I mean in the fields of study. Are there specific courses I would need to take for my bachelors? What sort of PhD would I need to get?
Obviously I don't know much about higher education. Currently enlisted in the military and looking up minors, majors, college, university, etc. it's all a bit confusing to me. Any help is appreciated!
A time machine to 30 years ago. There is no academic job market in history. "History professor" right now is just not a realistic career possibility. Besides the fact that colleges aren't replacing retiring/departing professors with new ones, the push towards more and more AP/college credit classes in high school means students are taking their 'history requirement' class long before they ever set foot in college.
That said. If you have 5-7 years of your life to set aside to studying the most awesome thing in the world, with the understanding that you will almost certainly not get a professor job at the end of it, things would look like this:
Undergrad: a history major is useful, but not necessary. Definitely do at least one major/take lots of classes where you will have to write a lot and research. If you major in history, it's good to do an honors option/take a class where you have to write some kind of longer thesis.
Grad school: You have two basic options: straight to PhD, or do a master's first and then a PhD.
A master's degree in history generally consists of 1-2 years of coursework (classes) and includes writing a substantial thesis.
A PhD at a North American university typically consists of some classes; a rite of passage known as "comps" or "quals" which is reading 300-400 books and then taking essay exams on the subject matter; and writing a book-ish dissertation (thesis) based on your own original research.
During undergrad, if you have your eye on grad school, you'll want to get in touch with your professors on strategizing whether doing a separate MA first is right for you (or you might end up there anyway if you don't get into a good PhD program right away, increasingly common). I am a big fan of doing a master's first--humanities grad school is much, much more intensive and harder than undergrad, and I would not have been ready for the extra demands of the PhD program (getting started on my own research, which includes a ton of independent study type stuff) ON TOP OF the horrors of grad classes' workload, without my MA first.
The problem with doing a master's first is usually that it is hard to get funding for that level of degree, although you might have GI Bill benefits? Any PhD program worth anything will give you a tuition fellowship plus a stipend, although whether its enough to live on is...questionable. Never pay for a PhD program.
And keep your expectations realistic. The job market for humanities professors is not coming back.
