Best french history books according to redditors

We found 965 Reddit comments discussing the best french history books. We ranked the 310 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top Reddit comments about French History:

u/The-Autarkh · 161 pointsr/politics

Trump's fabrications regarding crime should be getting more attention. Crime is a much less significant problem today than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Trump lies constantly and without shame or remorse about this.

I would not call Trump himself an outright fascist--but Trumpism is a proto-fascist movement. I don't want to find out whether it blossoms into the real thing.

Robert Paxton's definition from The Anatomy of Fascism:

>"A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

Trump's nativist anti-intellectual demagoguery, and willingness to fan and manipulate ethno-nationalist resentment is deeply concerning, especially now that we know he's going to have people like Steven Bannon as his top political advisor.

He still doesn't have the power of the military and national security apparatus at his disposal. There's still time to stop him and not have to find out if he will abide traditional constitutional and normative restraints.

u/desGrieux · 75 pointsr/AskHistorians

I'll take a stab at answering this, but it's kind of hard to focus on one aspect. I'm a linguist, not strictly speaking a historian. But I've done work in historical linguistics.

This of course is very dependent on the region, but in general yes.

The most complicated issues with answering the question is how your define what constitutes a language versus a dialect, which is primarily a political and cultural issue. Comprehensibility would be the logical division of languages, but that exists in degrees, not in absolute terms, so those lines are arbitrary.

Most languages existed in what we call a dialect continuum where your neighbors sounded different, but you could understand them. But you couldn't necessarily understand your neighbor's neighbor, even though your neighbor could.

For one, the idea of "nations" didn't really exist yet, so there was A LOT of linguistic diversity. For example, when Napoleon started doing censuses, French (at the time, the language of Paris) was spoken natively by less than a quarter of the population (Check out The Story of French) and was understood by less than half of the people in modern day France. Most people spoke regional languages such as Basque, Breton, dialects of German, Italian, les Langues d'oc, and other dialects of langue d'oïl (of which the modern French language, a descendant of the Parisian dialect, is a member).

England was similar. English itself had many dialects and celtic languages were still very prevalent in their regions. In addition, as an island nation, many people people involved in seafaring had at least basic knowledge of French. Anyone involved with the upper classes would have basic knowledge of French.

Spain had Basque, Galician, Portuguese, Mozarabic, Castilian, Catalan, Aragonese, etc.

German and Italian only came to have a sense of a "national language" long after Goethe and Dante practically invented them. Before that it was a hugely diverse region of non-mutually comprehensible dialects.

The point of mentioning all these is that traveling or doing commerce across even very short distances often required a different language if not at least different vocabulary.

Upper classes were very often multilingual, especially women. Women were often from other regions for the purposes of alliances and the like, and so they often didn't share a language/dialect with their husband. This is partially the reason for the term "mother tongue" as it used to be distinguished from the language of the community (since the mother was often from elsewhere). This was especially true of royalty, who often imported princess from very different kingdoms across Europe. There are exceptions to this of course, but this was the general trend.

Merchants would very frequently have basic knowledge of other languages because of the nature of their job. We have lots of records of small phrasebooks and things of that nature. When lots of merchants were involved, they often created their own "language" such as lingua franca. In fact, so many people were familiar with this language in its day that it became the name for any neutral language two non-native speakers used.

Another key aspect of this was Latin. Anyone with even basic literacy (while extremely limited) would have knowledge of latin. And even if you weren't literate, you certainly went to mass so even the poorest of poor had exposure to Latin.

Peasants who didn't have the opportunity to leave their towns were the least likely to know another language. But they still got exposure, hence why English today has more French vocabulary than Anglo-Saxon vocabulary.

Also the language landscape changed frequently, so it seems that languages in general were easily learned. Gaul become Latinized very quickly so it doesn't seem that celtic speakers had much difficulty acquiring Latin (Romans even commented on how similar Gaulish was to Latin, so that probably helped). Etruscan was easily replaced by Latin, Basque and other (with a big question mark) languages of Iberia were quickly replaced as well. English uprooted Celtic, only to be subsequently imposed upon by Latin's daughter French. This would not be possible at that scale and frequency if language learning and bilingualism were not common.

u/PancakesHouse · 67 pointsr/politics

I posted this in another thread, but going to post it again here since it's relevant.

------

I feel like we should be mailing textbooks/memoirs on fascism/authoritarianism to our representatives...

I thought about organizing a gofundme to send the same book to all Republican representatives (senate and congress) from Amazon, but I think it would be more effective if it was sent from individual constituents in the rep's districts. I personally feel powerless since all my representatives are democrat, but I think it would send a really powerful message if people in red districts sent copies of books directly from Amazon. It would only cost around $10 to do that, and you can include a gift message with your address and why you're sending it.

People smarter than me probably have better suggestions, and could even point out passages that should be highlighted and bookmarked, but here are a few suggestions off the top of my head:

u/itsallfolklore · 63 pointsr/AskHistorians

Marxism is obviously a cornerstone, but not for the reason normally considered - that is, economic determinism. While "ED" is important, I feel that the dialectic is much more important and valuable. I was profoundly impressed and influenced by the work of Eric Hobsbawm and his multi-volume history of the modern world because of his elegant use of the dialectic. He demonstrates an aspect of what a period of the past was like and then proceeds to prove its opposite. I used this approach in my first major book, and I cite Hobsbawm as the first person named in my acknowledgements. Economic determinism is extremely important, but if I had to pick between the two, I would teach Hegel and the dialectic.

I was trained in the French Annales School which in a way is the antithesis of Marxism because it is based on the idea of structuralism with its kinship shared by Talcot Parsons - while a Marists sees the seeds of change planted in the soil from which a plant emerges, Parsons sees change as occurring only when an existing structure can no longer serve. And much of the Annales historians attempt to demonstrate how fundamental shifts in the mentality of a period represent these structural shifts (consider Marc Bloch's famous Feudal Society). Although it contradicts the dialectic, the idea of shifting mentalities is extremely useful, and I regard it as yet another cornerstone of good history.

u/10z20Luka · 47 pointsr/HistoryMemes

What do you mean "future historians"? Historians for decades have been confronting our narratives of what we consider "modern", "civilized" or "barbaric".

Mark Mazower's Dark Continent is a good summary of where historians are at on the 20th century.

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Continent-Europes-Twentieth-Century/dp/067975704X

u/Anacoenosis · 47 pointsr/MapPorn

Magdeburg was the site of a particularly horrific, Berserk-style massacre.

If you're interested in knowing more about this period, The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood is a fantastic read. It's based on primary source documents, and it's both lyrical and illuminating. Here's a taste:

>Famine in Brunswick caused the Duke to notice that his table was less plentifully supplied than usual, and three bad wine harvests on the Lower Danube once prevented Ferdinand from sending his annual gift of tokay to John George of Saxony--such minute draughts blew in through palace windows from the hurricane without. Mortgaged lands, empty exchequers, noisy creditors, the discomforts of wounds and imprisonment, the loss of children in battle, these are all griefs which man can bear with comparative equanimity. The bitter mental sufferings which followed from mistaken policies, loss of prestige, the stings of conscience, and the blame of public opinion gave German rulers cause to regret the war but seldom acted as an incentive to peace. No German ruler perished homeless in the winter's cold, nor was found dead with grass in his mouth, nor saw his wife and daughters ravished; few, significantly few, caught the pest. Secure in the formalities of their lives, in the food and drink at their tables, they could afford to think in terms of politics and not of human sufferings.

u/Tony49UK · 46 pointsr/thegrandtour

Ah the good old days when we could just pop over the channel for a bust up.

1,000 Years of Annoying The French A truly great book.

u/Quickstick4 · 40 pointsr/todayilearned

Allot of slightly incorrect information in here already.

Britain DID betray the Arabs and Lawrence did know about it - but not when he began the campaign. There is allot more to it (and trying to simplify this is really difficult); but simply(and skipping over a lot of details):

  • At the start of the campaign it was vaugh British policy to give the Arabs their own state, it then became a solid policy and then the Brits went back on it.

  • The French did not believe that Britain would do such a thing (they believed an ulterior motive was in place) and actively pushed to ensure that France would retain sections of the Middle East

  • This led to Britain turning to a 'so called middle eastern expert' Sykes. He negotiated with France a deal that gave France Syria and split the promised Arab kingdom in Half (literally drew a line across the desert). N.B. He ignored allot of negotiations made by the Cairo office

  • when this was questioned by others in Britain - the worry was that France would become so pissed off they would leave the war against Germany - something Britain could NOT afford/allow to happen.

  • Then add in the Zionist views. These were strong in the UK at the time and the land division proposed by Pico-Sykes would allow Britain to give the Jews a homeland (which we did - just not quick enough in many peoples opinion and hence a whole other mess the US got involved in)

  • Several resignations happened in protest of how the Arabs were being treated and betrayed

    In summary Britain Pandered to the French - allowed people in London rather than on the field make decisions and messed the whole thing up because Germany was their focus

    Further Reading
    Fantastic book that explains it all: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Line-Sand-Britain-France-Struggle/dp/1847394574/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425926695&sr=8-1&keywords=A+line+in+the+sand

    Quote Summarises quite well: Source Wikipedia
    > In May 1917, W. Ormsby-Gore wrote "French intentions in Syria are surely incompatible with the war aims of the Allies as defined to the Russian Government. If the self-determination of nationalities is to be the principle, the interference of France in the selection of advisers by the Arab Government and the suggestion by France of the Emirs to be selected by the Arabs in Mosul, Aleppo, and Damascus would seem utterly incompatible with our ideas of liberating the Arab nation and of establishing a free and independent Arab State. The British Government, in authorising the letters despatched to King Hussein [Sharif of Mecca] before the outbreak of the revolt by Sir Henry McMahon, would seem to raise a doubt as to whether our pledges to King Hussein as head of the Arab nation are consistent with French intentions to make not only Syria but Upper Mesopotamia another Tunis. If our support of King Hussein and the other Arabian leaders of less distinguished origin and prestige means anything it means that we are prepared to recognise the full sovereign independence of the Arabs of Arabia and Syria. It would seem time to acquaint the French Government with our detailed pledges to King Hussein, and to make it clear to the latter whether he or someone else is to be the ruler of Damascus, which is the one possible capital for an Arab State, which could command the obedience of the other Arabian Emirs."

    *N.B. Islamic State are now fighting to restore the Borders that Britain once promised
u/Bywater · 36 pointsr/Libertarian

Pretty sure the slaves didn't get a vote in that democracy and if you think the NSDAP rise to power in the Weimar republic had anything to do with democratic process I have to assume you have not take the time to look at how that shit went down.

In 32 they received 10% fewer votes than just six months earlier, that's when the conservative parties there made a literal deal with the fucking devil and threw all their weight behind him and had him declared chancellor in order to maintain some semblance of power. While it was "legal" Hitler was not elected president by the German people. Even then Hitler only had 2 cabinet appointees from his own party.

Course, then they lit the Reichstag in a false flag and seized power under the guise of a communist revolt, and the rest is nothing but a stain on human history.

But Nazi's being democratically elected? Rofl, good one Fritz.

If you have an interest in the truth of this check out "The Death of Democracy" and/or "The Anatomy of Fascism". While more general, the Anatomy of Fascism is the better read IMO.

u/barkingbullfrog · 34 pointsr/todayilearned

This book is a rather interesting read, too. Very well presented, and a good 2/3rds of the book is background behind the incident. How everyone wound up being there, what their reasons were (or hypotheses on what they were), etc.

Edit: ooh, and it looks like they're going to make a movie about it. That's cool. Hopefully it turns out to be a good one.

u/LRE · 31 pointsr/languagelearning

French. It's a serious panty dropper here in the US. Plus it has an enthralling history.

u/greenkarmic · 29 pointsr/todayilearned

People don't realize how much the English and French languages are connected. I suggest this book, it's really good: The Story of French

u/PerNihilAdNihil · 28 pointsr/todayilearned

>In village games, players with hands tied behind them competed to kill a cat nailed to a post by battering it to death with their heads, at the risk of cheeks ripped open or eyes scratched out by the frantic animal’s claws.

>Barbara Tuchman, "A Distant Mirror: life in the calamitous 14th century"

u/MayorMcCheese59 · 28 pointsr/Destiny

Ok, so your best bet is to read a comprehensive set of books on the matter. For the sake of a quick introduction into the matter, your best bet is from the ''a very short introduction'' series. It gets your feet wet at the very least. Now the best and most comprehensive single book on the matter is by a man called Ian Black see here for the book. It is widely acknowledged as being one of the deepest guides on the conflict that goes beyond the current conflict and back to the British Mandate. He was a guardian lead on the conflict for a number of years and now currently works at the LSE. The book itself has a slight pro-Palestinian bias but then it is up to you to judge if that is warranted or not. Other good books on the matter are as follows; On Palestine by Chomsky (obviously very left leaning), A line in the sand By Barr (A historical understanding of how the conflict as it is today can be grounded in past imperialism), and, Belonging the story of Jews by Schama (A history of Jews, one that I can't give too much info on atm because I am reading it myself).

​

Other recommendations that I can give are to subscribe to notifications from the Israelis newspapers etc to get there perspectives on matters. As well as following or subscribing to certain joint peace based groups within the area- my favourites are ''Roots'', ''Combatants for Peace'', and the ''Bereaved families forum''. I've met with all three organisations in the past and I'd say that the second is for sure the most interesting- combining ex-IDF and ex-Hamas forces together to seek a peaceful solution.

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Also just another thing to add when looking at the region specific to Palestine- make sure to differentiate between the west bank and Gaza- they have very different politics and Palestine- like Israelis are not a monolithic group- as seen by the rise of certain countermovements in both Palestine and Israel that are seeking to challenge the hegemony of Abbas and Bibi respectively.

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Any other questions please feel free to ask.

u/wiking85 · 27 pointsr/WarCollege

That is not actually true. The defenses in the Verdun sector were effectively left to rot due to it being a quiet sector since the German 1914 offensive was stopped. The Germans amassed a huge amount of artillery tubes initially and flanked French positions on three sides. Plus the French relied on a lot of massed charges to try and retake positions, while the politicians also insisted on holding the East Bank of the Meuse, which Petain, the French commander in charge of the defenses, wanted to abandon due to how exposed it was. Then many of the forts like Douaumount fell early in the German offensive, as it was barely defended, which gave the Germans its use as a shelter, not the French, for most of the campaign. In the end, especially as artillery was concentrated with the attacker, attacking in many cases was cheaper than defending, as even during the final French offensives their super heavy artillery was able to shatter the forts that the Germans held and led to their recapture by the French.

Here are two excellent books on the battle:

http://www.cambridge.org/ht/academic/subjects/history/twentieth-century-european-history/german-strategy-and-path-verdun-erich-von-falkenhayn-and-development-attrition-18701916?format=PB

http://www.amazon.com/Price-Glory-Verdun-1916/dp/0140170413

u/Laminar_flo · 27 pointsr/bestof

People have got to stop with this massively hyperbolic trash repost. Calling the far right 'nazis' is unworthy of discussion. Calling the far right 'fascist' is only slightly less ignorant, but is still extremely hyperbolic. 99.95% of people using the term are completely ignorant of the history.

Why?:

There is no 'definition' of fascist/fascism. This shitty '14 points list' has been floating around the internet for a while and Trump checks all 14 points (as does Obama, as does HRC, as does Bush2). 1) This list is completely fabricated (fake news?). 2) The actual definition of fascism is extremely debatable by very educated people (see below). 3) you can take these lists and look at the Obama administration and check 12-13 of the 14 points. 4) and I should have to tell you this, but if you see something thats being passed around the internet between like-minded people, its probably bullshit.

If you want to read/learn about real fascism, read these two books:

Fascism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) 2nd Edition

The Anatomy of Fascism Reprint Edition

They are both excellent, and pre-Trump. They provide and excellent overview of the fascist movement(s) throughout history. The quick takeaways are: 1) there is no 'definition' of fascist (eg that 14 point list is facebook bullshit), 2) both right-wing and left-wing political movements have shown many elements of fascism (eg extreme right wingers are just as intolerant as extreme left wingers), 3) the current right movement in America bears little in common with actual fascist movements.

So why are people calling the right 'fascists'? In my personal opinion, the left is using the term to justify vilification and aggression towards the right (I say this as a political moderate). This is not to say 'the right' are the good guys - there are plenty of situations in life where there are no 'good guys' - the current left/right debate is one of those situations.

I'm sure you saw that white nationalist, Richard Spencer got sucker punched a few weeks ago. The entire left was hand-wringing about wether or not this was justified - even the NYT published a half-assed assessment. You saw it here on reddit - 'the alt-right' is so toxic they deserve violence. You know who also thinks that speech should be silenced with violence - fascists.

As a moderate I find this rationalization for 'violence to silence' horrifying. Violence is never an answer. You'll note that actual fascists use violence and threats of violence to suppress speech - so what is the difference between the left and right these days?. I stand in the middle and have a hard time telling.

TL;DR they very people that claim to be 'anti-fascist' are abusing the term to create an enemy that's (apparently) worthy of a priori violence - if you think about that for a second it should be horrifying.

And just watch - by virtue of 1) trying to inject a little reason here 2) showing a refusal to call the more extreme right 'nazi-fascists' and 3) criticizing the left for being shitty too, I am going to get called an alt-right wing Trumpeter.

u/arist0geiton · 26 pointsr/IncelTears

they were starving to death because there was no food, no water, no buildings, and no society.

https://www.amazon.com/Savage-Continent-Europe-Aftermath-World/dp/125003356X

u/riverblue9011 · 26 pointsr/travel

Absolutely, it was just a case of opening my mouth before engaging my brain.

If anyone wants some more information on it though I've recently finished a book called A Line in The Sand by James Barr that's based on the most recent documents that have surfaced. If that's a little dry for you there's a Podcast called Martyr Made that does a really good job of explaining the Israeli Palestinian conflict and why it's still going on.

u/Goodlake · 25 pointsr/politics

You might be interested in Robert Paxton's "Anatomy of Fascism."

u/The_Thane_Of_Cawdor · 23 pointsr/askscience
u/BeondTheGrave · 21 pointsr/AskHistorians

What are you interested in? Do you have a time period or topic that interests you? You seem pretty keen on Christian history, so there are a few books that discuss that I could recommend you.

Or, I could recommend you books that talk more about the craft of history, the practice of the discipline. These books would (hopefully) show that history really isnt one big fixed thing, but a series of smaller, but interconnected, debates about what really happened.

Or, would are you interested in the classics, which have historical significance?

The trick with all this is to figure out what you really like. There are 10,000 history books out there that will put you to sleep, I promise you. Weve gotta figure out which ones wont. So, what interests you?

u/Get_Erkt · 20 pointsr/lostgeneration

I was just reading about the link between labor aristocracy and the rise of fascism a few days ago. The ruling class becomes decadent and complacent, the opposition is unable or unwilling to act, and this spurs radical change.

However, if you reject leftwing action based on internationalism and feminism (anti racism and anti sexism), and especially the destruction of class society (communism), then you're only alternative is to double down on narrow, chauvinistic nationalism, patriarchy, and patriotism. You can find anti capitalist and socialist sentiment in fascist movements, but usually it's against an imagined corrupted form of capitalism, "crony capitalism," and not the existence of class society generally. In other words, the fascists want to be the boss, not get rid of them. They think they can manifest a truly just and natural order once deviants and subversives are liquidated and everyone becomes unified by a grand national impulse. In short the fascist solution is to unleash war within and without--the standard capitalist response. But the fascist impulse carries a vital, energetic tone that fetishizes action and violence for their own sake, against both decrepit old guard bourgeoisie, low class deviants and radicals, and the foreigner.

The historian Robert Paxton described fascism as "pallangenic," or Phoenix-like, a desire to rebirth society into an imagined former greatness, but America was never great. It hasn't fundamentally changed it's character since 1776, which is why we've been fighting the same battle against the same ruling class for over 200 years. The first rebellion in the US was against onerous taxes imposed by an unelected regime built on slavery and native land theft, and since sustained by more land theft, a racial-economic hierarchy, and aggressive resource wars. All our problems stem from this, problems that cannot be addressed using tools this same system provides, for obvious reasons.

So fascists seek revolution without revolution. Not a change in fundamental order, but to supplement the current order. German Nazi party loyalists were installed into factory management positions alongside the old managers, for example.

There's a complicated mix of factors. White supremacist hegemony is threatened by an increasingly (but necessarily) globalized labor market (outsourcing and immigration--capitalism direly needs cheap labor to avoid recession) and destruction of the family as it was shaped by capitalism--its nuclear form, as women become more economically independent and no longer need to be with a man they don't want to, but this also grows the labor pool. Now that more and more whites are subjected to the economic conditions familiar to the underclasses (which are mostly nonwhite and women), they are panicking. There's nothing in the bourgeois political toolkit to handle severe existential crisis except racism, sexism, and other scapegoats.

But the Democrats and their unions are in no shape to fight this, just as the social democrats in Europe were in no way ready to combat the fundamental nature of capitalism. The problems now are so great and the interests in the status quo so entrenched it would take an aggressive movement with revolutionary orientation to reconstitute society on a less inherently antagonistic basis. Fascists believe they can do this, but have never been able to

u/schueaj · 17 pointsr/history

Oxford History of the French Revolution by William Doyle

Khan Academy has a bunch of great video lectures about the French Revolution and Napoleon

http://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/history


u/notreallyhereforthis · 16 pointsr/Christianity

> before the Church plunged Europe into the Dark Ages

If by the "Church" you mean the "collapse of the Western Roman Empire partly due to invasion and raiding" and by "plunged" you mean "precipitated the slow decline of the infrastructure of the society" and by the "Dark Ages" you mean the "Early Middle Ages" then there are plenty of history books, a good overview one is Europe: A History or for a wider view History: From the Dawn of Civilization to the Present Day.

u/DonaldFDraper · 15 pointsr/AskHistorians

Generally, when feudalism faded away, the nobility found a place in the bureaucracy. Many nations had limitations to positions that allowed only nobility to fill such spots. In France, most officers, if not all, were nobility as a commoner could only reach the rank of Sergeant Major in the army of the Ancient Regime. In Britain, officers and the wealthier merchant class could afford to buy a comission in the Army. The Prussian military also had the same model as the French, with officers ranks being for the junkers.[^[1]](http://www.amazon.com/War-Austrian-Succession-Reed-Browning/dp/0312125615/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382668090&sr=1-1&keywords=the+war+of+the+austrian+succession "'The War of the Austrian Succession' by Reed Browning (1993)") And in Russia, nobility could serve in Guard regiments before transfering out to leadership positions in the Russian Army,[^[2]](http://www.amazon.com/History-Russia-Vol-European-Eurasian/dp/1843310236/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382668479&sr=8-1&keywords=A+History+of+Russia+Volume+I "'A History of Russia: Volume I To 1917" by Walter G. Moss (2005)") although if I remember, there were not the same restrictions of rank for promotion, just literacy, but before the Napoleonic Wars, it was practically the same.

This changed with the French Revolution changed everything in France. As a result of it, nobility was abolished and all positions were available to the masses, but the rich still dominated due to literacy levels. However, most of the military leadership consisted of qualified and experienced people after 1796. When Napoleon came to power, he continued the reforms and even with the creation of the Empire and the return of noble titles, a lowly private could find himself a baron (victory titles didn't come with land but with a pension paid by the state to ensure a noble life style). Some of Napoleons 's best commanders came from nothing: Bessiers was the son of a surgeon, Ney was the son of a Barrel cooper, Massena was a smuggler, Agareau served in at least three armies before the Revolution, and Murat was destined to be a Priest.[^[3]](http://www.amazon.com/March-Twenty-Six-Sword-Military-Classics/dp/1844150976/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382668453&sr=1-1&keywords=The+March+of+the+TWenty+Six "March of the Twenty-Six" by R. F. Delderfield (1962)")

After Napoleon abdicated to Louis XVIII, Louis tried to bring France back to it's pre Revolution days. He sold officers commissions and the coveted Legion of Honor to anyone with the money. After having a meritocratic country under the Revolution and Empire, people grumbled. When Napoleon returned from Elba, people were happy to see him, hoping that he'll return France to what it was. Before though, people were tired of the war and happy when he resigned, hoping for peace. Now, they couldn't stand the Bourbon 'king' placed there by the foreign powers.[^[4]](http://www.amazon.com/Contesting-French-Revolution-Paul-Hanson/dp/1405160845/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382668487&sr=8-1&keywords=Contesting+the+French+Revolution "Contesting The French Revolution" by Paul R. Hanson (2009)") [^[5]](http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/swords-around-a-throne-john-r-elting/1100624204?ean=9780306807572 "'Swords Around A Throne' by John R. Elting (1997)")
[^[6]](http://www.amazon.com/The-Campaigns-Napoleon-David-Chandler/dp/0025236601/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382579275&sr=8-1&keywords=Campaigns+of+Napoleon "'The Campaigns of Napoleon' by David Chandler (1966)")

Napoleon lost but the hope never died. Charles X, successor to Louis, abdicated during the Revolution of 1830 to Louis Philippe, the Citizen King, whom was supposed to make things better. However, in the end it didn't work and the people revolted again in 1848, sparking the Revolutions of 1848, and creating the Second Republic.

Overall, the nobility served as a source of able workers for the bureaucracy and the people were tired if the privilege of the nobility.

Edited for proper sourcing.

u/soapdealer · 13 pointsr/AskHistorians

Sometimes, an in-depth case study of a specific person/event can reveal larger truths about the period being studied.

Probably my favorite history book ever, A Distant Mirror, is framed as a biography of a relatively unimportant French noble from the period for precisely this reason.

In other cases, historians are forced to take this approach because the surviving writing from a period is mostly about the smaller subject. The reason so many studies of Norman England are about land ownership isn't because it's necessarily the best way to understand the time period, it's because we happen to know way more about land ownership from the time period than we do about anything else. I'm not sure this is true of, say, Dutch local political parties from the interwar period, but it wouldn't surprise me if whoever wrote that paper had an exceptionally good group of documents on them. The fact that a paper might attract a small or specialized readership shouldn't diminish its scholarly importance.

EDIT: bad grammar corrected

u/reginaldaugustus · 12 pointsr/AskHistorians

Because he won. A lot.

If you want to look at the big one (Amongst many):

The Battle of Austerlitz is one of the most important battles in western history, for instance.

I think part of it is also what his opponents did after his fall, too. They magnified his successes. The Duke of Wellington famously stated that Napoleon was the greatest general in history, and therefore implied that he himself was better, since he defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.

If you want to read a book, the standard is David Chandler's The Campaigns of Napoleon.

u/fuckin442m8 · 12 pointsr/unitedkingdom

Yes; Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, & Israel (don't get me started on that one) were created or given independence post WW2 by Britain & France (who previously controlled many of them)

There's a good book about this and the years preceding .

u/Triseult · 11 pointsr/books

There are no knights in shining armor in the books any more than on the show. Knights in ASoIaF are of the Gregor Clegane variety: they use their title and power to rape and pillage.

There's a fantastic book on the Middle Ages called A Distant Mirror, and it explains how even in Medieval times, the idea of the "knight in shining armor" was an outdated myth that didn't reflect reality. One of the reasons I took to A Game of Thrones when I read it is that it was the first "accurate" portrayal of historical knights that I could think of.

A Song of Ice and Fire is by no means faeries and fair maidens... The show extrapolates the tone of the books.

u/soulessmonkey · 10 pointsr/AskHistorians

Robert Paxton, made famous for his book Vichy France, has a book titled The Anatomy of Fascism. He focuses more on how the actions of particular fascists defined the political ideology. Maybe not the best source, but definitely worth a quick read if only to make a comparison to other books.

u/x_TC_x · 10 pointsr/syriancivilwar

Depends on how much in-depth you want them to be, and if you're more into 'general politics', or into 'military-related affairs'.

For really good understanding of how Syria came into being, and what events and processes shaped it early on, you might want to read:

  • A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East, and

  • The Great Syrian Revolt: And the Rise of Arab Nationalism

  • Syria: A Recent History

    Given your German flag, you might add

  • Damaskus: Oase zwischen Haß und Hoffnung for a 'general overview'. This small volume is covering general Syrian history since ancient times until early 1990s. Similarly good (i.e. 'for general orientation'), is

  • Die Araber

    Now, since much of recent Syrian history is dominated by the Syrian military, you might need some read in this regards. Ideally, there would be an English translation for the best - most detailled, most in-depth - book on history of Syrian armed forces, Pesach Malovany's big volume tittled something like 'Out of the North an Evil shall break Forth' (sorry, all the links I used to have to its publisher are down) - published (like, sigh, so many really good Israeli books on Arab-Israeli wars) in Hebrew only. But there is none. Word is that this might get translated to English by the University of Kentucky, sometimes next or the year after.

    Some might suggest you Arabs at War. Regardless how comprehensive, when it comes to Syria I find it hopelessly obsolete, onesided and largely based on 'battlefield heritage' (see: hear-say). Indeed, although anything than 'Syria-related', I found Egyptian Strategy for the Yom Kippour War much more useful for studying the Syrian military during the October 1973 War (and even after!).

    Namely, that one is largely based on Egyptian documentation captured during the October 1973 War, and cross-examination of related Egyptian and Syrian military literature.

    A 'short-cut' of sort (i.e. avoiding collecting all of these books) would be to go for the Arab MiGs books... though this is in turn an own series of six volumes, covering the history of Arab air forces at war with Israel in period 1955-1973.

    Good thing about these books is that they're based on hundreds of interviews, authentic publications (including several by top Syrian military commanders), and whatever documentation the authors managed to get. They're providing really unique insights: far from merely counting aircraft, describing their markings, or discussing claims, they're descibing political backgrounds, arms deals, training (including outright fist-fights between top Syrian pilots and Soviets supposed to instruct them), organization, tactics, weaponry, foreign influences (in the case of Syrians, this was foremost Czechoslovak and not 'Soviet' by nature, and in this regards these books are well-supported by - between others - loads of original documentation from Czech National Archives) etc.

    Finally, re. causes of the SCW: there is meanwhile a small myrad of related titles - with best example probably being a quite massive volume titled The Syrian Jihad: al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency. Where that title 'excells' is in showing 'local influence and flair' of the entire affair: in turn, that is often making it hard to follow. Right now, I wouldn't know a 'simplier', 'easier to follow' volume describing this affair, though (any recommendations are most welcome).
u/[deleted] · 9 pointsr/history

The French knights of this era are nothing like what you're describing here, J. Alfred. Please take a look at this book for a fascinating look at this period. Most French knights in the 14th and 15th century were closer to Sir Jack Falstaff than Sir Lancelot.

u/Peter_J_Quill · 9 pointsr/europe

> Right-wing nutjobs (fascists)

Not even remotely the same, fascism originated from the Italian left and got great under Mussolini, whose party was hugely supported by Italian Jews.

Well, until he thought of Hitler as a serious threat and tried to get cozy with him.

Experts like Roger Griffin, Robert Paxton and many more generally agree that fascism is neither "Left" nor "Right" exclusive.

Edit: I just realized the glorious irony in your comment.

u/PrivateMajor · 8 pointsr/CrusaderKings

Enguerrand I, Lord of Coucy

I have been reading "A Distant Mirror" an amazing book about medieval history, and decided to play as , the first royal ancestor of the main character in the book.

To play him the start date has to be January 1, 1077, and choose the County of Amiens in the Kingdom of France.

Me and my friend have had a back and forth succession game as his line and it has been a blast. You are constantly caught in the middle of France exploding into revolutions, the English, Flemish, and HRE, among others, all trying to encroach on your position. It is a constant defensive battle, but very rewarding when you manage to snag an extra county or two.

u/ClintonLewinsky · 8 pointsr/CasualUK
u/ryth · 8 pointsr/AskHistorians

Very much enjoyed Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama . Very readable. Was my first foray into reading about the French Rev. so I don't have a lot to compare it to, but it was quite informative and engaging.

u/TheFreshmakerMentos · 8 pointsr/Slovenia

Prosim te, ne ti ne jaz nisva citirala enega samega kosa literature, ker je to reddit debata. Tako da ne ti meni, da si ti nadobjektiven, jaz pa dajem samo mnenja.

Kar se tiče pokolov, pobojev, te izvajajo skozi čas bolj ali manj vsi politični sistemi. Samo poglej si pokole ameriških Indijancev v 19. stoletju in prej. To je bil tudi en vzor nacistom glede njihove politike v Vzhodni Evropi. Da so ZDA to počele, to ne pomeni, da je njihov sistem enak fašističnemu. Politične podobnosti se določajo na globlji ravni, kot samo o tem, koliko se pobija, strada itd.
ZDA so po mojem mnenju kljub tem dejanjem svetlobna leta pred nacistično Nemčijo glede svoje dobrote. Enako tudi glede Sovjetske zveze, sicer malo manj.

Prosim te še enkrat, ne govori iz riti. Predpostavljam, da si libertarec (popravi me če to ni res). Za osnovo ti priporočam delo Roberta Paxtona: Anatomy of Fascism.
Evo link od Amazona: https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918. Ni le o fašizmu, temveč tudi o pojavu množične politike nasploh.

Če ti to ni všeč, predlagam tudi klasiko: Hannah Arendt: Izvor totalitarizma. Zelo dobro opisano, kaj je bilo pred 130 leti skupno imperializmu, fašizmu in leninističnemu komunizmu.
https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Totalitarianism-Harvest-Book-Hb244-ebook/dp/B004Q9TLJW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Da ne bo spet, da podajam samo svoje mnenje.

u/ObdurateSloth · 7 pointsr/europe

Not from my country, but relevant to this sub - Postwar by Tony Judt.

u/yawningangel · 7 pointsr/HistoryPorn

D-Dayis well worth a read too..

u/whogivesashirtdotca · 7 pointsr/ArtPorn

I've been re-listening to my Citizens audiobook. A good summary of the French Revolution and the Terror, of which Marat was a guiding hand.

I like this take on the painting because it slyly copies David's Death of Marat from a different angle!

u/Hezekiah_the_Judean · 6 pointsr/history

The literature that has been written on the French Revolution is so vast that it's difficult to know where to start. I took a class on it my junior year of college, and here are just a couple of recommendations:

"The Oxford History of the French Revolution", by William Doyle, is a pretty good general overview, and helped me keep track of all the events (and boy are there a lot of them). Here is a link to it on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Oxford-History-French-Revolution/dp/019925298X

Wikipedia actually has a surprisingly well-written article on the historiography of the Revolution. It is a helpful place to start, because it lists many of the most important authors and their positions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_French_Revolution#Contemporary_and_19th-century_historians

Timothy Tackett's book "When The King Took Flight" is a good book about the Legislative Assembly during 1791 to 1792, and King Louis XVI's attempted flight from Paris to escape across the border. This focuses on a specific incident in the Revolution.

As for when the Revolution was over, and its legacy? As Zhou Enlai said, "It is too early to say." :P But there are several conflicting dates--such as in 1794 when the Jacobins were overthrown and replaced with moderate leaders, when Napoleon seized power in 1799, or when he was defeated in 1815 and imprisoned on St. Helena. And the Revolution had a massive impact on Europe and the world--it shook aristocrats and monarchs, and after it was over things would never be the same.

Hope this helps!

u/PrexUnagi · 6 pointsr/AskHistorians

Start with something like William Doyle's textbook The Oxford History of the French Revolution.

Then use the bibliography to guide further reading in subjects you're interested in.

u/jdac · 6 pointsr/IAmA

Yes, this. The Protestant Work Ethic: idle hands, etc.

Of course the puritans weren't the inventors of such notions. In the Middle Ages, usury (making money out of money, or charging "excessive" interest for loans) was a sin, technology which allowed one person to do more work than another were forbidden. The word curfew ("cover fires") comes from the extinguishing of all lights so that no-one could work after dark to increase productivity. (For most of this I use Barbara W. Tuchman's A Distant Mirror as reference)

Human beings do seem to have an innate distaste for unfairness. We're social creatures, after all. Perhaps the drive that motivates the above, as well as the denigration of work that seems "too easy" is simple jealousy, maybe combined with the fear of being used.

ETA Link to A Distant Mirror on Amazon. It's a great book; y'all history buffs should read it, or some of her other works. A history prof I know regards Tuchman very highly.

u/mildjeffers · 6 pointsr/AskHistorians

I'm a big fan of Barbara Tuchman. Her book A Distant Mirror is about the Fourteenth Century. It is specifically focused on Europe (mostly France and England). It has an excellent chapter on the black death.

http://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-Century/dp/0345349571

u/Robert_Bork · 5 pointsr/AskHistorians

I'm not a historian, but I used to be a history teacher and I think I got a few things right in terms of keeping people interested. A few books I used that are fun and relatively easy:

  • The Cartoon History of the Universe is good for kids and grown-ups, although there might be some sections for which there has been much new research.

  • You may also enjoy Guns, Germs, and Steel which gives an interesting theory of history up to about 1535. A book which tackles the same questions from a much more "cultural" (rather than geographical) angle is The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. They're a fun read together.

  • I know the professional historians might disagree, but starting with the broad sweep of European history and working your way outward can be fun. I liked From Dawn to Decadence which is a bit of a luxuriating read and very detailed. Less detailed but also good popular introductions are Norman Davies' Antiquity and Europe books and Norman Cantor's Civilization of the Middle Ages.

  • For a total timeline (big bang to now), Cosmos (the series or the book) is an awesome way to slot human history and science into the whole universe.

  • Also, novels that cover crazy spans of time are great. One I liked was Bridge over the River Drina which helps you understand both Europe and the Ottoman Empire over the course of 400 years. Others can recommend novels in the super-epic (in terms of timespan) genre as well.
u/omaca · 5 pointsr/history

The Battle for Spain by Anthony Beevor is considered the definitive, modern single volume history of this conflict.

Beevor is renowned for his justifiably famous books Stalingrad, D-Day and The Fall of Berlin.

u/PaperbackWriter66 · 5 pointsr/guns

Ambrose can be a bit unreliable; I cannot recommend more highly Antony Beevor's "D-Day"

u/chrisbucks · 5 pointsr/PropagandaPosters

I was reading D-Day: Battle Normandy by Antony Beevor last night, where he claims that paratroopers were issued with condoms, but a Catholic padre preached something about going into battle carrying tools of sin and immorality, so many threw them away. Not sure how much truth there is to this passage but if true, I'm sure it wouldn't have helped!

u/kung_fu_jive · 5 pointsr/booksuggestions

You might want to look into The Last Battle, a nonfiction book about a tank unit at the end of the war. This unit found a castle that was housing political prisoners. A fanatical SS unit sieges the castle and both political prisoners and captured Wehrmacht end up taking up arms alongside the US forces. It's a pretty remarkable tale and the writing is decent.

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Battle-German-Soldiers-Joined/dp/0306822962

u/Geschichtenerzaehler · 5 pointsr/todayilearned

There's a book about these events:

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Battle-German-Soldiers-Joined/dp/0306822962/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419629049&sr=8-1&keywords=The+last+Battle

It's a good read, just a bit short after all the built up for my taste.

u/kjhatch · 5 pointsr/gameofthrones

It's just you. Hobb's Elderlings series was first published in 1995. GRRM's ASOIAF was started in 1991, and there are many accounts/interviews that document GRRM's inspirations and overall vision he planned from the beginning.

GRRM's website FAQ also lists a number of book titles he used for research. I've read some of them, and the specific influences are not hard to pick up on. For example, A Distant Mirror describes a family that grew to importance because they built up their main keep at a major river crossing and controlled all traffic through it, just like House Frey.

Additionally, themes of mental connections with fantasy animals, people riding dragons they are connected to, etc. are all old tropes. An easy example is McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series that was first published in 1967.

EDIT: Also you may want to fix the references to "worgs" in your article; you have them down as "wogs."

u/irishmickguard · 5 pointsr/AskEurope

1000 years of antagonizing each other will do that to a relationship. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Years-Annoying-French-Stephen-Clarke/dp/0552779938 I highly recommend this book. It's very funny.

u/BigBearKitty · 5 pointsr/todayilearned

before you go, try to read 'Savage Continent' by Keith Lowe

i guess i would recommend it to anyone, but if you're travelling particularly to Germany, I would think it would be especially enlightening. It's probably available at any decent-sized public library. It describes how, after the end of the war, some concentration camps were re-opened and a virulent anti-semitism re-arose, among other things. I always think it's really enlightening to know the history you're walking through when you travel, and this is a history no one seems to truly know about.

from an editorial review:
>The end of World War II in Europe is remembered as a time when cheering crowds filled the streets, but the reality was quite different. Across Europe, landscapes had been ravaged, entire cities razed, and more than thirty million people had been killed in the war. The institutions that we now take for granted—such as police, media, transport, and local and national government—were either entirely absent or compromised. Crime rates soared, economies collapsed, and whole populations hovered on the brink of starvation.. In Savage Continent, Keith Lowe describes a continent where individual Germans and collaborators were rounded up and summarily executed, where concentration camps were reopened, and violent anti-Semitism was reborn. In some of the monstrous acts of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen, tens of millions were expelled from their ancestral homelands. Savage Continent is the story of post–war Europe, from the close of the war right to the establishment of an uneasy stability at the end of the 1940s. Based principally on primary sources from a dozen countries, Savage Continent is the chronicle of a world gone mad, the standard history of post–World War II Europe for years to come

u/donnydealZ · 5 pointsr/history

The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton. Amazon link

I think going into this it would be wise to get a good picture of what was happening in Europe leading up the rise of Mussolini and Hitler. I recently read The Guns of August, which is a great book about the lead up and early days of WW1. You can see that the major European were focused on expansion into Africa. The tactics they employed to control the population, particularly by the English, (notably concentration camps) were then adopted by the Nazis.

So many roots of fascist ideology are grounded in settler colonialism. With that in mind a good read for more background would be Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

u/IDFSHILL · 5 pointsr/TumblrInAction

Did you just try to cite Jonah Goldberg on fascism/nazism, someone that has been ripped to shreds by actual experts, a man with no clue what he's talking about?

Paxton shreds him here:

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/122231

> The best description of how Nazism fits on the Left-Right spectrum is probably that given by Jonah Goldberg: Nazism, like Italian Fascism, Spanish Francoism and Soviet Communism, is a heresy of Socialism.

Nazism was an extreme form of ANTI-socialism. Why exactly is it you think the only 2 fascist movements that came into power were put there by conservatives.

From the third Reich trilogy:

> To many readers of the newspapers that reported Hitler’s appointment, the jubilation of the brownshirts must have appeared exaggerated. The key feature of the new government, symbolized by the participation of the Steel Helmets in the march-past, was surely the heavy numerical domination of the conservatives. ‘No nationalistic, no revolutionary government, although it carries Hitler’s name’, confided a Czech diplomat based in Berlin to his diary: ‘No Third Reich, hardly even a 2½.’25 A more alarmist note was sounded by the French ambassador, André François-Poncet. The perceptive diplomat noted that the conservatives were right to expect Hitler to agree to their programme of ‘the crushing of the left, the purging of the bureaucracy, the assimilation of Prussia and the Reich, the reorganization of the army, the re-establishment of military service’. They had put Hitler into the Chancellery in order to discredit him, he observed; ‘they have believed themselves to be very ingenious, ridding themselves of the wolf by introducing him into the sheepfold.’

Or:

> Many other middle-class occupations felt their economic and social position was under threat during the Weimar Republic. White-collar workers lost their jobs, or feared that they might, as banks and finance houses got into difficulties. Tourist agents, restaurants, retailing, mail-order firms, a huge variety of employers in the service sector ran into trouble as people’s purchasing power declined. The Nazi Party, now equipped with its elaborate structure of specialist subdivisions, saw this, and began to direct its appeal to the professional and propertied middle classes. All of this was anathema to those Nazis who, like Otto Strasser, brother of the Party organizer Gregor, continued to emphasize the ‘socialist’ aspect of National Socialism and felt that Hitler was betraying their ideals. Angered by the support given by Otto Strasser and his publishing house to left-wing causes such as strikes, Hitler summoned the leading men in the Party to a meeting in April 1930 and ranted against Strasser’s views. As a way of trying to neutralize Otto Strasser’s influence, he now appointed Goebbels Reich Propaganda Leader of the Party. But, to Goebbels’s annoyance, Hitler repeatedly postponed decisive action, hoping that Otto Strasser’s propaganda apparatus would still be of some use in the regional elections that took place in June 1930. Only after this, and Strasser’s publication of an unflattering account of his row with Hitler earlier in the year, did he decide to purge the party of Otto Strasser and his supporters, who pre-empted this move by resigning on 4 July 1930. The split was a serious one. Observers held their breath to see if the Party would survive this exodus of its left wing. But things had changed markedly from the days when Goebbels and his friends had revived the Party in the Ruhr with socialist slogans. The dissidents’ departure revealed that Strasser and his ideas had little support within the Party; even his brother Gregor disowned him. Otto Strasser vanished from serious politics, to spend the rest of his life in Germany, and, later, in exile, dreaming up small, sectarian organizations to propagate his views to tiny audiences of the like-minded.

> Having shed the last vestiges of ‘socialism’, Hitler now moved to build more bridges to the conservative right. In the autumn of 1931 he joined with the Nationalists in the so-called ‘Harzburg Front’, producing a joint declaration with Hugenberg at Bad Harzburg on 11 October stating their readiness to join together in ruling Prussia and the Reich.

I'd highly suggest you avoid reading anything written by Goldberg, the man is historically illiterate and is laughed at by actual experts.

I'd suggest the third reich trilogy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Reich_Trilogy

Anatomy of fascism by paxton:

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

Or Gregors nazism:

https://www.amazon.com/Nazism-Oxford-Readers-Neil-Gregor/dp/0192892819

And a bit more, from the end of the third reich trilogy:

> The Nazi propaganda effort, therefore, mainly won over people who were already inclined to identify with the values the Party claimed to represent, and who simply saw the Nazis as a more effective and more energetic vehicle than the bourgeois parties for putting them into effect. Many historians have argued that these values were essentially pre-industrial, or pre-modern. Yet this argument rests on a simplistic equation of democracy with modernity. The voters who flocked to the polls in support of Hitler, the stormtroopers who gave up their evenings to beat up Communists, Social Democrats, and Jews, the Party activists who spent their free time at rallies and demonstrations - none of these were sacrificing themselves to restore a lost past. On the contrary, they were inspired by a vague yet powerful vision of the future, a future in which class antagonisms and party-political squabbles would be overcome, aristocratic privilege of the kind represented by the hated figure of Papen removed, technology, communications media and every modern invention harnessed in the cause of the ‘people’, and a resurgent national will expressed through the sovereignty not of a traditional hereditary monarch or an entrenched social elite but of a charismatic leader who had come from nowhere, served as a lowly corporal in the First World War and constantly harped upon his populist credentials as a man of the people. The Nazis declared that they would scrape away foreign and alien encrustations on the German body politic, ridding the country of Communism, Marxism, ‘Jewish’ liberalism, cultural Bolshevism, feminism, sexual libertinism, cosmopolitanism, the economic and power-political burdens imposed by Britain and France in 1919, ‘Western’ democracy and much else. They would lay bare the true Germany. This was not a specific historical Germany of any particular date or constitution, but a mythical Germany that would recover its timeless racial soul from the alienation it had suffered under the Weimar Republic. Such a vision did not involve just looking back, or forward, but both.

> The conservatives who levered Hitler into power shared a good deal of this vision. They really did look back with nostalgia to the past, and yearn for the restoration of the Hohenzollern monarchy and the Bismarckian Reich. But these were to be restored in a form purged of what they saw as the unwise concessions that had been made to democracy. In their vision of the future, everyone was to know their place, and the working classes especially were to be kept where they belonged, out of the political decision-making process altogether. But this vision cannot really be seen as pre-industrial or pre-modern, either. It was shared in large measure, for one thing, by many of the big industrialists who did so much to undermine Weimar democracy, and by many modern, technocratic military officers whose ambition was to launch a modern war with the kind of advanced military equipment that the Treaty of Versailles forbade them to deploy. Like other people at other times and in other places, the conservatives, as much as Hitler, manipulated and rearranged the past to suit their own present purposes. They cannot be reduced to expressions of ‘pre-industrial’ social groups. Many of them, from capitalist Junker landlords looking for new markets, to small retailers and white-collar workers whose means of support had not even existed before industrialization, were as much modern as they were traditional.123 It was these congruities in vision that persuaded men like Papen, Schleicher and Hindenburg that it would be worth legitimizing their rule by co-opting the mass movement of the Nazi Party into a coalition government whose aim was to erect an authoritarian state on the ruins of the Weimar Republic.

u/theKalash · 4 pointsr/germany

It's a very complicated topic. I can't tell you what it's really about. I recently read this book, which was quite interessting and gives a lot of insight towards many of the fundamental roots of the tensions in the region.

But I don't think there is one conclusive answer to why there is currently war there.

> I expect the average American idiot to buy into this nonsense, but Europeans? On average, you're far more informed than the typical American and I was hoping you guys could take the global leadership role since America is being governed by an incompetent orange ape. You can have these dog and pony shows and pat yourselves on the back like you're making a difference but they won't do anything.

maybe. But large scale social change is a slow process and this is a step in the right direction. What do you expect? We magically summon a german army that can slap it's dick on the table and end this shitshow. The US could. But this is at least a small alternative to the military option, even if it's effects are currently minor.

u/forker88 · 4 pointsr/history

A few titles on specific topics that seem uncovered:

u/CynicallyIronic · 4 pointsr/history
u/Matador09 · 4 pointsr/eu4

I recommend Europe: a History by Norman Davies

He really breaks down the European history in a refreshing manner. Instead of just addressing the great powers, like France, UK, Germany, Spain, etc, he goes in to depth on the lesser known, or at least less written about parts of Europe. Of course, there's plenty of discussion on those powers as well, but it's all put together in a unified tract which in a way makes sense of the calamity that is Europe's shared histories.

u/joelitobarski · 4 pointsr/history

Norman Davies' Europe: A History is the best general introduction to European History I've ever read. But "short" it ain't.

u/belizehouse · 4 pointsr/worldnews

This book explains the degree to which we reconstructed Europe, the alternate plan, and some political reasons why we decided to save half your continent from totalitarianism.

This book, p 340-460, details how Christian realists and statesmen like Herbert Hoover turned away from the Morgenthau plan, for moral and spiritual reasons, and instead fed the world and made it fit for living in.

This book destroys your typical European conception of nazi occupation outside the typical France/Ukraine dichotomy and shows how Germans starved Greek families and created orphans so they could have Christmas feasts.

This book is a magisterial account of the European contribution to reconstruction and shows that I'm not some halfwit barbarian that thinks everything in the world comes from my country. It just wouldn't have been possible without the help of my country.

This book documents the degree to which the nazi war machine violated the Hague Conventions of the 1890s and looted all countries under their control. They imposed inflation on France (RKK certificate to civilian -> civilian to bank -> bank to central bank -> central bank to trash can ; print franc), used their soldiers as mules, how they 'purchased' goods in the East etc. Very useful for debunking the 1950s Soviet disinformation that was based on the idea that American administration was bumbling. Did you know we sent them ground corn instead of baguettes, sausage, and free shoes? How incompetent! And if a German lost their home we didn't give them a fully furnished one. How mean-spirited! lol

Read those books or at least four on the reconstruction of Europe and ask me that question again.

u/sloam1234 · 4 pointsr/TheGrittyPast

Fantastic recommendation, I got to read Junger's memoir last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. Absolutely horrifying and enlightening.

One of my favorite WWI books is A World Undone, by G. J. Meyer. Which is ironic since I don't think I've ever posted a single anecdote from it (an error I need to severely correct).

It's super dense, but probably one of the best overviews of the war, encapsulating a deep amount of academic research, primary sources from soldiers, civilians, leaders- all the while providing important historical context and background for the many many actors/nations involved, their motives, and goals.

I recommend this book to ANYONE interested in WWI besides a passing understanding. At 816 pages it can be daunting to most readers, but if you have the interest, absolutely check out this book.

Another great book is Max Hastings's Inferno, which is one of the best "social histories" of the war IMO. The wide-range of intimate, tragic, surprising, and sometimes funny testimonies collected in the book, along with Hastings's excellent prose, is one of the most "human" retellings of WWII, I've ever read and is a must for anyone who is interested in the war beyond just the military and political aspects.

Edit: I also want to include Hastings's Retribution which covers the Pacific campaign (1944-45) in equally masterful prose and heartwrenching testimony. Learned not only a lot about the Japanese perspective but also of people's lives under Japanese occupation.

Also Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy, which is a fantastic (American POV) of the war and incredibly well written.

u/CaptainMeap · 4 pointsr/history

Pretty much, yeah. His intent was basically to have minesweepers clear the straight, battleships bombard the coastal guns and enter into the harbor of Istanbul with enough firepower to force a surrender (it almost certainly would have).

The problem was that - after clearing the forts and the Ottoman guns almost entirely running out of ammo, supplies, and communications - a single Ottoman mine layer got through some pretty lax night time patrols. It layed some mines and scampered off; those mines sunk a couple of battleships and damaged others.

These ships were specifically chosen because they were old and expendable. Iirc Churchill thought along the lines that if every single ship under the admiral's command had been lost but Constantinople were captured it would have been a great victory.

Unfortunately, due to having been at peace for so long, the naval commanders were terrified of losing ships. In peacetime it meant demotion and disgrace, but in war it was neccessary, and that's something that didn't translate well after literally lifetimes of no naval warfare. As soon as the battleships retreated due to relatively light losses at a point in the battle in which the Turks later admitted they literally could not have stopped another push, the naval campaign ended. To add to this debacle out of Churchill's hands, the naval commander had a nervous breakdown when Churchill pressed him to continue attacking.

Once the sea battle ended another began: there was an internal fight over where a prepared expeditionary force in the Mediterranean (which included the only pre-war combat troops not decimated by the Western Front) would be used to try and force Gallipoli by land or attack another, French-supported location.

Gallipoli won out, there were weeks and weeks of delays, a German military attaché completely reworked the Dardanelles' defenses, Churchill got less troops than he asked for, the commander was a bit of a dolt, the landings were completely botched in both location and execution, and so Gallipoli became as much a trench-filled disaster as everywhere else. Some months later, the Allies pulled out.

If you like the era, check out G. J. Meyer's A World Undone. It's a fantastic and total account of World War I and Gallipoli gets at least a chapter devoted to it. It reads like an actual book rather than a dusty old historian's textbook and is truly fantastic, and I cannot recommend it enough.

u/satanic_hamster · 4 pointsr/CapitalismVSocialism

Socialism/Communism

A People's History of the World

Main Currents of Marxism

The Socialist System

The Age of... (1, 2, 3, 4)

Marx for our Times

Essential Works of Socialism

Soviet Century

Self-Governing Socialism (Vols 1-2)

The Meaning of Marxism

The "S" Word (not that good in my opinion)

Of the People, by the People

Why Not Socialism

Socialism Betrayed

Democracy at Work

Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA (again didn't like it very much)

The Socialist Party of America (absolute must read)

The American Socialist Movement

Socialism: Past and Future (very good book)

It Didn't Happen Here

Eugene V. Debs

The Enigma of Capital

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism

A Companion to Marx's Capital (great book)

After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action

Capitalism

The Conservative Nanny State

The United States Since 1980

The End of Loser Liberalism

Capitalism and it's Economics (must read)

Economics: A New Introduction (must read)

U.S. Capitalist Development Since 1776 (must read)

Kicking Away the Ladder

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Traders, Guns and Money

Corporation Nation

Debunking Economics

How Rich Countries Got Rich

Super Imperialism

The Bubble and Beyond

Finance Capitalism and it's Discontents

Trade, Development and Foreign Debt

America's Protectionist Takeoff

How the Economy was Lost

Labor and Monopoly Capital

We Are Better Than This

Ancap/Libertarian

Spontaneous Order (disagree with it but found it interesting)

Man, State and Economy

The Machinery of Freedom

Currently Reading

This is the Zodiac Speaking (highly recommend)

u/AreUCryptofascist · 4 pointsr/politics

Prove it, Benito.

Here's an actual writer and author, not a propagandist.

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

Dr Suess also instructed me otherwise.

u/LordTwatpurse · 3 pointsr/books

My favorite remains 'Europe: A History' by Norman Davies, although it's a bit of a brick. It's well written and comprehensible.

It's pretty beefy, but that's because it starts very early in European history. Specifically reading the periods you're interested in would certainly make it look a little less daunting.

Here's a link to the page on Amazon, so you can see what other folks are saying.

http://www.amazon.com/Europe-History-Norman-Davies/dp/0060974680/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318179129&sr=1-1

u/mrjimspeaks · 3 pointsr/history

If you're looking for a history of the experience of British women and civilians A Testament of Youth is a good read.

Now if you're looking for military history Alistair Horne's The Price of Glory is an incredibly detailed account of the largest battle of the great war. I can't recommend this book enough, it's also part of a three book set that deals with France and Germany's relationship over the years you're looking at.

Finally if you'd like something a little more out there The Rites of Spring is a good book.

u/loudribs · 3 pointsr/CasualUK

I'm re-reading Alistair Horne's Price of Glory and bloody loving it. Horne was a military historian who had a thing for the French and wrote in the way that only boozy, right-wing ex-public schoolboys at the twilight of Empire could. This particular book is about Verdun and it's just gripping - written in that real 'blood-and-stomach-pills' style that's now faded out of fashion. In fact, I really recommend all of his works - especially as they're all completely torn by his clear love for the French vs. his very real need to crow at them. Think Alan Clark but with actual, proficient scholarship and an absence of outright lies.

u/mancake · 3 pointsr/history

Two books I enjoyed:
Germany 1945, which is obviously very specific, and Postwar, which is much more wide-ranging and comprehensive.

u/dropkickpuppy · 3 pointsr/AskHistorians

Postwar, by Tony Judt, is the definitive guide to Europe after 1945. It's over 900 pages, but he has a wonderfully readable and sometimes entertaining style. I can't recommend it enough... even if you don't read every page, it will definitely keep you interested in history.

u/handlegoeshere · 3 pointsr/asoiaf

It seems to me that the two strengths of the series are world-building and character depth. If this is your favorite series, you probably like it for one or both of those things.

If you like it for the world building, I recommend history books such as the History of the Peloponnesian War or A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century.

If you like complex characters, then the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. Another strength of asoiaf is that it isn't too heavy handed regarding magic in the story, and this is a strength of the Mistborn series too.

u/jetpacksforall · 3 pointsr/history

I see. I lost track of the thread. I'm currently reading Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. Amazing read. Quick thumbnail: the Black Death wasn't the only, and may not have even been the worst thing that happened during what sounds like an unusually crappy time to have been alive (in Europe at least). War, famine, rape, pillage, robbery, bandits, a stark contrast between the ideals of courtesy and the actual behavior of mounted knights. Seemingly small value placed on life at all levels of society, but of course especially for the regular people.

u/HilariousMax · 3 pointsr/todayilearned

Possibly this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-Century/dp/0345349571/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404330328&sr=1-2

Without having read it, it doesn't look like what I would call "summer reading" but YMMV

u/WeirdlyTallGnome · 3 pointsr/worldbuilding

I'm assuming by medieval/renaissance you mean the traditional European inspired fantasy. Here's a brain dump:

Feudalism:
I feel like I see a lot of fantasy where heroes turn up at some village and get asked to fight someone or other because the villagers have nowhere else to turn to. What I don't often see is the local knight living in the manor across the field whose responsibility it is to be a warrior and protect his fief and who probably doesn't appreciate strangers turning up and undermining his authority by doing his job for him.

There would probably also be a lot of small wars going on at any given time between knights and barons and earls that provide lots of work for dangerous people but have nothing to do with the greater battle battle between good and evil.

Knighthood:
Speaking of knights a knight isn't "someone who fights with plate armour and a sword," that's what they were IRL because that was the most effective way to fight and you needed a certain amount of wealth and status to afford the huge investment in training and equipment. If you have a fantasy world where with enough training and expensive equipment people can learn to shoot fire and call down lightning that will break a cavalry charge then that world's knights will almost certainly all be wizards. And very few other people will be allowed to be.

Era-appropriate firearms:

  • https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/538672805409922868
  • https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/511721576383944160

    That aesthetic of people in plate armour with cannons is something you almost never see depicted.

    Renaissance fashion:
  • https://i-h1.pinimg.com/564x/67/7c/4d/677c4de51094fe521abab26318dc5f19.jpg
  • http://blog.sunandswords.com/post/143679221560/some-awesome-photos-taken-last-week-of-my-kit
  • https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ae/56/85/ae5685d3f34f0a1a777ca2a587d8cf54.jpg

    Speaks for itself.

    Medieval medicine and science:
    A physician diagnosing you by cross referencing your symptoms with the alignment of the stars to decide how to properly balance your humors isn't something I've seen a lot of in fantasy. That element of earnestly applying the scientific method to things you don't understand based on what seem to us like completely ridiculous variables and assumptions. Also more folk medicine like plants that only had medicinal properties if you found them by accident or sympathetic magic like curing a rabid dog bite using the literal hair of the dog that bit you.

    On a similar note you don't see a lot of importance put on folk superstition like hanging horseshoes above doors to keep out evil spirits/the devil/elves trying to steal your children. I feel like basing a fantasy world's idea of magic around the small everyday things might make a change from the usual Big Magic stuff.


    The equator:
    Not really something that will affect the day-to-day feel of a world but I read once that some people believed that the equator was hotter because it was closer to the sun and that right on the equator it would be too hot for anything to survive or cross. So they thought the entire southern hemisphere was inaccessible due to this deadly heat barrier. Not sure what you could do with it but I thought it was a neat idea. Maybe the discovery or creation of a tunnel under the equator would be an interesting way to introducing a "new world" to explore that developed totally independently.

    The devil:
    You know where medieval people got magic powers? By serving the devil. You know how they became werewolves? Made a deal with the devil. You know how women learned arithmetic? You better believe that's the devil. A lot of fantasy treats the monsters and magic and whatnot as just the natural flora and fauna of the world but these days I don't feel like I've seen much that filters the world through that lens of everything comes from one or two sources that have strong moral stances associated with them and, therefore, everything that comes from them does too.

    Pilgrimages:
    I don't know, you just never see them in fantasy but in the middle ages they were quite the thing from the noble woman who spends ten years of her life travelling constantly between holy sites to the common folk for whom the trip to visit the bones of St Whoever is basically the closest they ever have to a holiday.

    Ships:
    Don't have your medieval knights cross the sea on what amounts to a 17th century galleon like I feel like I keep seeing. Not when there are cool medieval and renaissance ships you could use:
  • Byzantine Dromon: https://ferrebeekeeper.wordpress.com/tag/dromon/
  • Venetian Galleass: https://www.deviantart.com/radojavor/art/Battle-Of-Lepanto-41693977
  • Look, we built towers on it and now it's a war ship: http://users.trytel.com/tristan/towns/florilegium/images2/def14b.jpg

    Level of material wealth/standard of living:
    When you turn up in a sleepy little farming village there probably won't be a big inn with a roaring fire, a dinner menu and a dozen rentable rooms. There will be a family that'll let you sleep on the floor of their one-room cottage for a few coins and might even share some of their latest batch of beer with you. Even the lord of the castle may very well sleep in the same room as their whole family and several servants. When you try to sell your stack of looted swords to the local blacksmith they aren't going to have cash sitting around to pay you. But they could offer you a box of nails and some of the loaves of bread the baker owes them.

    Little things:
    I feel like a lot of the reason "medieval" fantasy tends to feel stale is that it's mostly made up of just all the bits and pieces of history that people are familiar with smooshed together. Good for acccessibility, bad for originality. Often just adding little details or taking away familiar things can make a difference. Look up the things they had in place of anything resembling modern law enforcement like Tithings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithing) and the Hue and Cry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hue_and_cry) or people bringing their own mugs to taverns because the taverns couldn't just buy bulk mugs off the shelf or the fact that it could take members of ten different guilds to make a suit of armour and anyone trying to do the bits that are covered by another guild will find themselves out of work pretty quick. Maybe read something like https://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-Century/dp/0345349571. Look up medieval bestiaries to learn how lions are born dead and brought to life by their mothers or how vultures can see the future.
u/Mycd · 3 pointsr/history

A fantastic book, A Distant Mirror is a detailed glimpse of medieval 1300's French and English life, from royalty to peasantry.

There are some sections in the book that describe mercenary groups, including some interesting bits about groups that don't get paid, and essentially leaderless bands that pillaged 'friendly' countrysides just to survive. Some were as big as standing armies, but without a war to fight, bank to fund them, or often even a purpose just hardend soldiers - and how they roamed pilliaging summer seasons and forcefully occupied random towns for winters .



u/randomfemale · 3 pointsr/MedievalHistory

For anyone interested in this area in the previous century, this book is just great.

u/firstroundko108 · 3 pointsr/booksuggestions

Well, this book covers much of the 14th century, but it’s not as recent as the Thirty Years War. Nevertheless, it’s regularly mentioned in this sub as one of the best historical books altogether.

u/TheHellion · 3 pointsr/Libri

Storia antica:

  • Robin Lane Fox - Alessandro Magno
  • Tom Holland - Rubicone
  • Peter Heather - La caduta dell'impero romano
  • Peter Heather - L'impero e i barbari

    Scienza: Qualunque libro di Paul Davies, Simon Singh, John Gribbin, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker.

    -----

    Ti consiglierei anche questo e questo ma non credo ne esista una versione in italiano.



u/Containedmultitudes · 3 pointsr/DestructiveReaders

I'm only a recently active poster, but I hope to remain so. I just moved and I'm between jobs so I started writing a novel (stave off madness from the job boards) and was looking for some strong critiques. I really like the premise of a semi-enforced give to get critical community, because it helps build the skills of everybody involved.

I was an English major, but also always an avid reader, so my favorite books have a bit of a range (representative not comprehensive):

  • Gatsby, Ulysses, The Sound and the Fury
  • Song of Ice and Fire, His Dark Materials
  • Harry Potter
  • Moby Dick
  • Paradise Lost, The Odyssey
  • Citizens, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Last Lion Churchill series, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

    I'm predisposed to find things I like in almost any piece, but because I can find really great gems I try to be rough on the rough spots. I'm most drawn to anything that is true to life, even in the most fantastical situations.
u/ronaldvr · 3 pointsr/history
u/tenent808 · 3 pointsr/AskHistorians

Check out Eric Hobsbawm's trilogy of books: The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848, The Age of Capital: 1848-1875, and The Age of Empire: 1875-1914 where he makes the argument for the "long 19th century" spanning the years from 1789-1914. Hobsbawm is very much a Marxist historian, so keep that in mind reading his work, but he is a gifted writer and historian and lays out his arguments very convincingly and rigorously. As far as I'm aware, Hobsbawm is the scholar most credited with formatting the theory of the "long 19th century".

u/karma_morghulis · 3 pointsr/TrueReddit

Humans, as a species, are predisposed towards authoritarians. Even in idealized, pastoral tribal societies, which often did have high degrees of egalitarianism, there was invariably a strong social order generally associated with a group of elders or single elder depending on the size of the group, somewhat counter-intuitively larger groups tended to have single executives whereas smaller ones can remain effective with larger authority councils.

One of the most "free" people in a historically large society were the Iroquois, who had a much stronger influence on the democratic drive in North America than in generally recognized in common histories. Even they had multiple levels of government, with an interesting gender-split authority structure and weren't strictly democratic.

I think a lot of people conflate the ideas of egalitarianism (fairness and equity) with democracy. Historically democracy was one of the concessions to equability, but they are not the same thing. People want fairness. Democracy got them some of that. But much of the modern fairness we have in the Western world was engendered from two centuries of violent struggle by various populist, socialist, and nationalist elements against the colonial and imperial power structures that emerged during Europe's post-renaissance period.

This was not voted for in so much as from about 1740 up until the WW1-WW2 period, people were literally murdering members of the feudal and imperial power structures, and in some cases overthrowing governments. The notion of modern democracy was a concession by the various imperial systems to that quest for more equality (liberté, égalité, fraternité ... not démocratie) and not some natural progression of governance. Even the American Revolution was significantly driven by a desire for "leveling" that is left out of most histories, the colonies wanted a bigger share of the pie more than they specifically wanted to vote for which guy in a wig was head cheese.

tl;dr not suprising, our notional of preference for democracy is debatably propaganda and fairly ahistorical. A large fraction of the population would likely prefer an authoritarian system as long as they thought the result was fair ... to them at least

Interesting Reading: Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Revolution. amazon link

u/DaisyKitty · 3 pointsr/worldnews

um, yeah, people did do exactly that.

read: Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of WWII by Keith Lowe.

if you haven't read it, you're really not in a position to comment.

https://www.amazon.com/Savage-Continent-Europe-Aftermath-World/dp/125003356X

>n Savage Continent, Keith Lowe describes a continent where individual Germans and collaborators were rounded up and summarily executed, where concentration camps were reopened, and violent anti-Semitism was reborn. In some of the monstrous acts of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen, tens of millions were expelled from their ancestral homelands. Savage Continent is the story of post–war Europe, from the close of the war right to the establishment of an uneasy stability at the end of the 1940s. Based principally on primary sources from a dozen countries, Savage Continent is the chronicle of a world gone mad, the standard history of post–World War II Europe for years to come.

u/autobored · 3 pointsr/AskHistory

This issue is covered in the excellent book Savage Continent by Keith Lowe.

https://www.amazon.com/Savage-Continent-Europe-Aftermath-World/dp/125003356X

u/mullinbk · 3 pointsr/MapPorn

NSDAP was a rightist/reactionary/veterans movement partially funded by businessmen and was way more popular among the middle class than the working classes (just look at voting statistics). the nsdap didn't kill businessmen, it killed workers who tried to unionize against the corporatist state the nazis created. the national union was not a union concerned with workers rights, it was concerned with maintaining industry to feed the war machine. the Nazi state never owned all the businesses and was only able to control a select few industries.

I'd suggest you read the Nazi sections in this book, in order to better understand the relationships better business, workers, and the NSDAP

u/Motzlord · 3 pointsr/AskHistorians

The following book is also worth looking at:

Paxton, Robert: The Anatomy of Fascism (2005)

u/PPewt · 3 pointsr/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM

>Antifa is an organized group of people with a singular common purpose. Sure, they may claim that "they aren't an organization," but they literally are. They are a loosely governed organization, but still an organization, regardless.

Local antifa groups might be organized, but antifa as a whole is not. There is no consistent "antifa policy" on how to approach things like violence, protests, etc because antifa is not an organization. You could have a group of people calling themselves antifa in City A who do nothing but tear down fascist posters, and a group of people calling themselves antifa in City B who do nothing but milkshake fascists, and that isn't a contradiction because the groups are not part of any organized movement in any more specific sense than ideologically (people who dislike fascism and want to do something about it) and probably don't even talk to each other other than in the very vague sense that they may both use social media.

-------------

What are all of these "authoritarian" and "dictatorial" things that antifa does which are so horrible?

-------------

The rest of your post argues that since antifa is authoritarian and dictatorial (????????) it's somehow fascist by stubbornly refusing to use anything but a woefully inadequate dictionary definition that nobody actually takes seriously, as evidenced by the fact that nobody unironically calls most authoritarian countries in the world fascist. You should consider looking into some actual attempts to define fascism by credible people if you want to throw the term around.

> When I say that Antifa is fascist, I don't mean that they are literal fascists like Mussolini.

"When I say that antifa is fascist, I don't mean like, you know, fascist fascists. I mean the other kind of fascists: people I don't like."

u/HemingwaySweater · 3 pointsr/texas

He gave you the textbook definition of fascism. That is what “fascism” is. It was YOU who argued that Nationalism is non-violent. I did not back up your argument: Trump has been “violently taking out” people he perceives as enemies (undocumented immigrants) by using a paramilitary force (ICE) to arrest them in and lock them in cages. Does that sound familiar?

Here’s something you can do that might be a better use of your time: read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

u/pizzashill · 3 pointsr/Drama

> You are posting bullshit written by people with an agenda.

Yes, of course, the hand-waving of all experts on any given subject by simply declaring they have an agenda. Serious question, in your head, do you think this is a valid refutation of academic works in relation to fascism?

Do you think this works anywhere outside of the Donald?


> You have never read a history book that was written after 1960 is my guess. You are an amazingly stupid person.

Let's take a look.

I quoted the 3rd reich trilogy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Reich_Trilogy

> The Third Reich Trilogy is a series of three narrative history books by the British historian Richard J. Evans covering the rise and collapse of Nazi Germany in detail, with a focus on the internal politics and the decision-making process.[1] According to Ian Kershaw, it is "the most comprehensive history in any language of the disastrous epoch of the Third Reich",[2] which has been hailed as a "masterpiece of historical scholarship."[3] The three volumes of the trilogy were published between 2003 and 2008.

So that's after 1960.


I quoted the anatomy of fascism:

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

Which was written in 2005.

Which is again, after 1960 last time I checked. Next time you start throwing wild punches in an effort to save face after getting dismantled, make sure you can't be made to look like an idiot in 30 seconds.

u/thelostdolphin · 3 pointsr/history

This is supposed to be good - The Thirty Years War - CV Wedgwood

u/TechJesus · 3 pointsr/changemyview

I read A Line in the Sand not too long ago, which covers everything from World War One onwards, and my impression was not that the Israeli's were the good guys, but that the region would probably be more stable had the British not caved in to Zionism.

Of course, we cannot now evict the Israeli's from the region, or at least there is not the will to do so, plus we have a strategic interest in holding them there, some would argue. But they basically lucked out, because many in the West felt it would be a good idea to have a Jewish state. They certainly have less legitimacy over the area than the French have over France.

u/Rhandhali · 3 pointsr/rpg

I love WFRP; I absolutely adore the setting and the system for it's flaws captures the feel of that setting pretty well.

Part of what I love about the setting; It's very historically inspired and is the first game that I encountered that really broke from the Tolkein/Anglo-French themes that are stereotypical of fantasy roleplaying games. The political system is very different and the world is very much built around that; a (usually) weak and ineffectual leader elected by squabbling antagonistic city states that are held back from open war by external existential threats really adds to the atmosphere of decay, desperation and impending doom.

Read up on the 30 Years War some. Books like the
Malleus Maleficarum, a historic witch hunters bible and
CV Wedgwood-Hale's History of the 30 years War

A lot of the WFRP vibe is summed up in the engraving series The Grand Miseries of War

There aren't a lot of good movies out there but 1971's The Last Valley could give a few session ideas and help with the overall mood.
the Hammer Horror film Witchfinder General isn't quite 30 Years War but Puritan witch trials are definitely a good place to mine for ideas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchfinder_General_(film)

Warlord Games make 30 years war minis that would be perfect, if you use those in your games at all.

u/Dokky · 2 pointsr/ireland

I just finished this, you may want to read it:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Line-Sand-Britain-France-struggle/dp/1847394574

Certainly more complicated than I thought (and I thought I had a good idea).

Sykes-Picot is almost a footnote in what actually happened.

u/interociter · 2 pointsr/politics

Good question, exposing Zionist connections with Nazis and going with the original Uganda plan would've saved some problems. State of Israel, ok, Holy Land Belongs To The Jews, not so much.

u/hassani1387 · 2 pointsr/worldnews

Ummm....so if one guy is in favor of Nazis, then ALL PALESTINIANS FOR EVER are responsible? LOL

Hate to break the news to you but amongst other people who favored the Nazis were many prominent Americans and American companies, King Edward VIII of Britain, and THE ZIONISTS THEMSELVES WHO COLLABORATED WITH THE NAZIS. lol

http://www.amazon.com/51-Documents-Zionist-Collaboration-Nazis/dp/1569802351

u/DavidDPerlmutter · 2 pointsr/history

David Chandler, CAMPAIGNS OF NAPOLEON. Still best comprehensive military history.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Campaigns-Napoleon-David-Chandler/dp/0025236601

u/AGVann · 2 pointsr/natureismetal

Norman Davies is basically the better version of Jared Diamond. He's an actual historian, and does a good job of balancing depth with accessibility.

I really recommend both Europe: A History and The Isles: A History. They are both quite dense tomes, but Davies does a really great job of creating a narrative of the entirety of European/British history (from prehistory to modern times) while challenging our biases and subconscious notions. Instead of a tedious listing of events over 10000 years, he uses narratives and environmental/geographical analysis, interspersed with 'windows' where he goes into several key events in detail.

u/blizzsucks · 2 pointsr/ancienthistory

I've had Davies since high school and he's never failed me as a jumping off point into different periods and civilizations.



Also, Hansen is quite good at describing Hoplite warfare with an uncanny knack for the soldeir's perspective.

Everitt is great for looking at the fall of the Roman republic from Cicero's perspective. He also has a good book on Pompey but I have yet to read it.

These are the first 3 books I pulled off my shelf next to my desk, there are more but Ancient history is pretty broad (and two of my books arguably are classical rather than ancient), I'm not going to make an exhaustive list though, because well, that would be exhausting.

u/Skolanthropy · 2 pointsr/AskHistorians

Hrm, perhaps it is a misconception I have. What you say it true. But I remember reading in Alistair Horne's The Price of Glory that German commanders on the western front, Verdun specifically, had to be especially cautious of and sensitive to needless casualities because the French were calling in fresh troops from the colonies to fight, while Germany had no such luxury.

u/IamaRead · 2 pointsr/berlinsocialclub

The Iron Kingdom by Christopher Clarke is a great book if you are interested in Brandenburg/Prussia/Germany and Berlin.

Postwar by Tony Judt is a good book for the later periods, however since both are thick I recommend to start with the first if you only got 4 weeks to read.

If you write a bit more about what specifics interest you I could motivate a friend of mine to join you.

u/dmanww · 2 pointsr/PropagandaPosters

Check out this book. It's quite long, but has pretty interesting stuff.

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 - by Tony Judt

u/ProfShea · 2 pointsr/HistoryPorn

Correct, I don't have the numbers for you. However, I have given you a wonderful lead on finding something that you seem interested in. The book, Postwar, is a rich and in depth book about Europe prior to and post war. Reviewers noted the book's wonderful ability to dissect more modern history. If you're willing to write something like this:

>Yeah I'm sure a banking system lasting hundreds of years is nothing in the face of the holdings of 200 Jews in the 30s. The entire country is founded on that, definitely

Then, I'm certain you're willing to do some research beyond what you've already accomplished. You didn't seem to reference much in that quote, but I'm interested in where you've found your information.

u/Farwater · 2 pointsr/pagan

> I wonder how much you can understand what makes French French by learning Gaulish...

That's a great question! Honestly, not a whole lot just because modern French has evolved so much over time and is fundamentally based on Latin. Don't get me wrong, Gaulish was important to the development of French, as the vulgar Latin spoken throughout the Roman province of Gaul was a mish-mash of different Gaulish dialects mixed with Latin. But I think that French overall is clearly an Italic language, and the Franks probably had just as strong an influence over it as the Gauls did. But despite the fact that only a small fraction of French vocabulary comes from Gaulish, it definitely helped transform French into the language it is today.

What I just wrote above was an extremely abridged, superficial version of the Gaulish history of French. It's a complicated subject, and you would probably have to chase down an expensive textbook to get a proper history of it.

There is a good pop-history book about the French language called The Story of French. It's 500 pages, but I found it fun to read. It barely even touches on the French language's history with Gaulish, though. There's just that much more to write about French development in Medieval to modern times.

But I would say that the few words that do come from Gaulish are surprisingly important words and they help shape the character of the language. It seems like almost anything rustic, nature-based, or agrarian comes from Gaulish (alouette, lark; cabane, cabin; cheval, horse; mouton, sheep; etc., the list is very long)

There are also a small number of key words that aren't rustic which come from Gaulish, such as aller (to go), chemin (path/route), cloche (bell), craindre (to fear), crème (cream), drapeau (flag), manteau (coat), petit (small), and pièce (piece).

I'm sure you can see that some of these words even worked their way into English via Norman. Wikipedia has a good list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_words_of_Gaulish_origin

I feel like I rambled a lot and still couldn't do the subject justice, but I hope that answered your general question and gave you some more insight.

u/MiaVisatan · 2 pointsr/languagelearning

Here are the ones I have and that I recommend:

​

SPANISH

​

The Story of Spanish: https://www.amazon.com/Story-Spanish-Jean-Benoit-Nadeau/dp/1250049040

​

The History of Spanish: A Student's Introduction: https://www.amazon.com/History-Spanish-Students-Introduction/dp/1316507947 (available now from: https://www.bookdepository.com/History-Spanish-Diana-L-Ranson/9781316507940)

​

A History of the Spanish Language through Texts: https://www.amazon.com/History-Spanish-Language-through-Texts/dp/0415707129

​

A Brief History of the Spanish Language: (but it's really not brief) https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Spanish-Language-Second/dp/022613394X

​

La maravillosa historia del espa?ol https://www.amazon.com/maravillosa-historia-del-espa/dp/8467044276

​

A History of the Spanish Language https://www.amazon.com/History-Spanish-Language-Ralph-Penny/dp/0521011841

​

The Evolution of Spanish https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Spanish-Linguistic-Thomas-Lathrop/dp/1589770145

​

Los 1001 años de la lengua española https://www.amazon.com/lengua-española-ESTUDIOS-LITERARIOS-Spanish/dp/968166678X

​

FRENCH

​

The Story of French: https://www.amazon.com/Story-French-Jean-Benoit-Nadeau/dp/0312341849

​

A History of the French Language https://www.amazon.com/History-French-Language-Peter-Rickard/dp/041510887X

​

French Inside Out: The Worldwide Development of the French Language in the Past, the Present and the Future https://www.amazon.com/French-Inside-Out-Worldwide-Development/dp/0415076706

​

The French Language: present and past https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0729302083

​

u/Bamboozle_ · 2 pointsr/books

Barbra Tuchman's The Guns of August is a personal favorite of mine. Her A Distant Mirror is also supposed to be very good, though I haven't managed to get to it yet.

Carl Sagan is also a great choice if you are interested in space.

u/brightcarvings · 2 pointsr/writing

I that case you might be interested in the following books:

u/GunboatDiplomats · 2 pointsr/printSF

I'd suggest the 14th Century. Black plague, 100-years war, massive social unrest. See A Distant Mirror and more info here.

u/Fortspucking · 2 pointsr/history

This is a classic that I remember enjoying greatly. https://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-Century/dp/0345349571

u/criticalnegation · 2 pointsr/HistoryofIdeas

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman

absolutely enthralling. i've never read something so informative and entertaining...she teleports you to a different world: ours, 700 years ago.

next on the list is Immanuel Wallerstein's 4 volume World Systems Series. it's been on my bucket list since i took a course in undergrad on the subject.


then, marx's capital.

u/huxtiblejones · 2 pointsr/history

History of the Medieval World by Susan Wise Bauer. I'm reading this now and I've really enjoyed it, very clear writing and introductory overviews to cultures all over the world - Europe, North Africa, China, Korea, India, you name it.

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman. This one was highly recommended on /r/medievalhistory

u/spoffy · 2 pointsr/eu4

I'll give you two that I've enjoyed lately:

Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations talks about some states that you see in Eu4 like Aragon, Burgundy and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century takes you into the life of a French nobleman during the Hundred Years War. I'd check out pretty much anything else by Tuchman while you're at it.

u/spike · 2 pointsr/books

A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman

u/babydave371 · 2 pointsr/anime

I mostly read non-fiction myself. Some of my favourites are Penguins stopped play, 1000 year of annoying the french, iron kingdom and europe's tragedy. I'm currently reading Pax Romana and am probably gonna pick up Alec Ryrie's new book on the reformation as I had him as a lecturer and he was bloody fantastic.

u/runsinheels · 2 pointsr/suggestmeabook

A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914-1918 by G.J. Meyer is a really thorough and enjoyable read that definitely covers 'the big picture' in an accessible way.

u/Gewehr43 · 2 pointsr/history

A World Undone ( http://www.amazon.com/World-Undone-Story-Great-1914/dp/0553382403/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325016559&sr=8-1 ) is a phenomenal one-volume account of WWI. Just enough details to be really interesting, but not so high-level as to be dry. It's well written and very readable. Plus, it includes small, side chapters that help explain the history and historical context of events of the main chapters. It's really a phenomenal read.

u/downvotesattractor · 2 pointsr/malelifestyle
u/Hipster-Stalin · 2 pointsr/Battlefield

I finally have time to upload a bunch of pictures from Paris's Musee d'armee.

For some reason, the camera took terrible pictures indoors. Suffice to say, I got a new camera after this trip.

I studied history in college and found this book to be the best resource on WW1.. A World Undone by GJ Meyer. Easy to read and isn't dull like some history books can be.

u/saddertadder · 2 pointsr/badhistory

Got hooked into A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 and about a hundred pages in it. Has anyone else read it? what do you think?

u/ham_rain · 2 pointsr/books

What is a good book to "understand" World War II? It could be from a political, technological, military or social perspective. As an example, I found G J Meyer's "A World Undone" to be a fascinating read on the political and military aspects of WWI.

u/Hobbesian_Monarchist · 2 pointsr/MilitaryPorn

Dan Carlin is so fun to listen to. If you enjoyed Blueprint for Armageddon make sure to pick up "Wrath of the Khans," about the rise and zenith of the Mongol Empire. You can listen to it 4 times through and still hear new things on every listen... trust me haha.

Also, if you're interested in WW1 literature, this is required reading: https://www.amazon.com/World-Undone-Story-Great-1914/dp/0553382403

u/Super_Jay · 2 pointsr/battlefield_one

BOOKS:

  • If nothing else, I encourage everyone with even a modicum of interest in WWI to read All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Marie Remarque, a German veteran of the Great War. It's a harrowing, brutal, and eye-opening look at the conditions that soldiers on all sides had to endure, and the terrible toll that the war extracted from the troops that served.

  • For nonfiction, I highly recommend A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914-1918. by G.J. Meyer. It's a comprehensive, accessible, informative single-volume history that helps tie together all of the many theaters, nations, and other factors that made up the world-changing conflict that we now know as WWI.
u/TheFightingFishy · 2 pointsr/battlefield_one

Hey folks. I used to be a big war history book buff back when I was a kid, but got out of it in later years. However playing some BF1 and realizing that my WWI knowledge was pretty spotty got me looking for a book to brush up. I recently finished this guy and wanted to say that I really recommend it.

https://www.amazon.com/World-Undone-Story-Great-1914/dp/0553382403/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1503508652&sr=8-5&keywords=WWI+history

Trying to do a comprehensive war overview book is always fraught with peril. There is so much to cover and you need to do justice to all the major events while not turning into just a continual series of dates and casualty numbers. This book does a great job of balancing covering the action on the battlefields along with the homefronts and other political topics. I also liked how it helped to connect you to some of the major characters and empires by giving small side-chapters to fill in the background on them (The Romanovs, Ludendorff, The Ottoman Empire). Way less dry than John Keegan's "The First World War." Probably the best full war history book that I've read, it's pretty amazing how much it crams in without being too much of a doorstop.

u/toomuchcream · 2 pointsr/books

Probably about as in-depth as you'd need for assassins creed. Also the further reading at the bottom.

But I'm going to go ahead and recommend Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama. His works are very accessible for people who want a good, non-fiction narrative history that also isn't incredibly academic.

u/swampsparrow · 2 pointsr/suggestmeabook

Citizens is a really good account and a really good read. It's not a novel but I still highly recommend it

u/DoctorTalosMD · 2 pointsr/tuesday

This one's really good, though not sure if there's an audiobook.

u/vimandvinegar · 2 pointsr/history

Christianity: I've heard that Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch is fantastic. I haven't read it. It's called "Christianity", not "Catholicism", but it might work for you given that Catholicism pretty much was Christianity until (relatively) recently.

French Revolution: Citizens by Simon Schama.

Can't help you with Zoroastrianism.

u/amaxen · 2 pointsr/Libertarian

Schama's Citizens is a fascinating, readable book on the revolution.

Here's a review: >
>
> This well-written, thoroughly documented book should be on every high-school library shelf. It explains the self-destructive, bloody orgy that occurred in France but not in England or Prussia, countries in similar states of poverty and with similarly deprived, disenfranchised populaces. Schama theorizes that the cause of France's revolution lies in the self-deception of the ruling intelligentsia, who believed that they could make a Utopian France by allowing controlled violence, murder, and the destruction of property in the name of liberty, and all to exist simultaneously with good government. Schama presents Talleyrand, Lafayette, and others with more understanding than they are given in most histories, setting them amidst a web of violence of their own making. This book speaks to today's world, as nations strive to move from despotism to democracy. A more modern view of these same problems is found in Z. Brzezinski's The Grand Failure (Scribners , 1989) .
>-Barbara Batty, Port Arthur I.S.D., TX

u/chieflovedrug · 2 pointsr/AskHistorians

Mark Mazower's Dark Continent provides a very unique look at European history, it is a bit dry in places, but overall I found it incredibly stimulating.

u/Aidinthel · 2 pointsr/TrueAtheism

>I think it important to also note that in the past it has been considerably more difficult to actually be an atheist--not simply because of persecution-- but also because former generations didn't have the benefit of knowledge regarding scientific explanations of the diversity of life or origins of the cosmos.
Modern science offered the first real alternative to religion.


I don't buy it. The Gods of the Gaps argument isn't any more rational just because the gaps are bigger, and there were plenty of people who challenged the religious orthodoxy. Just this quarter I read a book about a small village in southern France during the early 1300s and there were plenty of people in that tiny, rural community who didn't believe in the Christian God or any other, saying things like "the soul is nothing but blood".

u/blue-jaypeg · 2 pointsr/MapPorn

The book Monatillou has a chapter on Time and Space-- which discusses how the peasants, clergy, shepherds and craftspeople measured their day, year, life and history--

SMITHSONIAN:
>Montaillou is a tiny quiet village in the roughest and most inaccessible part of the backward out-of-the-way Ariège department in the foothills of the Pyrenees. The village has existed since at least the time of Charlemagne, but it has never played any part in history, never been on any beaten track, never had a famous son, and its contribution to the national economy has always been close to zero. "The end of the earth," one of its older inhabitants calls it, with a certain affection....

>a source of pure joy to modern historians and readers....For they come as near as anything can to satisfying the curiosity at the heart of our interest in history: what was life really like in the old days? What did people do all their livelong days, what did they talk about, what did they think about?... The track led back and forth through the whole physical, economic, emotional, spiritual life of Montaillou.

u/Postgrifter · 2 pointsr/todayilearned

Russian atrocities to their own people were horrific, particularly throughout the war. They also exterminated Jews and blamed Germans (1). Allie bombing purposely targeted civilians (2), and after the war Allie behavior was ghastly, enslaved millions, and starved tens of millions (3). I don't think comparing atrocities is a good idea. I do think that the Germans and Japanese were far more horrific and purposeful in their carnage though. (Also I don't think we disagree here, really :)

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
2: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1413598/Germans-call-Churchill-a-war-criminal.html
3: http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Continent-Europe-Aftermath-World/dp/125003356X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452280371&sr=8-1&keywords=savage+continent

u/guanaco55 · 2 pointsr/history

I'm sure there was. I remember reading of an exchange between Churchill and one of his advisors after Yalta once it sank in that Stalin would control Eastern Europe after the war. Apparently Churchill simply asked his advisor "do you plan to live here after the war?" Answer: "No." Churchill: "Me neither..." Everyone was tired of war. The book Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II deals with the horrors of life in Europe in the decade following the end of the war. Too sad... No wonder so many desperately tried to go somewhere else like Canada or Australia. Nevil Shute's book The Far Country is about two of those.

u/GirlParts · 2 pointsr/EnoughTrumpSpam

I will check it out.

Currently finishing Anotomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

And the similarities make me wake up screaming daily. Seriously we are goose-stepping to plan.

Hate on news
Demonization on religion
Blame immigration
Sprinkle apathy and complacency of public and leaders

What gives me hope is the judges who put a stay. That didn't happen in either Italy or Germany.

u/NuclearTurtle · 2 pointsr/pics

> So we should wage war against everyone who has bad ideas?

If that bad idea involves the systematic murder of 6 million Jews, then yes, I'd say we should try and stop them, forcefully if necessary

> And how would one tell the difference between nazis and non-nazis?

You just need to know the signs to look for. If you want to learn more about them, I'd suggest reading Anatomy of Fascism or The Origins of Totalitarianism, both of which give you a good understanding of how to identify actual fascism. Also, while I'm linking to Amazon, I'd also like to recommend It Can't Happen Here, which is a novel written in the 1930s about how the rise in Fascism would look in America

u/diplomasi · 2 pointsr/PoliticalScience

http://theleder.com/docs/Misc/Paxton_Five%20Stages%20of%20Fascism.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

According to Robert Paxton (author of Anatomy of Fascism), fascism in United States would likely be religious

>For example, while a new fascism would necessarily diabolize some enemy, both internal and external, the enemy would not necessarily be Jews. An authentically popular American fascism would be pious, antiblack, and, since September 11, 2001, anti-Islamic as well;

I think Christian Theocratic Republic would manifest itself trough the five stages of fascism as described in the book and article above:

  1. Intellectual exploration, where disillusionment with popular democracy manifests itself in discussions of lost national vigor
  2. Rooting, where a fascist movement, aided by political deadlock and polarization, becomes a player on the national stage
  3. Arrival to power, where conservatives seeking to control rising leftist opposition invite the movement to share power
  4. Exercise of power, where the movement and its charismatic leader control the state in balance with state institutions such as the police and traditional elites such as the clergy and business magnates.
  5. Radicalization or entropy, where the state either becomes increasingly radical, as did Nazi Germany, or slips into traditional authoritarian rule, as did Fascist Italy

    >The language and symbols of an authentic American fascism would, of course, have little to do with the original European models. They would have to be as familiar and reassuring to loyal Americans as the language and symbols of the original fascisms were familiar and reassuring to many Italians and Germans, as Orwell suggested. Hitler and Mussolini, after all, had not tried to seem exotic to their fellow citizens. No swastikas in an American fascism, but Stars and Stripes (or Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance. These symbols contain no whiff of fascism in themselves, of course, but an American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy.

    ps. I like Paxton's take on fascism. He sees fascism as strategy to achieve power. Fascist movements can
    have very opportunistic turns in their ideology and policies.
u/KeruxduNord · 2 pointsr/hoi4

>essentially fascist

Stop using that word like it has no historical definition. There are a lot of things you could critique about the current Turkish state but the idea that it's equivalent to some kind of mid-20th century form of militaristic nationalism is absurd.

u/3kixintehead · 2 pointsr/Libertarian

Hitler also stated quite clearly:
>Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not.' - Adolf Hitler, Sunday Express, 28 September 1930

That's basically the underlying point of marxism/socialism/communism. That private property (not to be confused with personal property in the minds of most leftists) has to be eliminated. If fascists are against it, then they cannot be real socialists by definition.

Fascism is not anti-capitalist. It borrowed imagery and language from socialism because that is the idea that dominated mass politics at the time. Without doing that it would have failed as a popular movement. That would be like saying you are against affordable healthcare (I don't mean the controversial ACA here) in American politics today. Everyone wants healthcare to be cheaper and it would be political suicide to say you didn't want that. Likewise, Europe just before and after WW1 only wanted social programs. Some more socialist than others.

Additionally, when Fascism was being created, there was no revolutionary popular movement on the right. The revolutionary right-wing had to borrow key ideas from socialists in order to define their own movement. They had no intention of keeping bona fide socialist ideas, but rather corrupting these ideas for their own purposes.

I'll quote from The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in what fascism is and the danger it poses.

>Whenever fascist parties acquired power, however, they did nothing to carry out these anticapitalist threats. By contrast, they enforced with the utmost violence and thoroughness their threats against socialism. Street over turf with young communists were among their most powerful propaganda images.

Libertarians of all people should be especially sensitive to politicians who say one thing but do another. If a politician says they are libertarian, but does not act like it, then they are actually a sympathizer with the political actions they take, not the words.

u/sandr0 · 2 pointsr/UpliftingNews

Wait what? Since when are we doing the "guilty until proven innocent" shit? I thought first you'd need evidence for her being a fascist,... oh right she's a right winger, normal rules don't apply to her.

Idk man, I just go with the stuff 5 experts on fascism said because, you know they studied that crap their whole life.

here a paragraph from an article about fascism and which current politicians fit the description:

>Robert Paxton (author of: The Anatomy of Fascism) agrees: "I don't think it helps very much to use this inflammatory term [fascism] about Trump. 'Populist demagogue' works fine." So does Payne: "The Sweden Democrats and Le Pen movement in France really are just right-wing movements, in the sense of being conservative movements. There's nothing categorically fascist about them. They are outside the general consensus of center-left politics in these countries, and people want to find special pejoratives to apply to them."

u/elos_ · 1 pointr/history

This is a huge period of time, early modern and modern.

The 16th century is defined by religious wars, as is the first half of the 17th. I'm not sure of a good source on the Peasant Wars and such but I do know the absolute megalith you should get for the 30 Years' War (1618-1648) which is honestly the most important thing you could possibly study between 1492 - 1815 (the Early Modern Era traditionally). Yes, even more than the Napoleonic Wars. The greatest volume I've found on this is The Thirty Years' War: Europe's Tragedy by Peter Wilson.

I can not emphasize this enough: I know many people who consider the Early Modern Era to start in 1648 because of how fucking important the conclusion of this war was and what this war represented. It was the last religious war in Europe, it absolutely obliterated political lines and changed everything forever. It harkened the downfall of the top dogs at the time of Sweden, Poland, the Hapsburgs, the Ottomans, and Spain. This is a fucking important war.

Another great war on probably the most tumultuous area of the Early Modern Era is The Northern Wars: War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558 - 1721 by Robert Frost. If you want a book (that is pricey as shit) on arguably the most important man of the Early Modern Era and who brought France into greatness and basically started Absolutism I'd check out The Wars of Louis XIV: 1667 - 1714.

In terms of the Napoleonic Wars...well...it's a fucking hard topic to cover. There's not a lot of good general histories out there. I'll page /u/DonaldFDraper and ask him to come in if he has anything particular he'd like to recommend but preemptively I'll recommend Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation And Tactics In The Army Of Revolutionary France, 1791-94 written by that same dude who wrote the Wars of Louix XIV. Ultimately you can't separate the military history from the Napoleonic period very easily so you're going to get a bit of both whether you like it or not (but I hope you do! It's a great period of study w.r.t. military history). While I haven't read it I have heard French Society in Revolution, 1789-1799 by David Andress is a good read. However my principal source on the Napoleonic Wars is The Campaigns of Napoleon by David Chandler. Yeah it's expensive, go find it cheap (or free) if you can online (because it does exist, found it before I actually buckled down and bought it) but it is the source on Napoleon. This should be the last book you get though and only if this period becomes a fascination with you.

After that I'd recommend The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France 1870-1871 by Michael Howard and to help dispel some myths and give a general overview of the common perceptions of WWI The Great War: Myth and Memory by Dan Todman. If you want an overview of events leading up to the war along with the opening year or so I'd recommend the absolute megalith The First World War: Volume I: To Arms by Hew Strachan. This is the book you should get on your introduction to the First World War along with Myth and Memory. Read this one first though.

u/empleadoEstatalBot · 1 pointr/notArgentina
	


	


	


> # Percentage of Europeans Who Are Willing To Fight A War For Their Country
>
>
>
> [Percentage of Europeans Who Are Willing To Fight A War For Their Country](http://brilliantmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/fight-for-Europe.png)
>
> _Map created by reddit user Spartharios_The map above shows the percentage of residents in various European countries who are willing to fight and go to war for their country.
>
> Full results below:
>
> From high to low, these are the percentages by country:
>
> - 74% – Finland
> - 73% – Turkey
> - 62% – Ukraine
> - 59% – Russia
> - 58% – Kosovo
> - 55% – Bosnia and Herzegovina
> - 55% – Sweden
> - 54% – Greece
> - 47% – Poland
> - 46% – Serbia
> - 41% – Latvia
> - 39% – Switzerland
> - 38% – Ireland
> - 38% – Macedonia
> - 38% – Romania
> - 37% – Denmark
> - 29% – France
> - 28% – Portugal
> - 27% – United Kingdom
> - 26% – Iceland
> - 25% – Bulgaria
> - 23% – Czech Republic
> - 21% – Austria
> - 21% – Spain
> - 20% – Italy
> - 19% – Belgium
> - 18% – Germany
> - 15% – The Netherlands
>
> The results are from a 2015 WIN/Gallup International global survey. The sample size and methodology was as follows:
>
> > A total of 62,398 persons were interviewed globally. In each country a representative sample of around 1000 men and women was interviewed either face to face (30 countries; n=32258), via telephone (12 countries; n=9784) or online (22 countries; n=20356). Details are attached. The field work was conducted during September 2014 – December 2014. The margin of error for the survey is between 2.14 and 4.45 +3-5% at 95% confidence level.
>
> Europe is the continent with the fewest people willing to fight a war for their country. Globally, an average of 61% of respondents in 64 countries said they would. Morocco (94%), Fiji (94%), Pakistan (89%), Vietnam (89%) and Bangladesh (86%) had the highest percentage willing to fight.
>
> The country with the fewest people willing to go to war was Japan, with just 11% of respondents saying they would fight.
>
> Since World War Two, Europe has been relatively peaceful with major exceptions of the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s and various political suppressions during the Cold War. However, the 19th century was also a relatively peaceful time for Europe that ended with the start of World War I.
>
> For more on European wars and conflict have a look at the following books:
>
> - War in European History
> - The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
> - Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
> - Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II
> - Europe: A History
>
> Find this map interesting? Please help by sharing it:




u/3601squirrelnuts · 1 pointr/booksuggestions

Alistair Horne's Price of Glory about the Battle of Verdun is so well-written that it reads like a thriller novel IMO.

u/slow70 · 1 pointr/history

This book on Verdun really gave me a new appreciation for the churning hellscape so many soldiers fought and died over.

Over the course of months of fighting, literally thousands of shells landed every square meter, the earth heaved and upturned time and time again, men and bodies with it.

Men who fell in no mans land couldn't be buried, men killed by shellfire were shredded, buried and uncovered again in various stages of decomposition. Bodies were literally pulverized.

There are personal anecdotes that portray the horror that numbers convey, I read recently about a Canadian officer walking over the battlefield at Passchendaele, where every step he found himself stepping on 'corruption' meaning shredded flesh and viscera.

At the Somme, some 60,000 Commonwealth soldiers died in the first day of the offensive over an incredibly small patch of land. Most of the attacks failed, and I can't imagine what an effort it would have taken to retrieve the dead. It probably, by and large, didn't happen.

u/rocksplash · 1 pointr/Documentaries

She gave us a year, it was The Price of Glory, Strachan's First World War and The War Walk, and managed to get us rooms at [ Toc H] (http://www.greatwar.co.uk/ypres-salient/museum-talbot-house-history.htm), a living museum, so she was forgiven.

...If you ever have the chance to go to Toc H, do. It was one of the highlights of the trip.

u/ZcTAXx · 1 pointr/dancarlin

I've been re-listening Blueprint and I believe at least these two books have been mentioned: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2815620-now-it-can-be-told and https://www.amazon.com/Price-Glory-Verdun-1916/dp/0140170413

Sorry for lazy linking, just googled and pasted the first thing that came up :)

u/AnsweredHistoryBot · 1 pointr/AFH_meta

swummit replies:

> I'm currently reading Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt. The information I'm giving is me paraphrasing from...

u/Cdn_Nick · 1 pointr/history

Tony Judt's book: 'Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945' is worth reading. Although not specifically focused on Germany alone, it does provide the reader with a good general coverage of post 1945 events, and provides context for Germany's post war growth.
https://www.amazon.com/Postwar-History-Europe-Since-1945/dp/0143037757

u/mywifeisthings · 1 pointr/history

Give "Postwar" by Tony Judt a read. It's incredibly detailed and goes over the history of Europe from 1945.

u/Stellar_Duck · 1 pointr/unitedkingdom

Fucking hell. Go read a book about this instead of just blabbing about.

Tony Judts Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 is a fine starting point, though admittedly just gives an overview. It has a great bibliography though, so yea, good starting point.

Nobody said the EU was responsible for peace from before that particular union was created but it's a result of and a continuation of, thoughts and ideas from the immediate post war period and the treaties and communities founded at that time. Sheesh.

u/NonsensicalRambling · 1 pointr/history

Hi, "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II" deals with this very subject and talks about the five years immediately following the surrender. It is a fascinating book and won the Pulitzer. I read it in conjunction with "Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945" that deals a bit more expansively with the same subject in Europe and also won the Pulitzer. I cannot recommend either enough.

u/VanGoghsGoodEar · 1 pointr/pics

This is a great book on D-Day by Antony Beevor. It really does an excellent job of explaining some of the missteps that happened prior to the soldiers landing on Omaha (tanks never making it, fog detering accurate bombing runs etc.)

u/Darragh555 · 1 pointr/Showerthoughts

Thanks for clarification about Academie Francaise. We might also mention guys like Malherbe who did a lot of work to try to make French as standard as possible. There's a great book called The Story of French that goes into a lot of depth about his work and the work of the Academie, and the work of the Alliance Francaise to bring French to the globe.

French has changed a lot! Just not as much. The change English underwent is phenomenal. I wonder how both French and English compare to other languages (like Italian!) because I'm only really familiar with those two. If I had more of an idea of that I think I could form a more broad-based comparison in my head, but atm it's a bit like comparing two kinds of apples without knowing how different other kinds of fruit might be.

And, this is an old thread, maybe I'll post a question about all this somewhere else.../r/askhistorians perhaps...

u/Herxheim · 1 pointr/kingdomcome

> Pillars of the Earth

that looks good. have you read a distant mirror?

u/ronin1066 · 1 pointr/atheism

True, but also bored. Knights and other nobles without much fighting to do literally became brigands and also started attacking each other. I just read "A Distant Mirror" by Tuchman and she talks all about it.

u/otterarch · 1 pointr/books

The best book I've ever read about medieval Europe is Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror. It's a bit dense but you don't have to be a history scholar to enjoy it by any means. It really seemed to cover the whole breadth of medieval society and the political powers and figures at work. It was engaging enough that I wanted to start over at the beginning once I reached the end! Can't say that about any other nonfiction book I've read.

If you'd like to read a well-researched, balanced, and truly terrifying combo of journalism and epidemiology, you could do worse than The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett.

u/QuiteAffable · 1 pointr/todayilearned

I also recommend "A Distant Mirror", by Barbara Tuchman

u/ENRICOs · 1 pointr/todayilearned

If this topic has resonance then you'd do well to read a book like A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman. She covers the black death and several other issues of great import from that time.

u/CheesyLala · 1 pointr/todayilearned

First witnessed in 1374 - good article here. I remember reading about this years ago, the main suggestion being that it was in the years following the black death which led to an upsurge in religious fervour - also lots of examples of self-flagellation - basically people doing anything they thought would mean God spared them from the plague.

Read it in A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman which is a fantastic read if you're interested in this sort of thing.

u/lochlainn · 1 pointr/history

A Distant Mirror, Barbara Tuchman

Words don't do it justice. One of the reviews was "real life Game of Thrones" and while it's somewhat trite, it's also true. The subject is an example of the best of the medieval era, and his life touched on many events that shaped western history.

One warning, it's probably going to be a tough nut for a 15 year old to crack. It's accessible as a narrative, but you should expect to have to wiki things, look at maps, and use supporting material to explain the basics.

For a less intense look, one of the "Life in" books by Joseph Gies and Frances Gies (Life in a Medieval City, LIA Medieval Castle, LIA Medieval Village), is a look at the everyday in that time. Medieval Village is the best one to start with. Rather than the names and dates of "big history", they are the traditions, customs, and anecdotes of everyday life, based on specific examples in specific time periods.

I don't see a 15 year old having trouble going through them. They are written plainly and attempt to explain the backdrop of history that those places are in. Additional material will be minimal beyond wikipedia.

I'm not homeschooling, but I'm certainly going to expose my children to these books when they're old enough.

u/slcrook · 1 pointr/wwi

I think by far, the most comprehensive and accessible one volume history on the war is "A World Undone" by GJ Meyer.

Brigadier Sir Richard Holmes' "The Western Front" is a very quick read and very enlightening on aspects of, well, the Western Front. It's focus allows for detail on the main theatre of the conflict, but that focus does take away form the "World' aspect of World War One.

A wonderful, visual account of the war and the aspects surrounding it is found in Stephen Patricia's "And the World Went Dark" which is both informative and a fantastic illustrated history. (Full disclosure, I contributed written copy to this book.)

And I can't resist a little plug for my own work, a novel set on the Western Front in 1917, which, while a work of fiction has a painstaking approach to realism and I've used points in the narrative to take an educational tone so that readers unfamiliar with certain points of the conflict can become immersed in the story. It's only available as an ebook at the moment, "Killing is a Sin"

u/Tofufighter · 1 pointr/CombatFootage

I really enjoyed my reading of "A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918" https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553382403/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Eh21AbS0PCY5A
Covers all aspects and "fronts" in a very interesting way. I highly recommend it. I was in the same place you were now and this was my first book in my journey (I've since read about a dozen books on the war, and I keep wanting more!) Hope you find your book of choice and enjoy the topic as much as I have!

u/teachhikelearn · 1 pointr/history

do yourself a favor and read "A World Undone"

this book is an amazing look at ww1 and the individuals that drove the war... I studied WW1 in college (history major) and this book stands out as one of my all time favorites.

u/golden_canary · 1 pointr/TrollXChromosomes

For a more comprehensive look at Europe in the 20th century, touching on WW1, WW2, and The Cold War I suggest Out of Ashes by Konrad H. Jarausch. You can find reviews online and everyone is jizzing their pants over it, but I'm halfway through and I really like it. He's a great writer. For WW1 specifically, I'd suggest [A World Undone by G.J. Meyer] (http://www.amazon.com/World-Undone-Story-Great-1914/dp/0553382403/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449775167&sr=1-10&keywords=ww1). I didn't read it personally, but my bff is a huge military historian and she liked that it gave a larger global viewpoint than other more European-centric ones. I haven't read it yet (but she keeps bugging me to lol).

u/madecker · 1 pointr/books

Along with "The Guns of August" and Keegan's "The First World War," I'd recommend "A World Undone," by G. J. Meyer. It's quite a bit of book, but a great overview.

u/Marseille14 · 1 pointr/battlefield_one

A World Undone by G.J. Meyer; I'm not a big history reader but I could not put this book down
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553382403/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

u/wrc-wolf · 1 pointr/paradoxplaza

Earlier this week I just finished up Schama's Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution & McLynn's Napoleon: A Biography, both of which I highly recommend if you're at all interested in the French Revolution.

u/twethythree · 1 pointr/politics

Yeah, we'd all be so much better off with an angry mob "in charge." Read Citizens. Seriously, if you're going to run around advocating mob rule, at least first read a scholarly work that describes the results of such rule. I suspect you might change your mind.

u/Braves3333 · 1 pointr/history

https://www.amazon.com/Religion-Magic-Ancient-Egypt-Rosalie/dp/0140262520 This book i found to be very interesting when talking about old egyptian history. It gives a look into early society and how they went from scattered communities to a kingdom, but it focuses on the religious aspect.

I would think a book on Napolean would be a good start, and also a book on the French Revolution.
https://www.amazon.com/Napoleon-Life-Andrew-Roberts/dp/0143127853

https://www.amazon.com/Citizens-Chronicle-Revolution-Simon-Schama/dp/0679726101/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=TS49J5H345TC8T3XXSS5

u/radiumdial · 1 pointr/history

Citizens by Simon Schama well written and a compelling read, though with a somewhat anti-Jacobin slant
a good but less thorough book is Paris in the Terror by Stanley Loomis

u/romanov99 · 1 pointr/books

Citizens by Simon Schama gives you an in depth view of the entire revolution. Best read after you've mastered the basics of chronology and character though, it's too detailed to be a good intro.

u/misyo · 1 pointr/politics

Well, since people are reading now and my major is finally relevant, can I recommend Mark Mazower's Dark Continent as a good historical read for the rise of fascism in Europe from WWI through the end of WWII.

Also Alan Moore's V for Vendetta if you prefer you dystopian dictators in comic form.

u/IvankaTrump2020 · 1 pointr/CapitalismVSocialism

Enlightenment:

Broadly speaking, the Enlightenment is the ideology that asserts all people should be set free, and so all progressive, humanist, and libertarian ideologies are implicitly Enlightenment ideologies. It's a good thing. In practice, the Enlightenment was the radical ideology espoused by the rising bourgeois as they toppled feudal regimes across Europe from 1789-1848. Socialism has its roots in the most radical forms of Enlightenment thought.

French Revolution:

The political revolution that united the French bourgeois with the starving peasantry against the Feudal aristocracy that had become obscenely slothful and decadent. It was a good thing. Many modern political ideologies, both left and right, can trace their roots back to the various factions vying for power during the turbulent years following the fall of the Bastille (speaking of which--happy belated Bastille day everyone).

Rise of capitalism:

It was a good thing for the rising middle class, a bad thing for the feudal aristocracy and the mass of peasantry. It was good for European nation-states, bad for most everyone else. In terms of historical significance, I agree with Communist historian Eric Hobsbawm--that the rise of capitalism is probably the most important event in human history, at least since the invention of agriculture and the establishment of the first cities (link):

> Some time in the 1780s, and for the first time in human history, the shackles were taken off the productive power of human societies, which henceforth became capable of the constant, rapid, and up to the present limitless multiplication of men, goods and services. This is now technically known to the economists as the 'take-off into self-sustained growth' ... for it was then that, so far as we can tell, all the relevant statistical indices took that sudden, sharp, almost vertical turn upwards. ... The economy became, as it were, airborne.

u/Caz1982 · 1 pointr/todayilearned

Interested in Cathars? You should read this.

It has some of the oldest primary source material on the lives of normal Europeans known to exist.

u/gimmebackmyfamily · 1 pointr/AskHistorians

Thank you for this answer! This is exactly the kind of information I was looking for!

Yesterday, while still mulling it over, I actually was able dig up the name of a French historian named Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie who has written about Middle Age French peasants from surviving records. In the index of his books "The Peasants of Languedoc" and "Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error", the peasants almost all seem to have fixed family names. The first book covers the period of 1500 to 1750 and the second book covers 1294 to 1324, which reaches the same conclusion you did, i.e. that French peasants were using fixed last names by the end of the 13th Century.

As for some of the peasants having two different last names, the Wikipedia page on the name of Joan of Arc sheds some light. So even as late as the 15th Century, surnames in France weren't strictly hereditary, but it seems that many if not most such surnames had certainly begun to "stick" with the lower classes sometime between the 13th and 15th centuries.

Thanks again for your help!

u/BloodyGretaGarbo · 1 pointr/books

If it's mediaeval Europe you're after, and first-person in particular, the Paston Letters might be a good place to start. That particular edition uses modern spelling and has explanatory notes, but you can also play on hard mode for free here.

Montaillou is third person, but rich in detail - an amazing book about an inquisition into heresy in fourteenth-century France. I can't recommend it enough.

u/gentlemantroglodyte · 1 pointr/Jokes

I liked this, but it took me a little longer to get because of the reversed order in the middle.

The first sentence has "Jesuits...Dominicans", the last sentence has "Jesuits...Dominicans", so the middle one should be "the Jesuits to fight the Protestants, and the Dominicans to fight the Albigensians."

Side note: A really interesting book I read about the common Cathars in France was Montaillou. Definitely check it out if you're interested in that period.

u/chipsngravy1 · 1 pointr/CapitalismVSocialism

Highly educated opinions in that post. real edifying stuff.

Clearly the steady diet of racism and tabloid newspapers is rotting your "communist" brain. The post WW2 era refers to the first decade after the war. Take a step back from FOX news and look at one of these papery things commonly known as a book.

https://www.amazon.com/Savage-Continent-Europe-Aftermath-World/dp/125003356X

https://www.amazon.com/After-Reich-Brutal-History-Occupation/dp/0465003389

u/OldHomeOwner · 1 pointr/WWII

There are many including Savage Continent Europe and After the Reich. There are many many books written on the subject. Google book post ww2.

u/alc0 · 1 pointr/ColorizedHistory

I am not sure where you are getting this information from. The only book I have read on this specific subject is Savage Continent and any "atrocity" committed by the western allies obviously pales in comparison to what the nazis did.

u/CoyoteLightning · 1 pointr/politics

The best book, on the topic, hands down: Origins of Totalitarianism. Not for the weak in mind, though. There is also this: The Anatomy of Fascism. Books are cool.

u/nailingjellytoawall · 1 pointr/TopMindsOfReddit

If you want to know what drives the fascist worldview, and exactly why people are like this, I'd suggest: https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

The third reich trilogy is also fantastic and lays out the entire context and explains exactly why Nazis had so much appeal.

u/Eco_tem_razao · 1 pointr/PoliticalScience

Have you read Paxton? I'm asking because I'm convicend by the others comments that it would be the best option for me (since I don't have too much time for it).

Thank you very much for your attention!

u/bukvich · 1 pointr/sorceryofthespectacle

He lost me when he said it's like Rome under Augustus. In Rome under Augustus your life was the property of your paterfamilia. Go against the family and you have to kill the paterfamila or he will kill you. The closest any of us will get to this is going to see a movie about Michael and Fredo Corleone.

Also I am skeptical that Abby Martin is capable of using the word protean in a sentence correctly though I would be glad go be proven wrong.

Paxton's book is really great!

u/seedive · 1 pointr/history

I would recommend this. In particular, chapters two and three go into detail about the onset of Fascism and Nazism in Europe. It's a very in-depth read.

u/MiracleRiver · 1 pointr/worldnews

Here's Roosevelt and Churchill meeting with their ally Joseph Stalin - who murdered and starved far more people than Hitler ever killed. In Auschwitz, the workers feared being being sent to the starvation cells; they considered death by gassing a blessing in comparison:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference

Here's Donald Rumsfeld getting friendly with Saddam Hussein:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUPb-3zkh0c

The USA supplied components of chemical and biological weapons to Hussein in full knowledge of what he was doing with them:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/dec/31/iraq.politics

There is packs of evidence showing how the allies co-operated with Nazis after WW2:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Here's a book by one of those "self-hating Jews" that shows Zionists and Nazis working hand-in-hand:
"51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis" - Lenni Brenner

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1569802351/002-2290067-9319233?v=glance

"My enemy's enemy is my friend..."

You can read more about Hajj Amin al-Husseini:
http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/hitlers-mufti

A nasty piece of work - but what were the origins of his hatred and why did he get so much support? Hmmmm... Could it have been because the British has invaded his homeland?? Could it have been because the Zionists were plotting to steal his homeland after the British had left?

Does he not have the right to fight for his people and homeland? What lessons would you learn from history about this?

Does Israel not have chemical and biologic weapons millions of times more potent then Zyklon B? Why? To defend itself no? Is it not willing to gas millions of people if an invasion was imminent?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

u/topherino · 1 pointr/unitedkingdom

If you want to learn more about this, I recommend this book:

A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

u/Asks_For_Milkshakes · 1 pointr/arabs

The book was published in 2012. You mean the agreement's text? Nah. Everyone knew where the Palestine region was but there was no definite border so they had to agree to one. Nothing about immigration so far.

u/dariusorfeed · 1 pointr/politics

They didn't underestimate his support, they tried to co-opt the nazi movement.

There's a fantastic book called the anatomy of fascism that goes into detail on this and talks about exactly what is required for actual fascists to come into power:

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

u/Pylons · 1 pointr/politics

Just a nitpick - "Dr" Lawrence Britt doesn't really exist. This is a chain email that was popularized during the Bush administration. Robert Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism is a much better definition.

Anyway, yes, he's a fascist, fascism is inherently populist.

u/denzil_holles · 1 pointr/changemyview

Like others have mentioned, the Hindu Caste system is closer to a traditional land-based feudalism seen in Medieval Europe and pre-Imperial Japan.

It's important to emphasize that fascism is very different from feudalism/the Hindu Caste system, because it involves the mass participation in politics. While defining fascism has been very difficult, Columbia Univ. WWII historian Robert Paxton has defined it as:

>a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline ... and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence ... [the] goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

You can read more about fascism in Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism.

u/tanieloneshit · 1 pointr/news

The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton

Give it a read. It's a pretty interesting book about what fascism is,what is isn't, and how fascist governments come to power.

u/Brickus · 1 pointr/chomsky

The formation of the Israeli state and the reaction of the natives and the Arab states has to be seen within the context of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Essentially, after WW1, the British and the French divided up the Ottoman Empire according to which the French got everything to the north and the British everything to the south of a line in the shape of a tick/correction mark.

See here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/MPK1-426_Sykes_Picot_Agreement_Map_signed_8_May_1916.jpg

Part of that process was the Mandate system in which the two powers would oversee the transition into democratically governed states in the region who would eventually become self-governing. They encouraged Arab nationalism. The problem was that the British and French were both vying for power and resources in the region (oil was only beginning to become a major economic and strategic interest) and used their various Mandates against each other. The issue of Palestine was somewhat left off the table due to its religious importance and was eventually to be placed under international supervision, at least that was the plan. The British felt they had been forced into the agreement and in order to counter the French, they began to support the Zionists, some of whom were already in Palestine, and other Zionists in Europe. From that springs the Balfour Declaration. Their thinking was that if the Zionists were aligned with the British, then the British would have a more legitimate claim to Palestine than the French.

Of course, this went against the idea of Arab nationalism which had been promoted by the powers. So, there was a building tension as a result of this, and the result of increasing levels of Jewish immigration to the region. We must remember with regard to the latter that the Jewish/Zionist settlers were publicly backed by the British, and given the actions of the British in the region vis-a-vis blocking Arab nationalism, the natives were not happy. You also then had the rise of Revisionist Zionism, i.e., only a militarily superior Zionist enterprise would be able to take the land that they needed, the land being Palestine.

Here's a quote from a report by The Executive Committee of the Palestine Arab Congress that was sent to the British in 1924:

“The Palestine Administration, in pursuances of this rule, put into force (1921) a Turkish law that has never been enforced before, whereby a proprietor who fails to cultivate his land or a part thereof during three consecutive years will lose his title to it. The war-weakened farmer found it impossible for himself in the present crisis of financial stringency, costly labour and cheap product prices, to cultivate all his lands within three years. He, therefore, foresaw a part of his dear land cut off by virtue of that law, and thus frightened, he came down to the market to sell it to Jews at a low price....

The economic policy of the Palestine Administration pursues two lines of action, the one pertaining to Arabs and the other to Jews. The latter is progressive but the former is retrogressive. The overwhelming majority of the population in Palestine is composed of Arab farmers, of towns and villages, who are the sole producing element. Meanwhile, they are the poorest in the country. It is obviously essential that a good willing Government should, from the outset, give the first hand of assistance to them who give most and suffer most....

The Arab demand many be summed up in the following words: The establishment in Palestine of a National Constitutional Government in which the two Communities, Arab and Jewish, will be represented in proportion to their numbers as they existed before the application of the Zionist Policy” .

So you can see there was a lot of tension as a result of the British and their behaviour in the region. Later the Zionists got tired with the British due to the latter placing immigration restrictions on Palestine (see the two White Papers) so they turned to the French for support instead. During WW2 there was essentially a full scale rebellion in Palestine by the natives against the British but also against the Jewish paramilitary groups that had sprang up. The latter were funded and armed by the French government. It's an interesting irony of history that while the British were fighting to liberate France, the French government was arming and financing Jewish terrorists who were targeting British soldiers and civil servants in Palestine.

As for 1948, the Arab armies attacking was a result, in my view, of the broken promises by the British, Jewish terrorism that had been taking place for years, and of course the ethnic cleansing that began in late 1947.

This is just a general overview and not as detailed as I'd like. I could copy and past from my thesis but as it's a work in progress I'd rather not.

If you want more information on the background then I'd recommend James Barr's book, A Line in the Sand. It's fantastically written and there's a lot of information in it that's not widely known, such as the Stern Gang, a Jewish paramilitary group, offering assistance to the Nazi government in 1940 in return for the establishment of Jewish State in Palestine.

u/JackDostoevsky · 1 pointr/history

There are a lot of examples of kings and monarchs who led their armies, but just having finished reading CV Wedgwood's The Thirty Years War I can't help but think of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. In the context of the Thirty Years War he's definitely a singular character among a wide cast of interesting characters.

u/john_stuart_kill · 1 pointr/IAmA

The Cleanest Race is very much a fringe view, and itself has been highly criticized for (among other things) not recognizing the range of variation and character in totalitarian ideologies. It glosses over the rather fine-grained spectrum from communism through nationalist fascism, concluding that just because North Korea is definitely not communist in the traditional sense (which few would challenge), it much be some type of fascist state. But that dichotomy is a false one.

North Korean juche ideology does certainly share some similarities with fascism, particularly in its ultra-nationalism. But that is not enough to qualify it as fascist (at least in any way which preserves the meaning of the term, importantly distinct from other flavours of authoritarianism and totalitarianism), and there are some important areas in which it seriously diverges from fascism. As just a snippet, there is the "collaboration with traditional elites" that Paxton emphasizes; the maintenance of market-based economic structures (albeit with serious state intervention in labour and production markets in the form of fascist corporatism); and the important rhetoric in popular opposition to socialism that Griffin emphasizes (sorry; don't have a digital source for that).

But again, all of this is largely beside the point: the focus on the "fascism vs. communism" spectrum kind of bypasses the most important ideological components of North Korea. Rather, its most significant ideological characteristic is that of totalitarianism; you can take a look at Hannah Arendt's key work on totalitarianism to see how this perspective is the overriding one when it comes to understanding the nature of serious state oppression.

u/Malizulu · 0 pointsr/conspiracy

You stupid fuck. You need to learn how to differentiate between Jewish people and Zionists. I'm born a product of the former, but I despise the latter.

Zionists collaborated with the Nazi's

There's plenty of evidence for it

Also, there were/ and are a number of Jews who oppose Zionism -- these were the people killed in concentration camps predominantly.

You seriously just tried to justify the mass genocide of jews, gypsies, and gays. FUCK YOU.

I know that USA is no hero, and I don't have any illusions about it. Truman dropped atomic bombs without any military necessity. But I'm certain that Hitler was not a hero, and mass genocide is never something to appreciate.

u/usa_not_powerful · 0 pointsr/europe
u/Praetor80 · 0 pointsr/HistoryPorn

I thought you were significantly aware of the subject that referencing general sites regarding common knowledge was sufficient.

Look into Operation Gomorrah. I didn't know you were very new to this topic, or I would have pointed you somewhere more academic.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=LZ99c7ZlxxQC&hl=en

One single operation left 1 million civilians homeless, and 50,000 dead.

Not to mention the city of Caen. Check that one out, right after D-Day. No military targets at all.

http://www.amazon.ca/D-Day-Battle-Normandy-Antony-Beevor/dp/0143118188

u/astitious · -1 pointsr/politics

Read 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration With The Nazis.
http://www.amazon.com/51-Documents-Zionist-Collaboration-Nazis/dp/1569802351

If someone says 'Muslim Terrorists' that does not mean that they are saying that all Muslims are terrorists. 'Jewish satans' is the same. Some Jews (a small minority) collaborated with the Nazis in carrying out the Holocaust. Pointing this out is not a smear of all Jews.

u/newsens · -2 pointsr/Israel

51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis
by Lenni Brenner (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/51-Documents-Zionist-Collaboration-Nazis/dp/1569802351