Free Republic

One week after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt began pressing the U.S. military to immediately strike the Japanese homeland. The desire to bolster moral became more urgent in light of rapid Japanese advances. These included victories in Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines, Wake Island, Guam, and the Dutch East Indies, as well as sinking the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse. Only improbable, audacious ideas warranted consideration, because submarines confirmed Japan placed picket boats at extreme carrier aircraft range. One idea even involved launching four engine heavy bombers from China or Outer Mongolia to strike Japan and fly on to Alaska....

The head of Britain's digital espionage agency has apologized for the organization's historic prejudice against homosexuals, saying it failed to learn from the treatment of World War II codebreaker Alan Turing. In a rare public speech, GCHQ chief Robert Hannigan told a gathering organized by the rights group Stonewall that the agency's ban on homosexuals had caused long-lasting psychological damage to many and hurt the agency because talented people were excluded from working there. "The fact that it was common practice for decades reflected the intolerance of the times and the pressures of the Cold War, but it does not...

On April 11, John Kerry became the first Secretary of State to pay his respects to at Hiroshima’s memorial to those who died when the atomic bomb was dropped on that city on August 6, 1945. That event, and the dropping of a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki on August 9, brought a victorious and rapid end to World War II, and a Japanese surrender 6 days after Nagasaki, saving potentially millions of casualties on both sides if the U.S. had been forced to invade the Japanese home islands. Kerry’s statement during the visit, as reported by...

...Gross was questioned after multiple complaints were filed with prosecutors by Polish citizens over an article published in 2015 in which Gross said Poles killed more Jews than Germans during the German occupation – a claim that challenges a widespread conviction in Poland that the Polish response was almost exclusively honourable. Gross made the comparison in an article published by Project Syndicate in September critical of how Poland and other eastern European countries have reacted to the migrant crisis. He decried as “heartless” the region’s opposition to accepting refugees and argued that the attitude was rooted in the region’s “murderous...

Our new motto: Strength through moral equivalenceWhen John Kerry toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum this week before meeting foreign ministers at the G-7 Summit, Reuters reports that he had witnessed “haunting displays [of] photographs of badly burned victims, the tattered and stained clothes they wore and statues depicting them with flesh melting from their limbs.” “It is a stunning display. It is a gut-wrenching display,” explained Kerry. “It is a reminder of the depth of the obligation every one of us in public life carries … to create and pursue a world free from nuclear weapons.” Iran exempted,...

The U-2513 is what's known as a Type 21 German U-boat. In the 1940s, the Type 21 was a secret weapon that threatened to change the course of two wars: WWII, and then later, the Cold War. During WWII, German hopes were riding on it, and the Allies were terrified of it. After the war, the British, Americans, and Russians couldn't wait to get their hands on it. It was a weapon that had the potential to change the balance of world power and determine the outcome of the Cold War. Join our Deep Sea Detectives, John Chatterton and Richie...

THE Bismarck, the German battleship which sank with the loss of more than 2,000 sailors, was scuttled by her own crew, according to a news docu-mentary to be screened this weekend. The Second World War flagship, the pride of Hitler’s naval fleet, sank so quickly that it must have been deliberately aimed at the ocean floor by desperate commanders, according to the programme, made by the Titanic film director, James Cameron. Semi-crippled after an aircraft-launched torpedo knocked out her rudder, the Bismarck was hounded across the Atlantic by a chasing British naval pack. Then, on 27 May, 1941, in what...

Seventy-two years after eight airmen in the B-24 Liberator Hot as Hell crashed in violent weather over India during World War II, part of the crew began their final journey home after a full-honors ceremony Wednesday, April 13, 2016, at Air Force Station Palam in New Delhi, India. TARA COPP/STARS AND STRIPES AIR FORCE STATION PALAM, NEW DELHI, India — Seventy-two years after eight airmen in the B-24 Liberator Hot as Hell crashed in violent weather over India, part of the crew has begun the final journey home. In a full-honors ceremony Wednesday at New Delhi’s airport, Secretary of Defense...

When John Kerry toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum this week before meeting foreign ministers at the G-7 Summit, Reuters reports that he had witnessed “haunting displays [of] photographs of badly burned victims, the tattered and stained clothes they wore and statues depicting them with flesh melting from their limbs.” “It is a stunning display. It is a gut-wrenching display,” explained Kerry. “It is a reminder of the depth of the obligation every one of us in public life carries … to create and pursue a world free from nuclear weapons.” Iran exempted, of course. But, really, is this...

A great-grandfather has celebrated his 100th birthday with a skydive from 10,000ft (3,000m). D-Day veteran Verdun Hayes made the jump at Dunkeswell Airfield near Honiton, Devon, to raise money for the North Devon Hospice.

In the early 1940s, the U.S. Navy still expected to need huge, first rate battleships to fight the best that Japan and Germany had to offer. The North Carolina, South Dakota, and Iowa-class battleships all involved design compromises. The Montanas, the last battleships designed by the U.S. Navy, would not.

Monday in Holy Week, 1937 ... ... was the day when the Gestapo raided diocesan offices and presbyteries all over Germany. The previous day, Palm Sunday, when the churches were packed, priests all over Germany had read publicly the Encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge [=With Burning Sorrow?] of the Holy Father Pope Pius XI [thanks to Fr Ray for reminding us]. It had been smuggled into Germany in the Nuncio's Diplomatic Bag and secretly printed (as when the secret press was thumping away in the attic of Stonor House to produce S Edmund Campion's Decem Rationes); secretly distributed by special couriers...

At 0930 hours on 18 Mar 1938, at the mountain village of Brennero in the Brenner Pass, Italian Alpine troops welcomed the arrival of Benito Mussolini and Galeazzo Ciano by train. As snow drifted down heavily, Adolf Hitler and Joachim von Ribbentrop arrived, also by train. Ciano escorted Hitler and Ribbentrop toward Mussolini's train car over red carpet. The subsequent meeting lasted two hours and twelve minutes; after which, they each returned to their capitals. The two parties discussed potential plans for future joint-aggression, but to the public they offered terms to maintain peace in Europe.

General Draza Mihailovich Belgrade 1946 The famous bridge over the Drina River in Visegrad, Bosnia. Photo: Creative Commons Aleksandra's note: 70 years ago, on the night of March 12-13, 1946 near Visegrad in Bosnia, the town made famous by Ivo Andric's classic novel "The Bridge on the Drina" published in 1945, the most decorated Serbian military officer and leader of the first successful uprising against the Nazis in all of occupied Europe was finally captured by the Yugoslav communist special security agents (OZNA) loyal to Marshal Josip Broz Tito after a long manhunt. A short time later the Yugoslav communists...

Lt. Col. James M. Inks (USAF) 1921-2004 Lt. Col. James M. Inks (USAF): American Military Forces treated as prisoners by Tito's Partisans / The Chetniks treated us like free men and allies."...I kept an accurate account of what happened to me and my comrades while we were in Yugoslavia. This has recently had its secret classification removed by the army and is now cleared for publication. I hope in the near future to have it before every citizen in the United States, in one of our popular magazines and you can rest assured that I will leave nothing out that...

Patrick J. Buchanan's new contribution to the flourishing genre of World War II revisionism, should appear in the same season as Nicholson Baker's "Human Smoke." Never has there been such a clear demonstration of the way ideological extremes tend to converge. Messrs. Baker and Buchanan probably could not stand to be in the same room for five minutes. The former is to the left of most Democrats, the latter to the right of most Republicans. When they look back to the 1930s, Mr. Baker's role models are the Quakers and pacifists who believed it was better to lie down for...

February 19 was the anniversary of the beginning of the amphibious assault by the United States Marines on Japanese-held Iwo Jima (wiki) in 1945, during the final year of World War II. Located in the Volcano Islands, 750 miles south of Tokyo, Iwo Jima was one of the final steps in Admiral Nimitz's Central Pacific "island-hopping" campaign and was attacked both to eliminate a base from which Japanese fighter aircraft could intercept Tinian-based U.S. B-29 bombers on bombing raids against Japan and to provide those bombers the protection of U.S. fighter escorts based there, plus an emergency landing site. After...

General Draza Mihailovich on Ravna Gora in Serbia 1943 Aleksandra's Note: This year, 2016, will mark the 70th anniversary of the martyrdom of Serbian legend General Draza Mihailovich. There have been many testimonies over the last 70 years that accurately reflect who the General was as both military commander and as a man. Due to the vast institutionalization of communist propaganda over the course of these same seven decades, the truth has had to fight its way to the light. But "Truth" does, and always will, prevail. That is the nature of God's justice, and God's justice will always be...

When word spread that WWII/Korean War vet had no one to mourn him, that changed quickly He died an American hero, but with no family to mourn him. On Tuesday, however, Sergeant First Class Sidney Dean Cochran was buried with full military honors, surrounded by hundreds of strangers who came to pay their respects to the World War II veteran. Thanks to a social media campaign that began with a post on funeral director Ryan Jensen’s wife’s Facebook page, word quickly spread about the service.

SYDNEY – A 93-year-old World War II veteran from the United States embraced his wartime girlfriend in Australia in their reunion Wednesday after more than 70 years apart.