Free Republic

When it was released 50 years ago, The Sound of Music became one of the most successful films of all time. It was based on the true story of the von Trapp family (above) - but what did they think of it and was their life really like it was portrayed in the movie? "Everyone thinks the Sound of Music was exactly the way things happened, and of course it wasn't because there had to be artistic licence," says Johannes von Trapp. He is the youngest son of Georg and Maria - the decorated naval commander and singing nun turned...

A widely distributed political cartoon by Ranan Lurie, published after the massacre of four Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris, depicts a tiny shrub above ground, and just below the surface, supporting the plant, is a web of thick twisted roots spread in the design of the swastika. These Nazi roots are more than a cartoonist's imagination, carefully tended by the anti-Semites of France, exposed when the French rounded up their Jews, men, women and children, and shipped them to the death camps of World War II. If the cartoonist had dug deeper, he could have drawn the roots...

With the continued rise of Socialism around the world, and anti-semitism in Europe, the appearance of a self-described Nazi running for Mayor in an American town should be a cause for concern. The Elkhart Truth reports that National Socialist, Dale Duncan, is petitioning to run for Mayor in Elkhart, Indiana: “A National Socialist who believes in the separation of races is petitioning to run for mayor of Elkhart. Dale Duncan said Thursday, Jan. 15, that he’ll be seeking sufficient signatures to get on the November ballot as a representative of theNational Socialist Movement. The Detroit-based group describes itself as a...

Okay, I'm reading about a movie The Counterfeiters when I come across a reference to Bernhard Krüger, a real life basis for the main Nazi character Herzog. Who went through a special trial court for denazification, post allied victory of WWII.

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” - Aldous Huxley I like quotes. Quotes are wisdom for those with short attention spans. They are disregarded by many as irrelevant platitudes or obsolete; however, they are knowledge, often hard-earned and considered by their authors to be important enough to be passed on. I’ve chosen the above quote for today, not only because it is always relevant, but because we bear witness to a time where the political left of this country is trying...

Full title: "Inside the Nazi death camp for WOMEN: Injected with petrol, infected with syphilis and raped by their liberators, the shocking fate of prisoners at Ravensbruck" Katharina Waitz stared at the 15ft wall topped by barbed wire, took a deep breath and, undaunted, began to climb the last leg to freedom. She was one of the handful of inmates of Ravensbruck, the Nazi concentration camp exclusively for women, ever to break out, and it took the ultimate in daring high-wire acts for her to get away. A trapeze artist by profession, the crime that consigned her to this grimmest...

People of Free Republic. I would like your critique of the following statement: To say that "I am a Muslim but I am not a member of Al Qaeda or ISIS." is virtually identical to saying that "Sure, I'm a member of the Nazi party but I'm not a member of the Waffen SS or the Einsatzgruppen."

Frankly, the parade is exquisite. The marchers wear clean, crisp uniforms. They hold their banners high. Enormous sculptures of horses and men loom over the procession. It’s footage from German Arts Day—in 1939. A march in celebration of the Nazi aesthetic. “The government—half of which consists of men who once aspired to serve the arts—is conscious of the artist’s role as an intermediary,” the narrator says, quoting famed Nazi literati Hans-Friedrich Blunck.

English MP (Member of Parliament) Daniel Hannan, famous for his speech “the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government,” is no stranger to controversy. As a member of the European Conservatives and Reformist Group, he often says things that runs against the grain of prevailing sentiment in elitist circles. In this speech, posted on December 9th of this year, Hannan sets out to prove how the infamous German fuhrer Adolf Hitler was not a man of the right, but a different type of socialist. Mr Hannan opens, “Ladies and gentleman, who said this? ‘I am a socialist. And a very...

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident...collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in - your nation, your people - is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of...

Amongst the findings were shoes and photos hidden by Jewish prisoners of the Holocaust. PRAGUE - House owners rebuilding their attic in the Czech town of Terezinhave found photos, shoes and other possessions of Jews forced into a ghetto there under Nazi rule, a heritage project said on Thursday. Terezin (Theresienstadt), a fortress and garrison town built at the end of the 18th century, was used by the Nazis as a transit camp for Jews rounded up in Czechoslovakia and deported from elsewhere in Europe. They were held in the ghetto until they could be transported to camps farther east....

<p>A YouTube video of a Texas professor comparing the rise of the tea party in the United States to the rise of the Nazi Party in 1930s Germany has drawn criticism from conservatives online.</p> <p>In the video, filmed during a Nov. 17 lecture, Blake Armstrong — psychology professor at South Texas College in McAllen — said, "In 1931, which was really interesting, the Nazis — people are kind of tired of them. They've been around since 1920, 11 years now, they've won seats — they're like the tea party. Look, that's such a good example. Don't tell anybody I said that, though. 'The tea party are like the Nazis.'"</p>

The chief investigator pursuing Alois Brunner, one of the world's most wanted German Nazi war criminals, has told the BBC that he is "99% sure" that he died four years ago in Syria. "We cannot prove it forensically, but we are certain that is the case," Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff said. SS captain Brunner is accused of deporting more than 128,000 Jews to the death camps during World War Two.

Federal Agent Stepped in To Aid Her Propagandist Father It was October of 1990, and the Nazi hunters at the United States Department of Justice were furious at the FBI. The Nazi hunters, led by an attorney named Neal Sher, were tasked with finding and deporting former Nazis and other World War II-era persecutors. They had just tracked down a former pro-Nazi propagandist named Ferenc Koreh and sued to strip him of his U.S. citizenship. But the FBI seemed to be trying to sabotage the lawsuit. A 46-page memorandum written on FBI letterhead had landed on the desk of Sher’s...

Using the Nazi analogy to discredit political opponents is a popular game that seems to work best as a substitute for honest criticism. Although such comparisons usually do little more than expose one’s ignorance of the actual history of the Third Reich, it doesn’t mean that valid comparisons don’t exist. Within the right context, similarities can be drawn, Godwin's Law be damned. Actually, there’s only one good reason why the subject should ever be brought up in the first place. Nazi Germany was a fundamental transformation of a parliamentary democracy that became a one party dictatorship. Just as important, it...

I was close to beginning this article by saying only in New York. Sadly, that’s not true. There are a number of states today with some truly horrible gun laws and attitudes toward Second Amendment rights. But the Empire State is still right up near the top of that list and this story won’t do much to improve our reputation. Buffalo, New York police are now visiting the homes of those recently departed in search of firearms as part of a new plan to help keep tabs on local guns. The move, put into effect by Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda,...

BERLIN (AP) — A wrought-iron gate bearing the Nazis' cynical slogan "Arbeit macht frei," or "Work sets you free," has been stolen from the former Dachau concentration camp, police said Sunday. Security officials noticed early Sunday morning that the gate measuring 190 by 95 centimeters (75 by 37 inches) — set into a larger iron gate — was missing, police said in a statement. Whoever stole it during the night would have had to climb over another gate to reach it, they added. Police said they found nothing in the immediate vicinity of the camp and appealed for anyone who...

In the decades after World War II, the C.I.A. and other United States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants and, as recently as the 1990s, concealed the government’s ties to some still living in America, newly disclosed records and interviews show. At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforcement and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A. aggressively recruited onetime Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet “assets,” declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis’ intelligence value against the Russians outweighed...

The NAACP has been a hollow organization for a while. Its membership may or may not exist, but it’s so small that it represents a tiny fraction of African-Americans. ... There’s a reason why Obama took a pass at appearing before the NAACP. It’s a dying organization being kept alive as a front for various lefty causes that have nothing to do with black people or that black people oppose, like illegal immigration and gay rights, and because its legacy is useful to provide cover on voter fraud issues. Now the Democratic Party’s favorite anti-Semitic Nazi collaborator is helping the...

To the various critics of Pamela Geller’s and the Stop Islamization of America Campaign: It says something about the advanced state of political correctness in this country, and the moral rot it causes, that a bus ad featuring a photograph of Amin al-Husseini, the once Mufti of Jerusalem, sitting across from Adolf Hitler, draws immensely shallow and ignorant criticism. (See “Spread Hummus, Not Hate.”) The story behind the Mufti and the parallels with today are eye-opening, shocking, and portend a very dangerous near-term future for the Middle East and the world. We live in an age where the self-proclaimed “Islamic...

Nazi-inspired beauty pageant calls for contestants to submit 'selfies' to pro-Hitler page on Russian equivalent to Facebook "Miss Hitler" contest. (photo credit:VKONTAKTE�) A Nazi-inspired beauty pageant dubbed "Miss Hitler 2014" is calling for attractive women to participate in the contest held on the Russian equivalent to Facebook . Participants are requested to submit Nazi-themed "selfies" to the competition organized by a neo-Nazi group on VKontakte - Russia's largest social networking service - along with a caption describing why they "love and revere the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler," the UK-based Daily Mail reported. At least 14 females from Russian and...

The Green movement was the last segment of German Society to admit its complicity with National Socialism and the horrors of the holocaust. While countless historical books have decried the industrial nature of the holocaust, such works fail to explain the motive behind the greatest crime of the 20th century. The Nazi economy and its industry were merely the means by which the holocaust was implemented and paid for. “Nazi Oaks” describes the anti-Semitic historical background of the early German green movement in the 1800’s that was later absorbed by National Socialism under the biological umbrella of ‘scientific’ Social Darwinism....

Every so often someone will make the claim that Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party is both conservative and Christian. National Socialism is neither. It isn’t conservative, certainly not on the American political spectrum. National Socialism is closer to Obama’s outlook than anything else. Each believed government should dictate the economy but allowed private business to carry out the orders of the state in a for profit manner. Obamacare would fit right into National Socialism. Government dictates what healthcare policies will look like, creates mountains of paperwork to be filled out and then allows private companies to sell what...

DONETSK, Ukraine — At first glance, the prisoner swap between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists appeared fair enough: On a deserted stretch of highway along the front line, each side released 28 captives, observing a principle of numerical parity. Under the watchful eyes of mediators from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the prisoners walked past one another to freedom. Then the questions started to pop up. The pro-Russian separatists — who with the aid of the Russian Army routed the Ukrainians in battles in August, taking many captives — released men appearing to be actual prisoners...

Gas chambers at Sobibor death camp uncovered in archaeological dig Some 250,000 Jews murdered at camp in Poland which Nazis bulldozed and covered up with trees to conceal their crimes; personal effects of victims, including wedding rings found near gas chambers. An archaeological dig in Poland has revealed the location of the gas chambers at the Sobibor death camp, Yad Vashem announced on Wednesday. Some 250,000 Jews were murdered at Sobibor, but on October 14, 1943, about 600 prisoners revolted and briefly escaped. Between 100 and 120 prisoners survived the revolt, and 60 of those survived the war. After the...

We should applaud the newest memorial in Germany. And maybe we need one of our own. I’ll explain.A few weeks ago, Germany dedicated a memorial to Nazism’s first victims: the disabled. The people of Germany have come to terms with their past.The question now is, When will we?The 80-foot glass panel unveiled in Berlin’s Tiergarten memorializes the estimated 70,000 sick and disabled people killed by the Third Reich as part of what was officially called Aktion T4 (and more informally, “Gnadentod,” which is German for “mercy death.”)There was nothing merciful about it. Between 1939 and 1941, more than 5,000 children...

This Steampunkish Nazi Belt Buckle Pistol Packs A Deadly Surprise The Nazis had some pretty wild engineering ideas, and some of them, like the jet engine, ended up being a vision of things to come. Yet others were just over-engineered, strange, and in some cases, downright creepy. This steampunkish Nazi belt buckle four-shooter is one of those things. The whole idea was to give high-ranking Nazis a way to kill their captors should they be captured on the battlefield. The concept was said to have originated from known German inventor, Louis Marquis, who designed the contraption while he was held...

Kyiv appears to have taken a page from Stalin's book in a bid to root out pro-Russian spies looking to weaken Ukraine's defenses from within. Ukrainian Defense Minister Valeriy Heletey has announced the creation of a Special Service, similar to a counterintelligence organization that existed during Josef Stalin's rule, to deal with subversive elements in the Ukrainian military. "Today, more than ever, it is important to get rid of the Russian 'fifth column' in the Ukrainian armed forces and the Defense Ministry," he wrote on Facebook on August 30. "In order to expose and dispose of enemy agents, due to...

Speaking in Crimea on August 14, Vladimir Putin recalled that the peninsula had been the last refuge of the anti-Bolshevik White Russian army in 1920 before it fled Russia, bringing the Russian Civil War to an end. Formerly a site of fratricidal conflict, the Crimea should become a site of “reconciliation between Reds and Whites,” said Putin, a call which paralleled his appeal for an end to the conflict in Ukraine. The Soviet Union collapsed only 22 years ago, so there are still some old Reds floating about, but there certainly aren’t any of the original Whites, the last of...

Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a co-called "Master Race." But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing. - See more at: http://hnn.us/article/1796#sthash.2W5ntE2W.dpuf

A Kent State University associate professor of history is standing by his call for “jihad” and statement that Israel is “a regime that is the spiritual heir to Nazism.”In an “open letter” to “academic friends of Israel,” Julio Pino accuses the pro-Israel academic community of being “directly responsible for the murder of over 1,400 Palestinian children, women and elderly civilians.”In his statement that quotes former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and compares the academics to alleged Nazi collaborator and philosopher Martin Heidegger, Pino writes “Your names are scrawled on every bullet fired, bomb dropped, body buried and burnt forehead in Gaza. May...

Not content with imposing the highest corporate tax structure in the “free” world, Democrat hacks in the legislature are now asking the Imperial President to unilaterally take action. A group of tax happy corporate protectionists are hoping the President uses his "pen and his phone" to start punishing American businesses that have the audacity to lower their corporate tax burden. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), Dick Durbin (D-Ill), and Jack Reed (D-RI), have crafted a letter (yeah… It took three of them) to President Obama requesting that action be taken toward businesses that have sheltered themselves from some US taxes. According to...

Several "concerned local veterans" have reportedly pointed out that Rep. Julia Brownley (D-CA) of the 26th congressional district sent a political mailer to her constituents in July that featured a stock photo of a "veteran" wearing a hat bearing a German Lutwaffe insignia, according to the Daily Caller. "The photograph is likely a purchased stock photo of a model in a costume contrived from various emblems to look like an official naval uniform. However it is clearly not an American Navy uniform, or that of any U.S. military branch," said Brownley's opponent, Republican Assemblyman Jeff Gorell (R-Camarillo) in a press...

In eastern Ukraine, the battle lines have been shifting for months, after pro-Russian separatists asserted effective control over several key towns across the region. In a bid to assert its control, the Ukrainian forces have been fighting for months, to reinstate Kyiv’s authority over areas held by pro-Russian separatists. Law and order do not necessarily follow. In the broader context of a deteriorating security situation in the east, Amnesty International has recently raised its concerns with the Ukrainian authorities about one particularly errant MP who has been “detaining” – in effect abducting – and ill-treating individuals across the region. He’s...

One of the great advantages we have over our ancestors is hindsight. With a clearer picture of the past, we can avoid making the same mistakes they made. But what if weÂ’re not allowed to use our hindsight? What if weÂ’re forced to pretend that what happened in the past bears no relation to what is happening now?Of course, thereÂ’s something to be said for learning from your own mistakes, but some mistakes are so costly that itÂ’s far better to learn about them in history books. The appeasement of the Nazis prior to World War II is an...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Jim Gilchrist — one of the founders of the Minutemen Project — said he’s reaching out across America to recruit at least 3,500 volunteers who will go to the border to patrol and cover the “porous areas” between San Diego and Brownsville, Texas. The campaign is called “Operation Normandy,” and it’s set for May 1, 2015, Raw Story reported. “If you are familiar with the Normandy invasion of France in 1944, then you have an idea how large and logistically complicated this event will be,” Mr. Gilchrist said, Raw Story reported. “However, there is one difference. We are not going...

Darling of the far left Sen. Elizabeth Warren released her 11 commandments of progressivism this week during her stop at the Netroots Nation annual conference.The National Journal reported: - “We believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we’re willing to fight for it.”- “We believe in science, and that means that we have a responsibility to protect this Earth.”- “We believe that the Internet shouldn’t be rigged to benefit big corporations, and that means real net neutrality.”- “We believe that no one should work full-time and still live in poverty, and that means raising the minimum...

The First Lady of these United States has declared war on Chick-fil-A. It seems the home of plump juicy breasts and hot buttered buns has run afoul of the new Smart Snacks in School program. The program is a component of Mrs. Obama’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.

South Africa’s ruling party on Thursday issued a statement in which it compared Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza to the actions of the Nazis during World War II. The statement by the African National Congress (ANC) did not mention the rocket attacks from Gaza which led Israel to launch Operation Protective Edge. “The African National Congress (ANC), condemns in the strongest terms, the barbaric attacks on the defenseless Palestinian people of Gaza,” said the statement by the party’s Deputy Secretary General, Jessie Duarte. “As we move towards the month of August and are reminded of [the] atrocities of Nazi Germany, surely...

As members of Congress continue hammering out a bill to improve the Department of Veterans Affairs' beleaguered health care system, attention has focused on one man leading the charge: Bernie Sanders, Independent senator from Vermont and a self-described socialist. Sanders barely got 2 percent of the vote when he first tried breaking into Vermont politics in the 1970s, but now there's buzz that the man known simply as "Bernie" may be a presidential candidate in 2016."The cost of war is huge," the 72-year-old said recently during lunch at Henry's Diner in Burlington, Vt., where he rose to become an immensely...

The joke’s on you! A baby in a photo chosen by Nazis as the perfect Aryan baby has been revealed to in fact be Jewish, not German. Hessy Taft, who was 6 months old when the picture was taken, found out about the photograph after an aunt recognized her on a postcard, the Telegraph reports. But apparently the Nazis had no idea that the precious baby they deemed the “perfect Aryan” was actually a descendant of the House of David. Taft lived with her parents, Jacob and Pauline Levinsons, in Berlin during the height of the Nazis’ takeover in 1935....

A senior economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin has slammed Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko ahead of the country's signing of an EU deal on Friday, calling him an illegitimate president and a Nazi. In an interview with the BBC published on Friday, Sergei Glazyev said Ukraine had a "clear Nazi government," which was employing force against its own people in the country's east. "As for [Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseni] Yatsenyuk and Mr. Poroshenko, their coming to power is closely related to the government coup, which happened in Ukraine on the basis of Nazist slogans," he said. Glazyev added Moscow...

A Nazi-themed cafe in Indonesia that closed shop after sparking international outrage reopened Saturday with its walls still bearing swastikas and a painting of Adolf Hitler. Henry Mulyana voluntarily shut down his SoldatenKaffee last year after media reports exposed his swastika-clad establishment, prompting death threats and accusation of inciting racial hatred. Following the closure, his lawyer told AFP that Henry would later reopen his business with a broader World War II theme and said he would remove all swastikas. But at the opening on Saturday, three huge iron eagles bearing swastikas were on display, as were WWII propaganda posters bearing...

Recently Qatar, a tiny peninsular state with the world’s highest per capita GDP, has been in the news for negotiating the release of five (ten, really) Taliban commanders in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl; the Taliban five now reside in Qatar, allegedly under the watchful eye of the Qataris. But long before the Bergdahl incident, Qatar was known as the only country who openly welcomed the Muslim Brotherhood, a secretive radical group who has spawned countless other radical Islamist groups since its founding in 1928. A crucial dimension of the Muslim Brotherhood (aka, Al Ikhwan al-Mooslimoon, aka Ikhwan) that helps...

‘The Eternal Nazi’ tells the gripping story of the hunt for Aribert Heim, and the German detective who relentlessly pursued him“Everything would have been different if I had come from a happy home with people who cared about me,” Josef Mengele wrote in the 500-page autobiography discovered after his death. Mengele’s autobiography offers a disturbing spectacle: the pathetic whining of a pampered, sadistic murderer, interlaced with sermons on racial superiority and odd little drawings of bunnies and wooden cabinets. Mengele is a prime case of the perpetrator’s urge to see himself as a sufferer, a common syndrome among war criminals....

First lady Michelle Obama wants students to police their families for any “racially insensitive comments” they might make, and to challenge those comments whenever they’re made, asking them to “drag” their presumably racist relatives into the “fight against racism.” Huh? You heard right. The lady whose husband has taken every opportunity to fan the flames of racism, from the Cambridge police, to Arizona’s immigration law, to the Trayvon Martin case, and on and on, wants everyone else to stop being so racist.

Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh has said that representatives of his organization will contribute to ensuring security at voting stations in eastern Ukraine. ...

BERLIN — Around 20 former guards at the death camp Majdanek could face charges in Germany, following a widespread probe of the Nazi SS men and women who served there during World War II, war crimes investigators said Tuesday.

In an interview with Bloomberg News [URL at link], Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asserted that Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland had meetings with the Ukrainian neofascist group Right Sector in Washington DC. The Right Sector has been involved in numerous killings including the burning of pro-Russian supporters in Odessa. ... Whether Nuland met with Artyomenko or any other representative of the Right Sector to help with fundraising and support is unknown. What is known is that the US is supporting the gang in Kiev's "interim government" which includes Svoboda an openly neofascist party...

Macklemore may be a darling of gay rights activists and feel-good lefty types, but he's in potential hot water after the popular rapper played a show in a questionable costume. At a secret show in Seattle, Macklemore hit the stage appearing dressed to look like a stereotypical Jewish man. Last Friday, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis were the surprise performers in honor of a new exhibit at Seattle's EMP Museum. Although it's difficult to determine who exactly Macklemore is supposed to be in his getup, it's clear fans on social media are just as confused. But anyone expecting a rousing statement...