March 6, 2018
by Marie Meaney
Seventy-five years ago, Hans and Sophie Scholl were guillotined, just four days after the janitor at the University of Munich caught them distributing anti-Nazi fliers. She was 21, he 24, but they went to their death courageously, peacefully. They had stood up against the lies of the Third Reich, its contempt for human life, especially [...]
February 15, 2018
by John Hittinger
Within the last year and half I have traveled four times to Poland. I have by no means covered the broad expanse of this great country, but I have managed to visit Warsaw, Sulwalki, Lublin, Kraków, Oswęciem, Wadowice; I have spent much time in Katowice in Upper Silesia, and its surrounding towns such as Tychy, [...]
August 28, 2017
by John Paul Meenan
Editor's note: Due to the continued interest of our readers in the issues raised by Deacon Jim Russell in his defense of Truman's decision to use atomic weapons against Japan in World War II, Crisis furthers the debate with two new essays. Below is a rebuttal to Deacon Russell by Professor Meenan; also published today is [...]
August 28, 2017
by Deacon James H. Toner
Editor's note: The following essay by Deacon Toner is a response to Prof. John Paul Meenan's critique of Deacon Jim Russell's defense of President Truman's decision to use atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. President Warren Harding, not a bright man, is supposed to have said, as he mulled over certain [...]
August 10, 2017
by Jim Russell
I write this essay on my birthday, August 7. I mention this only because my birthday happens to fall between the anniversaries of the August 6 Hiroshima and August 9 Nagasaki nuclear bombings. August is therefore the month in which some Catholics are sure to excoriate other Catholics because these “other” Catholics do not automatically [...]
July 12, 2017
by Wanda Skowronska
While some frenzied protestors call Trump “illiterate,” Polish crowds were impressed at the American president’s depth of historical understanding in the recent speech delivered in Warsaw’s Krasiński Square (July 6, 2017). The place chosen for the speech was remarkable in itself and holds great significance for Poles. Trump chose to speak at the memorial to [...]
February 15, 2017
by Michael De Sapio
February 15 marks the date of one of the most regrettable episodes in the history of World War II, the bombing and destruction of the abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy in 1944. The Battle of Monte Cassino has been described as one of the longest and bloodiest engagements in the war, and the destruction [...]
November 23, 2016
by Michael De Sapio
In honor of Thanksgiving and in anticipation of the Christmas season, I offer this story of gratitude and faith concerning the experiences of a Catholic girl in Amsterdam during World War II. The girl, now enjoying her golden age ensconced on a quiet suburban street in northern Virginia, is my neighbor Mrs. Stien van Egmond. [...]
May 12, 2016
by Regis Martin
“On the face of every human being, especially when marked by tears and sufferings, we can and must see the face of Christ.” ∼ Blessed Paul VI We reached Poland early that morning, the long bus drive through the night bringing us first to Czestochowa, where the Black Madonna, Poland’s most sacred icon, has for more than [...]
April 27, 2016
by Regis Martin
General Mark W. Clark, whose Fifth Army led the capture of Rome in June of 1944, was the last of the fighting World War II field commanders to die (at age 87 in 1984). He never doubted the importance of the role America played in the liberation of Europe. Nor the idealism that moved so [...]
November 19, 2015
by Fr. George W. Rutler
During the debates leading up to the 1983 pastoral letter of the bishops of the United States on nuclear weapons, “The Challenge of Peace,” the great churchman Archbishop Philip Hannan of New Orleans said that many of the bishops were uninformed. I paraphrase, because the archbishop himself used much more colorful language, honed by years of [...]
September 2, 2015
by Filip Mazurczak
Although even secularist historians admit that Pope St. John Paul II inspired the rise of Solidarity and dealt a death blow to the Soviet Empire, the pivotal role Polish Catholicism played in anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet resistance is less well-known. The 70th anniversary of the end of World War II this year is a fitting time to [...]
August 25, 2014
by Fr. George W. Rutler
There is a warm spot in my heart for Sir Cecil Spring-Rice because he loved Theodore Roosevelt and disdained Woodrow Wilson. He also wrote the hymn “I Vow to Thee My Country” which some progressivists have forbidden their shrunken congregations to sing because it speaks of a real heaven, and a life of sacrifice. He said affectionately of Teddy: [...]
April 2, 2014
by K. V. Turley
London just witnessed the release of a newly restored version of Rome, Open City (Roma città aperta). Roberto Rossellini's Italian Neo-Realist classic emerged from the smashed debris of what was left of the Eternal City as the German armies retreated and the Allies slowly crept towards it. Watching the movie today it lacks none of [...]
August 19, 2013
by Fr. George W. Rutler
Arthur Cardinal Hinsley, Archbishop of Westminster, was such a strong voice against the Axis that when he died in 1943, King George VI expressed frustration that protocol prevented his attendance at the Requiem. When King George V and Queen Mary had attended the Requiem for the exiled Empress Eugenie at the Benedictine abbey in Farnborough in 1920, a [...]
October 22, 2012
by Fr. George W. Rutler
There are commentators on the sports channels whose numbing dialogues would never be confused with the Algonquin Round Table. These are the so-called Monday Morning Quarterbacks. Some historians quarterback that way. Pope Pius XII, hailed in his lifetime as a protector of persecuted people, has suffered in reputation from lax minds who never exercised themselves [...]
October 4, 2011
by Fr. George W. Rutler
In the Teutonic gloom spreading from Tunisia to Stalingrad, the Luftwaffe engineered a glimmer of fresh resiliency with the inaugural test flight of a Messerschmitt Me 262 jet that reached 520 mph on May 22. In those same hours, Stalin was dissolving the Third international, or Comintern, on the first anniversary of the formal Soviet [...]
June 13, 2011
by Fr. George W. Rutler
May was flush with the most colorfully camouflaged spy networks in every government, and the Allied bombing of Sicily and Sardinia on May 19 and 20, as prelude to the invasion of Italy, punctuated one of the most celebrated espionage tricks of the war: Operation Mincemeat. As the brainchild of Admiral John Godfrey, director of [...]
May 16, 2011
by Fr. George W. Rutler
Benedetto Croce died in 1952, the same year in which Albert Einstein had to protest to his friend Maurice Solovine, "lest you think that weakened by age I have fallen into the hands of priests." In 1943, Croce had to do something similar, as his essays on philosophic idealism increasingly gave the impression that he [...]