Free Republic

<p>In Russia, many unaware people dream of a new era of expansion.</p> <p>It won't happen.</p> <p>Stalin is gone. Capitalism is not.</p> <p>Russia is far more inferior by technological and overall societal standards than most Russians are willing to realize.</p> <p>The Soviet Union of the late 1930's and early 1940's were ridiculed in combat by "tiny" Finland.</p>

'Five thousand Irish soldiers who swapped uniforms to fight for the British against Hitler went on to suffer years of persecution. One of them, 92-year-old Phil Farrington, took part in the D-Day landings and helped liberate the German death camp at Bergen-Belsen - but he wears his medals in secret. Even to this day, he has nightmares that he will be arrested by the authorities and imprisoned for his wartime service. "They would come and get me, yes they would," he said in a frail voice at his home in the docks area of Dublin. And his 25-year-old grandson, Patrick,...

CHINLE - Funeral services were held Tuesday for a Navajo Code Talker who used his native language to confound the Japanese and help win World War II. Billy Crosby died last week, according to tribal officials. He was 85. -----

(NATIONAL CEMETERY OF THE PACIFIC – HONOLULU) It looked strange from the moment we pulled up to the Punchbowl, a sacred Hawaiian site once the location for human sacrifice before Cook's arrival to the islands. Our tour bus, filled with 23 WWII Pearl Harbor survivors as part of The Greatest Generations Foundation came to the beautiful location in an old crater above downtown Honolulu for a closing ceremony and presentation. The National Cemetery of the Pacific pays tribute to those veterans of all faiths who served their country, many who lost their lives during WWII. I admit I was not...

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When the Japanese fighters and bombers passed like shadows over the waters of Hawaii, they carried more than bombs and bullets, their fleeting shadows marked the end of over a century of security. The last time an enemy army threatened American territory was in the early nineteenth century, since then the closest thing had been the vicious clowning of Pancho Villa. But in the nineteenth century Commodore Perry had come calling to end Japan's isolation and nearly ninety years later, the Japanese warplanes came to end America's isolation. That isolation had been crumbling throughout the twentieth century as presidents began...

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — A snafu marred the critical moment of silence Wednesday at the Pearl Harbor ceremony observing the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack.... ...But on Wednesday, emcee Leslie Wilcox was still speaking at 7:55 a.m., even as the Hawaii Air National Guard's F-22's roared overhead on schedule 42 seconds later.

At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time (12:55 p.m. EST) on December 7, 1941, Japanese fighter planes attacked the U.S. base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, launching one of the deadliest attacks in American history. The assault, which lasted less than two hours, claimed the lives of more than 2,500 people, wounded 1,000 more and damaged or destroyed 18 American ships and nearly 300 airplanes. Almost half of the casualties at Pearl Harbor occurred on the naval battleship USS Arizona, which was hit four times by Japanese bombers. As we commemorate the 70th anniversary of this “date which will live in infamy,” as...

by John HillStand With Arizona Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Congress, 12/08/1941 The Dec. 7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor and those who lost their lives that day are being remembered today on the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack that brought the U.S. into World War II. About 120 survivors will join the Navy Secretary, military leaders and civilians to observe a moment of silence...

Brief audio of the announcement

Nearly half the residents of the German city of Koblenz are being forced to leave their homes this weekend after the discovery of a 2-ton, unexploded World War II bomb, marking the biggest bomb-related evacuation in Germany's post-war history. Some 45,000 residents of the Rhineland city—including those in a jail, two hospitals and several nursing homes and hotels—are under orders to evacuate by Sunday, when a bomb-disposal squad plans to defuse the 10-foot bomb dropped by British fliers, most likely in a 1944 bombing raid. Found lodged in the bed of the ebbing Rhine River earlier this week, the bomb...

Almost half the German city of Koblenz is under evacuation orders as experts prepare to defuse a two-ton ‘Blockbuster’ RAF bomb in the Rhine. The 10ft bomb, one of the biggest in the wartime arsenal of Bomber Command, was discovered after 65 years when the river level dropped during the driest November on record.

My Grandfather was a Marine in the South Pacific in WWII. My Mom has no details as he never talked about his experiences. I would like to know where was posted, etc. Can anybody help me with this? Thanks.

Seventy years ago this month, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and brought America into a war that had begun in Europe in 1939. In his masterful new book "December 1941: 31 Days That Changed America and Saved the World," Craig Shirley takes readers back to a very different America. Through hundreds of stories and advertisements culled from newspapers, Shirley not only transports us back to that tumultuous time, but reminds this generation that denial about an enemy's intentions can have grave consequences. Each chapter in the book deals with a single day of December 1941. We go to the movies...

Adolf Hitler stayed in Liverpool for five months before World War I in a flat which was destroyed by Luftwaffe bombers in the Second World War 30 years later, according to a new research. The then 23-year-old shared the flat with his married half-brother Alois Hitler Jnr in Toxteth from November 1912 to April 1913. During his stay, he wandered around the city and relaxed in the Poste House pub relishing pints. NAZI Fuhrer also enjoyed a sightseeing tour of London and was so fascinated by Tower Bridge that he bribed his way into the engine room so he could...

ANAHEIM – He was beaten. Marched before a firing squad. Starved at Buchenwald. Only a small twist of fate saved him – four days before the Nazis planned to execute him. They have survived Buchenwald. But the world isn't ready to hear it. After the war, they are told to not speak about it. The official U.S. stance was that no American POWs went to Buchenwald. "We were still negotiating certain things with the Germans," says Dorsey, of Temecula. "The government didn't want to upset people by saying U.S. servicemen were held in concentration camps."

Thank goodness for those among us who remain vigilant against the lies... Review: “Tito’s War” by John Brown, World War II History Magazine, November, 2011, Volume 10, No. 7, pp. 54-61. Review by Carl Savich In the November, 2011 issue of the military history magazine "World War II History", published in Herndon, Virginia, an article entitled “Tito’s War” by Australian author John Brown purports to chronicle the conflict in Yugoslavia between Draza Mihailovich’s Chetnik guerrillas and Josip Broz Tito’s Communist Partisans during World War II. This account is fake. It is a phony history of World War II. John Brown...

They are the images usually only seen in black and white - a fitting hue for the gloom of a 1940s America engaged in World War II and having just experienced the Great Depression. But these vivid photographs in glorious colour show better than ever what life on the United States home front was really like as war raged in Europe and the Pacific. From a Californian female aircraft worker focused on checking electrical wiring, to children rolling potatoes into a barrel on a farmyard in Maine - the pictures illustrate the significant role of those not on the battle...

When this day rolls around annually, it's difficult to pick a single unit, battle or warrior to honor. And despite all attempts, the story is only fractionally told. Truly all Veterans, from all wars, are to be honored, respected and given heartfelt thanks for their contributions to our freedoms. But this year I decided to zero in on Patton's Tiger's Division, serving in his Third Army, and single out only one of their remarkable accomplishments…Combat Command B's Herculean efforts in WWII's Siege of Bastogne in the war's largest, and bloodiest, battle - the Ardennes-Alsace campaign. Or as it is...

BENBROOK -- Working a .50-caliber gun from the top turret of a B-24 Liberator, Dale Hulsey fought in one of the most dramatic air battles in U.S. history and still the single most decorated mission in Air Force history. He survived the bombing run and the anti-aircraft fire, survived a crash landing when a German fighter jumped his plane, survived a frantic run into the woods to evade the enemy who had seen the bomber go down. He survived 319 days on the run by linking up with Marshal Tito's Yugoslav partisans, survived a brutal winter in the mountains and...