Free Republic

Most Americans have never spent a day in uniform in America of 2016 and that is a problem. The White House social engineers have been able to manipulate the Congress and the American people and have led them to believe that women can serve successfully in the combat arms and special operations because most Americans don’t understand anything about the military. Combine the ignorance of a nation, with the political correctness of Congress and the moral cowardice of the Joint Chiefs and it’s open season to destroy the military if your Valerie Jarrett, Ray Mabus, Ash Carter or Barack Hussein...

Full title :Heartwarming moment World War II veteran, 94, is reunited with man he saved from Nazi concentration camp in 1945 A 94-year-old World War II veteran was reunited with one of the prisoners he helped liberate from the Dachau concentration camp. Retired U.S. Army corporal Sid Shafner said he was among the first Allied troops to reach the Nazi camp in April 1945, and that he is the last surviving member of his unit. His tearful reunion with Marcel Levy, 90, who was a teenager when he was liberated, came during a recent tour of Europe and Israel. 'You...

Tokyo (AFP) - Victims of the atomic bombings of Japan want an apology from US President Barack Obama when he visits Hiroshima next week, the head of a survivors' group said Thursday. Obama will become the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima, where the first atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, killing about 140,000 people in total. Tens of thousands were killed by the fireball that the powerful Hiroshima blast generated, with many more succumbing to injuries or illnesses caused by radiation in the weeks, months and years afterwards. Vast swathes of the city, including many of...

Fully sixteen years after the State of Texas began honoring its military heroes with the Texas Legislative Medal of Honor, the most decorated combat soldier of World War II was finally recognized by Governor Rick Perry and the Texas legislature. Born in the Lone Star State in 1924, the 5'6", 130lb Audie Leon Murphy was told he was too small to make it in the Navy or the US Marines. So the baby-faced, underaged Texan enlisted in the Army and in early 1942 was shipped to North Africa as part of the Third Infantry Division. And in 3 years of...

In 1939, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier warned Adolf Hitler that if the Third Reich invaded Poland, a European war would follow. Both leaders insisted that they meant it. But Hitler thought that after getting away with militarizing the Rhineland, annexing Austria and dismantling Czechoslovakia, the Allied appeasers were once again just bluffing. England and France declared war two days after Hitler entered Poland. Once hard-won deterrence is lost, it is almost impossible to restore credibility without terrible costs and danger. Last week, Russian officials warned the Obama administration about the installation of a...

___________________________________________________ Please help to ID my "new" weapon. Backstory: I recently received this beautiful Colt's revolver as an early inheritance from my mother's estate. The accepted mythology is this: My stepfather was a navigator on a B-17 and later a B-24 and it is known that he was crew on USAAF battle missions over Jap held islands in the Pacific - throughout the entire Pacific War. What is less known is a little more about this issued firearm. There is no stamping of caliber anywhere on the pistol. On the top of the barrel is a rather careless stamping...

I knew the day might come. The news still hurt. The daughter of an amazing war hero called the other night to say her father was dying. An overnight email a day later told me that Norman "Dusty" Kleiss, 100 years old, hero of the Battle of Midway, had died Friday. He was the last surviving dive-bomber from the sea battle that turned the tide of World War II. In discussing Dusty with his daughter, we agreed it was as if the pilot was determined to reach the age of 100 before his health faded. Several weeks ago, there was...

The White House announcement Tuesday that President Obama plans to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park during his trip to Japan later this month undoubtedly will prompt much debate over President Truman’s decision to use atomic weapons in August 1945. Ben Rhodes, a deputy national-security adviser, wrote online Tuesday that the president will reflect on the site’s significance but “will not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II.” That claim is disingenuous. To be the first U.S. president to visit Hiroshima is to spark re-evaluations of Truman’s action and invite speculation that...

TOKYO (AP) -- Japanese are welcoming President Barack Obama's decision to visit the atomic-bombed city of Hiroshima, and those interviewed Wednesday said they aren't seeking an apology. Even those who want one realize that such a demand would have ruled out a U.S. presidential visit.

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,...