U-Boat off New York Coast
"I saw Long Island, the coast and all the lights and motor cars..." - Kapitainleutnant Reinhard Hardegen of the U-123 sailing undetected off the coast of Long Island in January 1942 This is a fascinating 2010 interview with famed U-Boat captain Reinhard Hardegen who...
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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. ...
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Truman Doctrine
The purpose of the Truman Doctrine delineated in 1947 was to counter geopolitical expansion of the Soviet Union. Initially, in place of direct military action, the U.S. Congress appropriated financial aid to support the economies and militaries of Greece and Turkey....
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WWII U-Boat Ace Dies at 105
U-Boat ace Reinhard Hardegen died this week at age 105. Although America's WWII enemy, Hardegen appears to have been an honorable warrior, revered by many today who are fascinated by the mystique of U-Boat warfare. ____________________ Captain of the infamous...
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Enemy in the Mirror
Excerpts from the book: Once the shoji screen was closed, Kiyoshi said in a low voice, “It’s about the piece I submitted to the Chūō Kōron.” Fumiko took a deep breath. The Chūō Kōron was one of the few literary magazines that still dared to publish articles hinting...
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US Military Personnel WWII
I began writing an author's note for my soon-to-be-released novel The Osprey and the Sea Wolf ~ The Battle of the Atlantic 1942: The first six months of 1942 were dark for America. Imperial Japanese forces ran amok across the Pacific. The Axis powers had swept through...
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Germany Divided
At the 1945 Potsdam conference, the four great Allied powers agreed to divide Germany into four administrative occupation zones. ...
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U.S. Weapons WWII
Some U.S. mass-produced weapons of WWII like the M-4 Sherman tank, the P-40 and P - 39 fighter planes and early model torpedoes, aside from the vast numbers, achieved dubious performance records. Ultimately, however, America produced vast amounts of weapons and...
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North & South Korea
This rapid-fire video is an excellent summary of Korean history since the 19th century. The division of Korea between North and South occurred after WWII, ending the Empire of Japan's 35-year rule over Korea in 1945. The United States and the Soviet Union occupied two...
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Soviet Propaganda
This quirky, undated Soviet propaganda film reflects the Communist view of Western imperialism during the Cold War.
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He May Be a Communist
While a bit over-the-top (Jack Webb?), this U.S. Army film made in 1950 reflects the post-WWII Cold War mentality.
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The Rescued Film Project
The Rescued Film Project recovers unclaimed rolls of film from the 1930s to 1990s. These recently-discovered photos from an unknown WWII soldier show every day events that may give you a sense of time and place: The Rescued Film Project In what year and to where do...
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The Iron Curtain
In March 1946, as the Green Lecturer at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill delivered a lecture entitled the "Sinews of Peace" that became known as the "Iron Curtain Speech." "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron...
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Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor
Press this link for more photos published by Alex Q. Arbuckle that are rare and interesting from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor December 7....
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The Long Telegram
In 1946, the American Chargé d’Affaires in Moscow George F. Kennan proposed the concept of "containment" in his famous 8,000-word "long telegram" to the U.S. State Department. These suggestions became the foundation of U.S. Cold War policy in the 1940s. in 1947,...
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COLD WAR BEGINS
After the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, most Americans viewed Communism as a threat to the Western democracies. Communist rhetoric envisioning the overthrow of capitalism was common in Depression-era America. Before WWII, both American and Soviet...
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Understanding Korea
Ancient Korea Gojoseon, Korea's legendary first kingdom, was founded in 2333 B.C.E. After its collapse, several small kingdoms coalesced into the Three Kingdoms Period (Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla) around the year zero C.E. Gradually assuming power, Silla consolidated...
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You and the Atomic Bomb
Just months after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, George Orwell published an essay entitled You and the Atomic Bomb in the London Tribune. The first one to use the term "cold war," Orwell outlines in the prophetic excerpt below a rationale that would...
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COLD WAR DAYS
Image: Wikimedia Commons Dear valued reader - With posts about the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials, we draw our Enemy in the Mirror website coverage of WWII to a close and embark on what would become known as the Cold War. I began this website as I dug deeply into the...
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Tokyo Trials
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) conducted the Tokyo War Crimes Trials from May 1946 to November 1948. 28 Imperial Japanese military and government leaders were charged with Class A war crimes - participating in a joint conspiracy to start...
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After the War
September 1945 - the war is over! ...You'll never know how many dreams I've dreamed about you Or how empty they all seem without you So kiss me once...and kiss me twice And kiss me once again It's been a long...long time It's been a mighty, mighty long time WWII...
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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 by Theodor...
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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...
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A-Bomb Morality
Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd The concept of a nuclear chain reaction reportedly came to the physicist Leó Szilárd as an epiphany while waiting to cross a London street in 1933. “...It suddenly occurred to me that if we could find an element which is split by...
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WWII DEATHS
A scene from Dreams directed by Akira Kurosawa in 1990. The following graphic presentation of war deaths is worth watching until the end. ...
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