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Free Republic University, Department of History presents World War II Plus 70 Years: Seminar and Discussion Forum
First session: September 1, 2009. Last date to add: September 2, 2015.
Reading assignment: New York Times articles and the occasional radio broadcast delivered daily to students on the 70th anniversary of original publication date. (Previously posted articles can be found by searching on keyword “realtime” Or view Homer’s posting history .)
To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by freepmail. Those on the Realtime +/- 70 Years ping list are automatically enrolled. Course description, prerequisites and tuition information is available at the bottom of Homer’s profile. Also visit our general discussion thread.

Selections from West Point Atlas for the Second World War
The Western Pacific, New Guinea, and the Philippine Islands: The Invasion of Leyte (KING II), 17-20 October 1944 and the Battle for Leyte Gulf, 23-25 October 1944
The Philippine Islands: Leyte Island and the Visayas, 1944 – Sixth Army Operations on Leyte and Samar, 17 October-30 December 1944
Northwestern Europe, 1944: 6th and 12th Army Group Operations, 15 September-7 November 1944
Northwestern Europe, 1944: 21st Army Group Operations, 15 September-15 December 1944
Eastern Europe, 1941: Russian Balkan and Baltic Campaigns – Operations, 19 August-31 December 1944
Northern Italy 1944: Allied Advance to Gothic Line, 5 June-25 August and Gains 29 August-31 December
China, 1941: Operation Ichigo, April-December 1944 and Situation 31 December
China-Burma, 1941: Third Burma Campaign – Slim’s Offensive, June 1944-March 1945

October 21, 1944:

"Aachen, Germany, is captured by U.S. troops.
This is the first German city to fall to an Allied army."

"Head bowed in defeat, the commander of the German garrison in Aachen, Germany, Colonel Gerhard Wilck, accompanied by three of his officers, sits in a U.S. Army jeep after his capture.
Although months of fighting, including the Battle of the Bulge, lay ahead, the German defeat now appeared to be only a matter of time as the Western Allies pushed toward the Rhine and the Soviets moved into East Prussia.
With the capture of Aachen on October 21, American troops stood for the first time on German soil."

"Ala Gertner, one of the heroines of the 1944 Sonderkommando uprising in Auschwitz-Birkenau, strikes a stylish pose in this photograph from happier days in prewar Bedzin, Poland.
Deported with her husband to Auschwitz, she was assigned to work in the Union Munitions factory.
There she and two of her fellow workers managed to steal and hide the explosives the Sonderkommando used to blow up the crematorium on October 7.
Arrested, held in a bunker, and tortured, she died without betraying her accomplices."

Roza Robota

"In the annals of Holocaust heroism, Roza Robota holds a special place.
An activist in the Zionist underground of Poland, she was deported to Auschwitz in 1942.
Her strong spirit was not broken by the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and she became a link between the women's camp and the resistance that was forming within the men's camp.
Detailed to a factory manufacturing bombs, she and several other brave women began to smuggle out small quantities of gunpowder with which the underground planned to blow up a Birkenau crematorium in October 1944.
Caught and questioned, along with three other women working in the factory, Roza refused to divulge any information, even under prolonged torture.

"Her execution by hanging before the camp population was intended to extinguish any fires of resistance.
Roza left her comrades with a different memory, as she yelled 'Nekama!' ("Revenge!") just before her death."