WW2 Vets 1960 Interviews
Remember Pearl Harbor
https://youtu.be/A2kSnlS4xX8 On Dec. 7, 1941 2,403 service members and civilians were killed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. 1,178 people were injured in the attack, which permanently sank two U.S. Navy battleships (the USS Arizona and the...
Pearl Harbor
On the morning of December 7, 1941, the surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii catapulted a reluctant America into the Second World War. There are not many...
Tales of the South Pacific
In 1948 James Michener won the Pulitzer Prize for his series of short stories entitled Tales of the South Pacific. Derived from his experience with the US Navy in the New Hebrides Islands during the Pacific Campaign of World War II, the fascinating stories focus on...
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...
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...
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...
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. In what year and to where do you imagine he was...
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 ...
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...
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.
Japan Surrenders
After the bombing of Hiroshima, some members of Japan’s supreme war council favored acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, but the majority resisted unconditional surrender. Things grew worse when the USSR declared war against Japan. Then, a second atomic bomb was...
Operation August Storm 1945
On August 8, 1945, after refusing to mediate a Japanese surrender with the United States and its allies, the USSR declared war on Japan. On August 9, 1945, Russian troops invaded the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in Operation August Storm. On August 14, 1945 a...
German POWS
Unlike the treatment of German POWs in the USA, the Allied treatment of German military prisoners in Europe at the end of the war is quite controversial. With titles like Eisenhower's Death Camps, The Real Holocaust, The Last Dirty Secret of WWII and Eisenhower...
Potsdam Conference
https://youtu.be/xQuQ38XgdI0 In July 1945, USSR Premier Joseph Stalin, the new American president Harry S. Truman, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain met in Potsdam Germany in the last Big Three meeting of WWII . At Potsdam, the Big Three leaders...
Under the Sand
From 1940-1943, the Danish government pursued a course of cautious cooperation with the occupying forces of Nazi Germany. However, in 1943, with increased turbulence and sabotage by the underground resistance movement, the Germans imposed a state of emergency and...
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...
V-2 to Apollo – Wernher von Braun
https://youtu.be/4wIxsYk9UdI The German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun was a complex character. Fascinated by astronomy since childhood, he studied at the Technische Hochschule Berlin and the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin, receiving a bachelor's...
Nazi Germany Surrenders
https://youtu.be/DsIs9GRgQgs Grössadmiral Karl Dönitz Wikimedia On 20 April 1945, as the Nazi regime collapsed around him, Hitler appointed Grössadmiral Karl Dönitz as his successor, President of the Reich, Minister of War and Supreme Commander of the armed forces....
Ezra Pound Arrested
Ezra Weston Loomis Pond (1885 – 1972) was one of the most controversial, major literary figures in the 20th century. Early in his career, Pound promoted Imagism, a modernist movement, derived from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry, that emphasized clarity,...
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...
Buchenwald Liberated
https://youtu.be/ZBBY8ngkY3I The motto "Jedem das Seine" displayed over the entrance to the Buchenwald concentration camp, is an old German proverb derived from the Latin phrase "suum cuique" meaning "to each his own" or "to each what he deserves." Built in the...
My Japan
This propaganda film was produced by the U.S. Treasury Department in 1945 in an effort to promote War Bond sales. My Japan might be described as a heavy-handed attempt to elicit angry responses from American citizens regarding Japan's audacity as well as contempt for...