On 8 May 1995, the British prime minister, John Major, referred to the end of World War II as the end of a thirty years’ war; in this, he was correct: both sides saw this war as an attempt to complete a task left undone at the close of the First World War – the show-down which ended European global domination. The Second World War was, however, the ultimate catastrophe of modern history, laying waste the heart and soul of Europe. Here you will find contributions about this conflict, its prelude, conduct, and personalities – excluding non-military Nazi personalities, which are covered under the entry “Third Reich Era.” Also covered are contributions dealing with war crimes (and lies about alleged war crimes) committed in the course of the conflict. This does not include the “Holocaust,” which has a separate entry (and is not a war crime in the strict sense).
By Lou A. Rollins ∙ April 1, 1985
A Trial on Trial: The Great Sedition Trial of 1944, by Lawrence Dennis and Maximilian St. George. Torrance, CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1984, 503pp, $11.00, Pb, ISBN 0-939484-20-X About fifteen years ago, in the midst of the raging debate over American involvement in the Indochina War, which I had come to oppose, I wrote…
By Walter Trohan ∙ December 1, 1985
Perhaps the most telling aspect of World War Two historical orthodoxy is its one-dimensional view of war criminals; by current definition these are the losers of a war. The winners decide the degree of the losers' culpability and the depth of their depravity. Apart from this victor's morality play is the reality of the difficult-to-envision…
By Karl Otto Braun ∙ December 1, 1984
Following the final defeat of Napoleonic France, the leaders of Europe gathered for the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to reorganize the war-torn continent. European recovery from the consequences of Napoleon’s downfall was considerably aided by the decent and magnanimous treatment of defeated France by the victorious powers. Henry Kissinger aptly entitled his study of…
By Charles Lutton ∙ April 1, 1984
Stalin's Secret War by Nikolai Tolstoy. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1981, 463pp, $18.50, ISBN 0-03-047266-0. Pawns of Yalta: Soviet Refugees and America's Role in Their Repatriation by Mark R. Elliott. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982, 287pp, $17.95, ISBN 0-252-00897-9. Our “present” has to a large degree been shaped by the events of…
By David Baxter ∙ April 1, 1985
I have the honor to discuss an historical event in which I played a personal role, the notorious Sedition Trial of 1944. As a Christian I have long since forgiven those who were responsible for instigating this persecution of American citizens and I have no axes to grind with anyone. Some of what I have…
By Karl Otto Braun ∙ April 1, 1985
During my career as a German diplomat, I had three superiors. The first was Alfred Rosenberg, head of the Foreign Political Office of the National Socialist Party. The next was Foreign Minister Freiherr Konstatin von Neurath, an “old school” conservative. The last was Joachim von Ribbentrop. After the war these men were condemned as criminals…
By Charles Lutton ∙ December 1, 1984
“Good words are a mask for evil deeds.”– attributed to Joseph Stalin During both the First and Second World Wars, the nations warring against Germany and her allies portrayed their fight as a “world war for humanity.” Despite the opening of hitherto closed government archives and the testimony of political participants, the general public, with…
By Mark Weber ∙ December 1, 1985
In a secret wartime memorandum recently made public, Winston Churchill told his advisers that he wanted to “drench” Germany with poison gas. Churchill's July 1944 memo to his chief of staff Gen. Hastings Ismay was reproduced in the August-September 1985 issue of American Heritage magazine. “I you to think very seriously over this question of…
By Robert J. Chapman ∙ July 1, 1985
It has been often said that the first casualty of war is truth. Belligerents have always had their own versions of history, particularly with regard to responsibility for wars. And yet certain basic facts and events have not been totally suppressed, if only due to the lack of total media technology and control. Roman statesmen…
By Walter N. Sanning ∙ April 1, 1985
The Soviet scorched-earth policy has many facets: Military, economic, and so on. In The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry I touched only on those which are of importance in connection with the demographic changes of Eastern European Jewry. Here I want to emphasize the economic side of a little-known portion of the Second World War….
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