Free Republic

The State Department’s Under-Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, Rose Gottemoeller, proudly bragged to a Brookings Institution gathering that “our progress toward total nuclear disarmament is now 85% of the way there. If we can maintain the pace, our last nuclear device will be moth-balled before President Obama completes his term.” Gottemoeller asserted that “it is our fervent hope that our example will inspire others to follow suit” and maintained that “a nuclear-free world will be a safer world.” Whether either of these aspirations would bear out is unknown. Prior to the dawn of the nuclear age less potent...

"Patton's familial ties to Confederate veterans is quite fascinating (Chapter One is titled, "Ghosts of the Confederacy") and had a significant impact on his view of history, as well as his role it it. (An extremely important and influential factor, despite what some think.) Patton's great-grandmother once wrote, "I am crying because I have only seven sons left to fight the Yankees."

...Bill Darron drove down the alley behind Laura Hillenbrand’s house (with) a Norden bombsight. Since 1987, Hillenbrand has been sick with chronic fatigue syndrome, which has mostly confined her indoors for the last quarter century. When she explained this to Darron, he agreed to bring the Norden from New Jersey on his next visit to Washington. Now, as he made the final calibrations, Hillenbrand returned to the room, and he offered her a brief tutorial. He showed her how to position herself above the monocular eyepiece, guide the cross hairs toward a target on the map, then lock the sight...

Albert Darago had never fired a bazooka before. He was an “ack-ack” guy, a fuse-cutter on a 90mm antiaircraft gun. But on Dec. 19, 1944, the brass was looking for volunteers to go after some German tanks. And Darago said sure. He was a 19-year-old, color-blind draftee, a native of Baltimore’s Little Italy and a musician who played piano and clarinet. He was no hero, he said. But when Adolf Hitler launched the massive attack that began World War II’s bloody Battle of the Bulge, he had not reckoned on GIs like Darago.

At the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin this weekend highlighted a video of Rand Paul speaking in 2012 about sanctions on Iran. In it, Paul disparages the notion of use of force, and for some reason claims the United States was partly to blame for World War II! “There are times when sanctions have made it worse. I mean, there are times .. leading up to World War II we cut off trade with Japan. That probably caused Japan to react angrily. We also had a blockade on Germany after World War I, which may have encouraged them … some 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....

In a bedroom lay a white silk pillow - yellowed with age and emblazoned with the screaming eagle emblem of the Army's 101st Airborne Division. On the walls were pictures and plaques telling the story of a World War II veteran; in another room was an adjustable hospital bed and, on a windowsill, a worn Bible. That October day, Jim Bennett was looking for an investment, a house to buy, rehab, then rent or resell, as he has done with about 500 others over more than 20 years. But Bennett found much more at the modest, two-story rowhouse on Winton...

Belgium’s King Philippe, right, and Queen Mathilde throw nuts to the public, during the 70th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, in Bastogne, Belgium, on Saturday. The tradition dates from when the Germans asked for the US surrender in Bastogne, to which General Anthony McAuliffe answered: ‘Nuts!’ Photograph: Yves Logghe/AP Braving snowy weather, Americans and Belgians gathered in the Ardennes on Saturday to mark the 70th anniversary of one of the biggest and bloodiest US battles of the second world war, the Battle of the Bulge. Jean-Claude Klepper, 62, of Virton, Belgium, said “we must never forget what...

TOKYO — Angelina Jolie’s new movie “Unbroken” has not been released in Japan yet, but it has already struck a nerve in a country still wrestling over its wartime past. The buzz on social networks and in online chatter is decidedly negative over the film, which depicts a U.S. Olympic runner who endures torture at a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. Some people are calling for a boycott of the movie, although there is no release date in Japan yet. It hits theaters in the U.S. on Dec. 25. Others want the ban extended to Jolie, the director...

The Greatest Generation With each passing year, the reunion number is dwindling. The Pearl Harbor survivors are over 90 years old, and the members of that group that got together today in Hawaii numbered a little more than a dozen. Today marks the 73rd Anniversary of the attack against Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, during which 2,400 sailors, Marines, and soldiers were killed. Some have called the reunion of the USS Arizona Reunion Association the last gathering of USS Arizona survivors, but the gathering doesn’t see this meeting as the last one, just yet. The USS Arizona was a battleship that was...

At dawn on Dec. 7, 1941 the I-26 surfaced and fired a warning shot at the Cynthia Olson, the radio officer sent out an SOS from position 33.42N-145.29W which was picked up on the mainland and Minoru reported seeing lifeboats being lowered, after which he began to shell the ship. Some time during the attack the Japanese commander received the signal "Tora, tora, tora!" indicating the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor had been a success. Compaired to what was going on at Pearl Harbor his attack would be easy. Since the Cynthia Olson was unarmed she would offer no resistance,...

December 7, 1941 began as a perfect Sunday morning for the troops serving the US fleet at Pearl Harbor. Under a early morning South Pacific sun, softball teams were lining up on the beach. Pitchers warmed up their arms, while batting rosters were finalized and the wives and kids came over from seaside church services.

Of all the memorable dates of World War II, this one somehow got lost in the jungle. Remember Aug. 7, 1942? Quiz your friends. Note the silence. To veterans who landed 60 years ago today on the Pacific island of Guadalcanal, it is a silence almost as eerie and inexplicable as the quiet of the early hours of their raid -- the first U.S. offensive of the war. "So many people today don't even know what Guadalcanal is," said Rudy Bock, 82, of Overland Park, who stormed in with fellow Marines and caught the Japanese with their guns down. "You...

Memories of fallen consecrate name of Solomons' airportBy Tom HennessyStaff columnistHenderson Field is one of those place names that still resonates with most Americans who lived through World War II. And even with some of their descendants. U.S. Marines seized the airfield Aug. 7, 1942, when they invaded Guadalcanal in our first offensive of the Pacific War. They finished the construction the Japanese had started and named the airfield for Lofton Henderson, a Medal of Honor aviator killed in June at the battle of Midway. It was one of the war's most significant airfields. Whoever held Henderson pretty much...

It's hard to envision -- or, for the dwindling few, to remember -- what the world looked like on Oct. 26, 1942, when a few thousand U.S. Marines stood essentially stranded on the God-forsaken jungle island of Guadalcanal, placed like a speed bump at the end of the long blue-water slot between New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago, the most likely route for the Japanese Navy to take if they hoped to reach Australia. On Guadalcanal, the Marines struggled to complete an airfield. Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto knew what that meant. No effort would be spared to dislodge these upstart...

What if the Allied war effort of World War II was directed by the current Republican leadership? Listen to the strumming harp music as we take an imaginary journey into the past... 24 November 1944 -- Emerging from a joint strategy meeting, Generals Eisenhower and Zhukov addressed a press meeting and outlined their plans for bringing about a peaceful resolution to what had snowballed into a massive world war. “My Russian counterpart and I realize the meaning of our spectacular victories at Stalingrad and Normandy," said Eisenhower. "It is that the message of the Allies must be one of willingness...

The remains of a World War II airman from San Francisco, who was missing for seven decades after his plane was shot down over New Guinea, will be returned to the United States and buried with full honors, the Department of Defense said Monday.

On freerepublic, people were discussing the recent legal victory, where a federal judge ruled that people who already had guns had no reason to wait through a 10 day California waiting period.  The law was first passed in 1923.  He ruled that the law infringed on second amendment rights.  The KG9 Kid wrote, from freerepublic.com: I'm sorry, but I read of these little 'victories' by the CalGuns Foundation in their thoroughly anti-gun state and cannot help but compare them to some WWII Japanese radio broadcast that exclaims that the Imperial Japanese Navy now has now deployed the first rocket-powered...

Can it be true that Vladimir Lenin, the alleged “leader of the world Proletariat,” whose monuments adorned central squares in every Soviet town and who inspired generations of Soviet citizens, had been a mere agent provocateur working for the German government? In The World Crisis, Volume 5, Winston Churchill writes this about war-time Germany in 1917: “They turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland into Russia.” The rest is history: Lenin staged a coup and withdrew Russia from World War One, conceding large swaths of...