The Rhine River was the line of no return—once the paratroopers of the 17th Airborne crossed it, they’d be over enemy territory. Some pretended to sleep while others smoked or just stared into space. No one spoke. The roar of the engines and the rattling of the airframe made conversation impossible, which was just fine. [...]
"Stalag 17," set in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II, is a genuine Christmas movie, albeit a complex one: at once a mystery, a comedy, a war story, and a morality play, all wrapped in barbed wire. Die Hard changed the definition of a “Christmas movie,” mostly providing dads an excuse [...]
The moral choice in war is ascertained by doing a crude calculus: Of the available options, which kills the fewest? The option of Japan suddenly embracing peace is an illusion. The brutal calculation was: Do we kill so many people by dropping atomic bombs or so many more by invading? Those were the only two choices. [...]
The debate over whether the United States ought to have used the bomb against Japan is complicated and vexing. Did the United States have to drop atomic bombs on Japan to win the war? Should the United States have done so, even if military necessity dictated? I. The Pacific War German surrender on May 8, [...]
In reflecting on the lives of Fr. Gereon Goldmann and Dr. Takashi Nagai, and the era of war in which they lived, I was struck by how the Catholic faith—when truly lived with dedication—surpasses any national or ethnic enmity. It unites any and all in a universal goodness, mercy, wisdom, and love. While Germany and [...]
I started out for Florence in the morning in a state of feverish excitement, and the recollection of the sights of that day makes it difficult to write even now. We drove down the hill from San Casciano to the Greve valley with a sense of overwhelming tragedy. The destruction of Florence seemed the end [...]
Franz Jägerstätter and Fr. Gabriel Gay are two lesser-known victims of the Nazis. May their prayers deliver Europe from the wolves of secularism and restore the European nations to the Faith which forged them. Franz Jägerstätter In the previous essay in this series, we honored Blessed Otto Neururer, the first priest to be executed [...]
Blessed Otto Neururer would be the first priest to be martyred by the Nazis but by no means the last. Caesar, like the poor, is always with us. So is Judas. And so are the disciples of Christ. The Tyrant, the Traitor, and the Martyr. These three types of men form the very threads from [...]
On May 7, 1945, the German High Command surrendered to the Allies, bringing the war in Europe to an end. The following day was celebrated as Victory in Europe, or V-E, Day. On May 8, General Dwight D. Eisenhower issued a Victory Order of the Day, which read in part: “The crusade on which we [...]
To every man upon this earth/ Death cometh soon or late./ And how can man die better/ Than facing fearful odds,/ For the ashes of his fathers,/ And the temples of his gods. —Thomas Babington Macaulay How much resistance is a man—and a country—obligated to muster against insurmountable odds? This is the central question of [...]
On January 25, 1945, the Battle of the Bulge ended. But not until a decade after my father’s death did I uncover the fact that he fought in what one historian has deemed the greatest battle in history. Cpl. Joseph D. Klugewicz won a Bronze Star for his actions against the Nazis that winter. But [...]
The most important element in European foreign relations throughout the 1920s and during the early 1930s was the desire at all costs to avoid another war. There was among European statesmen a widespread conviction that another war would be infinitely more destructive than the Great War had been, and any alternative seemed preferable. 1. Hitler's [...]
Ridley Scott’s TV adaptation of Phillip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle came to Amazon in November, and bluntly put, it’s a horrifying ten hours. The premise says it all: What if the Allies had lost World War II? We see America divided between a Nazi regime in the east and a Japanese empire [...]
Today, the degree of popular ignorance of World War II is astounding. Military buffs apart, younger Americans know nothing about the Battle of the Bulge, which claimed nineteen thousand American lives. World War II was our “Aeneid,” an epic struggle against authentic evil, which at once created the nation and framed its destiny. The World [...]