Free Republic

Considered one of the most successful combat generals in US history, Gen. George S. Patton died on December 21, 1945, 12 days after breaking his neck in a car accident near Mannheim, Germany. Sadly, a few hours after that tragic car accident, Patton was due to return back to the US. While leading troops during World War II, Patton purchased an English bull terrier puppy that he named Willie. Willie was known to follow Patton everywhere, and the two were seldom separated while in England. According to some accounts, Willie would enter a room and alert soldiers in there that...

Edgar Harrell, the last surviving Marine of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during World War II, has died. Harrell died Saturday, according to an organization devoted to preserving the ship's legacy. He was 96. The Facebook group said in a post that it was "shocked and saddened" by the news. "Ed was beloved among the group, and traveled the world sharing the story of his ship and shipmates," the group wrote. "He joined the crew as a sea-going marine in 1944, meaning he was one of the best of the best. During his time aboard ship, he helped guard...

Moscow on a midsummer’s night in 1941 was a balmy place to be. For the discerning, there was Chekhov’s Three Sisters playing to full houses, while opera lovers had a choice between Rigoletto and La Traviata. Others fished for their suppers on the banks of the river, tended their allotments, or simply strolled through Gorky Park. All felt safe in the knowledge that, for the past two years (give or take a few weeks), Stalin’s Soviet Union had been in a pact of friendship and non-aggression with Hitler’s Germany. Though their fundamental political beliefs were polar opposites — one communist,...

Over ten days in the spring of 1945, Army Engineers expedited the invasion of Germany and thus shortened the Second World War in Europe by daringly capturing one of the last bridges left standing across the River Rhine. It had been nine months since D-Day, and Allied forces had fought in several long, difficult campaigns across France and the highlands of the Ardennes forest and had just crossed the German border. The last natural barrier to driving deeper into German territory was the Rhine. Starting in March, Operation Lumberjack, led by the U.S. First Army, aimed to secure the west...

Beware a Desert Fox when he’s cornered. It was North Africa, in the winter of 1943, and American soldiers were feeling cocky as they prepared for their first ground battle against the Germans in World War II. So far, it hadn’t been a bad war for the U.S. Army. The GIs were well fed, well paid and well equipped, especially compared to their threadbare and envious British allies. Even better, their baptism by fire had been to splash ashore in Algeria and Morocco in November 1942, where the defenders had been unmotivated Vichy French soldiers who soon capitulated. Maybe defeating...

Here's What You Need To Remember: Perhaps the biggest consequence of the fall of Singapore was the destruction of Britain’s Asian empire. Depleted by the First World War and then squeezed dry by the Second, Britain would have lost its empire eventually. But the photos of British generals and soldiers marching into captivity under Asian guns left their mark on colonial subjects. In the darkest days of World War II, when disaster after disaster almost overwhelmed the Allies, it took a lot to shake a leader like Winston Churchill. But when the news arrived that the fortress of Singapore had...

On this date in 1943, the Milwaukee-born translator and historian Mildred Fish-Harnack was beheaded at Plotzensee Prison — the only American woman executed by Hitler’s order. A graduate student at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee,* she met German jurist Arvid Harnack when the latter was a visiting scholar at the university’s sister campus in Madison. In 1929, the couple moved to Germany where they worked as academics: Mildred, a teacher of language and literature; Arvid, of economics and foreign policy. Both watched the rise of Third Reich with growing horror, and soon began converting their circles of academics, artists, and...

A 95-year-old German woman has been charged with being an accessory to the murder of more than 10,000 people at the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland during World War II. The unidentified woman, who reportedly worked as a secretary and commandant’s aide in the camp for two years, will be tried in juvenile court because she was under 21 at the time, according to the public prosecutor’s office in the small town of Itzehoe, northwest of Hamburg.

The last survivors of the German 6th Army surrender to Soviet forces in Stalingrad. Of the 91,000 German POWs, captured at Stalingrad, only 6,000 would live to see Germany again.

With the New Year quickly approaching, a new crop of wellness trends and resolutions will likely pop up. That being said, this WWII Air Force Veteran has an unlikely tip for living a long, healthy life: a daily can of Coors Light. Andrew E. Slavonic, the veteran who went viral in 2018 after connecting his longevity to the beer, turned 103 on Dec. 1. Two years ago, Slavonic first made news when Fox reported that he had enjoyed a Coors Light at 4 P.M. every day for over 20 years. According to his son Bob, Slavonic began drinking Coors in...

A wartime spy described as Winston Churchill's favourite has finally been remembered with a blue plaque. Christine Granville, who was born Krystyna Skarbek in Warsaw, joined British intelligence in 1939 and is said to have inspired Ian Fleming's spy character Vesper Lynd. She struggled after the war and was given cheap lodgings at a London hotel run by the Polish Relief Society. It was her home until she was murdered by a stalker in 1952, aged 44. The English Heritage Blue Plaque has been unveiled at the former Shelbourne Hotel (now 1 Lexham Gardens), in Kensington, and is inscribed with...

Nazi Operated Enigma Machine Retrieved In Baltic Sea Recovery of the century’s long lost-quintessential mechanical encryption machine: The Enigma code machine was made in the cold Baltic Sea in Europe nearly three centuries after its drastic beneficial purpose had been served during the second world war. Having been said that during the ending period of World War II, the machine was abandoned deep into the sea by German to keep it out of reach of the allies. WHAT IS AN ENIGMA CODE? The Enigma code machine. ( image source ) Enigma machines also used a form of substitution encryption. Substitution...

A photograph of a damaged Allied ship after the Luftwaffe raid of Bari Harbour, Italy, December 2, 1943. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Before the atomic bomb came along, chemical weapons were the ultimate red line – the boundary between supposedly civilised warfare and unrestrained barbarism. Even before their horrors were first unleashed on a large scale in World War I, nations had sought to ban the use of “poison weapons.” After approximately 90,000 were killed by gas warfare during World War I, the moral and legal revulsion intensified. Numerous solemn proclamations and protocols were created in which civilised nations pledged never...

The process to remove grave headstones of German prisoners of war that display swastikas and markings related to the Nazi regime at cemeteries in Texas and Utah will begin later this month, Veterans Affairs announced. The VA said Monday in a statement that it has decided to replace the headstones on gravesites of three German POWs. Two are located at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas, and one is at Fort Douglas Post Cemetery in Salt Lake City, Utah. “Americans must always remember the horror of the Nazi regime and why so many Americans sacrificed so much...

WASHINGTON — The US Veterans Administration will not replace three tombstones of soldiers who fought for Nazi Germany inscribed with swastikas in its military cemeteries, calling them “historic resources.” A group that advocates for religious freedom in the military on Monday called on the VA to replace two World War II-era POW headstones in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas, inscribed with swastikas inside a German cross, and the phrase, “He died far from his home for the Führer, people, and fatherland.”

Well welcome to Stalag Covid 19 for this weekend's adventure..... Hey the one and only "Rnaround Sue" Dion with a song he recorded in the days when he was part of the Contemporary Christian Music scene in the early 1980's. I was around and saw him beret and all in person. Idols and idolatry right out of the Good Book but what about today..... Resistance In Idaho: The Latest This week a woman arrested for asking too many questions, Sara Brady, as a group of mothers and children entered a closed down park in Meridian, Idaho engaging in civil disobedience....

A garden that once provided Adolf Hitler with fresh vegetables has been discovered at his infamous Wolf’s Lair headquarters. Hitler spent much of his time in the final years of the war at the Wolf’s Lair, which is located in what is now Poland. The top-secret, heavily guarded bunker complex was used by the Nazis until January 1945, when it was abandoned and partly destroyed ahead of advancing Soviet forces. The garden was found on the grounds of Mazurolandia, a nearby theme park museum, and excavations took place during the summer.

Chris Morehouse, Aerospace Engineer at U.S. Air Force (2017-present) We can just put up a bunch of numbers, but I don’t think that gives a full appreciation of scale. So first let’s hit some specific examples. The B-24 This is Willow Run. It was a B-24 plant built by Ford to mass produce the bomber. It ran its line 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and produced a complete B-24 every 63 minutes on average. At peak, it produced 100 bombers in just two days. This plant produced less than half of the total B-24s we built during...

"This bizarrely conflicted view was even more pronounced in Hitler’s attitude towards the U.S. In World War I, Corporal Hitler had been given two captured American soldiers to escort back to his brigade HQ and he was appalled by the fact that the pair were of German descent. From that moment on, Hitler was transfixed by the notion that the best of Germans had emigrated to the U.S. (attracted by the potential for self-realisation in its vastness) and that Germany should prove itself to be a mighty state that would persuade its ‘children’ to return. Hitler would constantly complain that...

A district assembly in Prague voted on Thursday to remove a statue of a Soviet World War Two marshal and replace it with a more general memorial following a row that has drawn in the Czech president and Russian authorities. The statue of Marshal Ivan Konev, who led the Red Army forces that liberated most of Czechoslovakia and entered Prague on May 9, 1945, was erected in 1980. It has been the subject of controversy since the 1989 fall of communism because of Konev’s later endeavors, which included a leading role in crushing the 1956 Hungarian uprising as well as...