Free Republic

YouGov asked citizens from four countries deeply involved in the European theater of WWII (the UK, France, Germany, and the US) who they thought was most responsible for defeating the Nazis – the Americans, the British, or the Russians. Those in the UK were the only country who choose the British; the other three were most likely to choose the Americans. Intriguingly, historical data shows that at the close of the Second World War the French public believed that it was the Russians, not the Americans, who had done the most to defeat the Nazis. A survey conducted by IFOP...

“These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.” Ronald Reagan, June 6, 1984 Standing on a craggy overlook jutting into the English Channel Ronald Reagan delivered those words 35 years ago on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the D-day invasion. By then the “boys” were already boys no more. The few who are still with us are now all in their 90’s. Some have come to today’s anniversary...

Deep sea explorers found the USS Hornet in the South Pacific earlier this year, but the Hornet was not the only ship located on that expedition. In the latest update for the American Naval history books, the research vessel Petrel revealed it also found the World War II aircraft carrier USS Wasp. We're 2.5 miles down, peering inside the cockpit of an avenger torpedo bomber from the sunken World War II aircraft carrier, USS Wasp. The plane is not just a relic, it's a clue, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips. Can the Wasp itself be far away? The Wasp...

On July 1, 1942, the U.S.S. Wasp, an aircraft carrier holding 71 planes, 2,247 sailors and a journalist, sailed from San Diego to the western Pacific to join the battle against the Japanese. On board was a naval officer named Lt. Cmdr. John Joseph Shea. Two days before he left San Diego, Shea wrote his 5-year-old son a letter.

Her code name was “Hedgehog,” an homage to a “tough animal that even a lion would hesitate to bite,” as a friend once said. And like a hedgehog, which appears cute and nonthreatening but can roll into a tight ball deploying dangerous quills when challenged, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade had an unexpected tough side. The young French woman headed one of the most important resistance networks during World War II and oversaw the collection of crucial intelligence that helped turn the battle’s tide. And yet she remains virtually unknown — in large part, because of her gender. “Nobody really remembers her, and...

Looks like an amazing film. Just saw the preview on TV.

A World War Two veteran who grew up in poverty and described himself as the "world's oldest rebel" has died. The son of RAF veteran and author Harry Leslie Smith tweeted to say his father had died while visiting him in Canada. The son of a miner, Mr Smith lived through the Great Depression and joined the RAF in 1941, serving in World War Two.

Memorial, the country oldest rights group, has held a 12-hour ceremony every year on 29 October for the past 11 years. Hundreds of people read out names of those killed during Stalin-era repressions at a memorial in Lubyanka Square, outside the headquarters of the current security service and its Stalin-era predecessors. Historians estimate about a million people perished in Stalin’s Terror, also known as the Great Purge, in the 1930s. The group said Moscow city authorities had refused permission this year for “The Return of Names” ceremony. “Today, 19 October, that is 10 days before the ceremony was due to...

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate has adopted a resolution recognizing that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin committed genocide against the Ukrainian people in the early 1930s, when millions died in a horrific famine known as the Holodomor. The office of Republican Senator Rob Portman, who sponsored the bill, did not immediately get back to RFE/RL for comment. Asked for comment, the State Department referred to a 2017 statement that described the Holodomor as "one of the most atrocious acts of the 20th century. The "simple resolution" passed on October 3 commemorates the 85th anniversary of the famine of 1932-33. The Senate...

SEOUL (Reuters) - Japan should refrain from flying the “Rising Sun” flag on a warship in a fleet review planned in South Korea next week, a North Korean propaganda website said on Friday, joining South Koreans in the latest spat over the countries’ colonial history. ...“The ‘Rising Sun’ flag is a war-crime flag that the 20th-century Japanese imperialists used when executing their barbaric invasions into our nation and other Asian nations,” North Korea’s state-controlled Uriminjokkiri website said. “Planning to enter flying the ‘Rising Sun’ flag is an unbearable insult and ridicule to our people.”

The Associated Press news agency on Wednesday acceded to a Russian request to delete the term "former ally" from an article mentioning the relationship between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during World War II. The article, which was published at the beginning of the month in media outlets worldwide, including Haaretz, was about a Ukrainian city commemorating the 75th anniversary of the destruction of its Jewish community. It included the claim that "in June 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union, its former ally." On Wednesday, ten days after the article was published, AP amended the text. The news agency...

Observances commemorating the 79th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II were held in Poland at dawn on Saturday. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki attended observances held on Westerplatte in on the Baltic coast, where on September 1, 1939 at 4:45 am the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein began shelling a Polish military depot in the first battle between Polish and German soldiers of WWII. Sirens wailed and the Polish national anthem was played at a monument honouring those who defended the Polish coast. Observances were also held in central city of Wieluń, the first Polish town to be bombed by...

Russia has been accused of interfering in the affairs of the Czech Republic after its embassy tried to block changes to the inscription on a Soviet-era statue explaining the chequered role of Russian Marshal Ivan Konev, who was twice designated a Hero of the Soviet Union by Stalin and whose remains are buried in the Kremlin. Now the dispute is set to come to a head at a historically sensitive moment, the 50th anniversary of the 1968 invasion of then-communist Czechoslovakia by Soviet-led forces to crush the liberal Prague Spring. Critics said the original plaque exaggerated the marshalÂ’s role while...

A World War II veteran who has been delivering sweet surprises from the sky for 70 years continues to brings smiles to the faces of children as the "Candy Bomber.” "There's something magical about a chocolate bar come floatin' out of the sky," Col. Gail "Hal" Halvorsen told ABC News. "It's tied on an actual parachute. Hopefully, some kids appreciate it." Halvorsen, 97, started his candy drops when he was a U.S. pilot for the Allied forces during the Berlin Airlift. In 1948, the Russians cut off food and supplies to West Berlin, Germany. The United States and its allies...

Matthew Luxmoore’s article (Poles apart: the bitter conflict over a nation’s history, The long read, 13 July) contains a gross error likely to lead readers to misunderstand the Soviet Union’s true intentions during the second world war. There were 1.5 million Poles deported to Siberia, not “hundreds of thousands” as the article states, with no mention of their fate. They were forcibly taken from their homes in eastern Poland to gulags. Most died of starvation and disease under forced labour. To misrepresent this suffering, which took place on a colossal scale, is a crime akin to Holocaust denial. My grandfather...

Angela Merkel appeared to hit back at US President Donald Trump's claim that "Germany is a captive of Russia" by drawing on her own upbringing in Soviet-controlled East Germany. "I wanted to say that, because of current events, I have witnessed this myself, that a part of Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union. And I am very happy that we are today unified in freedom as the Federal Republic of Germany," she said in an arrival statement at the NATO Summit Wednesday. Merkel, who was born in Hamburg in 1954, has spoken on numerous occasions about her upbringing under...

Four months after the Pearl Harbor attacks, Kapitanleutnant Reinhard Hardegen decided that Americans should see for themselves what war with Adolf Hitler's Germany was going to look like. He began with Florida sunbathers. On April 11, 1942, Hardegen's submarine, U-123, torpedoed the tanker SS Gulfamerica off Jacksonville. He maneuvered U-123 around the flaming wreck and surfaced between the SS Gulfamerica and the beach. He sank it with U-123's deck gun. Hardegen later wrote in his log: "All the vacationers had seen an impressive special performance at [President Franklin D.] Roosevelt's expense. A burning tanker, artillery fire, the silhouette of a...

Princess Alice von Battenberg was born in 1885 in Windsor Castle in England, and was deaf from birth. After marrying the Greek Prince Andrew in 1903, she lived in Greece until the expulsion of the Greek royal family in 1917. In 1930, Alice was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was hospitalized in a sanatorium in Switzerland for two years. During World War II she lived in Athens, where she helped hide Jews from the Nazis. In 1994, 24 years after her death in 1969, she received the title of Righteous Among the Nations from Yad Vashem. After the war, she remained...

Poland has amended its controversial Holocaust law that made it a crime punishable by up to three years in jail to say “Polish concentration camps,” four months after the law went into effect. Polish lawmakers voted on Wednesday by a vote of 388-25, with five abstentions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he is pleased that Poland “fully rescinded” clauses in its Holocaust law. “I’m pleased that the Polish government, the parliament, the senate and the president of Poland decided today to fully rescind the clauses that were signed and caused a storm and consternation in Israel and among the international...

The Night of the Long Knives was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political murders. When Hitler rose to power in early 1933, he owed much of his success to the muscle of his Nazi Storm Troopers, the SA, a violent, ruthless army headed by Ernst Röhm, Hitler’s long-time friend. Röhm and his Storm Troopers brought Germany into submission by gaining control of the streets gangster-style and violently eliminating Hitler’s political enemies. However, a threatening, revolutionary force was no longer useful now...