Free Republic

This video series is titled “In Defense of World War II.” I didn’t realize we had to defend it, but regardless of that, here’s an education brought to you by Victor Davis Hanson and Christopher Hitchens.

THE WHITE HOUSE Washington, D.C.IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- August 6, 1945STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam" which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare. It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against...

My great uncle was captured in the Philippines by the Japanese during World War II, and died during the Bataan Death March. As far as I remember, I cannot recall anyone in my family saying that he was awarded the Purple Heart. If he was never awarded the Purple Heart, would he be eligible? If he did get it, how can I find out?

MEMBERS of the Greatest Generation - especially those with weak hearts - might want to steer clear of an upcoming PBS documentary that suggests the Allied victory in World War II was "tainted" and questions whether it can even be called a victory. Moreover, the documentary, titled "The War of the World: A New History of the 20th Century," asserts that the war could only be won by forming an unholy alliance with a dictator - Joseph Stalin, who was as brutal as the one they were fighting, Adolf Hitler - and by adopting the same "pitiless" and "remorseless" tactics...

Are you looking for a roller coaster ride of a book - a book you stay awake reading till the wee hours of the morning? Look no further than Rita Kramer's fascinating true story nail-biter, Flames in the Field: The Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied France. I can guarantee you this: the four agents' riveting and haunting tales will stay with you for a long, long time

Europe, the Mother Continent of Western Man, is today aging and dying, unable to sustain the birth rates needed to keep her alive, or to resist conquest by an immigrant invasion from the Third World. What happened to the nations that only a century ago ruled the world? In “Churchill, Hitler and ‘The Unnecessary War’: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World,” published today, this writer will argue that it was colossal blunders of British statesmen, Winston Churchill foremost among them, that turned two European wars into world wars that may yet prove the mortal wounds...

On Dec. 3, 1943, a B-24D Liberator bomber with two Army airmen from Massachusetts flew a stealth mission to destroy Japanese war vessels in the Bismarck Sea. The mission turned out to be a success. The crew found a Japanese convoy and bombed it.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The United States will search for remains of several World War Two aircraft and airmen lost over the forested mountains of India's northeast, a U.S. commander said on Wednesday. The U.S. military says it lost some 430 Americans in 90 planes in India while they were on missions to resupply China's besieged army in the city of Kunming, desperately trying to hold out against the invading Japanese during World War Two. The wreckage of six U.S. planes have been found in the jungles of India's Arunachal Pradesh state, giving the U.S. Joint Prisoners of War/Missing in...

When Woodrow Wilson went to Congress to ask for a declaration of war in 1917, the U.S. Army was ranked 17th in the world, behind Portugal. On Armistice Day, 19 months later, there were 2 million doughboys in France, where they had helped to break the back of Gen. Ludendorff's theretofore invincible army in its final offensive, and 2 million more in the United States ready to march on Berlin. No other nation could have done that. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, FDR demanded that a disarmed America "build 50,000 planes" -- a seemingly impossible number, but one...

WASHINGTON - During the final allied offensive of the Korean War, Master Sgt. Woodrow Wilson Keeble risked his life to save his fellow Soldiers. Almost six decades after his gallant actions and 26 years after his death, Keeble will be the first full-blooded Sioux Indian to receive the Medal of Honor. The White House announced this morning that Keeble will receive the Medal of Honor posthumously in a ceremony scheduled for 2:30 p.m. March 3. Keeble is one of the most decorated Soldiers in North Dakota history. A veteran of World War II and the Korean War, he was born...

REDDING, Calif. - Raymond Jacobs, believed to be the last surviving member of the group of Marines photographed during the original U.S. flag-raising on Iwo Jima during World War II, has died at age 82. Jacobs died Jan. 29 of natural causes at a Redding hospital, his daughter, Nancy Jacobs, told The Associated Press. Jacobs had spent his later years working to prove that he was the radio operator photographed looking up at an American flag as it was being raised by other Marines on Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945. Newspaper accounts from the time show he was on...

Not sure if I'm doing this right, dupe thread, but I feel it's important

I began by asking myself the question linked inevitably to the survival of the United States as a trusted nation in the 21st century: Why can't America admit defeat? What is it in the American psyche that seems to dictate the necessity to be proven not only right, but superior in dealings with the outside world? I have lived the better part of 40 years in Japan, a country whose nationalistic ardor and patriotic zeal once easily matched that of the U.S. If the Japanese government has not sufficiently apologized for the utter brutality their nation inflicted in Asia and...

Would anyone like a free dinner at Golden Corral? Well, there is an easy way if you are an American military veteran. Golden Corral just announced this year’s Military Appreciation Monday will be November 12, 2007, from 5 to 9 pm. For the past 6 years, Golden Corral has been honoring the US Military with a free “thank you” dinner and beverage at any Golden Corral restaurant on Military Appreciation Monday (first Monday after Veteran’s Day), to honor any person who has ever served in the United States Military. In the past the only requirement to receive the free meal...

Remembering Kristallnacht, the 'Night of Broken Glass' By Hilda Pierce November 9, 2007 Crystal Night is a beautiful name for an evil event that took place in Austria and Germany on the night of Nov. 9, 1938. It was orchestrated on the orders of Adolph Hitler's minister of propaganda, Josef Goebbels. Adolf Eichmann also had a part in organizing the “Night of Broken Glass,” the night of burning synagogues, smashing windows of Jewish stores, looting, killing or torturing Jews on the streets and in their homes, 69 years ago today. It is a historical date because it was also the...

Japan's War Crimes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes Sex Slaves of Japan's Imperial Army http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women 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 Allied seamen and countless civilians in cold-blooded defiance of the Geneva Convention. "Many of the Japanese sailors who committed such terrible deeds...

Last Monday was a maddening day. The swimming pool heater was not working right and when I wanted to get my nightly swimming exercise before bed, the water was a bit cool. Plus, the water heater was broken and my shower was barely tepid. I lay in bed sulking and then turned on the TV. Ken Burns's magnificent epic about American participation in World War II came on. There were American children being starved in Japanese prison camps in the Philippines. American Marines getting blown to pieces by Japanese shells on Iwo Jima. American soldiers fighting and freezing at the...

'You know," drawled Fred Thompson at a recent rally in Des Moines, Iowa, "you look back over our history and it doesn't take you long to realize that our people have shed more blood for other people's liberty than any other combination of nations in the history of the world." This is an interesting statement, and not only because Fred Thompson has a good shot at being the Republican nominee for president in 2008, and an outside chance of winning. It's also interesting because of who Thompson is. Fred Thompson is a Washington lobbyist. That's not what his campaign highlights,...

They lived in the Philippines, but they were members of the U.S. armed forces. More than 200,000 of them fought during World War II. Tens of thousands died before the final hard-won triumph over Japan. But in the decades following the war, the title of U.S. veteran -- and resulting compensation -- has eluded them.  Now, Filipino-American World War II veterans, aided by their adult children, have stepped up a decades-long fight to get Congress to recognize them as bona fide U.S. veterans – a move that would qualify them for VA benefits."Our community has been lobbying for this...

Four top-tier presidential candidates have accepted invitations to speak to the 108th National Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S., which starts Aug. 18 in the hometown of the VFW's national headquarters, Kansas City, Mo. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and John McCain (R-AZ) are scheduled to speak Aug. 20, and former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) will speak Aug. 21. "This is the candidates' opportunity to address the national convention of America's oldest and largest organization of combat veterans," said VFW Commander-in-Chief Gary Kurpius, from Anchorage, Alaska. "In our audience will be...

1945 : Japanese sink the USS Indianapolis On this day in 1945, Japanese warships sink the American cruiser Indianapolis, killing 883 seamen in the worst loss in the history of the U.S. navy. As a prelude to a proposed invasion of the Japanese mainland, scheduled for November 1, U.S. forces bombed the Japanese home islands from sea and air, as well as blowing Japanese warships out of the water. The end was near for Imperial Japan, but it was determined to go down fighting. Just before midnight of the 29th, the Indianapolis, an American cruiser that was the flagship of...

1945 : United States conducts first test of the atomic bomb The United States conducts the first test of the atomic bomb at its research facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The terrifying new weapon would quickly become a focal point in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. The official U.S. development of the atomic bomb began with the establishment of the Manhattan Project in August 1942. The project brought together scientists from the United States, Great Britain, and Canada to study the feasibility of building an atomic bomb capable of unimaginable destructive power. The...

It is not often that servicemen have to fight a double war - one on the home front and one overseas. Training at the Tuskegee Airfield in Alabama was segregated But this is exactly what America's legendary Tuskegee Airmen did, more than 60 years ago. While they were fighting the Nazis abroad, they were battling racism at home. Their double victory has been honoured by Congress, which has presented the survivors of America's first black air squadron with the Congressional Gold Medal. The medal, which is the highest civilian award bestowed by Congress, can also be awarded to military...

Did Hirohito play an active part in planning and conducting the war? Japanese emperor Hirohito expressed doubts about going to war with China in the 1930s and 40s, extracts from a diary of one of his advisers reveal. They show Hirohito was afraid the Soviet Union would intervene. The diary by Kuraji Ogura, who worked as a chamberlain to Hirohito in World War II, was found recently and parts have been published in Japan's media. The full text may help solve the debate about how much responsibility the emperor had for Japan's wartime action. South Pacific visit The document...

After more than 60 years of silence, World War II's most enduring and horrible secret is being nudged into the light of day. One by one the participants, white-haired and mildmannered, line up to tell their dreadful stories before they die. Akira Makino is a frail widower living near Osaka in Japan. His only unusual habit is to regularly visit an obscure little town in the southern Philippines, where he gives clothes to poor children and has set up war memorials. Mr Makino was stationed there during the war. What he never told anybody, including his wife, was that during...

The Diary of Anne Frank was displayed on the judge's desk A suspected German neo-Nazi has admitted publicly burning a copy of Anne Frank's diary, at the start of his trial with six others.The suspects are accused of inciting racial hatred and disparaging the dead. Prosecutors in the eastern German city of Magdeburg said Lars Konrad, 25, threw the book onto a bonfire during a summer solstice party in June 2006. Anne Frank wrote her diary while she and her family hid from the Nazis in an attic in Amsterdam during World War II. The indictment says the public...

If you look at my home page, you will see that I rank FDR third behind Lincoln and Washington, and ahead of Reagan and TR in my list of our greatest presidents. Now, someone took me to task for that choice on an unrelated thread, which led me to pen this piece that I now throw out there for your review and comments. In my younger, more brash days I would have dismissed FDR because of his socialist policies. And Yalta. And the supreme court-packing try. Sure, he had his faults, like all presidents. Yet he is - along with...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

The cavity magnetron played a decisive role in WWII In the summer of 1940, the war with Germany was at a critical stage. France had recently surrendered and the Luftwaffe was engaged in a concerted bombing campaign against British cities. The United Kingdom was being cut off from the Continent, and without allies to help her, she would soon be near the limit of her productive capacity - particularly in the all important field of electronics. On the morning of 29 August, a small team of the country's top scientists and engineers, under the direction of Sir Henry Tizard...

Abdulwahab heard of a plan to put Jewish women in a brothel Israel's main Holocaust memorial centre has for the first time nominated an Arab to be recognised as a "righteous gentile" for saving Jewish lives.Researchers at Yad Vashem will now examine the life of Khaled Abdulwahab, who died in his native Tunisia in 1997, to see if he is eligible for the award. He is said to have sheltered Jews on his land during the Nazi occupation. The Righteous Gentile award has already been bestowed on about 22,000 non-Jews, including 60 Muslims from the Balkans. The request to...

Calling all WW2 FReeper Vets! Next week there will be a special 2-day Finest thread on WW2 vets and the WW2 memorial in Washington DC .It will be a thread that I believe FR will be proud of. I desire the names of all LIVING & DECEASED(on the wall) Freepers for inclusion in the article. Pictures of course are wanted, but not critical. The actual names will only be used with your permission. Right now I know of one living (Wheelbarrow) and one deceased (Bevlar)… the lar (larry) in name. Freepers. I will have a collage pix with the screennames....

Yesterday (December 16) marked the 62nd anniversary of the start of a German counter-offensive, known in the history books the Battle of the Bulge. It was also the longest fought and costliest battle the United States Army had ever fought, before or since. The details for this offensive were months in the planning by Adolf Hitler and the very highest echelons of the German high command. This plan was so top secret that none of the field commanders had an inkling that there was even one being planned until they were briefed about it six weeks before the scheduled jump...

Germans demand compensation from Poland over war losses A German group has filed claims against Poland with a European court over property lost in the aftermath of World War II, a member said today. The Prussian Claims Society, which represents some Germans who were expelled from Poland after the war ended, filed the complaint with the European Court of Human Rights, the society’s deputy leader Gerwald Stanko said. “Twenty-two individual complaints have gone to the European Court of Human Rights,” Stanko said. He said the aim was to secure either compensation or the return of property. The Prussian Claims Society...

HONOLULU - Sixty-five years ago, Takeshi Maeda and John Rauschkolb tried to kill each other at Pearl Harbor. This week, now both 85, they met face-to-face for the first time — and shook hands. The Japanese veteran gripped Rauschkolb's arm with his left hand and briefly hesitated, as if he was searching for the right words. Then he said, "I'm sorry." On Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese Imperial Navy navigator Maeda guided his Kate bomber to Pearl Harbor and fired a torpedo that helped sink the USS West Virginia. Rauschkolb, a Navy signalman, stood on the West Virginia's port side as...

Marc Deneen has lived in the same two-story brick home in the quiet western Dane County hamlet known as Riley for all of his 81 years - almost. Like so many Americans his age, a little something called World War II interrupted. It was during the war, somewhere on a German tank trail that would hopefully in the weeks ahead lead all the way to Berlin, that a bazooka blast ripped 35 holes in Deneen's body, burned him in several spots and destroyed the hearing in one of his ears. Nevertheless, he was the lucky one. Two of his combat...

AN Army bugler sounded Last Post, old men saluted, and a true Anzac hero was officially farewelled in a windswept corner of Fawkner cemetery yesterday morning. For more than 50 years, Captain Edward Renata Mahunga "Tip" Broughton has lain in an abandoned, bare grave at Fawkner. He died intestate, aged 70, in 1955. Until yesterday, a weather-beaten bronze plaque was the only marker on the cracked grey clay of Tip Broughton's final resting place. The marker recorded that it had been placed by "the ex members of the 8th AEC, AMF -- mainly Dunera Boys -- in cherished memory of...

A BIBLE believed to have been used for the last rites of soldiers has been stolen from Brisbane's Shrine of Memories. The Bible, which was carried through World War II by the 2/7 Cavalry Regiment, had been held for public viewing in a glass case, said Ron Watson, curator of Anzac Square in Brisbane's CBD. But the case was forced open recently and the Bible stolen.

The Russian government has backed a 17bn-rouble ($630m) plan to develop the Kuril Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The draft plan for 2007-15 aims to improve the islands' energy and transport infrastructure, including the construction of an all-weather airport. Russia has a long-standing territorial dispute with Japan over four Kuril islands, seized after World War II. Meanwhile, Russia plans to expand its restricted border zones that could be as big as in Soviet times, reports say. 'Ignored region' The government plans to spend nearly $1,000 for every resident of the chain of 56 Pacific islands a month - more...

Bruce ShandBritish soldier and father of the Duchess of Cornwall. Born January 22, 1917. Died June 11, aged 89. BRUCE Shand had a calmly philosophical approach to life, even when subjected to extremes of discomfort and danger during World War II. But the constant media attention and consequent stress on his family arising from the relationship between Prince Charles and Shand's daughter Camilla tried his patience. He was a man given to speaking his mind in a straightforward, albeit courteous, manner and there was a story circulated that he eventually suggested to the heir to the throne that the situation...

Determined to win the Cold War, the CIA kept quiet about the whereabouts of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in the 1950s for fear he might expose undercover anticommunist efforts in West Germany, according to documents released Tuesday. The 27,000 pages released by the National Archives are among the largest post-World War II declassifications by the CIA. They offer a window into the shadowy world of U.S. intelligence — and the efforts to use former Nazi war criminals as spies, sometimes to detrimental effect. The war criminals "peddled hearsay and gossip, whether to escape retribution for past crimes, or for...

RANDOM SEARCH ON GOOGLE REVEALS SURPRISE TREASURE By Mike Cassidy Mercury News Tony Gellepis remembers the last time he saw his Navy-issue peacoat. More or less remembers. See, he'd had a drink. OK, a few. And it was 65 years ago. March 1941. Shore leave. San Francisco. ``San Francisco was a great liberty port,'' Gellepis, 85, says, sitting in his Santa Clara duplex. ``That called for hoisting a few. I mean, you didn't want to go to the library.''

General Walker's Story of the Rapido Crossing Sent to the editor by Joe F. Presnall Joe Presnall thinks he received this manuscript (original) in 1946 at the 36th Reunion in Brownwood and would like to see it in the Quarterly. The story has been around for many years and deserves a place in the series. The veterans of the 36th (Texas) Division, which I commanded in World War II, will never forget the Rapido River crossing. In that operation in January 1944, more than 2,100 of their comrades were killed, wounded, or missing in a heroic and needless sacrifice. After...

I once read a poem about World War 2 that I can't remember the name of. It's pretty famous, so I'm sure there are some FReeps here who should know it and I'd appreciate it if someone could tell me where I could get a copy of it. The poem describes the lament of a man who stood back and watched as the Nazis came to power in Germany. He knew they were bad people when they started taking certain groups off to concentration camps. He, however, was not a target of the Gestapo just yet so he didn't do...

61 years ago today.

Desmond T. Doss, Sr., the only conscientious objector to win the Congressional Medal of Honor during World War II, has died. He was 87 years old. Doss never liked being called a conscientious objector. He preferred the term conscientious cooperator. Raised a Seventh-day Adventist, Doss did not believe in using a gun or killing because of the sixth commandment which states, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13). Doss was a patriot however, and believed in serving his country. During World War II, instead of accepting a deferment, Doss voluntarily joined the Army as a conscientious objector. Assigned to the 307th...

IT IS a world away from the holiday phrasebook. A newly discovered relic of the Second World War shows how the Red Army was expected to take a no-nonsense attitude if they ever encountered English speakers. The Russian-English military phrasebook told officers how to interrogate English-speaking soldiers and civilians, demand food and water and order people to help repair roads for troops. It even included a phrase for how to demand more tea. But the date of the phrasebook's publication, summer 1940 - a year before the Soviets published their equivalent German phrasebook - is seen as highly significant. Some...

A reader e-mails Andrew Sullivan: "I believe that if you compare the conduct of the Iraq war by the Bush administration with the record of Lincoln during the Civil War and Roosevelt during World War 2, the record will show that Bush is doing a better job than either Lincoln or Roosevelt. Check out 'Battle Cry of Freedom' by James McPherson, a history of the Civil War era. Lincoln faced continuous vilification by the Democrats and did not think until late in the campaign that he would win re-election. The Union military during the Civil War lost dozens of major...

In the early hours of March 6, 2006, a fire broke out at a warehouse complex near San Antonio International Airport, causing extensive damage to the offices of The Holocaust History Project (THHP), an organization that has been, for the last ten years, in the forefront of confronting Holocaust denial online, in addition to providing educational materials to students throughout the world. Arson investigators now have confirmed that the fire was intentionally set and are continuing their investigation. It was just the latest in a series of attacks with the apparent intent to silence THHP. For the past 18 months,...

SWASTIKAS fluttered over Berlin yesterday, German soldiers raised stiff arms in the Hitler salute and hundreds of bedraggled spectators shouted approval as the Nazi leader delivered a faltering speech. “My God,” said Benny Zimmerman, from St Louis, as he left Berlin Cathedral. “They’re back!” Dani Levi, the Israeli director, has turned the German capital upside down in an attempt to recapture the atmosphere of Nazi Germany for a new comedy about Adolf Hitler. Nazi symbols and Hitler salutes are banned in Germany, yet the Finance Ministry — once Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe headquarters — was draped in huge red and black...

Sixty-four years ago today, a quick swipe of a pen by President Franklin D. Roosevelt forever changed the lives of tens of thousands of U.S. citizens. Two months after the Dec. 7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, ordering all Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast to move inland, fearing an uproar from their assumed loyalty to Japan. (snip) In 1988, President Ronald Reagan issued an apology for the wrongful imprisonment of the 120,000 American citizens. Those incarcerated were issued $20,000, meant to compensate their losses. (snip) For those living, Fuyuume called the payment a small-token...