Does anyone know where I can discuss history?

[Irascor]

I like reading history books like some people read novels. I read those too, but I can curl up in front of the fireplace with a college level history textbook or just a book dedicated to a historical topic and be having the time of my life, and geeky as it sounds, I'd like to get into a good history discussion.
My problem is that I don't know where to look to indulge my inner scholar, so does anyone know where I can find a good history forum where people just talk about historical topics all day?
If it's allowed, I wouldn't mind getting into a discussion about historical topics here.

[robkelk]

It's allowed (rule 1 of the forum: Have Fun). I don't know whether the rest of us know enough history, outside of some narrowly-focused areas, to take part, though...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Irascor]

Thanks for clearing that up, rob, I just wasn't sure what anyone wanted to talk about.
In fact, I know quite a bit about American and World History, so if anyone has any questions, I wouldn't mind getting into a discussion about it.
I also like to learn, so if anyone has some interesting trivia or something I've never heard about, I hope they are willing to share.

[DHBirr]

History -- especially military history and alternate history -- is an interest of mine, so I'd be glad to join in a discussion if I feel I have anything worth adding.  As far as asking questions is concerned, nothing specific leaps to mind at this moment, but give me time.
Since you asked for trivia, here's an item I discovered on my own, mentioned at least once on this board, and have never found referenced anywhere else:  
A good seven or eight years before the Japanese began using kamikaze tactics against the Allied forces, science fiction writer John W. Campbell, Jr. had written a story ("Frictional Losses," July 1936) in which he described them doing so to help repel an extraterrestrial invasion.  They supercharged airplane engines, packed the planes with high explosives, and rammed them into the alien spaceships.  (The aliens responded by atom-bombing Japan so heavily that the islands essentially slid off their "foundations" into the deep water of the Japan Trench.)  And yet the real-world kamikazes caught the U.S. Navy totally by surprise, according to Admiral Nimitz.  No one in the Navy realized that Campbell had made a logical prediction, based on Japanese culture, of what they might do in a desperate situation.
-----
Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

[Irascor]

Interesting. I had no idea about that particular book, but it is indeed curious that the U.S did not anticipate the use of kamikaze attacks.
However, perhaps the idea was a bit too strange to accept, since the U.S. inherited many cultural precepts of honor from European countries, where suicide was seen as the cowardly way out and forfeiture of a chance to reclaim honor by way of restitution and/or penance, whereas the Japanese considered suicide a means of atonement for wrongs committed against family, their own conscience, or, in feudal times for vassals, failure to honor one's obligations to their daimyo (i.e. - feudal lords), and thus saw suicide as means of retaining honor by way of what their culture deemed the ultimate penance/restitution.
Personally, I'm not surprised the cultural side was not anticipated (or fully considered), but also from a military standpoint it probably far too alien to comprehend treating perfectly good aircraft and especially their pilots as expendable. In fact, in my view, the preservation of life where possible became more and more entrenched in Western military doctrine after World War I (though the American Civil War had already given the U.S. a precedent for desiring this) due to the excessive losses of manpower and the wake up call of just how dead modern weaponry could render soldiers en masse, especially since military leaders on all sides sustained horrific losses to machine guns, chemical weapons, and had learned  that using Victorian-era tactics on modern battlefields with modern weapons of destruction was nothing less than throwing sheep before wolves.
As a result, it was a tendency of Western military leaders not to regard their forces as expendable, but since the Japanese had a long cultural history of honorable death and preferring to fight to the last man, it's no surprise that the dissonance in context had the U.S shocked, mostly because even if they knew it was possible, it just seemed too crazy to believe.