Free Republic

Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso has retracted remarks suggesting that the country could learn from Nazi Germany’s constitutional reform. Mr. Aso said on Monday Japan could “learn the technique” Nazi Germany used to change the Weimar constitution. The remarks come amid debate in Japan over its pacifist constitution, which restricts the military to a self-defense role. …

Indeed, the Bank for International Settlements was so useful for the Nazis that Emil Puhl, the vice-president of the Reichsbank and BIS director, called the BIS the Reichsbank’s only “foreign branch”. The BIS’s reach and connections were so vital for Germany that all through the war, the Reichsbank paid interest on BIS loans. The BIS then paid dividends to shareholders – including the Bank of England. Thus, through the BIS, the Reichsbank funded the British war economy. Thomas McKittrick, an American banker, was president of the BIS. When the United States entered the war in December 1941, McKittrick kept the...

In devastating detail, an excerpt from a controversial new book reveals how the big studios, desperate to protect German business, let Nazis censor scripts, remove credits from Jews, get movies stopped and even force one MGM executive to divorce his Jewish wife.

BANDUNG, Indonesia – Authorities in central Indonesia will ask a restaurant owner to explain his reasons for opening a Nazi-themed cafe that has sparked controversy among locals and tourists, an official said Thursday. Soldatenkaffee includes a red wall of Nazi-related memorabilia, including a large flag with the swastika and a giant picture of Adolf Hitler. Its wait staff dresses in SS, or Schutzstaffel, military uniforms, and can be seen posing in front of the cafe on its Facebook page. The cafe, located in the West Java provincial capital of Bandung, one of Indonesia's tourist destination cities, has been open since...

<p>The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday afternoon appealed to civil rights groups and community leaders, nationally and in Sanford, for help investigating whether a federal criminal case might be brought against George Zimmerman for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, one advocate said.</p>

VIENNA — It was 1943 when Vienna’s Nazi overlords gave the order to destroy the city’s oldest Jewish cemetery, demanding it be leveled and the tombstones attesting to centuries of Jewish existence there be destroyed.Desperate to save their heritage, the city’s shrinking Jewish community decided to act. Defying the possibility of prison, deportation or execution, they buried the gravestones and kept them from Nazi hands.Some 70 years later, Jewish leaders in the Austrian capital say the long-lost stones have been rediscovered. It is a find they say could transform a small obscure graveyard into one that rivals the significance...

“Intellectuals and Race“ by Thomas Sowell, Basic Books, 2013, 184 pages, $25.99. Thomas Sowell, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is not a newcomer to the theme of intellectuals and race. In his 1985 Marxism: Philosophy and Economics he noted that Karl Marx referred to German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle as a “Jewish n–ger,” based on his “cranial formation” and hair growth. Marx also said that Lassalle’s paternal grandmother or mother was “crossed with a n–ger” and that “the fellow’s importunity is also n–ger-like.” Sowell’s The Economics and Politics of Race, along other writings from a conservative viewpoint, drew attacks from...

The Department of Justice intervened in the case of a German family seeking asylum in order to home school their children. The Romeike family fled Germany when authorities threatened to remove their children from their parents' custody if they weren't sent to public school. Lawyers for the family called teaching one's own children a fundamental parental right. Not so, said a brief filed by the US Department of Justice: “Where the boundary lies between parental authority and state authority is a matter of law. The state's interest in promoting a child's socialization as a participant in the collective body of...

Wendy Davis is no Kim Kardashian. She is famous for something: standing up for a woman’s right to kill an unborn baby up to 24 weeks old at substandard medical clinics.For this the Democrat from Fort Worth who last week filibustered a bill banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy in the Texas Senate is the hero of our times. Make that the “superhero” of our times according to Katha Pollitt at the Nation.Who could disagree? “Davis remained standing, unable to take a bathroom break, eat, drink, sit or even lean against a desk,” as Ms. Pollitt wrote. “She was...

Members of the Mongolian neo-Nazi group Tsagaan Khass stand near a quarry where they questioned a worker. A Mongolian neo-Nazi group has rebranded itself as an environmentalist organisation fighting pollution by foreign-owned mines, seeking legitimacy as it sends swastika-wearing members to check mining permits. Based in an office behind a lingerie store in the Mongolian capital, the shaven-headed, jackbooted Tsagaan Khass stormtroopers launch raids on mining projects, demanding paperwork or soil samples to be studied for contaminants. "Before, we used to work in a harsh way, like breaking down doors," the group's leader, Ariunbold Altankhuum, 40, told Reuters. "But now,...

A soon-to-be released book claims that the Hollywood film industry had close ties to the Third Reich, the Yisrael Hayom daily reported on Sunday. Hollywood’s major studios not only passively accepted Nazi censorship, but actively collaborated with Hitler’s propaganda machine to protect their interests in the German market, according to the book written by Harvard University doctoral student Ben Urwand. … “Hollywood [in the 1930s] is not just collaborating with Nazi Germany; it’s also collaborating with Adolf Hitler, the person and human being,” Urwand, 35, was quoted as having said in an interview with The New York Times. The fact...

When 94-year-old Minnesotan Michael Karkoc was revealed to be a Nazi war criminal last Friday — thanks to the ill-advised tell-all memoir he published — his friends and neighbors were, understandably, shocked. An actual OG Nazi! In Minnesota! In the year 2013! It's almost incomprehensible. But Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center — named after the world's foremost Nazi hunter — was hardly surprised. When we asked him how many Nazi war criminals may be living in the United States, Hier told Daily Intelligencer, "It could be hundreds." "Normally I would have said thousands," he added,...

The IRS Is Defying An Obama Administration Order To Give Employees $70 Million In Bonuses Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated PressJune 20, 2013 WASHINGTON (AP) — Already reeling from a pair of scandals, the Internal Revenue Service is drawing new criticism over plans to hand out millions of dollars in employee bonuses. The Obama administration has ordered agencies to cancel discretionary bonuses because of automatic spending cuts, but the IRS says it's merely following legal obligations under a union contract. The agency is about to pay $70 million in employee bonuses, said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a senior Republican on the...

A new film, Under the Roman Sky, starring James Cromwell as Pius XII, details the heroic efforts of Pius XII to save the Jews of Rome from the Nazis, after Rome came under Nazi occupation subsequent to the fall of Mussolini following the Allied invasion of southern Italy in 1943.Rabbi David G. Dalin, in his review of a Moral Reckoning, a tome by Daniel Goldhagen which sought to blame Catholicism for the Holocaust, details the efforts of the Pope to save the Jews of Rome:Goldhagen’s centerpiece is the outrageous allegation that Pius XII “did not lift a finger to forfend...

WASHINGTON — After more than three decades in existence, the Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting team is facing what could end up being its last investigation after reports emerged Tuesday that a 94-year-old Ukrainian immigrant in Minnesota had led a Nazi SS unit accused of burning villages during World War II. In northeast Minneapolis, news crews and curious neighbors milled outside the modest home of Michael Karkoc, who has lived in the United States for more than 60 years, after a report linked him to a Ukrainian SS squad. The Associated Press reported that wartime documents and interviews with soldiers indicated that...

After you read this- you will wonder what country we are in. Tom Francois is an outspoken critic of Barack Hussein Obama- and has a robust Twitter presence. He also likes to dabble with his "paint" program to create funny cartoons. He has never threatened the President in any way, manner or form. On April 11, 2013, he heard relentless pounding on his door shouts of "Police!" The officers introduced themselves as members of The Secret Service and asked if they could "take a look around." Since Tom had nothing to hide (and he didn't want any return visits) -...

A Washington IRS attorney named Carter Hull closely oversaw the targeting of conservative nonprofit groups and suggested questions that IRS employees could ask of conservative and Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt nonprofit status, according to interviews that two IRS employees gave with congressional investigators. “I was essentially a front person, because I had no autonomy or no authority to act on [applications] without Carter Hull’s influence or input,” said Elizabeth Hofacre, an employee of the Cincinnati IRS office, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal. Hofacre’s office, which oversaw tax-exempt applications, reportedly requested help from the...

Francesco Manicardi (far right) speaks about his grandfather during the June 4, 2013 press conference in Vatican Radio's Marconi Hall. Credit: Lauren Cater/CNA. Rome, Italy, Jun 4, 2013 / 01:20 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Odoardo Focherini will be beatified in the Italian city of Carpi on June 15 for his life of faith and dedication to helping those in need, including 100 Jews he helped escape the Nazis. “One of the Jews whom he saved said, ‘we are the miracles of Odoardo Focherini,’ and they saw his as their savior and angel,” said Focherini’s grandson, Francesco Manicardi. “His neighbors weren’t...

In a chilling story by Rebekah Maxwell, people with disabilities in the UK are being targeted to be euthanized based on what she claims is the almighty dollar. From Do No Harm: Doctors Killing Disabled People?: “But a much more practical motivation also exists, and it goes ka-ching. In a land of nationalized health care, every worker pays into the system, so everybody can access the system. But some people are too weak, too old, too disabled to work. Yet they still need medical treatment, draining the system of resources without contributing to the pot. No longer does the UK...

Feds suggest anti-Muslim speech can be punished By BYRON TAU | 5/31/13 5:26 PM EDT A U.S. attorney in Tennessee is reportedly vowing to use federal civil rights statutes to clamp down on offensive and inflammatory speech about Islam. Bill Killian, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, was quoted by the Tullahoma News this week suggesting that some inflammatory material on Islam might run afoul of federal civil rights laws. "We need to educate people about Muslims and their civil rights, and as long as we’re here, they’re going to be protected," Killian told the newspaper. Killian, along...