Free Republic

Days after Hitler’s suicide a group of American soldiers, French prisoners, and, yes, German soldiers defended an Austrian castle against an SS division—the only time Germans and Allies fought together in World War II. Andrew Roberts on a story so wild that it has to be made into a movie. The most extraordinary things about Stephen Harding’s The Last Battle, a truly incredible tale of World War II, are that it hasn’t been told before in English, and that it hasn’t already been made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie. Here are the basic facts: on 5 May 1945—five days after...

The most extraordinary things about Stephen Harding's The Last Battle, a truly incredible tale of World War II, are that it hasn’t been told before in English, and that it hasn’t already been made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie. Here are the basic facts: on 5 May 1945—five days after Hitler’s suicide—three Sherman tanks from the 23rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. 12th Armored Division under the command of Capt. John C. ‘Jack’ Lee Jr., liberated an Austrian castle called Schloss Itter in the Tyrol, a special prison that housed various French VIPs, including the ex-prime ministers Paul Reynaud and...

The Obamacare "Cadillac tax," which will tax businesses for employee health plans that are above a certain level by 40 percent, could be the next big fight in the push to either repeal or change the Affordable Care Act. This particular piece of the Obamacare law will not go into effect until 2018, but it is already causing headaches for businesses as they put together employee benefit plans. Politico has an in-depth story about the "Cadillac tax," which will apply to individual health plans worth more than $10,200 and family plans worth more than $27,500. The current system in place...

OK Neil – You are right. It was not until December 2008 that I found out that I no longer had to remain silent about the help I received from the Brits in Stalag IVB. I had been asked repeatedly the details of my escape on Friday the 13th of April 1945. Now I can answer. I GUESS SOMEDAY IT WOULD BE TOLD......I VOWED NOT TO EVER DISCUSS THE DETAILS OF MY ESCAPE...NOW "THE CAT IS OUT OF THE BAG"....YES, I HAD THE HELP DESCRIBED. (See below narrative) AT STALAG "IVB" I WAS LOCKED IN WITH 187 BRITISH NCO's. THERE...

This is kinda interesting, seeing the English repel repeated assaults,  then the Prussians came-in from the east and hit the French flank: 'Every puppy has his day, everybody has to pay...' (click pic to play Stonewall Jackson) BritishBattles.com   Reddit   YouTube

A team of researchers led by NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries have discovered two significant shipwrecks from World War II’s legendary “Battle of the Atlantic” just off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The German U-boat 576 and the freighter it sank, named Bluefields, were found just a few hundred yards apart from each other approximately 30 miles off the coast of North Carolina, according to NOAA.

(CNN) -- Hundreds of Kurdish fighters from Turkey have arrived in the Syrian Kurdish town of Ayn al-Arab to join a Kurdish militia group battling to hold off ISIS forces, activists said Saturday. Clashes continue in the area between the militia, called the People's Protection Unit (YPG,) and the ISIS fighters, according the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The latest ISIS advance in Syria has brought a swath of the country's north-central Kurdish region under siege, with Kurdish leaders warning of another humanitarian crisis without international intervention. The Syrian Kurdish town of Ayn al-Arab, or Kobani as it is...

Former IAF Chief Maj. Gen. (res.) David Ivry says, in a new article, that Israel needs to rethink the concepts of ‘deterrence’ and ‘decisive victory’, which are less relevant in today's assymetrical battlefields. “Limited-scale, asymmetrical conflicts have become the norm. All-out wars between states where both parties invest all of their national resources in an attempt to achieve a decisive victory have become less relevant,” writes Ivry, who is now President of Boeing Israel, in a paper for the BESA Center. “David Ben-Gurion’s conceptual trinity of ‘deterrence’, ‘early warning’ and ‘decisive victory’ is no longer fully valid,” he explains. “These...

One of the (if not THE) key battles for Jerusalem in 1967 was the battle for Ammunition Hill. Ammunition Hill, which we pass on our way to the Old City - it's probably a five-minute drive from our house - is a small hilltop which was a system of bunkers filled with weapons. The IDF had to conquer it in order to make it to the Old City of Jerusalem and the eastern part of the city. It sits practically on the green line. After the war, this song about the battle was written and performed by an IDF choir....

Outnumbered six-to-one, at least one Ukrainian Donbas Volunteer Battalion member was killed and 20 were wounded in an ambush by 150-200 pro-Russian separatists in the village of Karlivka, 35 kilometers northwest of Donetsk, the quasi-military unit’s press center said. An unspecified number were captured, the press center added. Reporting from Karlivka, Agence France-Presse stated that at least four separatists were also killed in the same confrontation. The ambush took place around 6 a.m. on May 23 while the group was approaching a separatist-held checkpoint near a dam reservoir next to the village where usually “7-10 people stood guard,” Semyon Semenchenko,...

U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan are now forced to fight a two-fronted war. Before each deployment, these soldiers understand fully that day after day they will do battle against relentless terrorists with shifting loyalties and unspeakable hatred. But what none of them could have foreseen was the killing field that would open from their rear: the Continental United States. Our government’s incessant tightening of already restrictive ROE (Rules of Engagement), compounded by the failed COIN (Counterinsurgency) strategy—also known as “winning hearts and minds”—has made an otherwise primitive enemy formidable. Our best and brightest come home in body bags as politicians and...

In the gloom of this holy Christmas night, a cold sleet fell. It was not a night for man nor beast but yet here they were. Huddled upon the banks of this frigid river, 2000 men contemplated their bleak fate. The past few months had gone very, very badly. Their hopes had been crushed time and again. The noble experiment in Liberty which had begun with such promise, had by this time deteriorated to the point where every day was a battle just to survive. Defeat after defeat, at places like Long Island, Harlem Heights, Fort Washington and White Plains...

React To Contact, Break Contact and Insurgent Operational Planning I talked about Battle Drills awhile back. Recently Max Velocity talked about Reacting to Contact. We label the steps differently but basically do the same thing. I will get into it a bit but do not feel the need to write it from memory or get fancy paraphrasing FM 7-8. Either you know how to do it and I'm wasting my time or you don't and me writing about it for a couple paragraphs will not fix the problem so I'm wasting my time. For those without an Infantry or Special...

The US navy started WW-II with leftover destroyers. The destroyers we were building towards the end of WW-II were vastly more powerful. Two or three of them in groups would amount to something like the secondary (5") battery of an Iowa class battleship. This was with radar, radar fire control, and significant AA capabilities, along with torpedoes and depth charges. In the middle of the campaign to retake the Phillipines, there occurred one of the more astonishing stories I've ever read or heard, in which three such ships basically sailed into Ormoc Bay, and essentially fired off their entire ammo...

There will be a ministry rise up from out of these ashes for this "IS" the Sequoia you have been waiting for . Do you see my children there is no waste in my kingdom so use ALL and cast not out what I call Holy for each member has been given a cause and a calling and you are "ALL" my creation says The Lord for I am God and not man . So get along by "doing" my will for it "IS" the active branch I do NOT prune but the dormant fail and fall away . Seek...

Richard Fernandez, who writes as Belmont Club at PJMedia, has a good entry on the current state of the Republican Party. He riffs on Angelo Codevilla’s fine recent essay As Country Club Republicans Link Up With The Democratic Ruling Class, Millions Of Voters Are Orphaned, and adds to it his thoughts on the recent Rove-Gingrich exchange.Richard notes that the Democrats “have been the party of income transfers for a long time. Their political genius has been to define the beneficiaries to include themselves and all their constituents.”Now the Republican establishment wants to be: [T]he party of ‘me too’. Or more...

This week, January 22-23 marks the 134th anniversary of the Battle of Rorke's Drift in Natal Province, South Africa. Everyone knows the story of the small company of Welsh troops from the 24th Regiment of Foot who held off a force of up to 4,000 Zulu warriors who outnumbered them twenty to one. I plan to celebrate the occasion tomorrow by viewing the classic movie of the siege starring Stanley Baker and Michael Caine, made fifty years ago. It looks like there won't be anything else worth watching on TV that day anyway.

(Reuters) - Egyptian police battled thousands of protesters outside President Mohamed Mursi's palace in Cairo on Tuesday, prompting the Islamist leader to leave the building, two presidential sources said. Police fired teargas at demonstrators angered by Mursi's drive to hold a referendum on a new constitution on December 15. Some broke through police lines around his palace and protested next to the perimeter wall. Several thousand people had gathered nearby in what they dubbed "last warning" protests against Mursi, who infuriated opponents with a November 22 decree that expanded his powers. "The people want the downfall of the regime," the...

Fierce fighting broke out on Friday night after crowds trying to storm the Benghazi base of a militia blamed for the death of US ambassador Chris Stevens came under fire. Earlier in the evening protesters calling for an end to militia rule had stormed the headquarters of the Islamic Ansar al-Sharia brigade in the city, setting fire to buildings after pushing past guards who fired in the air. But the protesters ran into a hail of fire when they moved south to storm a much larger secondary base of the militia, whose members are accused of the attack on the...

In the aftermath of the conventions, two trends are conspiring to raise the presidential stakes in Wisconsin: the polling bounce Mitt Romney got in this state after picking Paul Ryan as his running mate, and Romney’s struggles elsewhere on the map, which make winning Wisconsin more important than ever to the GOP. And yes, things are heating up here