A Turning Point In The Life Of Musashi, The Undefeated Samurai

Miyamoto Musashi was three hours late. This was his way. On the beach the tension in the air was palpable. Sasaki Kojiro paced up and down on the fine sand with his hands behind his back. His wrath was rising with the sun, and with every passing minute he felt the insult to his honour growing. The date was the 13th of April, 1612.

Kojiro was considered one of the greatest Samurai in Japan. He was famous throughout the land for his speed and precision, which was made even more remarkable by his preferred weapon. He wielded a huge no-dachi blade, a curved Japanese sword in the classic style, but with a blade over a meter in length. The size andWEIGHT of the no-dachi made it a brutal, unsubtle weapon, but Kojiro had perfected its use to a degree unheard of in all Japan.

The Heroism of Chiune Sugihara – Saved Countless Jews From Nazi Deathcamps

Chiune Sugihara is not a name that immediately springs to mind when thinking of Japanese Second World War heroes, but his story is remarkable.
Born in January 1900 in the small Japanese town of Yaotsu, Chiune was an excellent scholar. He graduated from high school with top marks. He gained a place at the famous Waseda University in Tokyo where he studied English. He paid his way through university by taking several part-time jobs.
When he was 19, Sugihara discovered that the Japanese Foreign Ministry was looking for people who wanted to work in the overseas diplomatic service, and he applied. The entrance exam was notoriously difficult, but Chiune passed. He studied Russian at a Manchurian University, graduating with an honours degree when he was 24.

Report on the German People – October 1943

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The specter of 1918 is haunting the Nazi party, as Himmler and his Gestapo are turned loose on the German people in a desperate attempt to hold the home front together.
Our enemy has become our protector.” Thus one German visiting Stockholm reacted when told that Heinrich Himmler had been appointed Reichsminister of the Interior. Even Hitler knows that the white-headed, uncultivated, bespectacled man with the moist, slack handshake is disliked among Germans. Only absolute necessity put this man in the ugly palace on the Koenigsplatz in Berlin. About 8,000,000 foreign workers, several millions of evacuees constituted a gravely disquieting problem for the party leaders. Germany’s home front has become her second front.

“A Nazi Guide to Christmas” Leaflet Found; Instructs Party Members How Christmas Should be Celebrated

Unearthed from an archive in the German city of Dresden is a leaflet with the printed title stating A Nazi Guide to Christmas. The said pamphlet lists a number of instructions on how a Nazi party member should precisely decorate and celebrate Christmas. What’s more, in this said leaflet, the Virgin Mary is turned German and the archangel Gabriel into an Aryan goddess.

The leaflet A Nazi Guide to Christmas is composed of twenty pages filled with clear-cut instructions for Nazi Party members on how to celebrate their Christmas. It was printed way back in 1937 by the Nazi Party’s Saxony branch, the Heimatwerk organization. This arm of the party was organized the year before the pamphlet was published. It was formed as the “promoter of Saxon Germanic culture as a shining example of true Germanness”.
There never was an intention to mass produce the A Nazi Guide to Christmas leaflet. However, it was distributed among the Nazi Party’s bureaucrats and in turn, they were the ones who would disseminate the information to the population making sure that the latter follow on to the new way things had to be.

ΠΟΛΕΜΙΚΑ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥΓΕΝΝΑ (Μικρή συλλογή άρθρων)

Α)Christmas with GIs: How American Soldiers Took The Place of British Fighting Men During WWII

GI Christmas WWII (Left: A Gi spending his Christmas with a British family; Right: The actual poster put around the base urging GIs to spend their holidays with British families.)

American GIs sent to Britain during the height of WWII were repeatedly described as “overpaid, oversexed and over here” but at least, on Christmas they made many a British families happy with their presence during the holiday celebrations. The main reason – they brought with them extra rations as well as the much sought after Coca-Cola and nylon stockings.

With British soldiers away battling on the Western Front, their families left in Britain were encouraged to invite the US soldiers stationed in their country over to celebrate Christmas. This they readily did because they knew the soldiers would be bringing extra food with them. As for the American GIs in the foreign land, it was their way of escaping the difficulties brought about by being away from home on an occasion that would have been best spent with families and friends.

Η ΑΝΑΚΩΧΗ ΤΩΝ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥΓΕΝΝΩΝ ΤΟΥ 1914 (Μικρή συλλογή άρθρων)

Α)The Christmas Truce of 1914 – When the Impossible Happened

 

Still from last years Sainsbury’s Christmas truce advert

WWI was most notable for trench warfare, the conditions of which were often so horrific that it’s hard to imagine what these soldiers endured, day after day. Despite such horrors, something strange happened on 25 December 1914, one that threatened the governments of both sides and the progress of the war. The threat? Christmas.

 

The Germans started the war in July 1914. Having taken Belgium and a slice of France, they were confident they’d take Paris just as quickly and that the whole thing would be over by Christmas. The British and the French, as well as their allies, thought the same. They were all wrong.

The Allies repelled the German advance at the First Battle of the Marne from September 5 to 12, forcing them to retreat to the Aisne valley where they dug themselves in. The Allies reached them on September 13, and the First Battle of the Aisne began. It ended in a stalemate.

 

Map of the trenches that defined the Western Front

The Germans wanted to reach the Sea; the Allies wanted to prevent that, so each dug trenches to try to outflank the other, separated by several meters called no man’s land. And so it went: the Allies blocking the Germans by digging trenches further east and west, and the Germans doing the same, till both reached the North Sea.
By the start of December, each side had dug over 250 kilometers of trenches and had suffered heavy losses in the first months of the war. Britain lost almost 100,000 men. In August alone, France had lost double that number, roughly the same as Germany.
Not all the deaths were due to combat, however. Disease was rampant in the cold, the cramped and unsanitary conditions, as well as the constant mud and water. There was also trench foot: when feet are constantly soaked. Left untreated, gangrene and death results.

 

Sometimes, trenches caved in, burying the men they were built to protect. But even the best-made ones could be death traps because if hit directly, they focused bomb blasts, causing more damage than if they had gone off in open spaces. Often, the men could only watch helplessly as the bombs fell toward them – unable to run because they were so tightly packed together.
Finally, there was the propaganda. Each portrayed the other as unfeeling brutes because it’s easier to kill a person if you stop seeing them as human. Despite this, there were occasional, hour-long ceasefires so that everyone could dispose of their dead.
On the evening of December 24, however, the Twilight Zone descended. No one is sure where it started exactly, but it’s believed the first incidents began in Flanders before spreading to the rest of the Western Front.

The Lancashire Fusiliers attaching bayonets to their guns in preparation for the Battle of Albert at the Somme in 1916

The Germans started singing Christmas carols. Then flashlights and cigarette lighters came on – a dangerous thing to do since it allowed the Brits to pinpoint exact enemy positions.
But while most of the Brits understood no German, they recognized the tunes. Some even sang along in English. As they did, more flashlights and lighters were lit among the German line. None of the Brits had the heart to shoot them.
On Christmas morning, Pioneer Sergeant J.J. ‘Nobby’ Hall, stuck a sign on a stick which read “Merry Christmas,” and waved it over the trench. A similar sign was waved over the German line before it popped back under.
Then at noon, a German jumped over his trench as British rifles took aim. The man put his hands up and began walking unarmed across no man’s land. Private Ike Sawyer went out to meet him. In the middle, they shook hands. From the German line, more soldiers stood with their hands up and the Brits met them in the middle.

British and German troops meeting between the trenches at the Bridoux-Rouge Banc Sector

Some Germans stuck candles in small pine trees and used that as a white flag while they crossed over. Gifts of food, cigarettes and clothes were exchanged. Football games were played, and the Germans who played against the Scotts couldn’t stop laughing when they found out the latter wore nothing under their kilts.

 

Such camaraderie only happened in the British sectors, however. The French were in no mood to fraternize with the enemy that had seized portions of their country. On the Eastern Front, the Russians (who were allied with the British and the French) did not celebrate Christmas till January 7.
Since many of the Germans worked in Britain before the war, most spoke some English. Some had even met, such as Captain Clifton Stockwell, who found himself shaking hands with a German soldier that had waitered at a restaurant he frequented. Another Brit let his pre-war German barber cut his hair and shave his beard.

 

A football game between enemies during the Christmas Truce

Despite the camaraderie, they had an unspoken rule: neither could see the trenches of the other to prevent revealing their weaponry and layout. Not all the British-German fronts saw peace, however, and fought through Christmas Day.
The governments of both sides were mortified. They threatened dire consequences for those who fraternized with the enemy, but it did no good for those who were already on friendly terms. The greatest fear was that the war might end on the Western Front. Worse, with anti-royalist and pro-communist sentiments growing in some countries, what would happen if soldiers dropped their weapons and brokered a permanent peace?

The German soldier in the middle is wearing a British balaclava, a gift from the British soldiers he is posing with

For those who did reach out, the truce usually held until December 26. Along some fronts, it held out longer, but for Private Archibald Stanley, it ended the day after Christmas. His commanding officer, fearing a mutiny, allowed the truce to hold on Christmas. The next day, he ordered his men to fire at any Germans still standing on no man’s land. He was ignored.

 

By late afternoon, fearing he was losing control, the officer shot and killed an unarmed German soldier. Things went downhill from there. As the war progressed and new weapons like poison gas were used, neither side felt any desire for a truce.

Peter Knight and Stefan Langheinrich, descendants of WWI soldiers, shake hands on 11 November 2008 at the Christmas Truce monument in Frelinghien, France to reenact the event

On 11, November 2008, a monument to the Christmas Truce was set up in Frelinghien, France. It was attended by the descendants of those WWI veterans who dared to let the spirit of Christmas infect them, if only for a day or two.
www.warhistoryonline.com

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B)Christmas Truce Story: Ordered to Kill Each Other, British Captain and German Baron Shared Beer Instead

One hundred years ago, instead of killing each other as they were ordered to do, British Captain Clifton Stockwell and German Baron Maximillian von Sinner instead had a toast at the midst of the Great War. A century past, their grand-kids – both involved in military service – met in the same spot to commemorate their grandfathers’ action.

The Orders

On Christmas morning some ten decades ago, two men from the Great War’s warring parties were commanded to kill each other. However, when they met on No Man’s Land, no blood was shed. Instead, they exchanged gifts of plum pudding and shared a beer.
The guns fell silent that day as British Captain Clifton Stockwell and German Baron Maximillian von Sinner negotiated a truce lasting for a day all the while toasting each other’s good health.
Soon after, the two parties were engaged in a game of football with the British troops being trashed by the Germans when it came to goals. Meanwhile, the officers smoked cigars and talked to each other showing to each other pictures of their families back home.
The 1914 ceasefire occurred Frelinghien in northeastern France. Starting at exactly eleven in the morning on Christmas day that year, a German soldier started it by walking towards the trench of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers with his hands up in the air. A British soldier climbed out of the trenches to meet that German soldier despite his officers’ attempts to stop him. When they did meet, the German serviceman presented the latter with a box of cigars.
Witnessing the scene unfold, the rest of the Fusiliers, with eagerness, wanted to come up as well. So, Captain Stockwell took upon himself the task of making contact with the officers of the other side. He called out to them to meet him.
It was Baron von Sinner who answered his call. Upon meeting on No Man’s Land, the two agreed to a truce that would last until midnight. With this agreement, the German soldiers belonging to the 134th Saxon Infantry rolled out three barrels of beer – taken from a nearby French brewery – and shared them with the British troops.
Both sides went on to make large banners wishing each other to have a merry season that they, then, put up just above their trenches.

Clifton and Maximillian, the two officers of the warring sides, who decided on a truce, shared plum pudding and a beer toast during the Great War.

Great War ended with both Stockwell and von Sinner surviving. Nevertheless, they never told their families about that particular occurrence. Stockwell just wrote about it in his war diary. This same journal was eventually used by the Royal Welsh for the compilation of its regimental history.
Aside from his account about the truce in his journal, it is also believed that Stockwell wrote this poem alluding to that one-day truce on Christmas day of 1914.
Entitled Christmas 1914, it goes as follows:
Twas a frosty Xmas morning
In our trenches on the Lys
And a fog was hanging thick along the fields
You could hear the Bosches singing
But no Xmas bells were ringing
’Cept the tinkle of the bullets on shields.
When the fog at last had lifted
And the Bosches glances shifted
On our parapet in front of them they saw;
On a notice board in writing
From the men that they were fighting
“Merry Xmas” and Kaisers heads galore.
Then the Bosches started shouting
“Will you come and take an outing?”
And a row of heads along our line appear
For two Saxons greatly daring
To our trenches were boldly faring
With a barrel of the most indifferent beer.
Thus when after-dinner came
Both sides did more of the same
And their trenches boldly left and came abrad
And with barrels full of beer
And something of good cheer
Made an effort to arrive at an accord.
Then the officers conferred
While our rations were transferred:
To a truce between the two they did agree,
That till dawn the following day
None should shoot or forward stray
Whilst our notice board the enemy could see.
The Comeback
A century after that Christmas truce, the grandsons of the two officers returned to the same spot where they stood, they talked and toasted beer bearing the same items their grandfathers brought that day — beer and plum pudding.
In 2014, 71-year-old retired British Major Miles Stockwell and 63-year-old retired German Colonel Joachim Freiherr von Sinner visited the same location where their grandpas met. Both men had followed in their ancestors’ footsteps and had served in the respective military organizations of their countries.
According to Miles, who also served in the Royal Welsh, the story between their grandfathers is amazing. They had been ordered never to fraternize with the enemy that was why there were never pictures taken of that day and the two of them together.
He went on to say that deciding to ignore the orders of the ones above them had been risky but still they pushed forward to meet on the muddy No Man’s Land while their men cheered in the background. Miles added that his grandfather didn’t have anything to give as a peace offering that day, only a plum pudding he had been set, so he fetched that and handed it to the German baron.

Miles and Joachim honored their grandfathers in 2014 by bringing and exchanging plum pudding and beer on the exact spot where their ancestors stood a century ago.

The latter, on the other hand, had two beers in hand, and he gave one to the British captain. They toasted each other’s health, decided on having a short truce, sat on the flat ground drinking from their beer bottles and smoking cigar.
Miles, then, pointed out that this story just goes on to show what possible things happen when people just stop fighting and start talking.
www.warhistoryonline.com

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Γ)Watch: Christmas In The Trenches (1914-1918)

The Christmas truce in 1914 was a series of widespread but unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front around Christmas 1914. In the week leading up to the holiday, German and British soldiers crossed trenches to exchange seasonal greetings and talk.

 

In areas, men from both sides ventured into no man’s land on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to mingle and exchange food and souvenirs. There were joint burial ceremonies and prisoner swaps while several meetings ended in carol-singing. Men played games of football with one another, giving one of the most enduring images of the truce. However, the peaceful behaviour was not ubiquitous; fighting continued in some sectors while in others the sides settled on little more than arrangements to recover bodies.
In December 1915, there were explicit orders by the Allied commanders to forestall any repeat of the previous Christmas truce. Individual units were encouraged to mount raids and harass the enemy line, while communicating with the enemy was discouraged by artillery barrages along the front line throughout the day. The prohibition was not completely effective, however, and a small number of brief truces occurred.

 

An eyewitness account of one truce, by Llewelyn Wyn Griffith, recorded that after a night of exchanging carols, dawn on Christmas Day saw a “rush of men from both sides … [and] a feverish exchange of souvenirs” before the men were quickly called back by their officers, with offers to hold a ceasefire for the day and to play a football match.
It came to nothing, as the brigade commander threatened repercussions for the lack of discipline, and insisted on a resumption of firing in the afternoon. Another member of Griffith’s battalion, Bertie Felstead, later recalled that one man had produced a football, resulting in “a free-for-all; there could have been 50 on each side” before they were ordered back.
In the Decembers of 1916 and 1917, German overtures to the British for truces were recorded without any success. In some French sectors, singing and an exchange of thrown gifts was occasionally recorded though these may simply have reflected a seasonal extension of the live-and-let-live approach common in the trenches.

 

Christmas In The Trenches – cooking his pudding over a ‘fire devil’ in the trenches and enjoying Xmas fare under adverse conditions.
British soldiers stand in a trench around a bucket sitting on a grill over a small fire; someone off-camera hands a tin can to one of the men. He puts the can inside the bucket (a primitive double-boiler is the invention here), later a soldier removes a can from the bucket.
Shot of the enterprising cook dishing up tastes of the pudding to other soldiers; who stand in line in the trench. Shot of group of soldiers facing camera and eating; with big smiles.
The soldier in the front has a large moustache and is enjoying his Christmas pudding!
www.warhistoryonline.com
[embed]https://youtu.be/1emCCXegsKk[/embed]

Irena Sendlerowa Saved over 2,500 Jewish Kids From the Warsaw Ghetto, Smuggling Them Out in Suitcases or Medical Bags

During WWII, Irena Sendlerowa, a Catholic Polish social worker, saved 2,500 Jewish children from death. That’s more than Oscar Schindler managed with 1,200. Though recognized by Yad Vashem in 1965 as being one of the Righteous Among the Nations (a non-Jew who saved Jews during the Holocaust), the rest of the world knew virtually nothing about her.
At least, until 1999 when students at a rural Kansas high school were looking for material for their school play. Thanks to them, Sendlerowa was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize but lost it to Al Gore.
Sendlerowa was born on 15 February 1910 in the town of Otwock. Her father was a doctor whose motto was, “jump into the water to save someone drowning, whether or not you can swim.” He did just that, which was why he was the only doctor in Otwock who’d treat Jews.

Irena Sendlerowa in 1942

In 1935, Poland mandated ghetto benches in schools, requiring Jews to sit in assigned seats away from non-Jews. Many protested this by refusing to sit down in class. Sendlerowa took up Polish Literature at the Warsaw University and joined these protests, for which she was suspended for three years. Despite this, she earned her degree, joined the Polish Socialist Party, and found a job with the Warsaw Social Welfare Department.

Top 10 Most Senseless Wars of All Time

Images used (Clockwise from top left): (1) Sultan Kalid Barghash of Zanzibar who ruled from August 25 to August 27, 1896  (2) The French forces bombing and capturing the Mexican fortress of San Juan de Ulúa in 1838 (3) Holy Roman Emperor of the late 1700s, Joseph II, initiator of the Kettle War (4) A British Warship (Left) capturing a Spanish trading ship in 1743 during The War of Jenkin’s Ear, painted by a British painter Samuel Scott (5) Town Line, A Town in New York calls itself ‘the last Confederacy’
War can be defined as an organized and often extended conflict between states or non-state entities. Some people would consider war as a serious and glorious struggle over some important issues. But there had been unconventional wars in the history of mankind that could be termed as huge wastes of time.

Sparta: Growth of an Empire

It is widely known that the Spartans produced some of the most brutally efficient warriors of all time, but how did they gain that reputation? How did they hold on to their culture built solely around war with almost all other work falling to slaves? Sparta is remembered not just because of their army, but because of their little-discussed empire, the Spartans commanded large areas of Greece and all of Greece at one point. What they achieved with their power allowed them to have the reputation as warriors and also have the proven results.
The Spartans resided in the large Peloponnese Peninsula of Greece, far inland and among the mountains. With no real need or a suitable location for a navy, the Spartans focused on their land army. As Sparta grew in power, they sought power over their neighbors. One such neighbor was the city of Argos, with their reputation for outstanding warriors.

Lightning Strike: Killing Admiral Yamamoto and Avenging Pearl Habor

Not only did the Pearl Harbor attack of December 7^th, 1941 deal a devastating blow to the United States’ Navy and draw the nation into World War II, but it also gave the Japanese Imperial Navy some six months to further their control of the Pacific without U.S. interference. This was, of course, the plan.

The Man Who Saved the World’ – The Russian Who Avoided WWIII

The notion that one man alone could somehow avert a universal catastrophe or could potentially save the world has lost its age-old value with the increased awareness among masses. However this does not really mean that such people don’t exist, as many will see in the recently released movie by a Danish Filmmaker Peter Anthony.

10 Things You May Not Know About the American Civil War

The Battle of Chickamauga
The American Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865 between the Confederate States (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas) and the Union. Most believe it was about ending slavery, but that’s a myth.

Sons of Mars: Early Formative Events that Shaped the Roman Empire

How exactly were the Romans able to rise from a small trading settlement near a ford in the Tiber to establishing an empire that stretched from Britain to Mesopotamia? These people who had little interest in a navy for generations ultimately grew to a point where they called the Mediterranean “Our Sea.”
They had an innovative military and political dynamic and welcomed many aspects of foreign cultures and had such power that it resonates even in the modern world. They weren’t always the powerful Roman Empire, many influential periods shaped and truly enabled the Roman Empire.

The beginnings of the eternal city and “Romans.”

The traditional origin story of Rome is certainly a product of later Roman culture. However, the story of Romulus and Remus does speak a great deal to how the Romans viewed themselves. Romulus and Remus being raised by a wolf is barbaric enough, but the cold-blooded murder of Remus by Romulus over Romulus’ territory shows that the Romans will go to great lengths to protect their own. This is echoed in later civil wars with little hesitation to go to war with other Romans to protect their territory or to enforce what they thought was right.

With or without the legendary Romulus and Remus origin story, the early Romans were a fierce and warlike people. Local raiding was very common in this early and fragmented Italy and the Romans were quite good at it. With the Etruscans in the north and the Greeks to the south, the Romans mostly took the fight to the various Italian tribes and cities in between.

1453: The Fall of Constantinople and the Death of the Roman Empire

The Roman Empire didn’t end with the 476 depositions of the Western Emperor Romulus or the Fall of Rome. It continued with solid momentum in the east with the powerful Byzantine Empire. Though we know it as the Byzantine Empire, to them it was unequivocally still Roman.
Even when Latin gave way to Greek, the Byzantines still considered themselves Roman. In the early medieval period, the Byzantines reclaimed control of many of the fallen territories, notably the Italian peninsula. They fought various emerging powers and faced several attempts to take their triple walled capital city. The only time it had been taken was through internal strife and treachery coinciding with the Fourth Crusade.

Heinz Heydrich, brother of SS General Reinhard Heydrich, helped Jews escape the Holocaust after reading his brother’s files after Reinhard’s death.

Heinz Siegfried Heydrich  was the son of Richard Bruno Heydrich and the younger brother of SS General Reinhard Heydrich. After the death of his brother, Heinz Heydrich helped Jews escape the Holocaust.
Heinz Heydrich was born in Halle an der Saale to composer Richard Bruno Heydrich and his wife Elisabeth Anna Maria Amalia Krantz. Her father was Eugen Krantz, director of the Dresden Royal Conservatory.The Heydrich family were well-to-do Catholics. The father, Richard Bruno Heydrich, was an opera singer, the founder of a music conservatory in Halle, and a German Nationalist who instilled patriotic ideas in the minds of his three children. The Heydrich household was very strict and the children were frequently disciplined. As a youth, Heydrich engaged his older brother, Reinhard Heydrich, in mock fencing duels.

Gestapo Torture Chamber Under Eiffel Tower! Shocking

The Gestapo was the abbreviation of the Geheime Staatspolizei, or the Secret State Police. It was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the executive and the judicial branches into one power. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of SS national leader Heinrich Himmler, who in 1936 was appointed Chief of German Police by Hitler.
In the popular picture of the Gestapo with its spies everywhere terrorizing German society has been rejected by many historians as a myth invented after the war as a cover for German society’s widespread complicity in allowing the Gestapo to work.

The Red Baron – Separating Truth From Fiction – By Ryan Clauser

During World War I a scarlet triplane terrorized the skies over France. This image is one that many people conjure when they think of Manfred von Richthofen, or the Red Baron. Today, a similar triplane may be seen flying over the skies of The Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in New York State.[1] This powerful museum brings the aircraft of WWI to life with its weekend airshows and staged dogfights; it also houses fascinating history of aircraft and war memory in regards to the Red Baron. It is important to note that the stereotypical image of the Red Baron, which has been instilled into popular culture through toys, models, and a cartoon strip featuring a loveable beagle, is far from accurate. Many aspects of Richthofen’s life to this day are depicted incorrectly, from the aircraft he flew, to his personal mannerisms and how this legendary battle flyer has been memorialized.[2]