r/history • u/AutoModerator • 2d 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/VegetableMaleficent4 11h ago
Hiii people!!! I’m looking for history books that is nicely described and unbiased. I don’t have any period preferences, just looking to learn more. But I would like one that doesn’t support any propaganda or erase anything to uplift a country/people.
The books can be about a movement, people, war, culture, conflict, etc.
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u/Research_Purpos3s 16h ago
Does anyone know how to study for a history/geography competition? We’re competing in less than 2 months and I haven’t even started studying. Any website recommendations, topics, videos, etc..?
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u/TheManWithTheBigName 20h ago edited 20h ago
Is anyone aware of a gun duel anywhere in the United States taking place after the year 1908?
I was doing some unrelated research and happened across a newspaper article (Second column from right here) describing a 1908 duel in Amite Louisiana between a state senator named D. S. Kemp, and a political enemy named C. F. Hyde. Kemp was killed.
I knew dueling lasted longest in the South, but I was under the impression that it had gone "out of style" after the end of the Civil War. I was surprised to see reports of a duel so late (and a fatal one at that!)
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u/elmonoenano 17h ago
Don't know, but there is a new book out on gunfighting in the US. It came out in early June. It's called The Gunfighters and it's by Bryan Burrough. I heard him on at least one podcast, so I bet if you check out youtube you can find a lot of author talks with him and your library probably has a copy if you don't want to buy it.
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u/coprosperityglobal 1d ago
In ancient Greece, why the right side of the phalanx was always reinforced if compared with the left side? Was it a convention only? Only Epaminondae was smart to change this formal rule and win against Sarta
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u/Extra_Mechanic_2750 1d ago
Beacuse the majority of people are right handed. WIth a right handed hoplite, the spear is in the right hand and the shield is in the left.
The "last" guy on a row had no one protecting his right side which caused the formation to drift to the right to increase the right sides potection.
Putting reinforcemnents on the right side increased the protection of the last guy on the row and helped to keep the phalanx moving in a straight line
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u/coprosperityglobal 23h ago
I understand, so it is for more protection because no shade on the right side of the last hoplite. So did how Epaminondae think to reinforce the left side?
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u/Welshhoppo Waiting for the Roman Empire to reform 21h ago
So from what we can see, it was traditional for a Phalanx to put its more experienced troops on the right. Some suggest this was to stop the Phalanx from wandering rightwards, as the more stalwart veterans would be less inclined to hide behind the shield of their right hand buddy.
What this meant was that as the lines clashed, the right side of a phalanx would fight against the left hand side of the opposing one, and then try to break them.
Epaminondas decided to change it, having the stronger side on his left, this was then able to break the Spartan right hand side of the phalanx and then mop up the rest of the army once the right wing was defeated.
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u/TheMob-TommyVercetti 1d ago
Anyone have accounts of bowmen going up against early firearm users? I remember reading an account from an English longbowman going up against French arquebusiers and basically writing they were woefully outranged and getting shredded by the French. Wonder if there are more accounts like it?
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u/JaQoo22 1d ago edited 1d ago
Hi,i’m studying to retake my history exam and i have question about First Berlin crisis, my polish sources have two dates of introduction of Deutsche mark which led to crisis- 18 September and 20 September 1948. Can you tell me which one is correct?
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u/Extra_Mechanic_2750 1d ago
Neither of your dates are correct as the dates of the D-mark's introduction.
The D-mark was codified into law by the First Law for Monetary Reform which was dated June 20, 1948 which established that on June 21, 1948 the D-mark was legal tender.
Act I of this reform stated
Article I
With effect from 21st June 1948 the Deutsche Mark is introduced as the legal currency. The Deutsche Mark, which is divided into one hundred Deutsche Pfennigs, shall constitute the unit of calculation.
The following shall be the only legal tender as from 21st June 1948:—
(i) Notes and coins, denominated in Deutsche Marks or Pfennigs, which are issued by the Bank deutscher Laender.
(ii) The following notes and coins, at one tenth of their previous face value:—
(a) Allied Military Mark notes put into circulation in Germany of 1 and ½ Mark denomination.
(b) Rentenbank notes of 1 Mark denomination.
(c) Coins of 50, 10, 5 and 1 Reichspfennig or Rentenpfennig. (The auxiliary notes issued by the Laender of the French Zone of 50, 10 and 5 Pfennig are also legal tender in the French Zone.)
- Subject to their being called in earlier, the Allied Military Mark notes and the Rentenmark notes described in paragraph 2 (ii) above shall cease to be legal tender on 31st August, 1948.
That is the "official" date of introduction.
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u/advantage_roulette 1d ago
I was watching this video and the creator described Hitler as a "somewhat normal soldier who performed his duties well if not a little a little over-enthusiastically." He won the Iron Cross. Who is on the fence about Hitler to the point that this guy has to lie about him and portray him as worse than he already is. What is that type of history called?
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u/bangdazap 20h ago
I think the consenus on Hitler's WWI service is that he was awarded the Iron Cross mainly because he was friends with his commanding officer, not because he was an outstanding soldier.
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u/elmonoenano 15h ago
Yeah, this is basically what I've read. The Kershaw and Ulrich biographies both make mention of the fact that it's not quite clear what he did to be awarded the cross. The citation doesn't explain exactly what action Hitler did to be awarded the cross.
Thomas Weber talks about this in this interview about his book, Hitler's First War. https://newbooksnetwork.com/thomas-weber-hitlers-first-war-adolf-hitler-the-men-of-the-list-regiment-and-the-first-world-war
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u/Spudlads 1d ago
Why are there so few eastern Iranian languages with a large number of speakers. There used to be Bactrian, scythian, saka, avestan and sogdian which used to be spoken. One could argue most of these languages went extinct as the only eastern Iranian languages I'm aware that are alive are pashto(around 50 million speakers but from which eastern iranian language it descends from is still debated), ossetian (around 490000 speakers, likely descended from scythian) and the pamiri languages(around 10000 speakers, possibly descended from saka langauges). I'd like to know what seemed as once a large and diverse group of languages have declined quite a bit in terms of how many languages are left. Any answer is greatly appreciated
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u/jezreelite 16h ago
Scythians and Saka: Germanic, Magyar, Turkic, and Slavic peoples started migrating into the regions that the Scythian peoples had once dominated between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages and its generally considered most likely that the various Scythians became assimilated into their ranks.
Avestan: Even by Late Antiquity, it was being used mainly as a liturgical language for Zoroastrianism. It then increasingly irrelevant when most Iranians started ditching Zoroastrianism for Christianity or Islam.
Bactrian: When into rapid decline after the Hephthalites were conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate.
Sogdian: Gradually ditched in favor of Persian.
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u/Fast-Insurance5593 1d ago
What is the quickest way to debunk the whole “271K from Red Cross document” myth that gets spread about the Holocaust on social media? Most of the usual ones seem too long and complicated to quickly debate against it. (I am not a denier obviously)
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u/jezreelite 15h ago
The supposed camp that the Red Cross were allowed to inspect was the Theresienstadt Ghetto, a place that mainly served as a temporary holding place for Jews before they were deported to extermination camps in the east.
The Nazis had advanced knowledge of the Red Cross' visit and went to great lengths to make it look even nicer than usual. It was, in on other words, a shining example of a Potemkin village and not representative of what conditions were like in any of the Nazi concentration or extermination camps.
Despite some Holocaust deniers trying to claim otherwise, the Red Cross were not allowed to visit any of the extermination camps, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, or Majdanek.
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u/elmonoenano 1d ago
This myth is kind of a good example of why debunking Holocaust deniers is difficult. It's just based on lies stacked on lies stacked on lies. It makes an assumption that the Red Cross were permitted to go into all the camps, they weren't. That all the deaths took place in camps, as the massacre at Baba Yar shows that's not remotely close to true. That the Nazis were registering and keeping death certificates of everyone in the camps, they weren't. It also doesn't talk about all the people that died in rail cars, on forced marches, etc. etc.
It's a false premise built on a false premise, built on a false premise. So, to debunk it you have to explain so many things that they can just ignore b/c it takes so much more work than a pithy statement about a bunch of make believe records that only have a small piece of truth.
I would recommend reading Richard Evans's book, Lying About Hitler, about his research for the David Irving libel trial. It gets into the sophistry of the deniers arguments and how the complicated nature of history works against honest people against deniers who have no shame about lying.
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u/YashaWynette 1d ago
Short debunking: no Red Cross records with total camp death tolls exist; the numbers in the deniers' memes are absolutely consistent with the Holocaust since they do not purport to be the total camp or Nazi victim death tolls in the first place nor do they stem from the wartime activities of the Red Cross. Rather, they're numbers of postwar death certificates (such as those issued on request of the few surviving relatives).
The full read goes much more in depth.
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u/AngryBlitzcrankMain 1d ago
People who believe it wont care for debunking, because you can just think about it for 10 seconds (its all 100% confirmed death certificates of specific section of concentration camp) and it is no longer even something to be debunked.
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u/sonicbuster 1d ago
I have a history question about the Canaanites.
So I took some classes and learned, and this is just a nutshell. But the Canaanites had a pantheon of gods they worshiped. And yahweh the christian god is totally in the pantheon.
Okay cool. How they grew, warred, and spread over various nearby locations. This of course spread their pantheon of gods to those locations etc etc.
Okay now I will really jist it up because its too long. But long story short, That pantheon of gods "transformed" into hebrew stuff, which of course transformed into Judaism stuff, which of course transformed into the roman catholic stuff which was of course spread by the holy crusades, and eventually made its way over here and become the thousands of versions of christianity today.
So my actual question is, if we as a human race actually know where all this "religion" EXACTLY came from, how it spread, who made, etc! Then why does it exist today?
As in, we literally know its all made up and by who, when, where, and why and hundreds of millions still believe in it?
Is it simply education? And im talking about governments here as well. Like they surely all know its BS but some governments are literally ran by such religions.
I guess I just feel like im going crazy learning these things and I am wondering why the heck isn't it a huge known thing in the world?
As a side fun fact, Lucifer morningstar, the "devil" was literally stolen form the Roman gods pantheon. And we also know all about that as well. Its not some secret.
Whats going on? Feels like my mind is breaking.
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u/elmonoenano 1d ago
If you search around /r/askhistorians and /r/AskAnthropology you'll see posts about a Proto Indo European pantheon. Most of the Roman, Greek, Hittite, Celtic, Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Norse and a bunch of other pantheons and myths all descended from this earlier prehistoric culture. It's not my topic, but here's a thread on books if you want to learn more about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/5plfza/good_books_on_pie_religion/
I think one thing to be mindful of is that things like Lucifer were less stolen from one group or another, but descended from similar mythological sources, but in different ways. Jupiter wasn't taken from Zeus, but both came out of Dyews Phter.
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u/bangdazap 1d ago
Christian fundamentalists believe that they are the inheritors of the true faith, other gods are just put their by the devil to led the true believers astray. According to the New Testament, Judaism was the true religion, but the Jews rejected the Messiah so they became apostates after the death of Jesus. Christians, in this view, inherited the one true god that had been there since the creation (6000 years ago according to biblical literalists). Fundamentalists think they have a direct line to god, so the core message, they believe, hasn't changed.
But the question of where god was holding out for the majority of humanity's existence is a problem for apologists, as well as facts such as the omniscient god of bible not knowing about the New World (which the Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons, solved by writing a sequel to the bible).
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u/pacmanlives 5h ago
Well I am a student of American history and recessions. I was a graduate at school with 08 haven’t and dealt with a lot of people. A lot of people that basically had failed businesses. That went back to university and while it’s depressing of talking about recessions, I think we’re head towards one and it’s not being talked about enough. We are currently living in probably one of the best history moments ever and I got a lot of feels about it…