SDS Port Huron Statement
In 1962 the Port Huron Statement, was adopted by the Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor
Mexican-Americans in WWII
Ethnic and racial discrimination in WWII-era America was a powerful social force. Just as the civil rights of African-Americans were restricted in the South, similar discrimination weighed heavily against many "Tejanos" of Mexican descent in the Southwest. Breaking...
Wolves at the Doorstep 1942
Somewhere between the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Bataan death march and the fierce fighting on Guadalcanal, many of us seem to have forgotten one of the most important American theaters in early WWII - The Battle of the Western Atlantic. In 1942, German...
It’s A Wonderful Life
After a series of populist films in the 1930s (It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and You Can't Take It With You), Frank Capra read a forgotten story entitled The Greatest Gift written by Philip Van Doren Stern and...
Memorial Day
Memorial Day 1946 - The ways of peace have not returned to us, and the results of war are still upon us. - Eleanor Roosevelt MAY 30, 1946 NEW YORK, Wednesday—This is the first Memorial Day since the end of the war in the Pacific and yet in spite of that...
Baby Boom
We were the War Children 1945 When all the soldiers came marching home Love looks in their eye -Van Morrison Almost exactly nine months after World War II ended, “the cry of the baby was heard across the land,” as historian Landon Jones later described...
Post-War Christmas
Christmas in America after WWII reflected a period of peace, productivity, and prosperity.
Allies Occupy Germany
Your Job In Germany was a short film shown to US soldiers embarking on post-war occupation duty in Germany. Produced by the United States War Department in 1945, the film was made by a military film unit directed by Frank Capra and was written...
Burmese Harp / Grave of the Fireflies
Adapted from the novel by Michio Takeyama, this 1956 film directed by Ichikawa Kon, involves a company of Japanese Imperial Army troops who finally surrender in the last desperate stages of the Burma campaign. When their company commander begins to lead them in songs...
B-25 Strikes Empire State
A U.S. Army Air Force B-25 Mitchell bomber crashed into the Empire State Building on Saturday July 28, 1945. Fourteen people were killed. Flying from New Bedford, Massachusetts, to LaGuardia Airport in New York City, with two pilots and a passenger aboard, the B-25...
Post-War Germany
https://vimeo.com/126267047 23 May, 1945 — President of Germany Karl Dönitz and Chancellor of Germany Count Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk are arrested by British forces at Flensburg. They are respectively the last German Head of state and Head of government until...
Marriage & Death of Adolf Hitler
For ~12 years, Adolf Hitler tried to keep his relationship with his mistress Eva Braun a secret. His personal valet Heinz Linge reported that Hitler once said: "Fräulein Braun is ... too young to be the wife of one in my position. But she is the only girl for me. So...
Götterdämmerung Deutschland
In Nordic Mythology Ragnarök refers to a prophesied war among various beings and gods that ultimately results in the destruction and renewal of the world. In Richard Wagner's four opera adaptation of Nordic myth Ring des Nibelungen, the final opera was...
Dunkirk
After seeing the new movie DUNKIRK directed by Christopher Nolan last night, I wanted to recommend it to you readers. Like the top film critics, I found this film technically flawless and emotionally extremely powerful. The film's soundtrack by Hans Zimmer kept...
Bomb Kills Oregon Picnickers
Radiolab just broadcast an excellent, detailed account of the Japanese balloon bomb incident at Bly, Oregon LISTEN: http://www.radiolab.org/story/war-our-shore/ My history-inspired novel Enemy in the Mirror: Love and Fury in the Pacific War includes a...
Nazi Child Soldiers
In 1936 participation of boys and girls in Nazi youth groups became mandatory. At the onset of WWII older Hitler Jugend (HJ) boys were conscripted into the armed forces while younger boys functioned as air raid wardens and anti-aircraft gun assistants. Also you......
Mussolini Executed
After being freed from an Italian prison by German special forces in 1943, Benito Mussolini established the Italian Social Republic in northern Italy. Although he claimed autonomy, the republic Mussolini ruled for 1 1/2 years as Head of State and Minister of...
Home Front USA
In the spring of 1945, with much of Europe and the Pacific in ruins, the end of the war was in sight for Americans. While total U.S. military deaths exceeded 400,000 in the European, North African and Pacific theaters, mainland USA never became a significant site of...
Dietrich Bonhöffer Executed
Together with theologians Karl Barth and Martin Niemöller, the German pastor Dietrich Bonhöffer was a founding member of the German Bekennende Kirche ( Confessing Church), a Protestant movement that opposed Nazi attempts to unify all Protestant churches into...
Memorial Day
In May 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had recently died and the war in Europe was winding down. ___________________ The origin of Memorial Day is attributed by most scholars to the ladies of Columbus, Mississippi who decided to decorate both Union and...
Easter in Nazi Germany
In a 1939 census of Nazi Germany (including annexed Austria), 54% of Germans considered themselves Protestant, 40% Catholic, 3.5% gottgläubig (non-sectarian believers in God) and 1.5% as non-religious. In the spring of 1936, Der Angriff, Berlin’s Nazi paper founded by...
Was Hitler High?
A new book by Norman Ohler makes sensational claims that not only Adolf Hitler, but much of the civilian population of Nazi Germany, was high on drugs. While there is evidence that methamphetamines (e.g. Pervitin) were extensively used by the armed...
Japanese Balloon Bombs
From November 1944 to April 1945, Japan launched over 9,000 hydrogen balloons carrying antipersonnel and firebombs into the jet stream from the island of Honshu. Although many found their way to diverse regions of Western North America, only one caused...
The German War
Using German archival records and letters and diaries of both civilians and soldiers during WWII, The German War - A Nation Under Arms, 1939–1945 by Nicholas Stargardt is a fascinating book that illustrates the strong civilian support for Germany's armed forces right...
Volkssturm
https://youtu.be/jO05Jcu3xR8 As German military forces were beginning to suffer major losses, Adolf Hitler created a national militia called the Volkssturm ("people's storm") in October 1944. Under control of the Nazi party, rather than the Wehrmacht, the Volkssturm...