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After my 12year odyssey with the Veterans Administration and compilation of my military records. I decided to request my Fathers Records. My Father Passed away in 1967 at age 48. I was 17 and knew very little about his war time experiences. I knew he served with the 2nd Armored Division under General Patton that he fought in North Africa, Sicily, landed on Normandy and fought till the end of the war. He talked very little about the war. The response I received from the VA was that his records were destroyed in a fire in the records division in...

The classic History Channel documentary series. This episode: Japanese Guns of WWII.

Stolen Nazi gold may be in German cavern Last Updated: 3:11am GMT 20/02/2008 Treasure hunters claim they have may have found a haul of looted Nazi gold said to be part of a Russian collection that was dubbed the "eighth wonder of the world" before it was stolen. The resting place of the Amber Room treasures was reportedly made at the weekend near the German village of Deutschneudorf. Tests showed a man-made cavern 20 metres below ground that contained a large amount of precious metals. Treasure hunter Christian Hanisch [left] and Heinz-Peter Haustein at the site where the gold is...

Fate of Russia's lost art treasure revealed after 60-year cover-up John Ezard, arts correspondent Saturday May 22, 2004 The Guardian (UK) Steven Spielberg would have called it Indiana Jones and the Eighth Wonder, and supplied a happy ending. In a damp cellar, guarded by deadly snakes and senile but savage SS men, the holy grail of Russian art treasures would triumphantly have been liberated. According to evidence disclosed today in Guardian Weekend, the truth is more squalid. Peter the Great's 18th century Amber Room, rated as the world's prime missing art treasure, valued at £150m, perished in the chaos of...

In the old times there were two suns above the Earth. Unfortunately one got broken to pieces; the pieces dropped into the ocean that now casts bits of "the solar stone" ashore. People call these pieces amber. It is a nice legend about amber; it slightly reminds of the story of creation, loss and restoration of the famous amber chamber in Tsarskoye Selo. One woman from the Russian city of Rostov was one of the first people who believed that the amber chamber could be restored. What is more, she made first considerable contribution into the reconstruction process. In 1976,...

<p>Hidden for now behind a white screen from the prying eyes of visitors to Catherine Palace, the painstakingly re-created Amber Room glows with the yellows, oranges, reds of the late-afternoon sun. Intricately carved frames of amber showcase four elaborate mosaic pictures made of semiprecious stones. Amber roses and amber people and amber landscapes festoon the walls.</p> <p>It is, as museum official Yuri Dumashin put it today while marveling once again at its baroque extravagance, "the world's biggest jewelry box."</p>

CRAFTED entirely out of amber, gold and precious stones, it was a masterpiece of baroque art and widely regarded as the world?s most important art treasure. When its 565 candles were lit, the famous Amber Room was said to glow a fiery gold. Looted by the Nazis , its whereabouts have been a mystery since the dying days of the Second World War. But now a new German investigation believes it has found where the treasure, worth £120 million today, lies - in abandoned mine workings in the former East Germany. One of the few facts all historians seem to...

Image: via Food Court LunchAmong the chaos of the collapse of Hitler’s empire in April 1945 the biggest heist in history took place. Gold bars, jewels and stolen foreign currency with an estimated worth of $3.34 billion vanished from the Reichsbank vaults, in Germany.Reichsbank, Berlin 1933Image: German Federal Archive In the ensuing decades small quantities of this bounty have turned up in Portugal, Switzerland, Turkey, Spain and Sweden but the majority remains missing. Across the world search teams look for this missing treasure and the supreme prize of the legendary Amber Room, an acquisition from St. Petersburg during WWII,...

According to Diane Abbott, Britain is facing a crisis of masculinity. In a speech made on Thursday under the auspices of the thinktank Demos, the shadow health minister warned of a generation of angry, inarticulate young men who had no idea of their role in society. Raised on a diet of pornography and consumerism, they were "caught between the stiff-upper-lip approach of previous generations" and the "pornified ideals" of a youth culture that featured Viagra as a party drug and promoted sexism and homophobia.More prone to depression and less well educated than young women, and perhaps jobless despite a degree,...

An outspoken nationalist mayor said the Japanese military's forced prostitution of Asian women before and during World War II was necessary to "maintain discipline" in the ranks and provide rest for soldiers who risked their lives in battle. The comments made Monday are already raising ire in neighboring countries that bore the brunt of Japan's wartime aggression and have long complained that Japan has failed to fully atone for wartime atrocities.

An outspoken nationalist mayor said the Japanese military's forced prostitution of Asian women before and during World War II was necessary to "maintain discipline" in the ranks and provide rest for soldiers who risked their lives in battle. The comments made Monday are already raising ire in neighboring countries that bore the brunt of Japan's wartime aggression and that have long complained that Japan has failed to fully atone for wartime atrocities. Toru Hashimoto, the young, brash mayor of Osaka who is also co-leader of an emerging conservative political party, also told reporters that there wasn't clear evidence that the...

Caked in dust and full of turn-of-the century treasures, this Paris apartment is like going back in time. Having lain untouched for seven decades the abandoned home was discovered three years ago after its owner died aged 91. The woman who owned the flat, a Mrs De Florian, had fled for the south of France before the outbreak of the Second World War. She never returned and in the 70 years since, it looks like no-one had set foot inside.

'Hunched over a wireless set, alone in a safe house in a Parisian suburb on a rainy morning in July 1944, Didi Nearne tapped out a Morse Code message. It contained urgent information from the leader of her Resistance network to intelligence chiefs back in London. The average SOE wireless operator in Occupied France lasted for just six weeks before being arrested. Didi, 21, had survived for five months, making an astonishing 105 transmissions. The questioning began. What was she doing with a wireless set? Didi had her answer ready: she was a simple French girl and had been sending...

Work begins on Friday to raise a unique World War II aircraft from the floor of the English Channel just off the Kent coast. The Dornier 17 aircraft is the last of its kind, and lies in 50ft of water on the Goodwin Sands. The salvage is just the start of a two-year restoration project by the RAF Museum in Hendon. Summer 1940 and Britain stands alone in Europe against seemingly unstoppable German military success. For weeks on end, wave after wave of German aircraft cross the English coast, under orders to destroy the RAF and pave the way for...

A man says he walks his neighborhood with a World War II rifle to pick up garbage and keep the area safe. WCNC reports.

BERLIN — They were feasts of sublime asparagus — laced with fear. And for more than half a century, Margot Woelk kept her secret hidden from the world, even from her husband. Then, a few months after her 95th birthday, she revealed the truth about her wartime role: Adolf Hitler's food taster. Woelk, then in her mid-twenties, spent two and a half years as one of 15 young women who sampled Hitler's food to make sure it wasn't poisoned before it was served to the Nazi leader in his "Wolf's Lair," the heavily guarded command center in what is now...

Alan Wood, a World War II veteran credited with providing the flag in the famous flag-raising on Iwo Jima, has died. He was 90. Wood died April 18 of natural causes at his Sierra Madre home, his son Steven Wood said Saturday. Wood was a 22-year-old Navy officer in charge of communications on a landing ship on Iwo Jima's shores Feb. 23, 1945 when a Marine asked him for the biggest flag that he could find. After five days of fighting to capture the Japanese-held island, U.S. forces had managed to scale Mount Suribachi to hoist an American flag. Wood...

Interrupted Lives: Catholic Sisters Under European CommunismSat. Apr. 27 at 5 PM ET Documentary exploring the plight of Eastern-rite and Latin-rite Sisters under Soviet domination - who lived out their religious vocations underground from the end of WWII to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. BACKGROUND INFORMATION FROM THE USCCB WASHINGTON—Some were nurses. Many were educators. Still others cared for orphans, the elderly, the mentally ill. But all were women religious enduring the communist regime in Eastern Europe after World War II.Their story is told in “Interrupted Lives: Catholic Sisters Under European Communism,” a one-hour documentary. Interrupted...

Former British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill will be featured on a British banknote set to begin circulation in 2016, the Bank of England said. A portrait of Churchill, adapted from a Dec. 30, 1941, photograph taken by Yousuf Karsh, and his famous declaration "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat" will be featured on the five-pound banknote, the BBC reported Friday. Churchill will replace social reformer Elizabeth Fry on the banknote. Bank of England Gov. Sir Mervyn King announced the new banknote from Churchill's former home of Chartwell, in Westerham, Kent. "Our banknotes acknowledge the...

Bob and Sarah Fisher were checking their daughter's homework last week when a social studies assignment caught their attention – it criticized the United States for dropping the atomic bomb during World War Two."Both of our grandfathers were in World War Two and this worksheet makes it seem as if they were the bad guys," Fisher told Fox News.The Fishers have a daughter in eighth grade at Victory Junior High School in New York. They said the anti-American slant in the homework assignment was shocking."As if somehow the Japanese were the victims and that the United States had no right...

The US navy started WW-II with leftover destroyers. The destroyers we were building towards the end of WW-II were vastly more powerful. Two or three of them in groups would amount to something like the secondary (5") battery of an Iowa class battleship. This was with radar, radar fire control, and significant AA capabilities, along with torpedoes and depth charges. In the middle of the campaign to retake the Phillipines, there occurred one of the more astonishing stories I've ever read or heard, in which three such ships basically sailed into Ormoc Bay, and essentially fired off their entire ammo...

A newly released memo revealed that President Roosevelt was warned that Tokyo was focused on Hawaii days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Washington Whispers reported: Three days before the Dec. 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt was warned in a memo from naval intelligence that Tokyo’s military and spy network was focused on Hawaii, a new and eerie reminder of FDR’s failure to act on a basket load of tips that war was near. In the newly revealed 20-page memo from FDR’s declassified FBI file, the Office of Naval Intelligence on December 4 warned, “In anticipation...

One week after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt began pressing the U.S. military to immediately strike the Japanese homeland. Desires to bolster moral became more urgent in light of rapid Japanese advances. Victories in Malaya, Philippines, Wake Island, and Dutch East Indies included sinking the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse as the Japanese conquered Singapore. Only improbable 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. Captain Francis Law, a submariner,...

Next week, a United States Air Force Academy cadet will once again turn over a cup to signify that another "hero" has passed. 76 cups upside down...4 remaining. This "tradition " has been going on for 71 years and this will be the last time these few brave gentlemen will be together in one place, at one time. For you see, there are now only 4 remaining of the original 80 men who took off on a cold wet April 18th day knowing that they had insufficient fuel to reach a safe destination. Knowing full well that this may be...

At the end of World War II, huge swaths of Europe and Asia had been reduced to ruins. Borders were redrawn and homecomings, expulsions, and burials were under way. But the massive efforts to rebuild had just begun. When the war began in the late 1930s, the world's population was approximately 2 billion. In less than a decade, the war between the Axis the Allied powers had resulted in 80 million deaths -- killing off about 4 percent of the whole world. Allied forces now became occupiers, taking control of Germany, Japan, and much of the territory they had formerly...

Greek newspaper To Vima claims a secret report details millions of euros owed to Athens by Germany for World War Two reparations and unpaid loans. The story has been picked up by the online edition of German newspaper Der Spiegel, who quote Greek organisations calculating the value of loans from Athens to Berlin taken by the Nazis between 1942 and 1944 at 54 billion euros. Der Spiegel also puts the figure owed to Greece for reconstruction after the Second World War at 108 billion euros. Though the details of the report are being kept under wraps by the Greek Finance...

In May 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the White House. It was 17 months after Pearl Harbor and a little more than a year before D-Day. The two Allied leaders reviewed the war effort to date and exchanged thoughts on their plans for the postwar era. At one point in the discussion, FDR offered what he called "the best way to settle the Jewish question." Vice President Henry Wallace, who noted the conversation in his diary, said Roosevelt spoke approvingly of a plan (recommended by geographer and Johns Hopkins University President Isaiah Bowman)...

Many of the Nazi camps in Europe are falling apart, an expert has warned in advance of Holocaust Memorial Day. Florence Eizenberg, who is finishing a doctorate on the topic of Holocaust denial, said that the camps, which provide valuable testimony to Nazi war crimes, are in poor condition. Eizenberg visited camps across Europe as part of her research. …

In 1943, two Hollywood movies were made about the heroic nurses of the Philippines, “Cry ‘Havoc’ ” and “So Proudly We Hail,” but the real-life Angels of Bataan and Corregidor were almost forgotten after they were interned. The letters they wrote to their families in America never arrived and were found after the war in a Manila warehouse. Mrs. Manning later said that the prison camp had no showers, beds or kitchens. A single toilet was used by hundreds of people. Yet somehow she and the nurses persevered. They maintained strict military order among themselves, always wearing their uniforms and...

THIRTEEN years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe. The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

Today it is more clear than ever why Niles doubted FDR genuinely supported Zionism. President Barack Obama has spoken of his deep admiration for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his desire to emulate FDR’s leadership style. But in the wake of the discovery of new documents detailing FDR’s behind-the-scenes coldness regarding the creation of a Jewish state, many Israelis will be hoping that sentiment does not extend to Roosevelt’s views on Zionism.

Franklin Roosevelt enjoyed the overwhelming support of American Jews during his presidency, and the reasons are clear. In his three-plus terms from 1933 to 1945, he led the war against Hitler, supported a Jewish homeland in Palestine... Starting in the 1960s, a flood of books appeared with self-evident titles like “No Haven for the Oppressed” and “While Six Million Died.” But the most influential account by far was David S. Wyman’s “Abandonment of the Jews,” published in 1984. Wyman considered numerous parties responsible for America’s tepid response to the Holocaust, including a badly divided Jewish community, a nest of virulent...

Historian Rafael Medoff says Franklin Delano Roosevelt failed to take relatively simple measures that would have saved significant numbers of Jews during the Holocaust, because his vision for America only encompassed having a small number of Jews. “In his private, unguarded moments, FDR repeatedly made unfriendly remarks about Jews, especially his belief that Jews were overrepresented in many professions and exercised too much influence and control on society,” Medoff told The Daily Caller in an email about his new book, “FDR and the Holocaust: A Breach of Faith.” “This prejudice helped shape his overall vision of what America should look...

On April 12, 1945, my grandfather approached me as I played outside and asked where my mother was. He looked stricken, and so I quickly followed him inside and heard him say words that made my mother burst into tears: President Roosevelt had died. My mother’s grief and panic were so palpable — her brother was fighting in the Pacific, her brother-in-law was fighting in Europe — that it scared me. In our house, FDR was not merely the President. He was a god. He is a god no more. His New Deal is no longer solely credited with ending...

"...Outside my windows, the dark-browed Serbian peasants, the men in somber black, the women in their bright embroidered clothes, passed unhurriedly but more silently, more grimly than usual to the early Sunday market. I watched them thoughtfully as I began to pour my tea and turned the short-wave radio knob... ...I heard no sound but the jingling of milk carts in the streets and the shuffling of peasant feet. But it was coming, this raucously heralded doom. ...Bomb after bomb exploded all round us, some not more than twenty yards away. The effect was almost inconceivable. It wasn’t the noise...

He is engraved in stone in the National War Memorial in Washington, DC- back in a small alcove where very few people have seen it. For the WWII generation, this will bring back memories. For you younger folks, it's a bit of trivia that is a part of our American history. Anyone born in 1913 to about 1950, is familiar with Kilroy. No one knew why he was so well known- but everybody got into it, I even remember seeing him around public places in the late 60s... So who the heck was Kilroy? In 1946 the American Transit Association, through...

'These ghostly images reveal the forgotten harbour built off the coast of Normandy that for six months after D-Day became the world's busiest docks. British scientists have found the remnants of Mulberry B on the Channel seabed, which allowed the Allies to land troops, vehicles and equipment on French soil without having to capture a port first. The makeshift harbour, nicknamed Port Winston because it was the brainchild of Churchill, was the size of Dover and is considered to be one of the greatest military achievements of all time. Its development was even described by Albert Speer - Hitler's architect...

'Forty veterans of the World War II Arctic convoys have become the first recipients of a new medal. Prime Minister David Cameron hailed the men as a "group of heroes", as he presented them with the newly-created Arctic Star. The Arctic convoys, reportedly called the "worst journey in the world" by Winston Churchill, took supplies to the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945. More than 3,000 men died while on the convoys. Cdr Eddie Grenfell, 93, was given his Arctic Star at a special ceremony in Portsmouth earlier as he was too ill to travel to the ceremony at Number...

Millions of poignant black-and-white photos have come out of the World War Two era, but it is not often that scenes from the deadliest conflict in human history can be seen in living color. In 1942, LIFE Magazine sent Margaret Bourke-White, one of its four original staff photographers and the first female photojournalist accredited to cover WWII, to take pictures of the VIII Bomber Command, commonly known as the Eighth Air Force or The Mighty 8th. The photographs, executed in brilliant hues that make them look almost like oil paintings, put on full display the massive American B-24s and B-17s...

OPERATION DOWNFALL, to be complete within one year of the end of the war in Europe, had two major components. * Olympic . November 1, 1945. Invasion of Southern Kyushu to provide a large base for naval and air forces within range of Tokyo. * Coronet . March 1, 1946. Invasion of Central Honshu and Tokyo. OLYMPIC Olympic entailed landing three corps on southern Kyushu, the most southern of the four Japanese home islands. The center portion of Kyushu is almost impassible mountains which would be difficult to transit and was to be used to isolate southern Kyushu from counterattack...

The selection of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina to be the new pope of the Roman Catholic Church is being seen as a move that will continue to cement Catholic-Jewish relations and perhaps end the debate over the ChurchÂ’s actions during World War II. Bergoglio, 76, who took the name Francis and is the first Jesuit ever to be chosen pope, has publicly called for the opening of the Vatican archives to learn the true role Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust. There have been allegations that Pope Pius XII, who is on track to be canonized by the...

'Japanese people often fail to understand why neighbouring countries harbour a grudge over events that happened in the 1930s and 40s. The reason, in many cases, is that they barely learned any 20th Century history.'

Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist, the last surviving member of the main plot to kill Adolf Hitler has died. He was 90.

February 28th marks the 119th birthday of Ben Hecht, the wisecracking genius who invented the screwball comedy and gangster movie, and who raucously upheld the honor of American Jews in WWII. Blasted into history from a more colorful age, Hecht began his career as a circus acrobat and virtuoso violinist, then seamlessly morphed into Chicago's star crime reporter and the most successful screenwriter in Hollywood history. I love Hecht for the feast of intelligent entertainment he seemed to effortlessly concoct, from Hitchcock masterpieces like Notorious and Spellbound to Scarface, The Front Page, and the uncredited script of Gone With the...

A Bridge Too Far is one of my favourite war movies. Pretty much the last of the Big Screen Epics, with an All Star Cast, it doesn’t try to do much except simply tell what happened. No romantic sub plots, no political commentary, it just goes all-out to bring us the story. There’s a scene near the beginning, where von Rundstedt and Model are discussing if they need to worry about stopping Patton or Montgomery. “He’s their best. I’d prefer Montgomery, but Eisenhower isn’t that stupid” says von Rundstedt. The whole Monty/Patton argument in general is frequent, and shows up...

Rome, Italy, Mar 7, 2013 / 04:12 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Blessed Maria Restituta, a Catholic nurse who was decapitated by the Nazis in March of 1943, was remembered for her courageous martyrdom during a recent Mass in Rome. Cardinal Christoph Shonborn recalled the 70th anniversary of Blessed Maria’s death during a celebration of the Liturgy of the Word on March 6. The Mass was held at the Basilica of St. Bartholomew, which was dedicated by Pope John Paul II to the memory of the martyrs of the 20th and 21st centuries. During the Mass, members of Blessed Maria’s religious...

Now, he’s flying with the angels. Tom Griffin, one of just five surviving Doolittle Raiders, died Tuesday night in his sleep at the Fort Thomas VA hospital in Kentucky. He navigated one of 16 North American B-25 Mitchell bombers from an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific during the early dark days of World War II to launch a surprise daylight attack on Tokyo, lifting American morale. The longtime Green Township, Ohio, resident was 96. By his own count, Mr. Griffin cheated death eight times during World War II. The first time was when he took off in...

'It was a little-known Second World War tactic to fool the Germans - and it certainly did the job. These extraordinary photos reveal how Operation Starfish helped to dupe Nazi aircraft by creating a number of decoy towns which were built to lure enemy bombers away from more populated areas. The Starfish Sites - which got their name from the initials ‘SF’, standing for ‘Special Fire’ sites - were designed by Colonel John Turner and were intended to simulate burning UK cities during the Blitz.'

'He was best known for battling the Daleks as one of the best-loved Doctor Whos. But now it has been revealed that Jon Pertwee was a real-life secret agent years before he donned the Time Lord’s cape. The actor, who died in 1996 aged 76, was a senior intelligence agent during the Second World War and reported directly to Winston Churchill. He was also recommended for another role by James Bond creator Ian Fleming – and proved to be an expert in using a range of 007-like gadgets, including a smoking pipe that fired bullets and handkerchiefs containing secret maps....

It's the 68th anniversary of the Dresden bombing. In Britain, we don't think about it as much as, perhaps, we should. The bare facts. More than 1,200 RAF and USAAF bombers attacked the city between the 13th and 15th of February 1945, in four raids. They dropped 3,900 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs, killing between 22,000 and 25,000 people, almost all civilians. The city's anti-aircraft defences had all been moved to defend the industrial works of the Ruhr valley. The details are chilling.