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SEOUL : Fifty-eight years ago, a war broke out on the Korean peninsula, and today, the two sides - South and North Korea - remain technically at war and divided. Although it has been more than five decades, there are still South Koreans - who were soldiers at the time - being kept against their will in North Korea. One of the prisoners of war (POW), Kim Jin Soo, recently escaped the North. The 74-year-old POW fought in the Korean War at the age of 17 and was captured by the North Koreans in 1953. All these years, he had...

Early in the morning of June 6, 1944, Americans heard on their radios that thousands of American and British soldiers had landed on the beaches of northern France. They were fighting German soldiers. This day marked the beginning of the end of one of the bloodiest wars ever: World War II. The American and British invasion of France was a top-secret mission called "Operation Overlord." When they landed on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, the goal of every soldier was to drive the German military back. Thousands of men died during that effort, either in the churning...

ON THE ROAD TO BERLIN OWING to a last-minute alteration in the arrangements, I didn't arrive on the beachhead until the morning after D-day, after our first wave of assault troops had hit the shore. By the time we got there the beaches had been taken and the fighting had moved a couple of miles inland. All that remained on the beach was some sniping and artillery fire, and the occasional startling blast of a mine geysering brown sand into the air. That plus a gigantic and pitiful litter of wreckage along miles of shore line. Submerged tanks and overturned...

Victor Davis Hanson, a former classics professor, is a renowned conservative scholar of ancient history and military affairs who's recently become a nationally syndicated columnist and blogger. The author of 17 books with titles like "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War," "An Autumn of War" and "Mexifornia: A State of Becoming," he is the senior fellow in residence in classics and military history at the Hoover Institution on the Stanford University campus. Hanson, whose scholarship and interest in individual freedom recently earned him a 2008 Bradley Prize worth $250,000 from the Bradley...

Death, disease and injury were the fate of thousands held at sea More Americans died in British prison ships in New York Harbor than in all the battles of the Revolutionary War. There were at least 16 of these floating prisons anchored in Wallabout Bay on the East River for most of the war, and they were sinkholes of filth, vermin, infectious disease and despair. The ships were uniformly wretched, but the most notorious was the Jersey. Following the Battle of Long Island in August, 1776, and the fall of New York City soon after, the British found thousands of...

This Day In Civil War History May 24th 1861: - Union soldiers occupy Alexandria and Arlington Heights in Virginia. During the day Col. Elmer Ellsworth of the 11th New York takes down a Confederate flag flying from atop the Marshall House Inn. As he proceeds down the stairs he is killed by innkeeper James Jackson who almost immediately thereafter is killed. Ellsworth is the first Union officer killed in the war and becomes a martyr in the north. 1862: - Confederate forces under Gen. Thomas Jackson assault the rear guard of Union Gen. Nathaniel Banks retreating army at Middletown...

Pictured: Lancaster bomber in dramatic flypast to mark 65th anniversary of Dambusters raidLast updated at 18:49pm on 16th May 2008  It is one of the most stirring images of the Second World War - a Lancaster bomber coming in terrifyingly low over a huge dam.  Today, the last surviving pilot of the epic Dambusters operation was present to witness a spectacular re-enactment as one of the bombers flew again above the Derwent Valley dam in Derbyshire to mark the 65th anniversary of the raid. Scroll down for more...Bombs away: The world's only flying Lancaster makes a low pass over...

The Robert L. Capp collection at the Hoover Institution Archives contains ten never-before-published photographs illustrating the immediate aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing. These photographs, taken by an unknown Japanese photographer, were found in 1945 among rolls of undeveloped film in a cave outside Hiroshima by U.S. serviceman Robert L. Capp, who was attached to the occupation forces. Unlike most photos of the Hiroshima bombing, these dramatically convey the human as well as material destruction unleashed by the atomic bomb. Mr. Capp donated them to the Hoover Archives in 1998 with the provision that they not be reproduced until 2008. Three...

Five years into the war in Iraq, military history seems to be experiencing a golden age. Hollywood has been cranking out war movies. Publishers have been lining bookstore shelves with new battle tomes, which consumers are eagerly lapping up. Even the critics have been enjoying themselves. Two of the last five Pulitzer Prizes in history were awarded to books about the American military. Four of the five Oscar nominees for best documentary this year were about warfare. Business, for military historians, is good.

I fear that the French are wasting their time. The problem is that every time they look at Waterloo they say that Napoleon won on points. Napoleon’s army was the best he had commanded since he advanced into Russia – an army of veterans, 200,000 strong. Wellington referred to his force as “an infamous army”. My predecessor, David Chandler, who wrote the definitive account of Napoleon’s campaigns, said that the Emperor’s idea had been to get between the Prussians and the British. “I will defeat the British and the Prussians, then the Austrians, then the Russians, and Europe will be...

German Luftwaffe pilot returns to Bath to apologise for wartime bombing Last updated at 18:02pm on 27th March 2008 A decorated German Luftwaffe pilot is to return to the city he bombed during World War Two to make a public apology. Bomber pilot Willi Schludecker demolished dozens of Georgian buildings in Bath, Somerset, in April 1942 in his Dornier 217E-4. Now 87 years-old and in failing health, his dying wish is to make amends with the city which lost 400 residents in the raid. Scroll down for more... Return: Willi Schludecker will make amends with Bath in a service next...

MY LAI, Vietnam - Lawrence Colburn returned to My Lai on Saturday and found hope at the site of one of the most notorious chapters of the Vietnam War. On the 40th anniversary of the massacre of up to 500 unarmed Vietnamese villagers, the former helicopter gunner was reunited with a young man he rescued from rampaging U.S. soldiers. On March 16, 1968, Colburn found 8-year-old Do Ba clinging to his mother's corpse in a ditch full of blood and the bodies of more than 100 people who had been mowed down. Nearly all the victims were unarmed women, children...

Inside the amazing cave city that housed 25,000 Allied troops under German noses in WWIBy ROBERT HARDMAN - More by this author » Last updated at 11:53am on 15th March 2008  The wax is still melted on to the chalk pillar which served as an Easter Sunday altar for the men of the Suffolk Regiment more than 90 years ago.   Old helmets are scattered around the floor. A heap of cans, including a tin of Turnwrights Toffee Delight, lies alongside a collection of old stone jars - flagons of rum, perhaps, to numb the fear of the battle ahead....

How the Eton-educated wartime Aga Khan offered '30,000 armed Arabs' to help Hitler - but still evaded treason trialLast updated at 18:34pm on 8th March 2008 Secret plan to help Hitler: Aga Khan III, pictured at the races   Britain dropped a secret plan to charge the Aga Khan's grandfather with treason despite evidence that he offered to help Hitler in the war, documents just released reveal.  Ministers shelved the proposed prosecution of Sultan Muhammad Shah – who was Aga Khan III at the time – for fear it would inflame Muslims.  The spiritual leader of the world's Zizari Ismaili...

Adolf Hitler's 'lost fleet' found in Black Sea By Jasper Copping  Last Updated: 2:36am GMT 03/02/2008     The final resting place of three German U-boats, nicknamed "Hitler's lost fleet", has been found at the bottom of the Black Sea. The submarines had been carried 2,000 miles overland from Germany to attack Russian shipping during the Second World War, but were scuttled as the war neared its end. Now, more than 60 years on, explorers have located the flotilla of three submarines off the coast of Turkey.   On the road: One of the U-boats being taken to Ingolstadt  ...

Crumpled map solves mystery of German gun behind D-Day massacreLast updated at 17:03pm on 4th January 2008A baffling mystery of the D-Day landings was solved by an amateur historian - after he found a crumpled map at a fair in Stockport.  Experts have long disputed the location of the main Nazi gun battery which caused carnage on Omaha Beach, in terrible scenes which were recreated for the Hollywood film Saving Private Ryan.  The Germans had built a decoy gun emplacement overlooking the area while the location of the real guns which blasted the beach, where 2,000 men lost their...

December 1776 was a desperate time for George Washington and the American Revolution. The ragtag Continental Army was encamped along the Pennsylvania shore of the Delaware River exhausted, demoralized and uncertain of its future. The troubles had begun the previous August when British and Hessian troops invaded Long Island routing the colonial forces, forcing a desperate escape to the island of Manhattan. The British followed up their victory with an attack on Manhattan that compelled the Americans to again retreat, this time across the Hudson River to New Jersey. The British followed in hot pursuit, chasing the Americans through...

Had the Civil War not occurred when it did allowing Nathan Bedford Forrest to serve as a cavalry officer, we very likely would not be studying or even reading about him today. Of course the same could be said about Ulysses S. Grant and many other notable Civil War commanders. What separates Forrest from other successful general officers are his accomplishments despite his almost total lack of education or military background and his impoverished upbringing. His rise from private to lieutenant general was clearly earned, not gained through political influence or social standing. His military success are due to virtually...

Eight people were detained by police in Lund on Friday during demonstrations to mark the anniversary of the death in 1718 of King Karl XII. Two people were formally arrested for violent resistance. One of those arrested is also suspected of attempted assault. Six others were detained. A few dozen people were involved in the march, according to police. Demonstrators from the '30th November Association' gathered outside Lund Cathedral at lunchtime on Friday. The association is made up of nationalist groups from the university town and was founded following the First World War. Counter-demonstrators met in the Lundagård park. A...

War through the eyes of a PoW in Japan  Last Updated: 2:43am GMT 23/11/2007     Sketches by a Second World War Serviceman, tracing his experiences from RAF bases to a Japanese prisoner of war camp, are to be exhibited for the first time. Fred Goodwin began the war servicing aircraft. After the Battle of Britain he was sent to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) with 605 Squadron.     They were to try to halt the Japanese advance, but were under-prepared. Mr Goodwin was captured. As a prisoner he witnessed unspeakable horrors. However, throughout the war he made...

The one thing that America must never, ever do is stop teaching the rich military heritage of our nation, going back to the 1700's, decades before the Revolutionary War. Many schools, led by liberal teachers and administrators, refuse to teach military history lest someone actually grow up to want to serve their nation and those who live in it. As a retired Marine now serving in a civilian status in Iraq, I sometimes think about one of my personal heroes (among many of America's heroes), who must never be forgotten. The sacrifice of our military forces has given us our...

Alive and safe, the brutal Japanese soldiers who butchered 20,000 Allied seamen in cold bloodBy NIGEL BLUNDELL - More by this author » Last updated at 17:53pm on 3rd November 2007  The perpetrators of some of the worst atrocities of the Second World War remain alive and unpunished in Japan, according to a damning new book.  Painstaking research by British historian Mark Felton reveals that the wartime behaviour of the Japanese Navy was far worse than their counterparts in Hitler's Kriegsmarine. According to Felton, officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered the deliberately sadistic murders of more than 20,000...

Brig. Gen. David “Tex” Hill was decorated for his role in holding off a Japanese invasion of China in the early 1940s. Many remember him as a “fearless warrior.” Hill died last month at the age of 92. On Friday, those who knew him or his important role in history will pay tribute. The ceremony begins at 1:30 p.m in the Memorial Courtyard of the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg. It will include a bagpiper, military color guard, remarks from longtime friends and a fly-over of airplanes similar to those Hill flew. As part of the tribute,...

Later this week, a South Texas World War II hero will be honored. General David Lee "Tex" Hill died a few weeks ago at the age of 92 years. On Friday, the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg will honor the fighting ace with "Tex" Hill Day, which will feature speeches, music and friends' memories of Tex.

Countess Andrée de Jongh, who has died in Brussels aged 90, founded and organised the Comet Escape Line, the route from Belgium through France to Spain used by hundreds of Allied airmen to escape from Nazi-occupied Europe.Known to all simply as “Dédée”, Andrée de Jongh began her resistance work as soon as the Germans advanced into Belgium in May 1940. At the time she was a 24-year-old commercial artist and Belgian Red Cross volunteer, but she gave up her work in order to nurse wounded soldiers; once they were able to walk, she found them safe houses and recruited her...

Exhibition of wartime posters reveals very different Britain, with very different valuesLast updated at 01:15am on 4th October 2007From a patriotic call to eat less bread to proud soldiers extolling the benefits of signing up, these rare wartime posters are some of the finest pieces of propaganda art ever produced. Now they are going on public display for the first time in decades, in an exhibition appropriately named Weapons Of Mass Communication at London's Imperial War Museum.   Empire on the march: A 1939 poster emphasising the common aim  Dig deep for victory: Buying war bonds in 1917 helped the...

As early preparations for the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 get underway in Canada and the United States, organizers in Canada have run into an unexpected hitch: Their American counterparts seem to think they won. The historical disconnect between American and Canadian interpretations of the war, during which tens of thousands of American troops invaded Canada - then still a British colony - and were repulsed by the outnumbered defenders, has left Canadian organizers of the bicentennial events shaking their heads in bemusement at their American colleagues' staunch insistence that the war was a victory for the then-young...

The man with the German SupermodelTuesday, September 25, 2007   This scale model of World War II German battleship Admiral Graf Spee is 9m (30ft) long and weighs 320kg (700lb). It took creator William Terra six years to build and cost £5,000. Made from wood strips and fibreglass, the Spee can reach speeds of 15mph, thanks to its 11.2Kw engine. It also plays music by German composer Richard Wagner through an in-built stereo, said former fire officer Mr Terra, 65, from Maine, US.

<p>I remember Dec. 7, 1941. Our family was at home in Illinois. Around midday, my mom, dad, sister and my grandmother and great-grandmother gathered in front of the old radio in our living room. I was nine, so I suspect I didn't really understand the news about Pearl Harbor. And yet I knew this much: Something important, something truly momentous, had happened to our lives, and to the lives of our friends and neighbors.</p>

On this day in 1945, Gen. Douglas MacArthur moves his command headquarters to Tokyo, as he prepares for his new role as architect of a democratic and capitalist postwar Japan. Japan had had a long history of its foreign policy being dominated by the military, as evidenced by Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoye's failed attempts to reform his government and being virtually pushed out of power by career army officer Hideki Tojo. MacArthur was given the task of overseeing the regeneration of a Japan shorn of its imperial past. As humiliating as it would be for the defeated Japanese, the supreme...

Beheaded at whim and worked to death: Japan's repugnant treatment of Allied PoWs22:59pm 18th September 2007 The sheer brutality of the battle for the Far East defies imagination. And in a new book, historian Max Hastings argues that Japanese intransigence made it far worse.  Yesterday, he explained why America had to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Here, in the final part of our exclusive serialisation, he reveals how the West was stunned when it emerged how cruelly their prisoners of war had suffered...As the men of the victorious British 14th Army advanced through Burma on the road to Mandalay...

Why Did FDR Invade North Africa?By James Lewis   One of the clichéd questions of the Left is "Why did Bush invade Iraq? We were attacked by Saudi Arabians on 9/1 !" Or so goes the customary narrative.   This mantra is supposed to expose President Bush's stupidity. But in fact The Question reveals the asker's own clueless blunder about war and strategy. The proper answer is to point to other presidents and other wars. Like FDR after Pearl Harbor.    After the "day that will live in infamy" FDR's first land attack took place in Morocco and Algeria, then...

My Dad served during WW2 in the US Navy from somewhere around June, 1943 until January, 1946 in the Pacific. He was assigned to the USS SAN JUAN, a cruiser, and his duty on board was that of storekeeper. The USS SAN JUAN received 13 Battle Stars for her WW2 service. My Dad was on board when the ship received 7 Battle Stars. Almost needless to say, he saw a lot of heavy, heavy action. The USS SAN JUAN went all over the Pacific during the time my Dad was on board. Here is a link to the website should...

Look through the photo albums of any family in America--or on their walls or fireplace mantels. In many cases, you'll find a picture of a young Soldier mixed in with other cherished images. A young man with wide eyes and determined face (and freshly shorn head) of someone in the midst of Basic Training. A young woman standing or sitting in front of the American flag, shoulders square in her union. A just-married man in dress blues, taking his first steps with his bride under the proud protection of sabers upheld by friends-at-arms. My eyes rest on a picture of...

Did no one post a thread on Sept 2-3 re: Signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender?

One of the best essays I have ever read by Victor David Hansen on why we have to fight wars and an insight into today's problems with waging war. While it is long it is nonetheless a great read. While there are many references to past battles and generals, you don't have to be a history buff to understand what is being said here. Give it a read and comment. Why Study War?

ALMOST A MIRACLE: The American Victory in the War of Independence ___ by John Ferling In late 1779, John Adams, then America's "minister plenipotentiary for peace," set out across the Atlantic for France. It was a difficult moment. The Revolution was turning into a long war. It had been more than four years since Lexington and Concord and three since the Declaration of Independence; the American forces and their French allies had just lost an important engagement in Savannah. Adams had much to do, and his journey marked the beginning of yet another lengthy separation from Abigail. Sacrifices, however, were...

First World War tunnels to yield their secrets By Jasper Copping, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 1:42am BST 26/08/2007 As battle raged across the fields of Flanders, British soldiers found brief respite from the horrors of the First World War in "underground towns" far below the mud and gore. Now, more than 90 years after the armies left and the extraordinary networks of tunnels were flooded, the task of finally revealing their secrets has begun. The Tunnels The prize, archaeologists and historians believe, is an unprecedented insight into the lives of British troops on the Western Front. They believe that, because...

It was 40 years ago today, in the waters off Vietnam, that the crew of the USS Forrestal saw the gates of hell. A missile accidentally fired from a plane on the flight deck triggered a blazing inferno that would claim the lives of 134 men, two from New Jersey -- Francis Campeau of Bergenfield and Richard Vallone of Bridgewater. Not since World War II had a ship's crew sustained so many casualties. The Forrestal, the first of the Navy's newest class of super carriers left Norfolk, Va., in June 1967 for what was to be her first combat deployment....

Try explaining to a college student that Tet was an American military victory. You'll provoke not a counter-argument -- let alone an assent -- but a blank stare: Who or what was Tet? Doing interviews about the recent hit movie 300, I encountered similar bewilderment from listeners and hosts. Not only did most of them not know who the 300 were or what Thermopylae was; they seemed clueless about the Persian Wars altogether. It's no surprise that civilian North Americans tend to lack a basic understanding of military matters. Even when I was a graduate student, 30-some years ago, military...

Today, John Leo, Editor of MindingTheCampus.com, hosts Victor Davis Hanson to discuss his most recent article from the summer issue of City Journal, "Why Study War?". Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a City Journal Contributing Editor. * * * Leo: Welcome Dr. Hanson, your article "Why Study War?," strongly criticizes the academy for its increasing neglect of military history. How do you explain this neglect? Hanson: Mostly for three reasons. First, since the campus revolt against Vietnam, academia has associated war exclusively with amorality, forgetting, for example, that chattel slavery, Nazism,...

On March 15, 1781, American forces inflicted heavy losses on the British Army at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina. The redcoats had seemed invincible only a few months before. Winter clouds scudded over New Windsor, New York, some 50 miles up the Hudson River from Manhattan, where Gen. George Washington was headquartered. With trees barren and snow on the ground that January 1781, it was a "dreary station," as Washington put it. The commander in chief's mood was as bleak as the landscape. Six long years into the War of Independence, his army, he admitted to Lt. Col. John Laurens,...

Try explaining to a college student that Tet was an American military victory. You’ll provoke not a counterargument—let alone an assent—but a blank stare: Who or what was Tet? Doing interviews about the recent hit movie 300, I encountered similar bewilderment from listeners and hosts. Not only did most of them not know who the 300 were or what Thermopylae was; they seemed clueless about the Persian Wars altogether. It’s no surprise that civilian Americans tend to lack a basic understanding of military matters. Even when I was a graduate student, 30-some years ago, military history—understood broadly as the investigation...

On this day in 1945, a second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally in Japan's unconditional surrender. The devastation wrought at Hiroshima was not sufficient to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender. The United States had already planned to drop their second atom bomb, nicknamed "Fat Man," on August 11 in the event of such recalcitrance, but bad weather expected for that day pushed the date up to August 9th. So at 1:56 a.m., a specially adapted B-29 bomber, called "Bock's Car," after its...

On this day in 1942, the U.S. 1st Marine Division begins Operation Watchtower, the first U.S. offensive of the war, by landing on Guadalcanal, one of the Solomon Islands. On July 6, 1942, the Japanese landed on Guadalcanal Island and began constructing an airfield there. Operation Watchtower was the codename for the U.S. plan to invade Guadalcanal and the surrounding islands. During the attack, American troops landed on five islands within the Solomon chain. Although the invasion came as a complete surprise to the Japanese (bad weather had grounded their scouting aircraft), the landings on Florida, Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tananbogo...

Forrest's soldiers loved him. His fellow generals admired him. His enemies were terrified at the mere mention of his name. Gen. Robert E. Lee said of his finest subordinate commanders, the most remarkable was one he "had never met" — Forrest. And U.S. and foreign military officers alike have studied Forrest’s campaigns over the decades since the end of the war. It has even been speculated that some aspects of the German Blitzkrieg were patterned after some of Forrest's operations.

KUWAIT CITY, Aug. 2, 2007 – Kuwaiti air force Col. Sulaiman M. al-Otaibi remembers all too well the “dark day” his country faced 17 years ago today, when 100,000 Iraqi troops stormed across the border here, leaving death and destruction in their wake. Memories of Aug. 2, 1990, are still fresh for him and his fellow Kuwaitis as they recall four of Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard divisions and Iraqi army special forces units pushing into Kuwait City. They quickly overran Kuwait’s outnumbered forces, attacked the royal residence, Dasman Palace, and began a brutal six-month occupation. Six days later, Saddam...

Mass Grave Sheds Light on Europe's Bloody History By David Crossland in Berlin Europe's soil is blood-soaked from centuries of fighting but rarely yields mass graves from battles that took place before the two world wars. One such grave has now been found near Berlin with over 100 soldiers who died in the 1636 Battle of Wittstock. Archaeologists say they can learn much from the skeletons which show terrible wounds. An archaeologist gently uncovering a row of skeletons in the mass grave found in Wittstock near Berlin. Archaeologists in Germany are examining a mass grave containing the skeletons of more...

1864 : Battle of the Crater On this day, the Union's ingenious attempt to break the Confederate lines at Petersburg by blowing up a tunnel that had been dug under the Rebel trenches fails. Although the explosion created a gap in the Confederate defenses, a poorly planned Yankee attack wasted the effort and the result was an eight-month continuation of the siege. The bloody campaign between Union General Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate Robert E. Lee ground to a halt in mid-June, when the two armies dug in at Petersburg, south of Richmond. For the previous six weeks, Grant had...