The biggest World War II Prisoner of War (POW) escape in Britain occurred on the 10 March 1945 when 70 German POWs tunneled their way to freedom. The 1963 movie “The Great Escape” made famous the British POW escape from Stalag Luft III in March 1944. But a year later, in 1945 was the largestContinue reading “The German POW Great Escape of World War II”
Category Archives: World War I & II
The Forgotten Sook Ching Massacre of World War II
The Sook Ching Massacre was a deadly Japanese military operation during World War II aimed at purging “anti-Japanese elements” from Chinese Singapore. From February to March 1942, Chinese men between 18 and 50 were ordered to mass screening centers across the region. Those even remotely suspected of being “anti-Japanese” were trucked away at gunpoint toContinue reading “The Forgotten Sook Ching Massacre of World War II”
The Indestructible Soldier – Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart
British war hero Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart survived both the trenches of World War I and PoW camps of World War II. During battles he was shot in the face, losing an eye, and shot through the skull, stomach, groin, ankle and ear. In WW I, he was severely wounded no less than eightContinue reading “The Indestructible Soldier – Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart”
The World War II Battle of Los Angeles
During the panicked weeks following the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans were told that enemy raids on the continental U.S. could be next! On the West Coast, pilots and radar had started mistaking fishing boats and even whales for Japanese destroyers and submarines. Two months after the Pearl Harbor attack, on 25 FebruaryContinue reading “The World War II Battle of Los Angeles”
The Secret World War II Bretton Woods Conference
Not all the major battles in World War II were in Europe or the Pacific. Some involved intense negotiations between the Allied nations – negotiations on what the post-war world would look like economically. The most significant was the secret Bretton Woods Conference of 1944. It was a gathering of delegates from 44 nations from around the world. They met in July in remote Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in the U.S.
The Forgotten Holocaust Hero, Japan’s Chiune Sugihara
Heroes are often born unexpectedly from dire circumstances. Confronted with an intolerable situation, they choose to act with humanity, rather than meekly back down, or join the angry mob.
The World War I Christmas Eve Truce of 1914
On Christmas Day 1914, in the cold, muddy trenches World War I’s Western Front, a truly miraculous event occurred. For a few brief hours, opposing soldiers, British, French, Germans and Austrians in the “No Man’s Land” of France and Belgium, declared their own cease fire. They laid down their arms, climbed from the trenches, andContinue reading “The World War I Christmas Eve Truce of 1914”
Operation Pastorius: the Forgotten Nazi Terror Plot on U.S. Soil
Few know that during Word War II, Nazis saboteurs actually landed on the east coast of the United States to carry out industrial sabotage and acts of terror.
The 1945 Yalta BIG THREE Conference – Russia, US and UK
The Yalta (Crimea) Conference was the second World War II meeting by the “Big Three,“ President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Premier Joseph Stalin, heads of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union.
Catcher, Lawyer, Soldier, Spy – the Odd Life of Moe Berg
Morris (Moe) Berg was all that and more, a life-long bachelor, devoted Jew, and eccentric intellectual. The son of a pharmacist in Newark, New Jersey, young Moe fell in love with baseball. He began playing baseball at age seven, first for a local Christian church, then high school, then at Princeton University. The sport becameContinue reading “Catcher, Lawyer, Soldier, Spy – the Odd Life of Moe Berg”