http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/worldwarii/ en-us Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:24:25 GMT Focus Forum 15 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2280514/posts The towering tree is believed to have been Adolf Hitler's gift to the occupied town of Jaslo — planted to the sound of a Nazi band during World War II. Town authorities now want it cut down and burned to make way for a new roundabout. But some residents have become attached to the 40-foot (12-meter) oak and are lobbying to save it. "The tree has not hurt anyone and is not guilty of anything," protest organizer Kazimierz Polak said, adding that his group was appealing to local and regional authorities to preserve the tree. "It is growing healthy and... AP http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2280514/posts#comment Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:24:25 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2279723/posts American Commando: Evans Carlson, His WWII Marine Raiders and America's First Special Forces Mission By John Wukovits Caliber, $25.95 Evans Carlson was not an ordinary U.S. Marine officer. He was a maverick. He learned guerrilla warfare from Chinese communist forces in the 1930s. He believed in sharing hardships with enlisted men. He swapped letters with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt's son, James, was his executive officer. Carlson led the Marines' first World War II special forces raids. The 2nd Raider Battalion was created and trained by Carlson. In August 1942, he led the first long-range strike against Japanese-held Makin Island.... The San Antonio Express-News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2279723/posts#comment Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:01:46 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2279535/posts NEARLY 66 years ago, a flotilla of mini-submarines set off to sink or cripple the mighty German battleship Tirpitz. Among the men behind this attack was Max Shean from Perth, a volunteer for one of World War II's most daring and hazardous naval missions. Shean's courage in command of the X-craft submarines in Europe and the Pacific earned him an unrivalled reputation as a leader whose aggressive instincts were always tempered by concern for his crew. He died on June 15, aged 90. Born in July 1918, Shean was in his third year of an engineering degree when news of... The Australian http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2279535/posts#comment Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:57:00 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2276576/posts His particular band of brothers, the 843rd Engineer Aviation Battalion, Army Air Corps, was not a front-line infantry unit. Its members were never dropped behind enemy lines. They stormed no beaches. Their exploits never turned up in a Stephen Ambrose book or a Tom Hanks movie. They were airstrip builders. As they marched across Europe from 1943 to 1945, soldiers of the 843rd constructed runways and airfield facilities, putting American and British planes ever closer to strategic military targets from France to Germany. The Times-Picayune http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2276576/posts#comment Mon, 22 Jun 2009 03:07:01 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2275540/posts WHEN Kim Beazley slipped his feet under the desk as Australia's defence minister in 1984, he took charge of a vast department with a multibillion-dollar budget and gained access to the nation's most valuable military secrets. But even from his position at the apex of Australia's military machine he was unable to find a definitive answer to one of his family's most enduring mysteries: what happened to Uncle Syd. Now, a quarter of a century on, Beazley has put his influence behind a campaign to demand answers to questions surrounding one of the nation's most tragic wartime episodes, the sinking... The Weekend Australian http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2275540/posts#comment Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:01:42 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2272811/posts “Whereas before there had been almost no framework to explain what Roosevelt was doing, now a respectable one was forming. Spending promoted growth, if government was big enough to spend enough.” ~ Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Perhaps as a result of all the commentary suggesting that we’re in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, there’s lots of talk about what led us out of same. It’s conventional wisdom that the government spending wrought by World War II ultimately sparked our emergence from the 1930s downturn, but the evidence suggests otherwise. World War II... Real Clear Markets http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2272811/posts#comment Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:47:55 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2263290/posts Conservation workers uncovered personal items of Holocaust victims at the World War II Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in southern Poland, authorities said. The items -- including baby toys and bottles, jewels, cosmetics and medicines -- had labels in Hungarian and belonged to Hungarian Jews imprisoned at the Nazi German-run Auschwitz concentration camp, near the southern Polish city of Krakow, from May to July 1944, Poland's thenews.pl Web site said Tuesday. The personal items were found during conservation work at the camp's Crematorium 3, a spokesman for the Auschwitz museum said. Some of the items will be put on display at the... UPI http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2263290/posts#comment Tue, 2 Jun 2009 22:41:08 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2260755/posts Steve Barry >>More PhotosSteve Barry has a story of survival and gratitude for the American troops who liberated him during World War II. Steve is Jewish and was sent from Hungary to the notorious Bergen-Belsen camp. He soon was loaded, along with 2,500 other starving Jews, on a train. The train became stranded in the middle of fierce fighting. Soon Steve's captors left, but the passengers were weak, and there was nowhere for them to go, so they stayed with the train hoping for a miracle. Carroll Walsh Steve will never forget the day he saw the first tank... The Story http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2260755/posts#comment Fri, 29 May 2009 19:09:06 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2260364/posts Queen Elizabeth II will not attend the 65th anniversary of the D-Day invasion in France, even if France extends an invitation, Buckingham Palace said. The queen was not on the initial invitation list and palace officials say even if France issues a belated invitation to next week's ceremony in Normandy, no member of the royal family will be able to attend, The Daily Mail reported Thursday. The government of French President Nicolas Sarkozy this week described the event as "very much a Franco-American occasion," which will be attended by U.S. President Barack Obama. The French said the commemoration would be... UPI http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2260364/posts#comment Fri, 29 May 2009 07:06:24 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2257094/posts Lest We Forget: Screaming Eagles Know FreedomÂ’s Cost The men of the 101st Airborne Division, or Screaming Eagles, train. (Courtesy of US Army) By MICHAEL P. TREMOGLIE, The Bulletin Friday, May 22, 2009 It is said that freedom is not free. The wise person knows this to be true. However, it takes more than wisdom to know the exact value. If anyone knows the price, it is the men of the 101st Airborne Division. They know it all too well because they have paid it many times. They are known as the Screaming Eagles, the men of the 101st Airborne. They are... The Bulletin http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2257094/posts#comment Sat, 23 May 2009 23:02:52 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2257024/posts Herbert York, a leading physicist in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II who later became an arms-control advocate and founding chancellor of the University of California, San Diego, USA, passed away. He was 87. York died on Tuesday at Thornton Hospital in San Diego, the university announced, after a long illness. His death was attributed to acute myelogenous leukemia. “Herb York made this campus and this world a better place,” UC San Diego chancellor Marye Anne Fox said in a statement. Beginning with his work on the Manhattan Project, York held a series of high-level scientific,... Express http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2257024/posts#comment Sat, 23 May 2009 20:26:08 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2255829/posts If Rick Rocamora takes your picture, it may not be pretty. That's because the 62-year-old photojournalist doesn't consider himself to be your typical photojournalist; he's a "socially concerned documentary photographer," the Oakland resident says. "There's a difference. There are two kinds of photographers: There are those who take pictures of issues that concern them, but, in reality, they're doing that to improve their resume. ... But I'm doing it because whether I have a camera or not, I'll still be there." Rocamora's work, mostly in black-and-white, focuses on the two subjects foremost on his conscience: the immigrant community and its... San Francisco Chronicle http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2255829/posts#comment Thu, 21 May 2009 21:51:22 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2255564/posts German Officers observing battlefield with personal body guards and German medic attending to wounded German SS squads attacking through destroyed buildings with many casualties as a German Panzerfaust moves in to take out Russian T-34 Hand to hand combat on the battlefield - Germans attacking Soviets Soviet M-19 heavy machine gun crew firing rapidly on advancing Germans German motorcycle team and paratroopers planning a right side flank on the Russians Russian infantry and a female sniper have Germans in their gunsights as their Comrades lay dead from gunfire Destroyed Church and buildings and fallen telephone as Germans advance through Stalingad... Flickr http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2255564/posts#comment Thu, 21 May 2009 16:23:12 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2255109/posts Efforts to gain justice for thousands of Polish captives executed apparently at Stalin's orders have been rebuffed by Russia's courts. The country's mood has swung away from probing the Soviet past.Reporting from Mednoye, Russia — There were 6,295 Polish prisoners held captive at the monastery when the order came to "unload" the camp. It took a month and a half to kill all of them. The prisoners were mostly military officers, police, gendarmes and landlords, rounded up as a dangerous "bourgeois" elite when the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland in the run-up to World War II. The following year, 1940,... Los Angeles Times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2255109/posts#comment Thu, 21 May 2009 00:07:25 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2254011/posts He bested the forces of Adolf Hitler on the beaches of Normandy and blasted genetic superman Khan Noonien Singh out of space in a far-flung galaxy. How can James Doohan not be the greatest Sarnia of our time? Heck, he might be the greatest of all space and time? Doohan is best known for his role as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, the excitable, dependable and miracle-working chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise on the classic '60s sci-fihit Star Trek. If your dilithium crystals were ever fried, your photo torpedo tubes jammed or you were short a man in a brawl with... THE OBSERVER http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2254011/posts#comment Tue, 19 May 2009 16:43:54 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2247263/posts A man wanted in Germany for Nazi war crimes has been ordered by US authorities to surrender to an immigration office for deportation. John Demjanjuk, who lives in Ohio, has been fighting deportation since March, when Germany filed charges against him. On Thursday, the US Supreme Court rejected a request by Mr Demjanjuk, 89, to intervene in the case. He denies accusations that he worked as a guard in the Sobibor Nazi death camp during World War II. He says he was captured by the Germans in his native Ukraine during the war and kept as a prisoner of war. bbc http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2247263/posts#comment Fri, 8 May 2009 23:23:49 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2246777/posts U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald during his upcoming tour of Europe, official German sources reported Friday. The U.S. administration has yet to confirm the report, but secret service units have already been sent to Germany to examine the security at places Obama is expected to visit during his trip. The secret service personnel were sent to Dresden, among other places. Obama is scheduled to visit the concentration camp on June 5, one day before taking part in a ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of the 1944 invasion of Allied forces in... Ha'aretz http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2246777/posts#comment Fri, 8 May 2009 10:52:42 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2243996/posts Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Pacelli, was pontiff during WWII and considered by many one of the greatest heroes of the war. To others, he is simply "Hitler's Pope." The 46-year-old controversy surrounding Pacelli casts a shadow over Pope Benedict's trip this week to the Holy Land. Benedict's visit will include a stop in Israel, where he will pay respects to Holocaust victims at Yad Vashem but refrain from visiting the museum there that features an exhibit critical of Pius. The exhibit includes a photo of the wartime pontiff with a caption that says he failed to protest the Holocaust... The New York Daily News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2243996/posts#comment Mon, 4 May 2009 19:36:03 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2241434/posts Last night, Barack Obama said he had recently read an article about Winston Churchill during the London blitz. "Churchill said, 'We don't torture,' when the entire British -- all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat," Obama said. "And then the reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking short-cuts, over time, that corrodes what's -- what's best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country." It was, perhaps, the most powerful anecdote of the night, and an apparently powerful moral condemnation of President Bush, an admitted admirer of Churchill who kept the... Time.com (Swampland) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2241434/posts#comment Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:49:46 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2240877/posts Ben Macintyre thought he knew who condemned a fugitive British soldier to death in France in 1916, and wrote a book about it. Now, ten years later, an e-mail out of the blue has convinced him that he had the wrong man. Here, he sets the record straightHistory never stands still. Just when we think we understand the past, it moves on. Ten years ago, I set out to try to solve a murder mystery left over from the First World War. Two years later, thinking that I had done so, I wrote a nonfiction book about the case: part... The Times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2240877/posts#comment Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:36:02 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2239335/posts FUZZY Wuzzy Angels, who provided vital assistance to Australian troops in Papua New Guinea during World War II, are to receive commemorative medals from the Australian Government. The medallions would recognise their service and sacrifice, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said, adding they would be made available to surviving Angels or to their widows or widowers. Two surviving Angels joined Australian war veterans at Mr Rudd's joint press conference with PNG Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare in Canberra. "All of us in Australia know full well the enormous support, practical support and friendship extended to Australian diggers by the Fuzzy Wuzzy... news.com.au http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2239335/posts#comment Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:28:24 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2235670/posts IN nursing homes and darkened bedrooms across the nation, the generation of soldiers who fought to save Australia during World War II is suddenly dying in record numbers. During the course of today alone, 44 veterans of that terrible conflict are likely to draw their last breath. They will die quietly and without fanfare in a country which, thanks to them, has the luxury these days of being more worried about the economy than about war. In this week leading up to Anzac Day, the death toll among World War II veterans is likely to top 300, or 33 infantry... The Australian http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2235670/posts#comment Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:45:27 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2230775/posts Come April 23, and a total of 65 editions of Fauren Warte, a collection of Nazi women's magazines featuring knitting patterns, fashion advice, and at the same time blaming the British for WWII, are set to be auctioned. The magazine, which ran from 1935 to 1945, and was the Nazi Party's biweekly-illustrated magazine for women, had a circulation of nearly two million at its peak. Now, it's all set to be auctioned at Ludlow. As you turn through these pages you get an incredibly creepy feeling about these magazines as you realise they are not what they appear to be.... One India http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2230775/posts#comment Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:43:07 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2229786/posts I started to think about the girls I was at school with as I went to St Josephs, a convent based in France. The Imaculee Conception was the house name so a lot of the nuns were French and most of the rest were Irish. We had to pray every day that Hitler would come to his senses, so we were on a loser there. I started to think about the girls I was at school with as I went to St Josephs, a convent based in France. The Imaculee Conception was the house name so a lot of the... The Telegraph http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2229786/posts#comment Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:28:52 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2227254/posts New book lays bare French collaboration with the Nazis Matthew Campbell, Paris AN unusual history of the Nazis in France has trampled on one of the country’s most painful taboos by focusing on women who slept with the enemy during the occupation. Flouting a long-running convention of silence on what he calls “horizontal collaboration”, Patrick Buisson, the author, describes the Nazi occupation as the “golden age” of the French brothel, chronicling a dramatic growth in prostitution to satisfy German demand. The book, 1940-1945, Erotic Years, is the second hefty volume in a wide-ranging sexual history of the occupation that one... The Sunday Times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2227254/posts#comment Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:57:52 GMT