Free Republic

The story begins with a letter from Albert Einstein to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939. The celebrated physicist warned the president that Nazi Germany was developing the makings of an atomic bomb. Roosevelt knew what would happen if Hitler got such a weapon. The president ordered a massive secret project to make sure the U.S. beat him to it. Scientists from all over the country were enlisted in the effort. Early in 1942 Enrico Fermi and a team of physicists gathered at the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory. Their goal was to develop a self-sustaining nuclear pile. This was the...

Six months after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan sent aircraft carriers to the Pacific atoll of Midway. Despite those odds, the U.S. Navy sank four Japanese aircraft carriers the first day of the three-day battle and put Japan on the defensive. And though intelligence was a key reason behind a U.S. victory, other factors came into play, such as brave heroics by Navy dive bomber pilots.

"I don't worry about the Constitution," said Rep. Phil Hare, Democrat of Illinois, at a town hall meeting where voters questioned his support of the legislation that became Obamacare. You can find the clip on Youtube, where it has 462,084 hits. That was before the 2010 election, in which Hare, running for a third term in a district designed by Democrats to elect a Democrat, was defeated 53 to 43 percent by Bobby Schilling, proprietor of a pizza parlor in East Moline. A lot of politicians are worrying about the Constitution these days. Liberal commentators were shocked this past week...

"I don't worry about the Constitution," said Rep. Phil Hare, Democrat of Illinois, at a town hall meeting where voters questioned his support of the legislation that became Obamacare. You can find the clip on youtube.com, where it has 462,084 hits. That was before the 2010 election, in which Hare, running for a third term in a district designed by Democrats to elect a Democrat, was defeated 53 to 43 percent by Bobby Schilling, proprietor of a pizza parlor in East Moline. A lot of politicians are worrying about the Constitution these days. Liberal commentators were shocked this past week...

Forward to the Past- Moslem progress The Moslem world sprawls around half the east, from the Pacific across Asia and Africa to the Atlantic, along one of the greatest of trade routes; in its center is an area extremely rich in oil; over it will run some of the most strategically important air routes. With few exceptions, the states which it includes are marked by poverty, ignorance, and stagnation. It is full of discontent and frustration, yet alive with consciousness of its inferiority and with determination to achieve some kind of general betterment.Two basic urges meet head-on in this area,...

These diagrams from the March 2, 1942 issue of Life detailed the Nazi invasion of America shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Check out such alternate reality battles like the bombing of Detroit and invasion of Norfolk, Virginia. These maps were created as a follow-up to an article about an American defeat in WWII by pioneering science fiction author Philip Wylie, who wrote the proto-superhero novel Gladiator. These maps were made in the early days of US involvement in World War II, so there was a sense that this invasion was a real possibility. You can read more about...

A successful American intelligence operation uncovered their plans and the U.S. Pacific Fleet surprised the Japanese forces in early June of 1942, sinking four Japanese carriers while losing only one of their own. Japan's defeat at Midway turned turn the tide of the war in the Pacific and put America squarely on the offensive. But the victory came at a high price, particularly for the men of Torpedo Squadron 8.

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...

We know that history holds many surprises. One doesn't expect to learn more about the secret history of of the Gulag than we already know from both Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Acrcipelago" and Anne Applebaum's "Gulag: A history." This feat, however, is exactly what author Tim Tzouliadis has accomplished: the previously unknown story of the thousands of Americans who, during the Depression, sought employment and a better future in the "worker's paradise" built by the Bolsheviks. All kinds of Americans joined the exodus. Some of them were Communists or fellow-travelors but the majority were average Americans - skilled workers promised paid passage,...

The Jews everywhere are "the Muslim's bitter enemies," said a prominent Islamic leader. Throughout history, the "irreconcilable enemy of Islam" has conspired and schemed and "oppressed and persecuted 40 million Muslims," he said. In Palestine, the Jews are establishing "a base from which to extend their power over neighboring Islamic countries." And, he proclaimed, "this war, which was unleashed by the world Jewry," provided "Muslims the best opportunity to free themselves from these instances of persecution and oppression." Sound like Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah? Or perhaps Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Nope. It was the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj...

March 7, 2006 Expect Journalistic Tongues to Loosen By Jack Kelly Journalists will be paying rapt attention when Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman go on trial next month for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were officials of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. They received classified information from Lawrence Franklin, an analyst at the Department of Defense, which they passed on to an Israeli diplomat, and to journalists. They are the first private citizens ever to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Mr. Franklin pled guilty Jan. 20th and was sentenced to more than...

The U.S. military has identified the body of a World War II airman that climbers found in October at the bottom of a glacier in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Family members said they learned this week that the man was 22-year-old Army Air Corps cadet Leo Mustonen, who died in a 1942 plane crash. Mustonen joined the Army during his senior year in high school in Brainerd, Minnesota, and was in training to become a navigator when he was reported missing on November 18, 1942. Mustonen was son of Finnish immigrants. He was one of four cadets aboard a...

MARINE CORPS AIR STATION CHERRY POINT, N.C. (May 23, 2005) -- Panchito, a vintage B-25 named for the fighting rooster featured in a 1945 animated musical, graced event goers with its presence May 20-22 during the Cherry Point Air Show. In addition to charming air show guests with its classic paint scheme and powerful engines, the aircraft brought a message of awareness for Disabled American Veterans. The B-25 boasts a dynamic history. Best known for its role in Jimmy Doolittle's famed 1942 raid over Tokyo, the aircraft now enjoys the position of air show jewel. From wartime and post-World War...

It was the very worst of times. It was the opening days of 1942.   The story of that year is told in a new book, "1942: The Year That Tried Men's Souls," by Winston Groom. When America and Europe recently celebrated the 60th anniversary of VE day - the day the Nazis were finally defeated - I wondered if we would ever have a similar day to mark the defeat of global terror. I looked again at "1942" sitting on my desk. As an editor, I am deluged with books to review. Only a few make it to my lap...

On this day in 1942, U.S. Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright surrenders all U.S. troops in the Philippines to the Japanese.

The day after the surrender of the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese, the 75,000 Filipino and American troops captured on the Bataan Peninsula begin a forced march to a prison camp near Cabanatuan. During this infamous trek, known as the "Bataan Death March," the prisoners were forced to march 85 miles in six days, with only one meal of rice during the entire journey. By the end of the march, which was punctuated with atrocities committed by the Japanese guards, hundreds of Americans and many more Filipinos had died. The day after Japan bombed the U.S. naval...

On May 7 and 8, 1942, the badly outnumbered United States Navy struck back at the Japanese at the Battle of the Coral Sea. The action stopped a major Japanese offensive aimed at gaining control of New Guinea and then Fiji and Samoa, which would have isolated Australia and New Zealand. The U.S. lost a carrier, the Lexington, and the carrier Yorktown was heavily damaged. The Japanese lost the light carrier Shoho and suffered damage to the fleet carrier Shokaku while the carrier Zuikaku lost many of its planes and pilots. But for the first time since Pearl Harbor, ...

-Japan formally declared war on the Netherlands.-Japanese forces invaded the Celebes in the Dutch East Indies. There was only token resistance by the small defending garrisons.-Kuala Lampur was captured by the Japanese 5th Division. Japanese troops were 150 miles from Singapore.-The U.S. carrier Saratoga was hit by a torpedo from a Japanese submarine 500 miles southwest of Oahu but suffered no major damage.-The rail line between Rahav and Bryansk was cut as Soviet forces continued their westward push on the Orel front.-A Japanese attempt to outflank the Bataan defense line failed. U.S. and Filipino forces on Bataan were put on...

Autumn,1942: It came down to one Marine, and one ship. October 26 falls on a Thursday this year. Ask the significance of the date, and you're likely to draw some puzzled looks -- five more days to stock up for Halloween? It's a measure of men like Col. Mitchell Paige and Rear Adm. Willis A. "Ching Chong China" Lee that they wouldn't have had it any other way. What they did 58 years ago, they did precisely so their grandchildren could live in a land of peace and plenty. Whether we've properly safeguarded the freedoms they fought to leave us,...

During the early months of WWII, America suffered a devastating series of losses, leaving the public's morale at a dangerously low tide. In response, President Franklin D. Roosevelt secretly authorized an extremely dangerous mission to retaliate against the Japanese Empire. This Expeditionary Mission was to bomb major industrial targets in Tokyo and other large cities on the Japanese homeland. One obstacle was how to place heavy Army bombers in range of Tokyo, something that had been impossible to do with aircraft carriers before. To accomplish this, the aircraft carrier USS HORNET, CV-8, on February 2, 1942, successfully launched two Army...