Free Republic

Russia has been accused of interfering in the affairs of the Czech Republic after its embassy tried to block changes to the inscription on a Soviet-era statue explaining the chequered role of Russian Marshal Ivan Konev, who was twice designated a Hero of the Soviet Union by Stalin and whose remains are buried in the Kremlin. Now the dispute is set to come to a head at a historically sensitive moment, the 50th anniversary of the 1968 invasion of then-communist Czechoslovakia by Soviet-led forces to crush the liberal Prague Spring. Critics said the original plaque exaggerated the marshalÂ’s role while...

A World War II veteran who has been delivering sweet surprises from the sky for 70 years continues to brings smiles to the faces of children as the "Candy Bomber.” "There's something magical about a chocolate bar come floatin' out of the sky," Col. Gail "Hal" Halvorsen told ABC News. "It's tied on an actual parachute. Hopefully, some kids appreciate it." Halvorsen, 97, started his candy drops when he was a U.S. pilot for the Allied forces during the Berlin Airlift. In 1948, the Russians cut off food and supplies to West Berlin, Germany. The United States and its allies...

So powerful to watch POWs returning home. History...

NEW YORK (AP) — John A. Stormer, a religious leader and right-wing activist whose self-published Cold War tract "None Dare Call It Treason" became a grassroots sensation in 1964 and a rallying point for the emerging conservative movement, has died at 90. Stormer died on July 10 after an unspecified year-long illness, according to an obituary posted on the website of the McCoy-Blossom Funeral Home in Troy, Missouri. A spokeswoman for the funeral home confirmed the details from the website. A native of Pennsylvania who moved to Missouri in his 20s, he was chair of the state's Federation of Young...

Angela Merkel appeared to hit back at US President Donald Trump's claim that "Germany is a captive of Russia" by drawing on her own upbringing in Soviet-controlled East Germany. "I wanted to say that, because of current events, I have witnessed this myself, that a part of Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union. And I am very happy that we are today unified in freedom as the Federal Republic of Germany," she said in an arrival statement at the NATO Summit Wednesday. Merkel, who was born in Hamburg in 1954, has spoken on numerous occasions about her upbringing under...

Walt Gragg joined The Chris Pryor Show to discuss his best seller about the Russian invasion of Germany. (Click Here.)Walt Gragg lives in the Austin, Texas area with his wife, children, and grandchildren. He is a retired attorney and former Texas State Prosecutor. Prior to law school, he spent a number of years in the military. His time with the Army involved many interesting assignments including three years in the middle of the first Cold War serving at United States European Command Headquarters in Germany where the idea for The RED LINE took shape. Walt is the 14th Annual...

Is the United States embroiled in a new Cold War with Russia? Are we on the verge of WWIII? After a week in Moscow and conversations with several Russian foreign-policy analysts, I think the answer to both questions is negative. “We are in a hybrid war, a successor to the Cold War,” says Dmitri Trenin “But don’t call it Cold War 2.0; otherwise you will confuse things.” America and Russia are jousting on new battlefields – information space, cyberspace, economic battles. What then is one to make of Vladimir Putin’s military interventions in Ukraine or his venture in Syria? Or...

Well, so much for that “agonizing reappraisal” (allowing truth) by the media/Hollywood complex on the Kennedys. Naturally we were asking too much. Apparently the movie Chappaquiddick, which forthrightly—and thus astoundingly! -- showcases a Kennedy’s perfidy, was a flash in the pan.Recently here at Townhall your humble servant speculated the movie might open a tiny crack for historic truth about Kennedy treachery to seep through. So I quickly slipped in the truth on the Kennedy treachery at the Bay of Pigs.Alas! Now we’re back in traditional media/Hollywood Kennedy hagiography mode. I refer to this week’s Netflix’s release of “Bobby Kennedy for...

The dominant narrative of modern Middle East history emphasizes European colonization and accepts as a truism that the former colonial powers prioritized the protection of their material interests—in oil, above all—above the dignity and self-determination of the region’s inhabitants. --Thus did botched decolonization result in endless instability...Thus did the region become a breeding ground for radicalism, intensified by Cold War rivalry between the superpowers, who replaced the European colonizers as the region’s meddling overlords...Then came Mikhail Gorbachev—a Westernizing reformer. At last, the Cold War was over. A new world order was at hand. What if this conventional wisdom is nonsense?...

The highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to defect from the Eastern Bloc says the Soviet Union orchestrated an anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda campaign in the Middle East four decades ago -- and the effects of the effort still reverberate. The Middle East was a key battlefield in the Cold War, and Moscow spent considerable resources courting Arab states in the region and vocally backing the Palestinian cause. Humiliated by the defeat of the Soviet-backed Arab states in their 1967 war against Israel, Yuri Andropov devised the operation to discredit the Jewish state and present Zionism as "Nazi-style racism" while at the...

The Russian Ministry of Defense is looking to install the 25-ton monument in Elizabeth City, which is the near the headquarters of a secret WWII mission called "Project Zebra," in which hundreds of Soviet aviators were trained at a time when U.S. and Soviet forces were allied in the fight against the Nazis. But the Elizabeth City council voted 5-3 on March 23 against a previously signed memorandum of understanding. If the plan had come to fruition, the Russian Defense Ministry would have paid for the monument, with the city then covering some $228,000 for improvements to the park where...

Bolton said the "blatant" attack in public reminds him of North Korea, "Moscow's friend," murdering Kim Jong Un's brother in the middle of an airport last year. "It's an act of defiance. It's saying to London and the other western capitals, 'what are you gonna do about it?' Well, I think there should be a very strong answer to that," he said, arguing the time has come for real "deterrence" that Vladimir Putin will understand. John Bolton said Thursday that the chemical poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in England fits into the larger pattern of Russia...

March 5th is the anniversary of Winston Churchill's epoch-making "iron curtain" speech in 1946, at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri - the most famous acknowledgement of the existence of a "Cold War" between Russia and the West, which put an end to the alliance that defeated the Nazis in World War II. The Cold War, which would often became quite hot in places like Korea and Vietnam - and damn near led to a nuclear exchange during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 - continued for 45 years until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. "From Stettin in...

In July 1945, Evangelicals declared ideological cold war against world communism and began planning a spiritual invasion of Europe to restore Christianity and stop communism there. Billy Graham was among the young ministers sent to Europe, and he built upon his experience there to emerge as a major spokesman of American messianism. The popularity of Graham's anticommunism, a regular feature in his sermons, helped propel him to national fame. By 1950 his message was reaching much of the nation in a weekly radio broadcast, and by 1952 he was serving as a spiritual advisor to presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower. As...

F-16 jet was shot down on Saturday over northern Israel, prompting retaliation Israeli forces launched a series of bombardments against bases in Syria But Benjamin Netanyahu backed down after a call from Putin, it is reported Putin warned him against escalating the conflict in the region after Russia has spent years propping up the Assad regime Vladimir Putin warned Benjamin Netanyahu to back off from military strikes in Syria after an Israeli warplane was shot down in the region on Saturday. The Russian President told Netanyahu in a phone call on Saturday evening to avoid a course of action that...

Yuri N. Afanasyev, a Russian historian and former Communist loyalist who became a leading democratic politician in the late Soviet era ...died Sept. 14. He was 81. In 1989, Mr. Afanasyev helped found Memorial, an organization dedicated to exposing Stalin’s atrocities and commemorating the victims. That year he also joined the Soviet Union’s first freely elected parliamentary body, the Congress of People’s Deputies, which was created under Mr. Gorbachev’s reforms. But he grew disenchanted, doubting that its unwieldy mix of Stalinists, democrats and Communist Party functionaries could bring about change, and denouncing both its “aggressively obedient majority” and Mr. Gorbachev....

The successful launch of SpaceX’s Falcon powerful new rocket Tuesday ... was a tremendous step toward reasserting American leadership in space. The Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket launched in the U.S. since the Apollo missions – and the most powerful commercial rocket ever made. It can carry nearly 64 metric tons (141,000 pounds) into orbit. This is more than double the payload of the next-biggest rocket currently in operation. For perspective, SpaceX says this is, “a mass greater than a 737 jetliner loaded with passengers, crew, luggage, and fuel.” SpaceX owner Elon Musk also said the rocket system...

On a reporting trip to Gaza, Amman, and Damascus in 1994, I made a habit of asking Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood leaders whom I met the following question: Did they think the Jews had a plan to dominate the world? I’ll never forget the enthusiastic answer of a pediatrician named Abdelaziz Rantissi, a Hamas leader, whom I met in his doctor’s office in Gaza. “Yes, indeed,” he said. “I have a copy right here.” And he pulled down from a shelf an Arabic-language copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was a response I heard again and...

In today’s Russia it is not fashionable to delve too deeply into Gulag history, and 60-year-old Panikarov’s collection is one of just two museums devoted entirely to the Gulag in the whole country. Indeed, even Panikarov himself has a somewhat surprising view: “We should not have one-sided evaluations... “It was fashionable to say bad things about the USSR. Now it is again fashionable to insult Russia. We have sanctions against us. The west looks for negative things.” Panikarov’s views on the Gulag are part of a larger trend. With the Soviet victory in the second world war elevated to a...

"It is the greatest success in the history of American foreign policy," Mark Stoler, editor of the George C. Marshall Papers in Lexington, Va. "And it plays to the best American instincts — helping those in need. "In the process, it clearly turned America into the world's superpower. It was the key component of American Cold War strategy. And it was an immediate psychological booster shot to Europe. Marshall's message was: 'Here is a lifeline that you can take advantage of. America is going to be the leader here and accept that mantel of leadership.'" Georges Bidault, France's prime minister...