Free Republic

"It is the greatest success in the history of American foreign policy," Mark Stoler, editor of the George C. Marshall Papers in Lexington, Va. "And it plays to the best American instincts — helping those in need. "In the process, it clearly turned America into the world's superpower. It was the key component of American Cold War strategy. And it was an immediate psychological booster shot to Europe. Marshall's message was: 'Here is a lifeline that you can take advantage of. America is going to be the leader here and accept that mantel of leadership.'" Georges Bidault, France's prime minister...

In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization—in effect a second Russian revolution—which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least five million people died between 1931 and 1933 in the USSR. But instead of sending relief the Soviet state made use of the catastrophe to rid itself of a political problem. In Red Famine, Anne Applebaum argues that more than three million of those dead were Ukrainians who perished not because they were accidental victims of a bad policy but because...

One of the things that always strikes contemporary visitors to Russia is the lack of monuments to the victims of Stalin's execution squads and concentration camps. There are a few scattered memorials, but no national monument or place of mourning. Worse, 15 years after glasnost, 10 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there have been no trials, no truth and reconciliation commissions, no government inquiries into what happened in the past, and no public debate. This was not always the case. During the 1980s, when glasnost was just beginning in Russia, Gulag survivors' memoirs sold millions of copies,...

Japan has conveyed its concern to the U.S. government that a statement made by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson could contradict an agreement with South Korea over the “comfort women,” sources close to the matter said. “It’s one that only they can resolve,” Tillerson told reporters this month after a 20-nation ministerial meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. “And we know that there’s more that needs to be done,” he said, referring to the issue of the Korean girls and women who were forced into Japan’s military brothels before and during the war. Tokyo has told Washington that Tillerson’s words could...

The Red Army's defeat of Nazi German forces on Polish soil in 1944-1945 remains a thorny issue in Russian-Polish relations. Many Poles viewed the Red Army as an occupation force, not as liberators, as the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact had carved up Poland between two dictatorships. Poland updated its "de-communisation" legislation, banning "totalitarian" symbols, which would include Soviet propaganda monuments. The Russian foreign ministry condemned the new Polish "de-communisation" law as "an outrageous provocation", and warned of unspecified "consequences". "The USSR paid the highest price to liberate Poland - on that country's soil, in battles with the enemy, more than 600,000...

“Beetle Bailey” comic strip artist Mort Walker died Saturday at age 94, his family said. According to his oldest son, Greg, who partnered with his father on that venerable cartoon take on the military life, the elder Walker died of old age at his home in Stanford, Conn. Walker was part of more than a half-dozen comic strips in his career, including "Hi and Lois," ''Boner's Ark" and "Sam & Silo." But his greatest success came from Beetle, his hot-tempered sergeant and the rest of the gang at fictional Camp Swampy, which he drew for nearly 70 years. After an...

The Soviet armies advancing into East Prussia in January 1945, in huge, long columns, were an extraordinary mixture of modern and medieval: tank troops in padded black helmets, Cossack cavalrymen on shaggy mounts with loot strapped to the saddle, lend-lease Studebakers and Dodges towing light field guns, and then a second echelon in horse-drawn carts. The variety of character among the soldiers was almost as great as that of their military equipment. There were freebooters who drank and raped quite shamelessly, and there were idealistic, austere communists and members of the intelligentsia appalled by such behaviour. Beria and Stalin, back...

"Heroes are not to be criticized..." The official Soviet narrative of the Second World War used the concept of heroism to imbue war commemoration with an obligation towards the State. Such a concept was designed to make subsequent generations feel inferior to their predecessors and obliged to give of their best. Today, the victory serves as the strongest connection between Soviet and modern Russian patriotism. The paper argues that the memory of the Siege of Leningrad (1941-1944) as treated in museums in St Petersburg today is an appropriation by present-day Russian propaganda of the Soviet narrative. Soviet memorial sites are...

The casket sat at the front of the chapel, wrapped with an American flag, containing the remains of a soldier who had died seven decades earlier. It had taken a long time to find Army Pfc. Lonnie B.C. Eichelberger - who enlisted at age 16 and died in World War II at age 20 - but the military had found him. And now, under a gray Texas sky, he was going to be buried in home soil. Descendants could feel a sense of closure. The mantra of "no soldier left behind" was going to feel true.Soft music played through...

In The Long Hangover, Shaun Walker provides a deeply reported, bottom-up explanation of Russia's resurgence under Putin. By cleverly exploiting the memory of the Soviet victory over fascism in World War II, Putin's regime has made ordinary Russians feel that their country is great again. Shaun Walker provides new insight into contemporary Russia and its search for a new identity, telling the story through the country's troubled relationship with its Soviet past. Walker not only explains Vladimir Putin's goals and the government's official manipulations of history, but also focuses on ordinary Russians and their motivations. He charts how Putin raised...

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, plunging the United States into World War II, Jerry Yellin was a teenager living with his family in Hillside, N.J. Having been intrigued by flight since he was a youngster — he constructed planes modeled on World War I aircraft — he joined the Army Air Corps in February 1942, on his 18th birthday, and became a fighter pilot.

Żołnierz drogą maszerował... (Tę kolędę tę jedyną/ śpiewam dla Ciebie, Dziecino) Kolęda żołnierska [Soldier Marched Down The Road: This Carol, This Only One / I'm Singing For Thee, Baby Jesus] [The Polish soldier’s Christmas carol] - Chór 4 Asy [Choir 4 Aces] Melodje, 1946 (Polish) NOTE: This Soldier’s Carol from wintter 1945 was written as a Christmas Carol by an unknown author to the melody of a well known Polish partisan song: Żołnierz drogą maszerował (A Soldier Marched Down The Road). Text of this carol describes the meeting of a young Polish soldier with the Infant Jesus. The soldier turns...

Well, one of my favorites. It is the story from WW2 and the Battle of the Bulge where US and Germans got together.

This page has a quotation from Adolf Hitler, which hardly seems consistent with the standard Christmas story: All nature is a gigantic struggle between strength and weakness, an eternal victory of the strong over the weak. —Adolf Hitler

Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour butchers history to make the British prime minister a much less decisive figure than he actually was. Because an irresolute and small-minded age applies its own neuroses backward to history, because actors love to portray internal torment, and because we fancy ourselves so sophisticated that we know the official story of the past to be a ruse, movies about important historical figures have become less inspiring and “more human,” at times even iconoclastic... Now it’s Churchill’s turn to be shrunken down to a more manageable size. In Darkest Hour, which is set across May and June...

his U.S. territory in the western Pacific is known for its epic World War II battle, white-sand beaches and the enduring culture of its indigenous Chamorro people. But for a certain class of Chinese parents, Saipan has become known as the latest hot spot for birth tourism, a place where women can give birth to babies who will automatically acquire U.S. citizenship.

As six Pearl Harbor veterans stood by his side, President Trump signed a presidential proclamation from the White House Thursday recognizing December 7 as National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. One of the survivors of the surpise attack, Michael Ganitch, who was also wearing a bright Hawaiian shirt for the occasion, broke out into song with "Remember Pearl Harbor" during the president's remarks. "What can I say? Wow that was good -- he's a very shy person too," Mr. Trump joked as Ganitch finished the song. The president praised each of the six veterans as heroes, thanking them for their service...

Local residents recall date that will live in infamy SIERRA VISTA — Thomas Stoney Sr. still vividly remembers the paper that morning. It was a copy of the News and Courier, a paper his older brother, Oliver, delivered in his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina. His father had it on the kitchen counter that Sunday morning, where Stoney could catch a glimpse of the shocking news splashed across the front page. “The big headline: The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and it was an extra edition,” Stoney recalled Wednesday at his Sierra Vista home 76 years later. At the time, Dec....

President Franklin Roosevelt called December 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy.” On that day, Japanese planes attacked the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. The bombing killed more than 2,400 Americans. It completely destroyed the American battleship U.S.S. Arizona and capsized the U.S.S. Oklahoma. The attack brought the United States into World War II. The attack sank or beached a total of twelve ships and damaged nine others. 160 aircraft were destroyed and 150 others damaged. The attack took the country by surprise, especially the ill-prepared Pearl Harbor base. December 7, 2017 marks the 76th anniversary...

We were having an 8 a.m. coffee with family in their home on the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam when the music started.Ringing through the morning, as happens every day here and on U.S. military bases around the world, was the melody of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”“O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,“What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming …”As the song plays, people strolling through the neighborhood freeze in their steps, cars pull to the side of the road, and even children stop playing and stand tall, exactly as they have been taught, to honor...