Free Republic

Soviet War Dead [Infographic] Population Losses in the 20th Century: A Reference. Key Civilian Dead Military Dead Deaths as % of 1940 population

In the Western popular imagination -- particularly the American one -- World War II is a conflict we won. It was fought on the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima, through the rubble of recaptured French towns and capped by sepia-toned scenes of joy and young love in New York. It was a victory shaped by the steeliness of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the moral fiber of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and the awesome power of an atomic bomb.

On 7 May 1945, Germany signed an unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in Reims, France, to take effect the following day, ending the second world war in Europe. In this gallery, we look back at VE Day and the events leading up to Germany's surrender.

The unmistakable roar of American warplanes that helped the Allies win World War II will thunder over Washington on Friday to mark the 70th anniversary of Nazi Germany's defeat. From 12:10 pm (1610 GMT), for 45 minutes, 56 restored "warbirds" will fly in formation down the Potomac River, past the Lincoln Memorial and over the National Mall, the nation's symbolic front lawn. Up to 10,000 people are expected to watch the spectacle -- including 300 to 500 of the last surviving veterans of the 1939-45 conflict that the United States entered in December 1941 with the Japanese attack on Pearl...

Part I. The Pacific in Eruption. A segment on the WWII Battle of Coral Sea from the series War in the Pacific.

A series of incredible photographs showing more than 150 lost World War Two aircraft 130-feet under the Pacific Ocean has been released. The stunning images show the planes surrounded by coral and fish as they lie - sometimes vertically - on the seabed more than seven decades after they were dumped there. The find includes historic American aircraft including Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers, F4U Corsair and TBF/TBM Avengers.Amazingly, many of the planes have remained intact, with only a few broken tails and wings littering the floor. Brandi Mueller, from Cameron, Wisconsin, discovered the planes while scuba diving around five...

The reputation of a disgraced wartime navy captain has been restored, thanks to the discoveries of a documentary featuring the finder of the Titanic. For more than 60 years, Captain Herbert G. Claudius was blamed for letting a Nazi U-boat ‘get away’, after it sank the Robert E. Lee passenger freighter in the Gulf of Mexico in 1942. But an undersea expedition – aided by Dr Robert Ballard who rediscovered the Titanic 30 years ago – has revealed the first published pictures of the submarine’s wreckage, showing how bombs dropped by Cpt Claudius’ crew successfully sunk the attacker U-166. ........

"Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces, Reims: Nazi General Jodl, representing Admiral Doenitz, strides into the 'war room' where Allied Generals await him and his party. After the surrender terms are understood, Jodl fills a third of a page with his scrawly signature, this his associates sign. U.S. General W. B. Smith the Allied Chief of Staff signs as do the remainder of the Allied Generals. In an adjoining room, General Eisenhower, wreathed in smiles, forms the signature pens into a V for Victory sign. Unconditional surrender is an accomplished fact." scenes of peace signed at red scholhouse in Reims, France,...

Welcome to Jamie's Journeys! Join Regent Seven Seas cruise director and adventurer Jamie Logan as he travels to this this small but heavily fortified island which was the site of one of the great battles during WWII. Here American and Filipino forces held off the Imperial Japanese Navy which delayed their advance and saved Australia from invasion. See the incredible remains of this battle torn island!

"The Filipinos did most of the fighting and most of the dying..." This tells the "true story" behind the "forgotten war" of Bataan and Corregidor -- savage battles that violently hurled falsely reassured Filipinos and an ill-prepared Philippines into the Second World War in the Pacific. Produced by the Department of National Defense of the Philippines and the Philippines Veterans Affairs Office this series of videos documents the outstanding courage, heroism and nobility of Filipinos regardless the inevitable fall of the country to the unrelenting Imperial Japanese military juggernaut. An outcome inevitably irreversible despite the fierce resistance of the mostly...

Battle of the Coral Sea - Lest We Forget The Coral Sea holds great historical significance for Australia and the United States. In May 1942, it was the scene of a naval battle that reversed the tide of World War II in the Pacific. The Protect Our Coral Sea campaign has produced an 8-minute documentary in honour of those who fought and died in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Special thanks to veterans Tommy Simms and Ted Simpson and their families and naval historian Dr David Stevens and everyone else involved with this documentary for their contribution.

Seventy years ago, then-British prime minister Winston Churchill declared May 8, 1945, to be "Victory in Europe Day" after a gruelling five-year war against Nazi Germany and its allies. The day before, people had already started celebrating amid news that Hitler had committed suicide in his so-called Fuehrerbunker in Berlin days prior, and Germany has surrendered unconditionally. Canada celebrated, too. It had joined the war effort early, with its first troops departing for Europe at the end of 1939. More than one million Canadians performed full-time duty during the war. They fought in the raid on Dieppe and at Juno...

A group of 187 scholars of Japanese and East Asian studies have called on Japan to accurately address its history of colonial rule and wartime actions, particularly the so-called “comfort women” who were forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels. In a letter sent Monday to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the group, including Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Dower and Ezra Vogel, professor emeritus of history at Harvard University and author of the 1979 best-seller “Japan As No. 1: Lessons for America,” said the ability to celebrate 70 years of peace between Japan and its neighbors was being undermined by...

The last known surviving member of the German engineering team that designed the rocket that took US astronauts to the Moon has died in Alabama. Oscar Holderer, who was 95, suffered a stroke last week and did not recover, his son Michael said. Mr Holderer was one of about 120 engineers who moved to the US after World War Two, bringing technology used in the German V2 rocket. They played a key role in the Saturn V rocket used in the 1969 Moon landing. The team, led by Wernher von Braun, was part of a project called Operation Paperclip that...

That's how it looked like just after the Second World War in Berlin! Fascinating moving pictures in color show the situation of the city in summer 1945, just after the Second World War and the capitulation of Germany. Daily life after years of war. Pictures from the destroyed city, the Reichstag, Brandenburger Tor, Adlon, Führerbunker, Unter den Linden, rubble women working in the streets, the tram is running again. A collage of archive material produced by: Kronos Media

The Battle of the Coral Sea was fought between the Japanese and Allied navies from May 4 through May 8, 1942 in the Coral Sea, about 500 miles northeast of Australia. Occurring only six months after the surprise Japanese attack on American forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and a month before the decisive battle at Midway, it was one of the first naval battles fought in the Pacific during World War II. The battle, roughly a draw, was an important turning point in the Pacific campaign. My uncle, Bill Leu, fought at the Battle of the Coral Sea on the...

Seventy-three years ago today. Here's some covers in commemoration, with the last report sent by Irving Strobing, who survived the war. A nice detailed of the report here. Right up to the end we kicked butt and took names. [excerpt] The Americans and Filipinos on shore, unaware of the confusion in the Japanese ranks and still reeling under the effects of the bombardment, met the enemy with every weapon they could muster. One 2-gun 75-mm. battery near the tail of the island, just east of North Point, had never disclosed its position and it opened fire, together with some 37-mm....

For 70 years now, anniversaries of the end of the Second World War in Europe -- the "Good War" -- have neglected to reckon with another milestone: the approximate anniversary of Operation Keelhaul, the Allied operation that forcibly repatriated literally millions of people, Soviet-claimed anti-Communists in the Western war zones at war's end, to Stalin's Gulag or the firing squad. You've never heard of such a thing? You are not alone. From American Betrayal, pp. 232-236: ********** In contemporary terms, “repatriation” was a policy of reverse “ethnic cleansing” that scrubbed Western Europe of displaced or captured Russians and other nationals...

Moscow, May 5, Interfax - The remains of Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolayevich Romanov and his spouse Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolayevna have been reburied in Moscow to the sound of funeral tunes and artillery gun firings. The remains of the princely couple arrived from France on April 27 and were reburied at the Chapel of the Transfiguration at a military cemetery in the Russian capital. "The Duke and the Duchess have returned to their Homeland, their names are acquiring a worthy place in the Russian public memory," State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin, who chairs the Russian Historical Society, said at the...

Freely downloadable at the Internet Archive, where I first uploaded it. 1942 U.S. Army Film Bulletin #15 "Your Army In The Making." National Archives description: "On army maneuvers in North and South Carolina, 1941. Consists mostly of brief scenes of representative activities by various branches, corps,