the subject matter (Hitler, etc) that gets tiresome, it's frequent focus on trivia, basic narrative, and so forth. Historical narrative matters, obviously, but it's the first step not the last one, in understanding history. Part of this comes from realizing that history is NOT like physics. You can't really ask "What 'the real story' with X" the same way you can ask "What is the speed of light in a vacuum."
Similarly, theory in history is NOT the same thing as theory in science. In other words, there will never be a point in time when history is "done." There will never be a master narrative that simply puts the field to rest. This is because these, despite the reservations of some in the humanities, are fields are inherently interpretive. We too frequently fall into the false dichotomy of pure objectivity or complete relativism. In fact, it is learning to be comfortable in dealing with uncertainty, but not complete uncertainty, that is important for dealing with topics in the humanities. We are dealing with an interpretive field that is rooted in verifiable historical sources. What do these sources say when looked at through the lens of class? gender? what about when I read them "against the grain" as is often good practice in the archives? What about if I am writing a social history? cultural history? To be a good historian, I would contend, you need to be well versed in theory and methods for the sake of expanding your "historical toolbox" for analyzing and interpreting your sources.
I like questions that deal with historiography. I like questions that are looking for an answer (or multiple answers) instead of "the" answer. I like questions that contain within them an appreciation for different perspectives. I like questions that as "so what?" instead of "what?". The best historical questions tend to take a basic narrative (even if incomplete) and interrogate it. This is why so many history research projects change substantially through phases of initial conception, reading, and researching. Learning to be a good historian is much more about learning to ask good questions (what to ask, when to ask them and understanding why it is the right question), as it is about learning to recite historical narrative.
I don't blame people for asking the questions they do. However, I am often frustrated that it is difficult to get the above across in an answer to very narrative focused questions. You can give a basic narrative of something if that is what people really want, but it is, as I said, the first step to understanding the topic, not the last. It's a limitation of this medium, I think. Nonetheless, as someone who takes seriously the idea of getting the field of history "out there" to a wider audience, it is also a medium I think worth pursuing further.
I don't deal in European history, but I'll answer anyway because I think this is a problem that affects all historians. Short answer is no. Here's why:
As /u/sunagainstgold said, people can only question what they know, and this limits questions. Sure, some people put together different things they know and end up asking about the banking practices of nomad tribes in the Sahara, or the development of fish fingers by the Mayans. But generally, people stick to expanding their knowledge on something they recognise because it's a familiar and easy starting point. I've done so on this sub by answering questions outside my area, but which I have some knowledge of to use as a jumping off point.
Now when someone comes in and asks a question about Hitler, they're starting off with a fact they know: Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany during the Second World War, and is widely regarded to have been an evil man.
Recent questions submitted with Hitler in the title jump off from this fact:
How did German Americans react to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis?
How was Hitler's power given to him by the German politicians?
These questions all relate to that core fact: question 1 and 5 deal with perceptions of people amongst the German population. Question 3 & 4 do this too, but with a different spin on the questions: one looks at later perceptions; the other at the German migrant community in the United States. Question 2 tries(somewhat) to explain Hitler's behaviour in a different way. These questions reflect to us what popular views of history are. In these examples, we see that Hitler was a bad person, and people are trying to figure out why he was elected, were people swayed by him, and whether he was recognised for his actions even though they were bad.
This occurs in all histories. I do racial histories, usually in North America looking at the Civil Rights Movement. Historians refer to a 'long CRM', stretching from the first days of freedom for the slaves in the nineteenth century, through to the Black Panthers and Black Power, and even continuing on to the present day with protests over African American deaths at the hands of police. But while the CRM isn't as common a topic as Nazi Germany, there is a constant narrative about the history that is adhered to and it usually involves Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Brown v. Board, and Rosa Parks. They're the buzzwords for that period. Irish history has the Easter Rising and the Famine, slavery has indentured slaves, East Asian history has the Mongols. They're the popular images of history.
Now, the reason I don't mind these aspects of topics, and even like them appearing, is that they give us the opportunity to counter popular history with a slightly more accurate picture, or expand upon it with some wider knowledge. Whenever the CRM comes up, I make sure to plug the 'long CRM',(like above!) in the hopes people will retain that and think about the fact that African Americans were resisting white supremacy long before the fifties and sixties. Likewise, questions about Hitler can lead to discussing histories of the German American community and their persecution, about the dynamics of Nazi Germany politics - not all people were Nazis, and not all Germans were bad like their leader.
So repetitive questions are good because they show an interest, and we can seize on that interest to explain a bit more. They also mean we can challenge a dominant narrative, which may be tiresome because it exists. But answering a question on it is good because you're showing someone something they didn't know, while at the same time showing them that maybe not all history can be believed at what you're told first.
Being one of the few flaired users who actually is in a position to be answering Hitler questions... Yes and no?
On the one hand, Hitler questions can get very tedious, and the things people ask about him can be... weird. I mean, there is an entire FAQ page devoted just to Hitler questions. For better or for worse, I do understand why there is a morbid fascination with Hitler, but it doesn't make it any less "uggg" when it comes to the sheer volume of questions we get. With thousands of years of history, and nearly infinite topics out there... nope. "DID HITLER LIKE BRUSSEL SPROUTS!?"
On the other hand... I like answering questions! And I'm pretty good at answering Hitler questions it seems. I won't lie... answering "Did Hitler Masterbate?" wasn't as bad as people might think. Took a good bit of effort to get that info together! I haven't read thousands of pages on the damn Nazis for shits and giggles!
And less personally, the point of this subreddit is for people to get answers to their questions. And if people have questions about Hitler, well, I'd prefer they come here then, I dunno, get /r/AskReddit's opinion. So in the end... keep 'em coming...
I'm not employed as an actual historian, but as someone who tries to chip in on Arabic and Islamic studies questions when they come up, yeah I would love to get more questions on my topic, and especially recent history! It's a bit surprising to me, given how much interest there is in the region, that so little is asked about about 20th century middle east history, but I would support /u/sunagainstgold's about the paradox of needing knowledge to ask for knowledge on that one.
If there's a positive to all this it's that the number of questions on Hitler has inspired me to read Kershaw's massive biography of Hitler so I can chime in on some of these questions as well. :)
I'm doing NaNoWriMo at the moment and I find myself fascinated by the sort of questions that get asked on their HistFic forums. Some are ludicrously specific (I found myself suddenly trying to find the Romanian football fixtures for a particular week in 1939 while writing mine), others way too general ("what was it like living in Nazi Germany?") but the ones I particularly like are those where the question starts from such a stunningly wrong first premise that it's difficult to answer helpfully. One from a few years ago that I particularly cherish began "What was High School like in ancient Greece?" and included sub-questions about how lockers were secured before the invention of padlocks, and how teachers co-ordinated lesson times without clocks.
No. Mainly because it is my area of expertise and I think it is important to answer people's questions about it in order to gain a better public understanding of the past.
I do my best to give everybody the benefit of the doubt, however I am human and sometimes the tone of the question does upset me. I'm almost always busy, so rather than get upset I just ignore them. The nature of AH is that this sub is highly asymmetric in terms of effort. A 10-second question can require a 2-hour answer. So I've learned to be judicious and not burn myself out mentally.
Over time, what helps the most is that I've built up a decent set of replies for the most common asked topics such that I don't have to re-write them from scratch. Which, the top three topics in my flair area are Columbus, the Spanish Inquisition, and why the real world didn't comply to Europa Universalis IV.
Yes, but only because it means so many other aspects of history is left out.
Having studied International and SEA history in school and currently working in a library that concentrates on Chinese culture and history, I have covered a lot of ground in terms of different countries and varying cultures. But after a while, people just concentrate on the usual topics - WWII, Mao Zedong, Cold War.
In a way, I guess this subreddit isn't really the place for proper discussion because it is more for answering questions (rather than sharing of opinions) but I am also hoping that people will get more interested in things like France before the monarchy, Indonesia vs Malaysia in the battle of the East India Companies, and my current favourite - the rise of Qin during the Warring States period.
