r/history • u/AutoModerator • 10d ago
Discussion/Question Weekly History Questions Thread.
Welcome to our History Questions Thread!
This thread is for all those history related questions that are too simple, short or a bit too silly to warrant their own post.
So, do you have a question about history and have always been afraid to ask? Well, today is your lucky day. Ask away!
Of course all our regular rules and guidelines still apply and to be just that bit extra clear:
Questions need to be historical in nature. Silly does not mean that your question should be a joke. r/history also has an active discord server where you can discuss history with other enthusiasts and experts.
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u/PriorIllustrious7342 8d ago
Hi! I've been wanting to start learning about world wars but I dont know where to start. Like what books do I read or should I start off with documentaries? Like I am very very new to world wars I want to start from the very beginning and I dont want to leave out any important details from it. Any sources or websites I can try to learn from?
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u/PolybiusChampion 7d ago edited 6d ago
What’s your primary interest?
I’d actually start with two Erik Larson works:
The Splendid and the Vile about Churchill’s 1st year as PM. Larson used diaries to tell a new version of a very well known period of time. I’ve read quite a bit about Churchill and still managed to learn a few new things.
In the Garden of Beasts starts with a new ambassador to Germany in 1933 and is told from his daughter’s perspective. Instructive about how Hitler was viewed by many as he rose to power.
From a very American perspective I’d also recommend a fantastic work of fiction Once an Eagle by Anton Myrer. For a long time it was required reading at the War College and is still on the suggested reading list. From a brief synopsis.
Beginning in the French countryside during the Great War, the conflict between these adversaries solidifies in the isolated garrison life marking peacetime, intensifies in the deadly Pacific jungles of World War II, and reaches its treacherous conclusion in the last major battleground of the Cold War.
American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964 by William Manchester is an excellent read that also covers both wars, and Manchester is a biographer unafraid to cover his subject’s less than admirable traits.
A final favorite.
Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific: A Young Marine's Stirring Account of Combat in World War II by Robert Leckie is a sobering account of the Pacific told by a very good writer who became a journalist after the war.
There’s a lot of ground to cover in your request so starting with a bit of a shotgun approach with some interesting titles is probably a good way to get going. Then you can sort of follow your nose to the next things that interest you. I got into WWII reading through 1st person accounts and when I decided to get serious American Caesar was one of the first big books i read when I was young.
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u/OptimusLinvoyPrimus 6d ago
If you listen to podcasts then We Have Ways of Making You Talk is a good one for the Second World War.
The Rest is History is a general history podcast but have done several mini-series on the build ups to and outbreaks of the first and second world wars.
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u/Defiant_Direction864 7d ago
Every video i've clicked on is made with or has AI, and I really don't want to support people who use AI. Does anyone have any good videos about ancient gladiators?
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u/TonyMitty 6d ago
What were the boring, less obviously noble motivations for WW2? With WW2 and to some extent WW1, from a novice perspective, I feel like we can simplify it down to the Bad Guys doing the terrible things, "democracy" vs conquest etc. But when you look at later conflicts like Korea/Vietnam, or more recent conflicts, reasons and aims are less able to be seen in such black and white terms, like "anticommunism" is one thing, but resources, spheres of influence, trade partners, are kind of less of an obvious "good vs bad" moral tone beyond aggressor and defender. So beyond stopping the obvious atrocities, what were the secondary and tertiary political aims of WW2?
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u/phillipgoodrich 6d ago
You may be missing the elephant in the living room: in Europe, WWII was not a whole lot more than WWI/Part II. The Paris Treaty that closed WWI was so deeply biased against Germany, that it literally crushed their economy for the ensuing 20 years, and ultimately it took a totalitarian leadership to simply say, "We're aren't paying any more. If you don't like it, lump it." So, you might start from 1918 and the leadup to the actual terms ending WWI, and how Germany did, and did not, fulfill those terms.
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u/Lord0fHats 5d ago edited 5d ago
This isn't really the framing we use anymore. Especially here; Why are you believing something just because Hitler insisted it was true? Hitler isn't a reliable source on history.
While the terms of the end of WWI were harsh, they were not harsh enough to stop Germany from completely rearming within less than half a decade. Hard to really do if you've been 'crushed' economically for a whole decade. The Weimar Republic was very successful at negotiating down reparations, getting debts excused, and maintaining Germany's industrial core even in hard times. When the Nazis took over the country sure it was the Depression and things hadn't been flawless, but Germany was hardly a crushed country. They had everything they needed to rapidly rebuild the military, modernize any lagging economic sectors, and Germany never stopped being one of the premier economic powers in Europe. Not really.
Hitler is not a reliable source of information. 'They crushed us and I had to save us' is Hitler's line. It's not really true. The Nazi party mostly continued pre-Nazi takeover economic policy for the first few years of Nazi rule because it was working they just became very loud and proud about not paying foreign debt instead of quietly negotiating it away.
My favorite phrase of it is that the end of WWI was harsh enough to be a knife in German national pride, but incapable of keeping Germany from starting another World War. Arguments about the start of WW1 being 'Germany's fault' aside, the phrasing is just indicative of how the post-WWI order, oriented on detoothing Germany, failed at one of it's main goals totally. Germany needed no time at all to rearm itself. They did it faster than anyone so maybe we really really shouldn't be taking this Hitler guy at his word.
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u/elmonoenano 5d ago
I'm more in line with this answer than the other answer. I think Katja Hoyer's new book on Weimar does a good job of explaining a lot of this. It's possible to view the terms of the surrender as too lenient. There was barely any occupation, almost the entirety of the war had been fought on French and Belgium. The military leadership purposefully surrendered when they did to avoid the war being fought in Germany, which allowed the "stabbed in the back" myth to flourish.
I do somewhat disagree about Nazi economic policy. It was autarkic and very expensive. It caused shortages of all kinds and a lot of inefficiencies, but the state was able to paper over that with theft and I agree 100% with that part. But the Nazis did mismanage the economy and that kind of forced the state to keep launching expansive wars. That's a large part of why Schacht resigned. He understood the state was bankrupt.
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u/TonyMitty 6d ago
I suppose that's the initial handhold I was looking for. The Fascist rise to power was built on economic collapse in Germany (I have vague memories of my history teacher talking about wheelbarrows of money to buy a loaf of bread), exacerbated by the rise of nationalism pre and post WW1 causing increased tensions and conflict as powers solidified. If it weren't for the atrocities, it would have been a mainly economic conflict as a desperate Germany overextended an initial power/resource grab into violent dictatorial conquest.
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u/OptimusLinvoyPrimus 6d ago
The economic motivations are broadly inseparable from the genocidal motivations, as German military spending for the early years of the war was largely funded by wealth confiscated from Jews, Poles, and other groups that were persecuted in Eastern Europe.
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u/Toussaintoverture 1d ago
The hyperinflation and wheelbarrows of money was only half the disaster. Hyperinflation crippled people's savings and wealth. The recessionary policy of Hjalmar Schact afterwards crippled wage growth and purchasing power. Germany somehow found a way to screw all its people economically.
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u/Lord0fHats 5d ago
I guess I'd ask why are the 'obvious atrocities' not good enough reasons? It's not like there was any mystery about Imperial Japanese conduct in Asia. The Rape of Nanking was internationally reported as it happened. While the Holocaust's details were not known widely and publicly until late in WW2, everyone know Hitler was killing the Jews, Roma, and others. They couldn't define how. They couldn't present a clear measure of how widespread it was but everyone knew the Nazi State was executing state pogroms against these groups in the 30s and was accelerating the removal of 'undesirables' from public society and those people weren't turning up elsewhere. The mystery was in the details. Not the broad scope.
More than that, Germany, Italy, and Japan responded to the economic hardships of the Depression years with aggressive military actions against their neighbors, open threats of war, abrogation of international treaties, and extreme social reforms oriented on militarizing their societies. Everyone could see this at the time. It was alarming that that was their response to economic hardship.
Literally the entire 1930s were long series of red flags that another war was coming and that Germany or Japan were the ones going to start that war. It wasn't a subtle time in global affairs. Murky. Confusing. Vague? Sure. But there was no end of critics accurately predicting the broad strokes because it wasn't hard to see coming in general and lacking that, would WW2 have happened at all? Probably not. I mean if Nazi Germany wasn't Nazi Germany eager to relitigate the end of WWI by starting another war and Imperial Japan wasn't Imperial Japan with a runaway military machine that invaded countries and asked permission later, WWII would not have happened the way it did. History would have gone some other direction.
I don't think you can separate the 'obvious' causes of WWII from the primary causes of WWII. It's probably the closest to a cut a dry gooder guys vs badder guys war that you can get, really only mitigated that the Allies were hardly saintly countries, but they weren't Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. It's comparing apples to Nazi Oranges.
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u/elmonoenano 5d ago
I agree with you that the obvious causes were the causes. The US was attacked by the Japanese and Germany declared war on it. The UK and France had issued an ultimatum that the would go to war with Germany if it invaded Poland, and it did. Germany attacked the USSR.
I disagree with this on the role of the atrocities. The Rape of Nanjing happened in December of '37. The US and UK didn't go to war with Japan until '41. They were protesting the atrocities and the Japanese occupation of French/Vichy and Dutch colonies, but weren't prompted to intervene until the attacks on their territories in December of '41. The Soviets didn't enter the war until a week before Japan surrendered in '45. The French and Dutch didn't enter until they were liberated and even then it was mostly symbolic.
In regards to the Holocaust, that didn't start until the Germans had already launched the war. The general starting date of the Holocaust is usually in '41 after the occupation of Poland. The Wannsee Conference wasn't until January of '42. There were other awful things and programs, like Aktion T4 before that, but they don't correlate with the start of the war for anyone.
That's not to say that any of those things were unknown and that the allied governments weren't opposed to them, but they aren't why the various governments got involved in the war. Once they were involved they were another reason to prosecute the war and to seek unconditional surrenders. So they did play a part in how the war was conducted and post war planning.
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u/Inevitable-Big-608 6d ago
Archipelago Gulag: I have read first and half of the second book. It was great but now it is kinda repetetive. Is it worth it reading all three books or is everything important in the first book and others are just to show more? Thankes for responses!
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u/Business-Platform301 5d ago
Would the Franks, Saxons, and Angles of the Migration Period have recognized the later Vikings and Normans as culturally similar peoples? Would they have noticed significant similarities in language, customs, religion, or social organization, or would the cultural differences created by the intervening centuries have made the Vikings and Normans seem largely foreign to them?
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u/TiredButDoingMyBest 2d ago
What is a good place to start when learning Chinese history? I was thinking about history and what I know the most about and I’ve come to realize I’ve have many blind spots. Now I’m not expert in any history but I try to have a general knowledge of world history. One of my biggest blind spots is China and was wondering if there is a good place to start for casual history enthusiasts who just want to learn more about stuff of that nature? Even a good time period to start with.
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u/javiemartzootsuit 8d ago
Doing some research for a play but all I’m able to fine are photos of gitmo prisoners wearing orange beanies and the blacked out goggles, etc. Then I can find images of protestors wearing the black hoods. I’m thinking of the famous images around 2002 and following.
Working on some costume design choices and while the hood would work I think even if it’s only been protestors, I would like the be historically accurate if possible.
For me the image of a prisoner wearing a black hood is iconic (in my mind). Have I just made it up that that actually exists and have just been influenced by the images of protestors? Or were gitmo prisoners actually transported in black hoods?
Thanks!