Free Republic

It was only a matter of time before the “refugees” pouring into Europe and their sympathizers would begin to impose their Islamic will. Morad Almuradi, writing from the Netherlands, has created a petition on Change.org asking that the city council of Munich, Germany end the traditional 16-day Oktoberfest event.

Alfred Egner drowned. He was just a workhorse, really, a 19-year-old boy from Munich, hired by a couple of former SS officers in 1963 to dive down to the murky bottoms of Austria's Lake Toplitz and resurface with fistfuls of treasures secreted away in this alpine paradise. It wasn't his first dive in Lake Toplitz, but he may have gotten tangled in some of the hundreds of logs that line the bottom, or something may have gone wrong with his equipment. Regardless, he never retrieved what the two men were most likely looking for: secret codes to Swiss bank accounts,...

Amid frequent chants of “No deal,” up to 1,000 people gathered outside the Massachusetts State House on Sunday in protest of the proposed Iranian nuclear deal. Congress has until September 17 to either support or reject the controversial deal, which has been a fault line in the American Jewish community this summer... ...Opening with the Pledge of Allegiance, the rally was filled with speakers and signs referencing “Munich 1938,” when Europe’s governments attempted – and failed – to avoid war by appeasing Nazi Germany. As the only elected official to speak, state representative Shaunna O’Connell lambasted the Obama administration for...

Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz are blasting the nuclear deal between Iran and the six world powers, likening it to the Munich agreement signed in and which paved the way to World War II. The harsh criticism of the deal came in a joint op-ed the two wrote for The Wall Street Journal on Friday. The two write that “despite the explosive spread of terrorist ideology and organizations, the establishment of an Islamic State caliphate in the heart of the Middle East, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and increasing threats from Iran, China, North Korea...

Talk radio host and author of “Plunder and Deceit,” Mark Levin declared of the Iran deal “Barack Obama has planted the seeds…for World War III” and “This is Munich” on Tuesday. Levin said, “Barack Obama has planted the seeds, in my view, for World War III. They were already there, but he’s moved it along. I honestly believe that the next, massive, conflagration, war will now be in the Middle East. And I believe the Saudis are going to get nukes, and the Egyptians are going to get nukes, and others, and you can hardly blame them.”

A head teacher at a state school in Munich is attempting to introduce a strict Christian regime by hanging crosses in the classroom and holding daily prayers. He’s within the law, but parents and pupils are beginning to resist. According to Spiegel, the headteacher of Geretsried comprehensive was covering a lesson for a class of 14-15 year-olds when a debate broke out after the class refused to say a prayer. At the end of the debate, he said atheists were stupid, sparking outrage among teachers, parents and students alike. Not all pupils are baptized, and some teachers—including the biology teacher—don’t...

National Front party founder again insists Nazi gas chambers were just a 'detail'; daughter and party head distances herself. The founder of France's far-right National Front party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, reiterated his assertion Thursday that Nazi gas chambers were a "detail" of World War II, prompting condemnation from rights groups and his daughter. Le Pen told a French TV station he did not regret making the statement repeatedly over nearly three decades, earning convictions for hate speech along the way, and then said it again. "I have said what I believed. Gas chambers were a detail of the war, unless...

The Western capitulation to Adolf Hitler in the 1938 Munich Agreement is cited as classic appeasement that destroyed Czechoslovakia, backfired on France and Britain, and led to World War II. All of that is true. But there was much more that caused the Munich debacle than simple Western naiveté. The full tragedy of that ill-fated agreement should warn us on the eve of the Obama's administration's gullible agreement with Iran on nuclear proliferation. Fable one is the idea that most people saw right through the Munich folly. True, Europeans knew that Hitler had never once told the truth and...

Around 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 13, about two dozen high-level U.S. diplomats, politicians and four-star generals held a discussion in a briefing room on the sixth floor of the luxury Bayerischer Hof hotel in Munich. Their frank comments behind a sound-proof door were leaked, perhaps to German intelligence but certainly to the German newspapers Bild and Der Spiegel, which published reports of the discussions. They reveal a ham-handed U.S. diplomacy in Europe that has raised consternation and revulsion against the administration of President Barack Obama and by extension against NATO. Although not directly involved, Canadians can learn from the...

A German cardinal has publicly opposed the words of two other German bishops who have suggested that the nation’s Church can form its own policies without direction from Rome. Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes published a letter earlier this month objecting to the pronouncements of prominent leaders of the Church in Germany that the nation's bishops' conference will pursue its own program of pastoral care for marriages and family regardless of the outcome of October's Synod on the Family. At a Feb. 25 press conference following the German bishops' plenary assembly, Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, who is president...

It is not often that a ghostly figure from the past is not only embodied in a present-day politician but addresses the Congress of the United States -- which is what Israel's embattled prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, did last Tuesday.The prime minister could have been Banquo's ghost out of "Macbeth" summoned to haunt this administration's festive rapprochement with Iran. Instead, he brought to mind Edvard Benes, the leader of the Czechoslovakian government that would be sold out at the Munich Conference of 1938. Ever since, Munich has been not just the name of a German city but the symbol of...

After announcing he will be skipping Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu”s speech to Congress for a trip abroad, US Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry both met on Saturday with Labor leader Isaac Herzog on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich, Germany. The two sides insisted that the meetings were informal. But it reportedly revolved around security matters and the Zionist Union’s defense strategy, Israeli media reported. On Friday, Biden announced he’ll miss Netanyahu’s speech to Congress due to a pre-scheduled overseas trip, yet unnamed. Both Kerry and President Barack Obama said last month...

Israel must formally declare Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas responsible for the 1972 Munich massacre, the Students for Israel movement appealed to the Ministry of Defense Tuesday. From September 5-6 1972, masked terrorists stormed the apartments where Israeli athletes were staying in the Olympic Village for the 1972 Munich games. The terrorists took the athletes as hostages and demanded the release of 200 Arabs from Israeli prisons. After several tense hours, the terrorists killed the Israeli athletes. Nonetheless, the Games continued for several hours afterward. Over the past several years, it has been revealed on multiple occasions that Abbas...

Wednesday, November 19, 2014 Tears Don't Protect Against Murder Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog After serving a few years in prison for his role in the Munich Massacre, Willi Pohl moved to Beirut. The brief sentence was a slap in the wrist, but Pohl had still served more time in prison than the Muslim gunmen who had murdered eleven Israeli athletes and coaches during the 1972 Summer Olympics. Mohammed Safady and the Al-Gashey cousins were released after a few months by the German authorities. They went back to Lebanon and so did he. A decade after...

Charles Krauthammer says he believes President Barack Obama’s deal with Iran is “the worst deal since Munich.” “This is a sham from beginning to end. It’s the worst deal since Munich,” Krauthammer said on Fox News “Special Report” on Monday. “It’s really hard to watch the president and the secretary of state and not think how they cannot be embarrassed by this deal.” The Munich Agreement of 1938 between Hitler and major European powers expanded Germany’s borders. Today, the failed negotiation is widely considered an act of appeasement.

<p>MUNICH (AFP) -- Germany's world-famous Oktoberfest kicked off Saturday with the traditional tapping of the first barrel of beer, as millions of revellers are set to soak up the frothy atmosphere in the 16-day annual extravaganza.</p> <p>With the cry of "O'zapft is" ("The keg is tapped"), the amber fluid officially began to flow at noon after Munich's mayor, Dieter Reiter, with due pomp and ceremony, took a mallet and in four swings breached the 200-litre barrel.</p>

Germans are often considered to be more at one with nature than us prudish Brits. And now residents of the country's third-largest city have been given the go ahead to strip off for all over sunbathing sessions in six designated spaces. According to a report in TheAtlanticCities.com the six Urban Naked Zones are located in parkland, offering privacy, but also only minutes away from the busy city centre. The 'zones' were introduced following the expiry of statewide laws controlling nude sunbathing last year.

A man has had to have emergency surgery to reattach his lip after a woman bit it off during a fight at Germany's annual beer festival Oktoberfest. Video has emerged of the savage fight which shows the woman - appropriately wearing costume devil's horns - clamping her jaws around the bottom lip of the her victim. He is seen desperately trying to pull his head away as his onlookers attempt to disentangle the pair.

Seeking to create an analogy with the deal the United States negotiated with Iran to supposedly limit further production of its centrifuges, Secretary of State John Kerry chose to recall disarmament agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union. A better analogy would be the 1938 Munich Pact, which gave Hitler part of Czechoslovakia in the vain hope that war could be avoided. It is worth noting that several of the nations that were signatories in Munich, namely Germany, France and Britain, are also part of the current deal with Iran. There is another flaw in Kerry's analysis. Deal...

A treasure trove of artworks worth almost £1billion seized by the Nazis and reportedly destroyed in RAF bombing raids during WW2 has been found behind rotting food in shabby apartment in Munich. Experts have hailed the discovery of the 1,500 pictures, thought to have been lost or bombed, as a sensational find. The story of the lost masterpieces of such painters as Pablo Picasso, Renoir, Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall is revealed in this week's edition of Germany's Focus magazine which broke the story of the incredible find by customs officials. Art historians examining the collection claim up to 300...