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by John HillStand With Arizona Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Congress, 12/08/1941 The Dec. 7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor and those who lost their lives that day are being remembered today on the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack that brought the U.S. into World War II. About 120 survivors will join the Navy Secretary, military leaders and civilians to observe a moment of silence...

It’s a recurring fantasy for left wing academics fascinated by central planning that in cyclical downturns government should act decisively on a scale equivalent to war. Nobel Prize recipient Paul Krugman exemplifies this intellectual longing to steer our lives. Krugman effortlessly slides into a war footing espousing intervention comparable to America’s crusade against Hitler, who, take note, centrally planned an economy himself: “World War II is the great natural experiment in the effects of large increases in government spending, and as such has always served as an important positive example for those of us who favor an activist approach to...

Got to be tough, Lad... And I used to think my dad was nuts, playing winter golf in Cleveland!  The clubhouse notice below was actually posted in war-torn Britain in 1940 for golfers with stiff upper lips only... In the Battle of England, Luftwaffe warplanes launched from Norway would fly on missions to northern England and/or Scotland. To prevent icing of gun-barrel tips, the Germans utilized a glob of wax that was cleared as they crossed the English coast by letting loose a few rounds at the golf courses. The hard-core golfers still braving the links were thereby urged to take cover', while...

What ended World War II? For nearly seven decades, the American public has accepted one version of the events that led to Japan’s surrender. By the middle of 1945, the war in Europe was over, and it was clear that the Japanese could hold no reasonable hope of victory. After years of grueling battle, fighting island to island across the Pacific, Japan’s Navy and Air Force were all but destroyed. The production of materiel was faltering, completely overmatched by American industry, and the Japanese people were starving. A full-scale invasion of Japan itself would mean hundreds of thousands of dead...

Maria Strobel could not believe it of her Führer. Adolf Hitler and his party—a group of senior Nazis that included Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich—had spent more than an hour in her Munich bierkeller. Hitler had delivered a trademark speech, and, while they listened, Himmler and the others had run up a large beer bill. But the whole group had left in a hurry—leaving the tab unpaid and Strobel untippped.Georg Elser, whose attempt to kill Hitler came within moments of succeeding, commemorated on a stamp. The German phrase means "I wanted to prevent war." Image: Wikicommons Much annoyed,...

In 1939, Albert Einstein sent a letter (written largely by Leó Szilárd) to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The pressing concern was that Nazi Germany might be conducting research to create atomic bombs, and the letter suggested that the United States should begin researching the possibility itself. This was the impetus for the Manhattan project, which culminated in the explosion of the first atomic bomb at the Trinity Site in New Mexico. Socorro, New Mexico, a little more than an hour’s drive south of Albuquerque, is one of the meeting places for those who plan to visit the Trinity Site. Socorro,...

AMSTERDAM — The mayor of a Dutch town says a 96-year-old woman has confessed to killing a prominent citizen in 1946 after mistakenly believing he collaborated with the Nazis.

Since last week was Memorial Day, I would like to acknowledge those who fought for our freedom on D Day, June 6, 1944.

Toyo Ishii, a former military nurse, broke her 60-year silence about Unit 731 in 2006. Photograph: Itsuo Inouye/APuthorities in Japan have begun excavating the former site of a medical school that may contain the remains of victims of the country's wartime biological warfare programme. The school has links to Unit 731, a branch of the imperial Japanese army that conducted lethal experiments on prisoners as part of efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. The Japanese government has previously acknowledged the unit's existence but refused to discuss its activities, despite testimony from former members and growing documentary evidence. In...

Camp Pendleton Marines will commemorate the 66th anniversary of the bloody and heroic Battle of Iwo Jima on Saturday evening. The island south of Japan was where the iconic photograph was taken of Marines raising an American flag in the heat of battle. Marines landed on Feb. 19, 1945, to claim an emergency airfield for damaged B-29 bombers returning from Japan. Japanese soldiers, with the advantage of caves and high ground, contested every inch of land over the next five weeks and inflicted 26,000 casualties on U.S. forces, including about 6,800 killed. The public part of the commemoration will...

We are told by careful pollsters that half of the American people believe that American troops should be brought home from Iraq immediately. This news discourages supporters of our efforts there. Not me, though: I am relieved. Given press coverage of our efforts in Iraq, I am surprised that 90 percent of the public do not want us out right now. Between January 1 and September 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed...

PARIS — On the day Paris was liberated from the Nazis in 1944, a young American soldier nabbed a souvenir of epic proportions: He took home the French flag that hung from the Arc de Triomphe, a symbol of the end of four years of struggle and shame. Six and a half decades later, the aging veteran has given the flag back to the city of Paris. Officials from Paris City Hall took possession of the 12-meter (13-yard) tricolor flag Saturday in a ceremony in southern France, a step in its unusual journey from New York state back home to...

Nazi Germany landed eight saboteurs in America on a secret mission to destroy targets across the U.S., a documentary has revealed. U-boats dropped the men off the beaches of Long Island and Florida at the height of the Second World War. The first group of four men - carrying armfuls of weapons, explosives and primers - came ashore near Manhattan on June 13, 1942.

Japan Premier Apologizes at WWII Ceremony TOKYO—Japan's new liberal prime minister shunned a visit to a shrine that has outraged Asian neighbors for honoring war criminals, breaking from past governments' tradition and instead apologizing Sunday for the suffering World War II caused. Members of the now-opposition Liberal Democratic Party, which ruled Japan nearly continuously since the end of the war, made a point by carrying out their own trip to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II. Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan bowed to offer prayers for the war dead at Budokan...

For the first time since the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan 65 years ago, today the U.S. ambassador to Japan will attend the official commemoration ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. The U.S. ambassador has always declined the annual invitation, but this year is different. President Barack Obama decided to acknowledge the event with the presence of a high-level dignitary. As State Department spokesman Philip Crowley explained, Ambassador John Roos will be there "to express respect for all the victims of World War II." Gene Tibbets—the son of Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets Jr., the pilot who...

A James Bond-style gun that is disguised as a pencil and was given as a gift to Lord Mountbatten is coming up for auction. The gold-plated item has a concealed trigger and a 2 3/4ins barrel that forms a .22 pistol and was presented to the last Viceroy of India by a Maharaja. The 'pencil pistol' makes up part of the personal sidearms that belonged to Lord Mountbatten, a World War II hero who was blown up by the IRA in 1979. He used some of them in World War II and they reputedly helped to preserve his life. Bill...

In the end, it was only time from which he could not escape. Jack Harrison, the last of those involved in the 'Great Escape', has passed away, peacefully and quietly, at the age of 97. It has been 66 years since the dark night when he waited with bated breath, preparing to crawl through ‘Harry’ and under the wire of Stalag Luft III. Many years after the war the former RAF pilot, and his brave and resourceful comrades, would be immortalised by the iconic 1963 film - starring Richard Attenborough and Steve McQueen - which remains the staple fare of...

....These attacks, orchestrated by Japan’s infamous Unit 731 between 1932 and 1945, are the only documented mass use of germ weapons in modern times. Scholars say that we will never know exactly how many were killed. Sheldon H. Harris, the late American historian, estimated in a pioneering work that between 10,000 and 12,000 Chinese prisoners perished in the bloodcurdling experiments that Unit 731 performed in Japanese-occupied Manchuria. Another 300,000 to 500,000 civilians died, he wrote, as a result of Japan’s massive germ assaults on more than 70 Chinese cities and towns. China itself has disclosed no official tally. In fact,...

An image of the Shroud of Turin. Rome, Italy, Apr 8, 2010 / 10:27 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Holy Shroud was transferred from Turin during World War II to keep it out of reach of Adolph Hitler, according to a Benedictine priest in a southern Italian abbey. Monks in Avellino, Italy stored the relic until 1946 "officially to protect it from bombs, in reality to hide it from the Fuhrer, who was obsessed with it," the monk said. Sensing the dangers posed by German officials' interest in the Shroud during a visit from Hitler to Italy in 1938, the...