Historical revisionists have recently disparaged the righteousness of America's role in World War II, overlooking that the fact the conflict was both a defensive war and a crusade for the liberation of oppressed peoples. We Americans are justified in celebrating it as "The Good War" fought by the Greatest Generation this country has ever produced. [...]
Kinship among nations is not determined in such measurements as proximity, size, and age. Rather, we should turn to those inner things, those intangibles that are the real treasures free men possess. To preserve his freedom of worship, his equality before the law, his liberty to speak and act as he sees fit, subject only [...]
Those young men did not die at Normandy to establish an American empire. Instead, for perhaps the only time in history, soldiers came to fight and to die to liberate others and to save a civilization from tyranny. It was an act of magnanimity, of selflessness, for which all the European victims of the Nazis [...]
These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war. On June 6, 1984—the 40th anniversary of D-Day—President Ronald Reagan delivered a speech to an audience of D-Day veterans and world [...]
Saul Bellow's protagonist Artur Sammler is both witness and survivor to the central event in his own time: the attempt on the part of Hitler and his henchmen to eradicate European Jewry. But even though the novel takes place in a different time and place, behind those contemporary times are the ghosts from that World [...]
The sharp focus on Mrs. Verhagen gives “The Winged Watchman,” Hilda van Stockum’s novel about a Dutch family during World War II, such power. The close-up tasks of the women are just as heroic as the tasks of the men who often fought to protect their loved ones. Who knew a great war story would [...]
Shortly after the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, Sammy Kaye and Don Reid wrote the music and Reid wrote the words to "Remember Pearl Harbor." On December 17, 1941, RCA Victor recorded the song, with Sammy Kaye's Swing and Sway Band and The Glee Club.* History in ev'ry century records an act that lives [...]
The Bolsheviks were coming! The news was enough to make the blood of the people of the village of Suessenbergrun run cold. The Bolsheviks were atheists. They had no human decency, no respect for human lives. In this atmosphere I tried to settle into my normal parochial duties. But these very duties were colored with [...]
In the reading, listening, and viewing I’ve done recently on the ever-troubling question of the use of atomic bombs on Japan, what I’ve noticed clearly for the first time is the seemingly inexorable retributory escalation in word and deed not so hidden under the ostensible arguments of life-saving necessity. On the Feast of St. Augustine, [...]
Whether or not assassination is a legitimate means of resistance is a point that will be keenly debated. That said, there can be no denying that the efforts of Claus von Stauffenberg and the other German conspirators who tried to kill Adolf Hitler in July 1944 are a striking testimony to the decency and resolve [...]
Because of the extraordinary valor shown by so many young men on that distant beach, America stood singular and tall in the saddle. It was her finest hour and for that at least we must be grateful. General Mark W. Clark, whose Fifth Army led the capture of Rome in June of 1944, was the [...]
Does the "socialist-patriot" George Orwell offer a model for us today? Specifically for the young—of left or right—for whom Peter Stansky's book is likely meant to serve as an introduction of sorts? The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War by Peter Stansky (130 pages, Stanford University Press, 2023) Less a brief biography than a lengthy [...]
In André Zirnheld's touching plea, we sense the fiery charity of one that does not want to displease or even inconvenience God. We learn to be satisfied with what others do not want, with what is left over. In times like ours, everyone is so self-centered that few think of giving themselves to a higher [...]
"Blood on the Risers" is an American paratrooper song from World War II. Sung to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," the song tells of a fatal training jump of a rookie paratrooper whose parachute fails to deploy, resulting in him falling to his death. Each verse describes the man’s death and [...]