world-war-ii

In 1939, Hitler expanded the German Navy and, in violation of the Munich Agreement, occupied parts of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. Germany then established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. This protectorate included those portions of Czechoslovakia that had not already been incorporated into Germany. On August 30, 1939, the German Reich issued an ultimatum to Poland concerning the Polish Corridor and the Free City of Danzig. On September 1st, without waiting for a response to its ultimatum, Germany invaded Poland. Much to Hitler__ surprise, England honored its treaty with Poland. Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany, thereby ushering in another World War. Officially, __he Second World War_ in Europe was started by the German Reich when it attacked Poland, although at the time Germany blamed the Treaty of Versailles.

It was a glorious experience for the children to travel by rail and the panoramic views of Africa through the big glass window in the rear of the last car of the Blue Train, were beyond description. It was just as you would expect it to be, as described in a vintage National Geographic magazine, with springbok and other wild animals abounding. The distance is approximately the same as from New York City to Chicago and took an overnight. Adeline and Lucia talked late into the night as the children tried to hear what was being said. There was a lot of catching up to do, but it had been a long and exhausting day and the next thing they all knew, it was the following morning and the train was approaching Cape Town or Kaapstad in Afrikaans, affectionately known as the __avern of the Seas.

During World War II the top secret __orden XV_ or __lue Ox_ otherwise known the Army Airforce__ __orden M Series Bombsights,_ were used up to and including the Vietnam War by all American military aircraft with bomb carrying capabilities. This bombsight was considered a __anonical Tachometric Design_ meaning that it had the ability to measure the aircraft's direction and ground speed. In time the Norden improved its original design by using a computer that constantly calculated the aircraft__ flight characteristic and external wind forces to determine the bomb's impact point. When the B-17 Flying Fortress was designed, it came equipped with a Sperry A-3 Autopilot that only corrected angular deviations in the aircraft__ straight and level course. In time most bombsights were replaced by video displays on the instrument panel. Dumb or gravity bombs were mostly replaced with in-flight guidance bombs, such as laser-guided bombs or those using a GPS system. The last combat use of the Norden bombsight was by the US Navy during the covert __peration Igloo White_ mission when OP-2E Neptune aircraft dropped electronic sensors to detect enemy activity along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Project CHECO Southeast Asia Report was declassified on May 5, 2013.

People who mock incidents in history such as 9/11 or the Holocaust, referring to it all as a hoax or stirring up crazy conspiracy theories about it, should really stop and think about their words first, both because it shows flaws in logic and rationality to deny the obvious, and because to play pretend with incidents which killed innocent people, well, that's just like laughing in the face of tragedy. It's as if to say, "no, it's not horrible enough that these people were killed, oh no, we have to drag on these incidents by indulging in melodramatic fantasies!" In essence this means that those who lost loved ones not only have to live with these losses forever, they also have to live with the people who deny that any of it ever happened. It does no good to forget history or to deny it. All it does is desensitize people; it tells them that it's all just a game, which then risks the possibility of nobody taking it seriously enough to prevent something similar from happening again.

How many rapes occurred inside the walls of the main camp of Ravensbrück is hard to put a figure to: so many of the victims__lready, as Ilse Heinrich said, half dead__id not survive long enough after the war to talk about it. While many older Soviet women were reluctant to talk of the rape, younger survivors feel less restraint today. Nadia Vasilyeva was one of the Red Army nurses who were cornered by the Germans on the cliffs of the Crimea. Three years later in Neustrelitz, northwest of Ravensbrück, she and scores of other Red Army women were cornered again, this time by their own Soviet liberators intent on mass rape. Other women make no excuses for the Soviet rapists. __hey were demanding payment for liberation,_ said Ilena Barsukova. __he Germans never raped the prisoners because we were Russian swine, but our own soldiers raped us. We were disgusted that they behaved like this. Stalin had said that no soldiers should be taken prisoner, so they felt they could treat us like dirt.__ike the Russians, Polish survivors were also reluctant for many years to talk of Red Army rape. __e were terrified by our Russian liberators,_ said Krystyna Zaj_c. __ut we could not talk about it later because of the communists who had by then taken over in Poland._ Nevertheless, Poles, Yugoslavs, Czechs and French survivors all left accounts of being raped as soon as they reached the Soviet lines. They talked of being __unted down_, __aptured_ or __ornered_ and then raped.In her memoirs Wanda Wojtasik, one of the rabbits, says it was impossible to encounter a single Russian without being raped. As she, Krysia and their Lublin friends tried to head east towards their home, they were attacked at every turn. Sometimes the approach would begin with romantic overtures from __andsome men_, but these approaches soon degenerated into harassment and then rape. Wanda did not say she was raped herself, but describes episodes where soldiers pounced on friends, or attacked them in houses where they sheltered, or dragged women off behind trees, who then reappeared sobbing and screaming. __fter a while we never accepted lifts and didn__ dare go near any villages, and when we slept someone always stood watch.

In the end the war was Hitler's war. It was not perhaps the war he wanted. But it was the war he was prepared to risk if he had to. Nothing could deter him...He was no longer prepared to wait on events. He needed to force them to manipulate them to manufacture incidents to create pretexts for action.

What you don__ know going in is that when you come out, you will be scarred for life. Whether you were in for a week, a month, or a year__ven if you come home without a scratch__ou are never, ever going to be the same.When I went in, I was eighteen. I thought it was all glory and you win lots of medals. You think you__e going to be the guy. Then you find out the cost is very great. Especially when you don__ see the kids you were with when you went in. Living with it can be hell. It__ like the devil presides in you. I knew what I sighed up for, yes, and I would do it again. But the reality of war__ords can__ begin to describe it.

That is the way we decided to talk, free and easy, two young men discussing a boxing match. That was the only way to talk. You couldn't let too much truth seep into your conversation, you couldn't admit with your mouth what your eyes had seen. If you opened the door even a centimeter, you would smell the rot outside and hear the screams. You did not open the door. You kept your mind on the tasks of the day, the hunt for food and water and something to burn, and you saved the rest for the end of the war.

It was now December 7, 1941; the date that Franklin D. Roosevelt was destined to declare would live in infamy.

In political affairs illusions are usually the product of a failure to appreciate change; but such failure-usually a necessary and perhaps salutary part of human affairs-becomes, when the change is very fast, not a stabilizing conservatism but a form of deception resembling lunacy.

__ was cursed with the pessimism of both the Russians and the Jews two of the gloomiest tribes in the world. Still if there wasn't greatness in me maybe I had the talent to recognize it in others even in the most irritating others.

She had an emptiness in her eyes like a ghost tired of haunting.

Were prayers of murderers, when fighting on the __ight side_ of the war, ever heard__et alone answered?

It takes one a long time to become young. - Picasso

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.

The world is not static and the status quo is not sacred.

The cost of war is like an immeasurable tremor that knows no borders, its shockwaves reverberating across the world resulting in universal suffering.

Girls in love will do desperate and creative things.