Posts Tagged ‘WWII’
History of D-Day: 76 Years Ago
HISTORY OF D-DAY Why has D-Day captured the imagination of American consciousness for three-quarters of a century? On Twitter, the hashtag is #DDay76 Seventy-six years ago, on June 6, 1944, the Allies launched an offensive on the Normandy coast of France to liberate continental Europe from the Nazi German occupation. D-Day was the largest invasion by…
Read MoreHistory of V-E Day: End of WWII in Europe 75 Years Ago
HISTORY OF V-E DAY Seventy-five years ago today, World War II ended in Europe with the acceptance by the Allies of unconditional surrender from Germany on V-E Day. Or did it? May 7, 1945 Adolf Hitler had committed suicide in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, as I describe in my article here.…
Read MoreHistory of the Liberation of Dachau — a Personal Reflection
HISTORY OF THE LIBERATION OF DACHAU, a Personal Reflection On April 29, 1945, 75 years ago, toward the end of World War II, the Allies captured and liberated Dachau. My father, Staff Sergeant John Petro, was one of the liberators. It was one of the few stories from The War that my father told me…
Read MoreHistory of the Liberation of Dachau: April 30, 1945. Part 2
HISTORY OF THE LIBERATION OF DACHAU: APRIL 30, 1945. Part 2 In Part 1, I discussed the Nazi Concentration Camps and the initial movement of US Army divisions into Dachau. The Camp As my father and the 42nd “Rainbow” Division moved into the Dachau Concentration Camp, of the 32,000 survivors still alive in the main…
Read MoreHistory of the Liberation of Dachau: April 29, 1945. Part 1
HISTORY OF THE LIBERATION OF DACHAU: APRIL 29, 1945. Part 1 I remember what my father had told me of his involvement in the liberation of Dachau shortly before he died 44 years ago. Some of his war buddies discovered the tribute site I’d created for him and called or emailed me to recount stories…
Read MoreHistory of Christmas Eve and the Battle of the Bulge: 75 Years Ago
HISTORY OF CHRISTMAS EVE AND THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE: 75 YEARS AGO On Christmas Eve, 1944, my father, Staff Sergeant John Petro, had arrived in Strasbourg with the 42nd “Rainbow” Infantry Division. Eight days earlier, the Battle of the Bulge had begun, and the 42nd Division, along with others, supplied much-needed reinforcements to the…
Read MoreMemorial Day: Why We Fight
VETERANS DAY: WHY WE FIGHT The world is different than it was almost two decades ago as we celebrate Veterans Day. Presently we have troops in countries that we didn’t have then, and after 9/11 we now remember why we fight. The History Channel often re-runs the HBO series Band of Brothers, the TV adaptation…
Read MoreMemorial Day: Why We Fight
MEMORIAL DAY: WHY WE FIGHT The world is different than it was even a decade ago as we celebrate Memorial Day. We now are fighting a war, and we now remember why we fight. The History Channel re-runs the HBO series “Band of Brothers,” the adaptation of the Stephen Ambrose book about a company of…
Read MoreHistory of Veterans Day
HISTORY OF VETERANS DAY A professor once commented, “We write things down so we can forget them.” Now, of course this is wrong, except in the limited sense of writing down appointments so we don’t have to worry about missing meetings. But that’s just it, we do forget things. As individuals we forget things that…
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