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This month, President Obama will become the first incumbent American president to visit the Japanese city of Hiroshima since the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945. That bomb - and a second atomic blast on Nagasaki on Aug. 9 - effectively ended World War II; Japan surrendered six days after the Hiroshima bombing. However, the human costs were huge. Estimates of those killed go as high as 150,000, and even for those who survived, it was a hellish, life-altering experience. [Snip] In the first Gallup poll from 1945 just after the bombings, a huge 85...

Reuters The march of the "immortal regiment," in which Russians from all ages and walks of life carry pictures of ancestors who fought, was meant to allow Russians to highlight their forebears' role in beating back the Nazis during WWII. But it has grown immensely in popularity and prominence since then. Today it is a vast torrent that fills the streets of every Russian city and has since spread to over a dozen other countries, including nine US cities this year, according to Russian media. This year it almost eclipsed the more familiar official military parade, in which thousands of...

1 . On hearing the news on the radio, anxious Brits began the celebration on May 7 - without waiting for the official party the following day. People went out on the streets, hung bunting and began dancing. 2. King George VI and the Queen appeared a total of eight times on the balcony of Buckingham Palace during the official celebrations on May 8. 3. Half a million homes had been destroyed across Britain during the war 4. The initial suggestion for the Armistice Day silence came from Percy FitzPatrick, a South African author and politician, who was inspired by...

President Obama may visit Hiroshima when he travels to Japan late this month for a summit of key industrialized nations, but he will not apologize for the World War II decision to destroy that city with an atomic bomb, the White House said Monday. Asked by Yahoo News whether Obama believes Japan deserves a formal apology for the August 6, 1945, bombing, White House press secretary Josh Earnest replied: “No, he does not.” …

A 94-year-old former SS sergeant admitted in court Friday that he had served as an Auschwitz death camp guard, apologizing to Nazi Holocaust survivors looking on in a German courtroom that even though he was aware Jews were being gassed and their corpses burned, he did nothing to try to stop it. Reinhold Hanning told the Detmould state court that he had never spoken about his service in Auschwitz from January 1942 to June 1944, even to his family, but wanted to use his trial as an opportunity to set the record straight. "I want to say that it disturbs...

After a commemoration organized by the Jewish Communities last week [April 15, 2016] and the official state commemoration on Friday [April 22], the third commemoration takes place at Jasenovac camp.

One week after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt began pressing the U.S. military to immediately strike the Japanese homeland. The desire to bolster moral became more urgent in light of rapid Japanese advances. These included victories in Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines, Wake Island, Guam, and the Dutch East Indies, as well as sinking the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse. Only improbable, audacious ideas warranted consideration, because submarines confirmed Japan placed picket boats at extreme carrier aircraft range. One idea even involved launching four engine heavy bombers from China or Outer Mongolia to strike Japan and fly on to Alaska....

The head of Britain's digital espionage agency has apologized for the organization's historic prejudice against homosexuals, saying it failed to learn from the treatment of World War II codebreaker Alan Turing. In a rare public speech, GCHQ chief Robert Hannigan told a gathering organized by the rights group Stonewall that the agency's ban on homosexuals had caused long-lasting psychological damage to many and hurt the agency because talented people were excluded from working there. "The fact that it was common practice for decades reflected the intolerance of the times and the pressures of the Cold War, but it does not...

On April 11, John Kerry became the first Secretary of State to pay his respects to at Hiroshima’s memorial to those who died when the atomic bomb was dropped on that city on August 6, 1945. That event, and the dropping of a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki on August 9, brought a victorious and rapid end to World War II, and a Japanese surrender 6 days after Nagasaki, saving potentially millions of casualties on both sides if the U.S. had been forced to invade the Japanese home islands. Kerry’s statement during the visit, as reported by...

...Gross was questioned after multiple complaints were filed with prosecutors by Polish citizens over an article published in 2015 in which Gross said Poles killed more Jews than Germans during the German occupation – a claim that challenges a widespread conviction in Poland that the Polish response was almost exclusively honourable. Gross made the comparison in an article published by Project Syndicate in September critical of how Poland and other eastern European countries have reacted to the migrant crisis. He decried as “heartless” the region’s opposition to accepting refugees and argued that the attitude was rooted in the region’s “murderous...

Our new motto: Strength through moral equivalenceWhen John Kerry toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum this week before meeting foreign ministers at the G-7 Summit, Reuters reports that he had witnessed “haunting displays [of] photographs of badly burned victims, the tattered and stained clothes they wore and statues depicting them with flesh melting from their limbs.” “It is a stunning display. It is a gut-wrenching display,” explained Kerry. “It is a reminder of the depth of the obligation every one of us in public life carries … to create and pursue a world free from nuclear weapons.” Iran exempted,...

The U-2513 is what's known as a Type 21 German U-boat. In the 1940s, the Type 21 was a secret weapon that threatened to change the course of two wars: WWII, and then later, the Cold War. During WWII, German hopes were riding on it, and the Allies were terrified of it. After the war, the British, Americans, and Russians couldn't wait to get their hands on it. It was a weapon that had the potential to change the balance of world power and determine the outcome of the Cold War. Join our Deep Sea Detectives, John Chatterton and Richie...

THE Bismarck, the German battleship which sank with the loss of more than 2,000 sailors, was scuttled by her own crew, according to a news docu-mentary to be screened this weekend. The Second World War flagship, the pride of Hitler’s naval fleet, sank so quickly that it must have been deliberately aimed at the ocean floor by desperate commanders, according to the programme, made by the Titanic film director, James Cameron. Semi-crippled after an aircraft-launched torpedo knocked out her rudder, the Bismarck was hounded across the Atlantic by a chasing British naval pack. Then, on 27 May, 1941, in what...

Seventy-two years after eight airmen in the B-24 Liberator Hot as Hell crashed in violent weather over India during World War II, part of the crew began their final journey home after a full-honors ceremony Wednesday, April 13, 2016, at Air Force Station Palam in New Delhi, India. TARA COPP/STARS AND STRIPES AIR FORCE STATION PALAM, NEW DELHI, India — Seventy-two years after eight airmen in the B-24 Liberator Hot as Hell crashed in violent weather over India, part of the crew has begun the final journey home. In a full-honors ceremony Wednesday at New Delhi’s airport, Secretary of Defense...

When John Kerry toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum this week before meeting foreign ministers at the G-7 Summit, Reuters reports that he had witnessed “haunting displays [of] photographs of badly burned victims, the tattered and stained clothes they wore and statues depicting them with flesh melting from their limbs.” “It is a stunning display. It is a gut-wrenching display,” explained Kerry. “It is a reminder of the depth of the obligation every one of us in public life carries … to create and pursue a world free from nuclear weapons.” Iran exempted, of course. But, really, is this...

A great-grandfather has celebrated his 100th birthday with a skydive from 10,000ft (3,000m). D-Day veteran Verdun Hayes made the jump at Dunkeswell Airfield near Honiton, Devon, to raise money for the North Devon Hospice.

In the early 1940s, the U.S. Navy still expected to need huge, first rate battleships to fight the best that Japan and Germany had to offer. The North Carolina, South Dakota, and Iowa-class battleships all involved design compromises. The Montanas, the last battleships designed by the U.S. Navy, would not.

Monday in Holy Week, 1937 ... ... was the day when the Gestapo raided diocesan offices and presbyteries all over Germany. The previous day, Palm Sunday, when the churches were packed, priests all over Germany had read publicly the Encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge [=With Burning Sorrow?] of the Holy Father Pope Pius XI [thanks to Fr Ray for reminding us]. It had been smuggled into Germany in the Nuncio's Diplomatic Bag and secretly printed (as when the secret press was thumping away in the attic of Stonor House to produce S Edmund Campion's Decem Rationes); secretly distributed by special couriers...

At 0930 hours on 18 Mar 1938, at the mountain village of Brennero in the Brenner Pass, Italian Alpine troops welcomed the arrival of Benito Mussolini and Galeazzo Ciano by train. As snow drifted down heavily, Adolf Hitler and Joachim von Ribbentrop arrived, also by train. Ciano escorted Hitler and Ribbentrop toward Mussolini's train car over red carpet. The subsequent meeting lasted two hours and twelve minutes; after which, they each returned to their capitals. The two parties discussed potential plans for future joint-aggression, but to the public they offered terms to maintain peace in Europe.

General Draza Mihailovich Belgrade 1946 The famous bridge over the Drina River in Visegrad, Bosnia. Photo: Creative Commons Aleksandra's note: 70 years ago, on the night of March 12-13, 1946 near Visegrad in Bosnia, the town made famous by Ivo Andric's classic novel "The Bridge on the Drina" published in 1945, the most decorated Serbian military officer and leader of the first successful uprising against the Nazis in all of occupied Europe was finally captured by the Yugoslav communist special security agents (OZNA) loyal to Marshal Josip Broz Tito after a long manhunt. A short time later the Yugoslav communists...