I took a Cold War history class taught by my ultra-conservative cross country coach. It was awesome.

Which was?

The Holocaust.

Ahh I thought he meant to include that with "basically all of WW2 is unbelievably nightmarish". My mistake.

True, but the Rape of Nanking and Unit 731 were both from WWII. I figured if you were going to list specific atrocities from WWII, you would list the worst one.

Call me weird but that is actually what fascinates me about WWII - because I can't wrap my head around how such events actually occurred and how people degenerated into beasts so quickly.

My professor of Political Theory was an admitted opponent of the state system, so he was a bit biased, but made some good arguments for putting blame on the nation state system.

I like that you can annoy arrogant people with your own history knowledge.
That's always very satisfying. There is always some stupid usurper/king/general who said something similar the arrogant one said and failed utterly in the end.

Something like this:
"THEY COULD NOT HIT AN ELEPHANT AT THIS DISTANCE"- Major General John Sedgwick, said seconds before he was killed by a rebel sniper's bullet at the battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, May 9, 1864

My favorite would the analyzing the info presented to me leading me to do more research and further analysis. Research is wonderful but it is analysis that determines how wise someone really is.

Some of the most interesting topics I've researched included the atrocities of the Soviet Union especially the Holodomor. The Holodomor is especially interesting because people in my country talk endlessly about the Holocaust when they think of atrocities committed in 20th century Europe but they never talk about the Holodomor despite the millions of people who starved to death or the others who had to flee their homeland to survive.

Also, I always enjoyed reading quotes and analyzing quotes from the American Founding Fathers since many of the things they stated were quite prophetic.

My personal favorites are Roman Era, WWII Era, and Civil War Era. However, I enjoy reading or viewing history from all time periods. If only History channel chose to give us more Historical programming than what they currently show (Ice Road Truckers, Swamp People, the Ancient Aliens dude, etc.).

Hear, hear! The same goes for the Crime and Investigation channels with programs like, Psychic detectives and Ghost lab, or as i like to call it, People Shouting in the Dark

Dictators. These ambitious types are so inspiring.

Thats just because it is common knowledge, we learn that in school for several years, so its nothing new anymore. They were nazis, of course they did horrible stuff. And then later you find out normal humans can do those things,too, bit of a shock.

The Nazis were normal humans - how would you say they weren't?

I wouldn't, that was my whole point.

That people haven't really changed.