Tucker Carlson shocked nearly everyone last week when he implied that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor and one of the most revered heroes of World War II, had to abandon Christianity in order to turn on Adolf Hitler.
Bonhoeffer attempted to assassinate the Nazi leader and was murdered by the Third Reich in 1945. Bonhoeffer’s actions are almost universally regarded as heroic — but not to Carlson, who <a href="https://www.newsmax.com/us/tucker-carlson-dietrich-bonhoeffer-adolf-hitler/2025/11/13/id/1234491/">declared</a> recently that Bonhoeffer had simply &#8220;decided &#8230; Christianity is not enough, we have to kill the guy.”
Carlson held Bonhoeffer up as a warning to conservatives who criticize antisemitism on the Right, saying, &#8220;once you start calling people Nazis, we really have no choice but to start shooting them,&#8221; Carlson said.
So much sloppy thinking, so little time. 
Carlson is right that falsely labeling someone a “Nazi” or a “fascist” today paints a target on that person. It was reckless, for example, for California Governor Gavin Newsom to call White House advisor Stephen Miller <a href="https://stream.org/gavins-gambit-newsom-doubles-down-on-the-fascist-slander/">a fascist</a>, prompting leftists in Miller’s neighborhood to dox him, plastering telephone poles and lampposts with Miller’s home address.
But what does any of this have to do with Dietrich Bonhoeffer? He wasn’t sloppily using “Nazi” as a slur against his political opponents, the literal Nazis. Nobody was falsely claiming that the ordinary enforcement of just laws amounted to genocidal terror. Genocidal terror was written into the laws of a regime which had seized power in a crisis, suspended the constitution, outlawed all opposition, and stripped Jews of citizenship. 
Literal Nazis, who called themselves “Nazis,” were filling concentration camps with non-violent political dissidents, and preparing a war openly designed to conquer, enslave, and exterminate the peoples of neighboring nations. The Nazi blueprint for obtaining “Lebensraum” in Poland and the Soviet Union, <a href="https://wwv.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206247.pdf">Generalplan Ost</a>, envisioned wiping out some 80 million Slavs by either direct murder or slow starvation, to be replaced by German colonists. 
Carlson’s absurd criticism of Bonhoeffer is rooted in a fundamental misrepresentation of Christianity and its teachings. Despite Jesus’ words about turning the other cheek on a personal level, Christianity was never rigidly pacifist.
By the time of St. Augustine, the Church had developed the “Just War” doctrine, narrowly defining occasions when military action by the state was morally good and right. That teaching is widely accepted by most Christian churches, and codified by the Roman Catholic Church in its <a href="https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/war-and-peace/excerpts-from-catechism-of-the-catholic-church-safeguarding-peace-1997">Catechism</a>.
Catholic teaching holds that a Just War is one in which “the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain,” and “all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.” There also “must be serious prospects of success” and “the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.”
The language above refers to the actions of the state, not individual citizens. On the surface, it seems only to apply to decisions by nations such as Great Britain and France, whose declarations of war on Germany were obviously just. 
But the Just War analysis doesn’t only apply to states. As I explained in my recent book, “<a href="https://www.calamopress.com/store/no-second-amendment-no-first">No Second Amendment, No First”,</a> during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation religious persecution by intolerant monarchs drove thinkers in both the Jesuit and the Calvinist traditions to ask if those conditions could justify a civil war, a rebellion against a tyrant. Most of them answered “Yes,” and Christian political thinking began for the first time to countenance the overthrow of evil governments by their people. The men who removed King Charles I, and rebelled against French monarchs during the Wars of Religion, cited such arguments. 
So would later rebels, right here in America. Our own Declaration of Independence is actually an eloquent argument that the misgovernment of the 13 colonies by the British parliament and crown amounted to tyranny, and met the Just War requirements, making armed resistance not just permissible but obligatory.
The anti-Nazi resistance to which Dietrich Bonhoeffer belonged was steeped in this same tradition, and saw its efforts to overthrow a wicked tyranny in wartime as perfectly compatible with the broad Christian tradition. Their actions had nothing in common with the violence fostered by irresponsible leftist zealots in our non-tyrannical country in peacetime, which enjoys free elections and a free press.
For the real story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, treat yourself by streaming the recent, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0DQRBSF6S/ref=atv_dp_amz_c_TS8274d9_1_1?jic=16%7CCgNhbGwSA2FsbA%3D%3D">powerful biopic</a> about the man, or reading Eric Metaxas’s <a href="https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fclicks.aweber.com%2Fy%2Fct%2F%3Fl%3DFqFpc%26m%3D3XCdD_eFuk3cNaF%26b%3DK55f0DFRsI09TrIYGhU2MQ&amp;data=05%7C02%7C%7Cc0c9bf61e6b1422e8efa08de239ce248%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638987353876021137%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=aDTERBtB%2BmLzyO29EYFDyIh%2F8siQ%2B153YsTF2xJeGhA%3D&amp;reserved=0">magisterial book</a> on his inspiring life. And remember to always take with a grain of salt anything claimed by a certain former bow-tie-wearing war hawk with a maniacal laugh.
* * *
John Zmirak is author of many books, including the biography of anti-Nazi exile <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Wilhelm-Ropke-Library-Modern-Thinkers/dp/1882926560/ref=sr_1_1?crid=34MC41KJSEC8Z&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.IFJtRxoqeob52UgE206MCA.1YpaMP-rgHyaWkbhgF5AQT2XVjYRBIJOa9zsKPTGzuQ&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=Wilhelm+Ropke%3A+Swiss+Localist%2C+Global+Economist&amp;qid=1763142650&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=wilhelm+ropke+swiss+localist%2C+global+economist%2Cstripbooks%2C79&amp;sr=1-1">Wilhelm Röpke</a>, and the recent <a href="https://www.calamopress.com/store/no-second-amendment-no-first">No Second Amendment, No First</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Right now, DailyWire+ annual memberships are 50% off during our Black Friday sale. Join now at <a href="http://dailywire.com/blackfriday">dailywire.com/blackfriday</a>.

DB Germany

Critics Of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Are Wrong About Everything

Adolf Hitler

Christianity

Nazi Germany

Opinion

Tucker Carlson

World War II

MixCollage-10-Nov-2025-03-23-PM-5263

American Elections Are Now Being Decided Based On Tribal Blood Feuds In Africa

Democrats

Elections

Leftists

Matt Walsh

Minneapolis

Minnesota

Somalia

Veterans

Alec Penstone, a 100-year-old Royal Navy veteran who swept the seas for mines during the D-Day landings, has issued a blistering indictment of modern Britain, saying flatly that winning the Second World War “wasn’t worth the result.” Appearing on “Good Morning Britain,” Penstone’s voice carried the weight of a century — and the heartbreak of a man who watched his comrades die for a freedom he now believes has been squandered.
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“My message is,” Penstone told the hosts, “I can see in my mind’s eye those rows and rows of white stones — all the hundreds of my friends who gave their lives. For what? The country of today? No, I’m sorry, but the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result of what it is now.”
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This was no casual complaint from a disillusioned pensioner. It was the lament of a man who, at fifteen, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/07/winning-second-world-war-not-worth-it-d-day-veteran/#:~:text=A%20100%2Dyear%2Dold%20veteran,Good%20Morning%20Britain%20on%20Friday.">joined the war effort,</a> later serving on the HMS Campania, searching for U-boats and mines under constant threat of torpedo fire. He called himself “one of the lucky ones” simply for surviving. Yet after returning home, marrying his sweetheart Gladys, and watching Britain rebuild, he now looks upon a nation that no longer resembles the country that once stood defiantly against tyranny.
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“What we fought for was our freedom,” he said. “But now it’s a darn sight worse than when I fought for it.”
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&#39;What we fought for was our freedom, even now [the country] is worse than it was when I fought for it,&#39; says 100-year-old World War II Veteran Alec Penstone. <a href="https://t.co/M9HSsS5sIW">pic.twitter.com/M9HSsS5sIW</a>
&mdash; Good Morning Britain (@GMB) <a href="https://twitter.com/GMB/status/1986715254869332096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 7, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Penstone’s comments land in a Britain that appears almost determined to erase the very memory of the heroes who saved it. Earlier this year, under the Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, portraits of Winston Churchill and the Duke of Wellington — the men who defeated Adolf Hitler and Napoleon — were quietly <a href="https://www.gbnews.com/politics/keir-starmer-winston-churchill-portrait-parliament-labour-party-history">removed</a> from Parliament. GB News reported that the purge extended across Westminster, with Churchill’s image even taken down from Portcullis House, where he was once photographed standing at the Cenotaph in 1945.
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The Cenotaph, that sacred monument to the fallen, now stands in stark contrast to a political class eager to distance itself from the nation’s own history. To Penstone’s generation, Churchill embodied courage, conviction, and the defense of liberty. To today’s ruling elite, he is an embarrassment — an inconvenient reminder of British greatness.
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The moral decay goes deeper still. This year, Starmer dismissed calls to investigate the widespread rapes of young girls by Pakistani grooming gangs, smearing those who demanded justice as “jumping on a far-right bandwagon.” When Elon Musk called out the cover-up to his 210 million followers, Starmer called it “misinformation.” Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1876245946348208601">shot back</a>: “What an insane thing to say!” accusing Starmer of ignoring “vast numbers of little girls and their parents” for political gain.
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For a man like Alec Penstone, who risked his life so that truth and freedom might endure, such cowardice and corruption cut deep. His sorrow is not nostalgia — it is recognition. The Britain he fought for has traded courage for cowardice, truth for propaganda, and honor for convenience.
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The white stones still stand in silent rows. But the nation they represent, Penstone fears, has forgotten why they are there.
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The Mayor Of Arromanches Leads A Parade of British Veterans With A Royal Guard Of Honour

100-Year-Old D-Day Vet Condemns The Britain He Sees Today: ‘The Sacrifice Wasn’t Worth The Result’

General

Great Britain

World

After Nick Fuentes told Tucker Carlson that he was a “fan” and “admirer” of Joseph Stalin, Carlson told the young antisemite that they’d have to “circle back” on that point. But like Jen Psaki before him, Carlson failed to do so.
So, I reached out to Aaron MacLean, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the host of the <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/school-of-war/id1589160645" target="_blank" rel="noopener">School of War podcast</a>. He’s also a Marine who deployed to Afghanistan, a former professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, and, perhaps most importantly, was once my editor at the Washington Free Beacon, where I learned his encyclopedic knowledge of European history first-hand.
Is there anything to admire about Stalin? It’s a question that I think Daily Wire readers know the answer to, but one worth circling back on nonetheless. —Brent Scher
***
When Adolf Hitler shot himself in his Berlin bunker in 1945, he was directly responsible for the deaths of more than ten million men, women, and children.
That includes the millions he had murdered in the network of camps he had constructed across Europe. Toward the end of the war the typical method was to order large, terrified groups to strip naked at gunpoint, inform them they were to be disinfected from lice, and then asphyxiate them with cyanide gas in a sealed room mocked up to look like a shower.
The gassing itself took about 15 minutes. Early in the war many were shot, until questions of troop morale compelled the Nazis to invent techniques that would be less traumatizing for the executioner.
Europe’s Jews hold the unhappy distinction of having been the largest population of Hitler’s victims, with about 6 million killed in a campaign of deliberate destruction. Millions more deaths than these can be directly attributed to Hitler’s orders, without even broaching the question of his responsibility for the overall death toll of World War II in Europe, which he started and prosecuted almost until the end.
It&#8217;s remarkable that even with so steep a butcher’s bill, Hitler does not hold first place among the 20th century&#8217;s murderers. That position is occupied by Chairman Mao Zedong, whose efforts to bring socialism to China killed more than 40 million Chinese, the vast majority of whom starved. Hitler must compete among historians for second place.
His rival is the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin.
Like Mao, Stalin led a revolutionary leftwing regime that sought to bring equality and justice to one of the most economically and socially backwards nations on earth. Like Hitler, who was born in Austria, Stalin also came from the outer reaches of the empire he would come to terrorize.
Taking power upon the death of Lenin in 1924, Stalin inherited an incomplete communist revolution. The elimination of private property and Sovietization of major cities was well underway. But the Russian countryside was vast and it had been virtually impossible to impose the rule of enlightened science with any kind of scale or efficiency. In practice, independent farmers and landowners still lived their lives much as they had before the revolution.
Stalin ordered that this capitalist inertia be halted, and “collectivized” (that is, stole) these farms and gave them to “the people” (that is, the Soviet government he dominated). Hundreds of thousands of the farmers were murdered summarily; many more of them and their families died of starvation, disease, and other conditions of deportation from their land. As violent as this consequence was, it was not the worst outcome of collectivization. That was the death by starvation of millions as the food supply, predictably, faltered when those who had grown and sold the food were replaced by entirely new and untested systems of production and distribution.
As food shortages grew, rather than acknowledge his mistake, Stalin blamed those producing the food, and accused selfish locals of hoarding rather than participating in the new communist system in good faith. Brutal punishments and the confiscation of local food supplies abounded.
In Ukraine, this campaign of deliberate retaliation, remembered today as the “Holodomor,” caused the deaths of about 3 million, as Ukrainian-grown grain was taken and transported to feed the people of Moscow and other Russian cities. Whole villages died, but not before eating their pets, boiling shoe leather for soup, and grinding bones to make flour. Many went mad, their bellies distended, their limbs withered and strengthless. Cannibalism was far from unheard of, to include within families, to include mothers and their children. All in accordance with Stalin’s orders, all in the name of science and progress.
(For those who wish to know more about the Holodomor, Vasily Grossman’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Flows-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1590173287" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Everything Flows</a> is a brilliant examination of this episode by an eyewitness.)
Meanwhile, back at the regime’s center, among Soviet elites, Stalin feared dissent and plots to displace him from power — some real, most imagined. Such fears are the fate of any absolute dictator. To allay them, Stalin unleashed waves of purges of various elites in the state, the military, and the professions, culminating in the late 1930s in a period now known as the Great Terror. Over half a million Russians were executed during this period, many of them taken from their families in the middle of the night and shot in the basement of Moscow’s Lubyanka prison.
The overwhelming majority of them were guilty of absolutely nothing. Sometimes spectacular show trials were held for the accused, in which the captives would be compelled to theatrically “confess” their participation in nonexistent and cinematically traitorous plots against the state, lest their families also be murdered. In this period, the “luckier” victims were the many millions arrested and deported to the gulags in the east — concentration and forced labor camps where over a million died over the lifetime of the system.
(The work of Robert Conquest in his “The Great Terror” and the eyewitness accounts of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago” and “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” are outstanding ways to learn more about Stalin’s actions in this period.)
As the Second World War loomed, many expected an apocalyptic clash between the great leftwing revolutionary power, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and the great rightwing revolutionary power, Nazi Germany. The world was then shocked when in August of 1939 Stalin agreed to a non-aggression pact with Hitler, giving the Nazi dictator a free hand to fight a war in the west while also dividing Eastern Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence. When Hitler invaded Poland in September, Soviet troops marched in as well, dividing the country in two.
Setting aside the unique horror of the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust which was still to come, Soviet rule was hardly any less brutal than that of the Nazis, with widespread liquidation (that is, murder) of Polish elites who might resist Soviet imperialism — famously, the execution in the woods near Katyn of over 20,000 Polish military officers, police, intellectuals, and other elites. A small number in comparison to other bloodbaths of the day — an immaterial observation to the families of the dead.
Hitler betrayed Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, in one of the Soviet dictator’s most notable lapses of judgment: a man who never trusted another living soul in his own country bizarrely trusted Adolf Hitler. The cataclysm that ensued very nearly wiped Russia out as an independent country, not least because the Soviet military’s officer corps had been decimated by waves of purges, leaving mediocrities and yes-men overrepresented among the survivors.
Nevertheless, the blood of the common Russian soldier, the snow of the Russian winter, and the steel of the American industrial machine prevailed in defeating Hitler in the east. The United States saved Soviet Russia due to a common interest in defeating Nazi expansionism, only then to have to deal with Soviet expansionism, as Stalin postwar imposed iron rule on Eastern Europe and sought opportunities for global communism to expand wherever the free world showed weakness, from West Berlin to South Korea. The terror and expansionism only moderated upon his death in 1953 — and the regime he did so much to shape continued to destabilize the world and oppress its own people for another 40 years.
Why anyone, let alone anyone like Nick Fuentes, who claims to be on the Right, would “admire” Joseph Stalin seems at first a mystery — but the solution to the puzzle is in the fact that he seems to admire both Hitler and Stalin. The particulars of the revolutionary ideologies in question matter less than the sheer gleeful desire for destruction for its own sake. The terrain of the 20th century is made up of rivers of blood and mountains of murdered innocents, piled to the heavens. America’s heroic role in that period was to draw a line and defeat the terror of Hitler, and then contain that of Stalin.
Unfortunately the world is again a dangerous place; it is important to remember who the monsters were, and are.
Aaron MacLean is host of the podcast School of War and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
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The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Honoring Joseph Stalin On His Birthday

Circling Back On Joseph Stalin

antisemitism

Josef Stalin

Russia

Right-wing political commentator Tucker Carlson&#8217;s latest podcast episode featured a Cornell professor who suggested that there&#8217;s a good argument to be made for the United States backing Nazi leader Adolf Hitler during World War II instead of fighting the Nazis with Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union.
David Collum, a chemistry and chemical biology professor at the Ivy League school, told Carlson in an episode published on Wednesday that he read a book about the &#8220;revisionist history of World War II&#8221; and came away believing that &#8220;the story we got about World War II is all wrong, actually.&#8221;
&#8220;I think that&#8217;s right,&#8221; Carlson replied.
&#8220;One can make the argument [that] we should have sided with Hitler and fought Stalin,&#8221; Collum added. &#8220;Patton said that. And maybe there wouldn&#8217;t have been a holocaust, right? But Stalin was awful by any metric, and we weren&#8217;t his ally.&#8221;
In the episode, which can be viewed in full <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orgvAk7JhBI&amp;t=3943s">here</a>, Carlson offered no pushback to Collum&#8217;s claim that a U.S.-Nazi alliance would have been preferable during World War II, or to the bizarre idea that the U.S. siding with Hitler would have somehow prevented the Nazi regime from murdering six million Jews.
The Nazis <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/articles/zkxwgwx">began</a> instituting antisemitic laws in 1935, four years before the beginning of World War II and six years before the United States declared war on Germany. Jewish persecution intensified in 1937 and 1938 when Nazis began throwing people into concentration camps, and nearly 100 Jews were killed during the Kristallnacht pogrom. Hitler began creating concentration camps specifically for Jews in 1940, a year before U.S. troops joined its European allies to fight the Nazis. The largest mass murder of Jews under Hitler took place in 1942, just months after the United States had joined the fight.
As for Collum&#8217;s claim that Patton wanted to side with Hitler, there&#8217;s no historical record to back it up. While U.S. General George S. Patton believed that the Soviet Union would pose a major threat to the United States, he never advocated for siding with Hitler to fight Stalin. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill also said in the years following World War II that the Soviet Union was &#8220;in some ways more formidable than Hitler,&#8221; but he never suggested that it would have been better to fight Stalin alongside the Nazis.
Diana West, the author of the book that Collum credited for his revisionist take on World War II, said on Thursday that her book &#8220;does not argue for anything remotely like aligning with Hitler.&#8221;
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IMPORTANT: Lest there be any confusion from clip below, my book <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AmericanBetrayal?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AmericanBetrayal</a> does not argue for anything remotely like aligning with Hitler, and has ZERO to do with Darryl Cooper&#8217;s pro-Hitlerism. On the contrary, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AmericanBetrayal?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AmericanBetrayal</a> lays out the vast &#8220;occupation&#8221; of our… <a href="https://t.co/8G51ABb5RG">https://t.co/8G51ABb5RG</a>
— @realDianaWest (@realDianaWest) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDianaWest/status/1958332767583739954?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 21, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The former Fox News host was blasted after clips of Collum&#8217;s comments began circulating on social media.
&#8220;So now we should’ve backed Hitler? Let’s see if these sh*t heads are denounced by any but a handful of us on radio or TV,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/marklevinshow/status/1958345094001553896">said</a> conservative broadcaster Mark Levin.
Carlson <a href="https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1958552781242991095">responded</a> to Levin, writing, &#8220;Settle down, Mark. Nobody endorsed Hitler.&#8221;
During his interview with Carlson, Collum also claimed that when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, &#8220;It wasn&#8217;t a war.&#8221;
&#8220;It was a police action,&#8221; Collum said. &#8220;And they weren&#8217;t killing people. They were moving troops across the border.&#8221;
Nearly 60 people were killed and 170 people were wounded on the first day of Russia&#8217;s invasion, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-says-57-people-killed-first-day-russian-invasion-2022-02-24/">according</a> to Ukrainian authorities.
The Cornell professor added that it only became a war because &#8220;NATO wanted a war,&#8221; suggesting that the U.S.-European alliance was the aggressor in the conflict.
&#8220;And so, it morphed from being a police action, which I think Putin was trying to throw a fast ball past NATO&#8217;s chin and saying, &#8216;Back off on this whole NATO thing,'&#8221; Collum said.
&#8220;That&#8217;s correct,&#8221; Carlson replied.

Tucker Carlson Nods Along As Guest Suggests WWII History ‘Is All Wrong’: ‘Should’ve Sided With Hitler’

Jews

Stalin

Could the Catholic Church have done more to fight the Nazis? Conventional wisdom says yes, but newly-released information from the Vatican suggests otherwise.
Beginning August 13, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles will correct the historical record surrounding the papacy and Nazi Germany in &#8220;The Pope and the Führer: The Secret Vatican Files of World War II.”
Using once-secret files, made public in 2020 by Pope Francis, Knowles takes viewers through private correspondence and long-buried testimony that reshapes the legacy of a pope long accused of silence during Hitler’s reign. Knowles — a devout Catholic — is joined by a range of leading historians and Vatican scholars, offering new insight into the man who led the Catholic Church through one of history’s darkest chapters.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/the-pope-and-the-fuhrer-the-secret-vatican-files-of-world-war-ii-the-official-trailer" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH &#8216;THE POPE AND THE FUHRER&#8217; TRAILER HERE.</a>
“For eighty years, the world has condemned one man as the ‘Pope of Silence,’ the man who stood by in the face of shocking evil,” Knowles says in the trailer. “This is not just a story about Hitler and the Holocaust. One of the worst lies ever told about the Catholic Church is what she did or didn’t do in one of modernity’s darkest hours. Now, for the first time, the Vatican Secret Archive is open, and the truth is far more shocking than the fiction.”
In the four-part series, Knowles traces Pius&#8217; rise to the papacy, Rome&#8217;s fight against Hitler, and the Church’s response to the rising Soviet Union.
Knowles is the host of &#8220;The Michael Knowles Show,&#8221; &#8220;Michael &amp;,&#8221; and &#8220;Yes or No&#8221; on Daily Wire, as well as &#8220;The Book Club&#8221; on PragerU. In addition to his digital content, Knowles is the author of &#8220;Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds&#8221; and &#8220;Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide.&#8221;
“The Pope and the Führer” premieres August 13 on DailyWire+. New episodes every Wednesday.

Copy of 16×9

Michael Knowles Reveals The Truth About The Vatican And The Nazis

History

Michael Knowles

Pope Francis

The Vatican

More than 81 years after D-Day, Private Rodger Dean Andrews, an American soldier killed in the historic battle, was laid to rest at Bethel Cemetery in Gravette, Arkansas, <a href="https://www.kark.com/news/state-news/burial-service-to-be-held-june-9-for-gravette-wwii-soldier-killed-in-d-day-invasion/">NBC News</a> reported. He received full military honors.
In June of 1944, Private Andrews was assigned to the 37th Engineer Combat Battalion in the European Theater. That same month, Operation Overlord commenced, in which American, Canadian, and British soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy, France.
Andrews was killed during the battle, but his specific cause of death is unknown. After D-Day, his remains were recovered, but went unidentified until his family requested a renewed effort in 2014. In 2019, Andrews’ remains were exhumed, and his identity was confirmed through dental and anthropological analysis. They arrived in Arkansas on Sunday evening, where Bentonville’s Epting Funeral Home took them into their care.
His name at the Normandy American Cemetery will now be marked with a rosette.
<a href="https://get.dailywire.com/gift/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=wisepops&amp;utm_campaign=dad&amp;utm_content=fathersdaygiftpopups" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gift Dad an All Access Membership. Use code DAD40 at checkout to save 40%!</a>
The United States commemorated the anniversary of the historic D-Day battle on Friday, June 6, when President Donald Trump delivered honorary remarks about the brave men who fought and died in the battle.
“To the men who sit behind me, and to the boys who rest in the field before me, your example will never, ever grow old,” he said. “Your legend will never tire. Your spirit — brave, unyielding, and true — will never die.”
The White House also released a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/06/presidential-message-on-the-81st-anniversary-of-d-day-2025/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">statement</a>, which read in part: &#8220;We are grateful for those young men who answered their nations’ calls and faced the carnage of war in order to defeat tyranny—and we are eternally indebted to the souls who gave their lives in this noble struggle. It is our solemn obligation to remember their heroic stories, honor their sacrifices, and ensure that the freedom for which they died for may never again be in peril.&#8221;
On Monday, Private Andrews’ funeral procession departed from Epting Funeral Home, and the BCSO Motor Division escorted him to his final resting place. In a Facebook post, BSCO said that community members were &#8220;encouraged to line the route and pay their respects to honor the life and service of Private Rodger Dean Andrews, a true American hero.&#8221;

D-Day 80th Anniversary Ceremony At Normandy American Ceremony

D-Day Soldier Identified After 80 Years Laid To Rest In Arkansas

Arkansas

Donald Trump

Global Politics

Soldiers

U.S.

Today is June 6. It was on this day, eighty-one years ago, that 150-thousand men from the United States, Great Britain, and other allied nations, landed under withering gunfire on the beaches of France to begin the brutal process of breaking the Nazi stranglehold on the once-free nations of Europe. It is difficult now to imagine the almost superhuman courage it required for these men to slog through the bullet-riddled surf onto beaches carpeted with the bodies of those who went before them, in order to fight their way inch by bloody inch into the maw of gun emplacements, the destruction of which represented only the first small step toward eradicating the most murderous regime ever to stain the annals of human history. 
And that’s why, every June, we dedicate the entire month to celebrating homosexuality. Well, maybe that’s not why. But there must be some reason. Because that’s what we do.
That’s right, it’s Pride Month, and there is absolutely nothing Americans can be so proud of as homosexuality … apparently. Just think of the progress gay people have made. Homosexuality — once called the love that dare not speak its name — is now, at last, the love that simply will not shut the hell up. It just drones on and on and on. It’s so great. Really, you can’t get enough of it. On and on and on and on. A whole month of it. I mean, most sexual abnormalities, you just politely look away and try to mind your own business. But there’s no chance of that with this one, is there? Nosiree. On and on and on. That’s progress.
And there’s so much progress to be proud of in Pride Month. In the past, for instance, a gay man had to hide in shame. Now he can march down the street in a pride parade, dressed in leather chaps that open behind to expose his buttocks not only to anyone who’s interested but to the many, many, many people who really are not interested in seeing his buttocks even a little bit. Plus he can carry a whip to announce to all the world that he has a trauma-induced sexual fetish that prevents him from having any relationship that isn’t centered on debasement, domination and pain. Then he can proclaim how proud he is about that. Then he can go home and wash down a fistful of anti-depressants with half a bottle of gin and scream “I’m so effing proud,” before pitching face forward onto the kitchen table and sinking into blessed unconsciousness.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Andrew Klavan Show</a></h3>
And that’s not even all the progress. Some of you younger people won’t believe this, but it used to be that if a man punched a woman in the face, he’d be arrested. Today, thanks to the LGBTQ movement, if a man wants to punch a woman in the face, he can go to the Olympics and win a gold medal. I was so excited to hear this, I told my wife: I could punch you in the face and win a gold medal! My ex-wife, I should say. Still, it was a great moment.
And there’s even more progress. It used to be, if a man gave homosexual porn to a child, he’d be put in prison. Then he’d be killed by the other prisoners, because no matter how bad their crimes were, they weren’t as bad as giving homosexual porn to a child. Now, thanks to our pride, if a man gives homosexual porn to a child, it’s because he’s a member of a teachers union and has a job in a public elementary school. And man, if that’s not progress, then progress is probably something else. Like progress might be inventing air conditioning or computers or more effective treatments for disease. But no. For us, progress is teachers giving homosexual porn to children.
So this June, think back on that D-Day when thousands gave their lives for freedom. Remember it’s because of them that we can spend the entire month being proud of homosexuality. Because of them, and because our elite culture has become a cesspit of decadent buffoons who have no shame. After all, who else could be this proud?
* * *
This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Andrew Klavan Show</a>.”
The views expressed in this satirical article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Follow him on X: <a href="https://x.com/andrewklavan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@andrewklavan</a>
Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fourth installment, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1613165536?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_thcv_3&amp;storeType=ebooks" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A Woman Underground.</a>” His most recent nonfiction release is “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Cain-Finding-Literature-Darkness/dp/0310368340/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_w=nMYjR&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.bc3ba8d1-5076-4ab7-9ba8-a5c6211e002d&amp;pf_rd_p=bc3ba8d1-5076-4ab7-9ba8-a5c6211e002d&amp;pf_rd_r=133-8344803-2786917&amp;pd_rd_wg=7a8J3&amp;pd_rd_r=5791ea0f-6d96-4732-9d6a-3a4e6b348bb5&amp;ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Kingdom of Cain: Finding God in the Literature of Darkness.</a>” (May 2025, Zondervan/HarperCollins).

D-Day

America Now Honors D-Day By Celebrating Pride Month

Andrew Klavan

France

Humor

Normandy

Pride Month

Satire

Friday marked 81 years since Allied Forces launched the largest amphibious invasion in history, taking the first steps on a journey that would ultimately wrest Europe from the occupation and control of Nazi forces.
Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower — who would later be elected the 34th President of the United States — wrote two letters in the hours before 156,000 troops (primarily American, British, Canadian, and Australian) swarmed a 50-mile stretch of beaches near Normandy, France. One, delivered to the men preparing to march into the jaws of death, expressed his confidence in his men and his prayers for their victory. The second was a handwritten note, in which Eisenhower said that he alone would shoulder the blame if the mission were to fail.
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Left: Eisenhower’s D-Day letter: “You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade” &amp; “Let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great &amp; noble undertaking.”
Right: Eisenhower’s in-case-of-failure letter: “If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.” <a href="https://t.co/qBNjmHOu8T">pic.twitter.com/qBNjmHOu8T</a>
&mdash; Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) <a href="https://twitter.com/JerryDunleavy/status/1930849040851247517?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!&#8221; Eisenhower opened the first of the two letters. &#8220;You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.&#8221;
<a href="https://get.dailywire.com/gift/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=wisepops&amp;utm_campaign=dad&amp;utm_content=fathersdaygiftpopups" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gift Dad an All Access Membership. Use code DAD40 at checkout to save 40%!</a>
&#8220;Your task will not be an easy one,&#8221; the general warned. &#8220;Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!&#8221;
&#8220;I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!&#8221; he concluded. &#8220;Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.&#8221;
The second letter was much shorter — and was misdated &#8220;July 5,&#8221; likely due to stress — and scribbled in the general&#8217;s own hand. It was the message he intended to deliver if Operation Overlord failed:
<blockquote>&#8220;Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.&#8221;</blockquote>
But 81 years later, the world remembers the bravery and dedication of the men who charged those beaches amid a hail of machine-gun bullets and mortars to deliver first France, and then the rest of Europe, from Nazi control.
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Eighty-one years ago, our nation&#39;s bravest stormed the beaches of Normandy. 
We will never forget their sacrifice. <a href="https://t.co/eiwNDhBTHG">pic.twitter.com/eiwNDhBTHG</a>
&mdash; DOD Rapid Response (@DODResponse) <a href="https://twitter.com/DODResponse/status/1930990988891201670?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
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RIGHT NOW in 1944, this is the scene in Normandy. The liberation of France is underway <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DDay?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DDay</a> <a href="https://t.co/0LUQIImNJp">pic.twitter.com/0LUQIImNJp</a>
&mdash; Military History Now (@MilHistNow) <a href="https://twitter.com/MilHistNow/status/1930855923481972947?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
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“Here the allies stood &amp; fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking. … These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.”<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DDay?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DDay</a> <a href="https://t.co/kcFUv9wllA">pic.twitter.com/kcFUv9wllA</a>
&mdash; Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) <a href="https://twitter.com/JerryDunleavy/status/1930988710440452389?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered remarks commemorating the 81st anniversary, saying, &#8220;Eighty-one years ago, Hitler thought his Atlantic wall was impenetrable &#8230; He clearly had not met enough Americans.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
. <a href="https://twitter.com/SecDef?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SecDef</a> “Eighty-one years ago, Hitler thought his Atlantic wall was impenetrable.
He clearly had not met enough Americans.” <a href="https://t.co/pmf4WQK0G7">pic.twitter.com/pmf4WQK0G7</a>
— DOD Rapid Response (@DODResponse) <a href="https://twitter.com/DODResponse/status/1930950043151815068?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
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US Troops on D Day.

81 Years Later, The World Remembers D-Day

American History

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Military

Pete Hegseth

Politics

Earlier this month, we celebrated the 80th anniversary of V-E Day, “Victory in Europe,” which marked the end of the European Theater’s part in the Second World War. It is a date certainly worth commemorating as it closed one of the darkest chapters in European history, which was the rise and fall of Hitler’s Third Reich.
For the countries in what today we call Western Europe that languished for years under the jackboot of Nazi oppression — France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Greece — the Allied victory truly represented liberation.
<div id="attachment_925633" style="width: 875px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-925633" class="size-large wp-image-925633" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-3093644-865x576.jpg" alt="Ecstatic crowds celebrating VE Day in London's Piccadilly, at the end of World War II, 8th May 1945. Original Publication: Picture Post - 1991 - This Was VE Day in London - pub. 1945 (Photo by Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" width="865" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-3093644-865x576.jpg 865w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-3093644-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-3093644-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-3093644.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 865px) 100vw, 865px" />Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images</div>
But there was another side to V-E Day that seems to get glossed over. And that is the less happy fate of the Eastern European nations who were not liberated by the Anglo-Americans rolling in from the west, but rather the Red Army coming in from the east. And for those nations — Poland, Hungary, then-Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states — V-E Day merely meant trading one brutal oppressor for another. Indeed, as the Allies were closing in from both sides, the dark joke in Germany was “Optimists are learning English, pessimists are learning Russian.”
We have been conditioned for over 80 years to viscerally recoil at the very mention of the Führer’s name. Just say “Hitler” and the mind conjures up images of the Holocaust and mass murder of millions of innocents carried out by robotic, goose-stepping stormtroopers wearing their signature coal scuttle helmets.
Yet, when we utter the name “Stalin,” no such dark imagery materializes in the collective mind. And yet, in terms of pure numbers, it can be argued that the Soviet “Man of Steel” had more blood on his hands than even Hitler. Why the indifferent reaction?
It could perhaps be attributed to a curious media/academic tendency of apologetics towards communism. As polls consistently show, both of these institutions lean very much to the left. And Stalinism is the ultimate expression of their collective leftist ideology come to fruition in all its destructive inevitability. During the 1930s, for example, dispatches from Moscow-based New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty were shamefully obsequious towards Stalin, offering up for his readers images of a prosperous, happy communist USSR workers’ paradise.
No matter that the Soviet dictator was coldly stripping Ukraine of food and inducing a famine in 1932-1933 (called the “Holodomor”) during which anywhere from 3.5 to 5 million Ukrainians died of starvation — atrocities Duranty labeled as a “big scare” and “exaggeration.”
Then there was Stalin’s 1929-1933 genocide against the Kulaks (wealthy peasants who resisted his policies) to facilitate the expropriation of farmland. In one directive, the Soviet leader declared, “We must smash the Kulaks, liquidate them as a class.” Millions died.
And what of the estimated 700,000 to 6 million who died in Stalin’s Gulag, the far-flung network of concentration camps where he sent his enemies, whom the hyper-paranoid dictator saw all around him. (Figures vary widely; the latter number comes from dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was imprisoned for eight years.)
Starting in 1936, Stalin wiped out his political and military adversaries in a series of show trials called “The Great Purge.” Stalin’s biographer Oleg V. Khlevniuk estimates that 1.6 million were arrested, with 700,000 shot; no one knows how many died of torture.
<div id="attachment_925699" style="width: 883px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-925699" class="size-large wp-image-925699" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-104408516-873x576.jpg" alt="RUSSIA - JANUARY 01: Joseph STALIN, the supreme ruler of the USSR, working in his garden around 1935 to 1936 while Lavrenti BERIA, the chief of the Soviet secret police, poses with STALIN'S daughter, SVETLANA, on his knees. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)" width="873" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-104408516-873x576.jpg 873w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-104408516-300x198.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-104408516-768x507.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-104408516.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 873px) 100vw, 873px" />Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images</div>
During the Second World War on the Eastern Front, Stalin was so profligate with the lives of his people that by the time the red banner of the USSR was flying over the Reichstag in the conquered Berlin, some 27 million Soviets lay dead. Many as a result of combat and German atrocities, of course, but also due to Stalin’s unimaginative strategies that callously offered up both his soldiers and civilians before the guns of the Wehrmacht as fodder.
Whereas Hitler’s policies were driven by twisted racial hatred, delusions of grandeur, a sense of grievance on behalf of a nation he felt was ill-treated at Versailles, and, by the end, drug-addled bona fide madness, Stalin in some ways is even more disturbing as there was a cold, calculating, and ruthless nature to his machinations.
Stalin will also go down as one of the most treacherous characters in history. It should be remembered that until Hitler turned on him and attacked Russia in June 1941, Stalin and the German dictator were allies. Hitler only felt secure enough to invade Poland and trigger the Second World War because Berlin and Moscow had just entered into a non-aggression pact the month before. In fact, people often forget that in September 1939, Poland was not just invaded by the Wehrmacht but also by the Red Army. After which, Stalin’s NKVD promptly rounded up 22,000 members of Poland’s military and intelligentsia, marched them to the Katyn Forest, and shot them all dead.
<div id="attachment_925683" style="width: 949px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-925683" class="size-large wp-image-925683" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-875641680-939x576.jpg" alt="9/28/39: Russo -German Pact Molotov signing pact directly behind is J. Von Ribbentrop on the right is Josef Stalin. (Photo by Bettmann/Corbis/Getty Images)" width="939" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-875641680-939x576.jpg 939w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-875641680-300x184.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-875641680-768x471.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-875641680.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 939px) 100vw, 939px" />Bettmann/Corbis/Getty Images</div>
Says historian Victor Davis Hanson: “Of the six major belligerents of World War II, on the Axis side, Italy, Japan, and Germany, and the United States, Russia, and Britain, Stalin made a deal with every one of them at one time or another, and he honored the ones with the Axis better than he did us.”
But, unlike Hitler, Stalin’s image during the war was softened by the Roosevelt administration and pliant media due to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. FDR, especially, was hopelessly naïve about the duplicitous nature of the man whose military he was now supplying through Lend-Lease. As far as he saw it, the Russians were now our allies after all. And, frankly, we needed the Red Army to kill as many Germans as possible before we invaded France. The mass murderer of Moscow was thus re-christened “Uncle Joe” Stalin. And as it was his Red Army more than any other that destroyed the Wehrmacht, what he did to his own people and those in Eastern Europe were swept under the rug until the Cold War commenced in the late 1940s. After all, as the saying goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
<div id="attachment_925619" style="width: 762px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-925619" class="size-large wp-image-925619" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-186649926-752x576.jpg" alt="Russian leader Marshal Josef Stalin and President Franklin Roosevelt confer in the Soviet Embassy during the Tehran Conference, Tehran, Iran, December 7, 1943. (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images)" width="752" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-186649926-752x576.jpg 752w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-186649926-300x230.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-186649926-768x588.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-186649926.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 752px) 100vw, 752px" />Underwood Archives/Getty Images</div>
80 years after the war in Europe ended, modern Germany is still horrified by, and ashamed of, their Nazi past. But to this day, even in a post-Cold War Russia in which information regarding the horrific crimes carried out by the Bolsheviks is now widely accessible, Stalin is revered by the Russian people. A 2021 poll by the Levada Center found that 70% of Russians held a mostly or very favorable view of Stalin.
And that same lack of revulsion over Stalin’s decades-long reign of terror carries over into the West today as a misguided affinity for Marxism slithers its insidious way through the halls of so-called higher education. A poll by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation found that millennials, particularly younger ones, displayed a dreadful ignorance of communism and even support for it. Almost half of Americans between the ages of 16 and 20 “said they would vote for a socialist, while 21% would go so far as to back a Communist.” Even more shocking was that a “third of millennials say they believe more people were killed under George W. Bush than Joseph Stalin.” This is criminal negligence on the part of academia — and dangerous.
I have a shirt that reads “Communism killed 100 million people and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.” Though gallows humor, the message is also a searing indictment of a left-leaning academic and media establishment that are utterly dismissive of the crimes perpetrated by the founding fathers of their own defunct and cruel ideologies. The verdict of history should have condemned Soviet communism to the ashbin of history decades ago. But a fatal attraction for this defunct ideology that invariably leads to mass murder is alive and well in the West today. This is a tragedy — and dangerous.
* * *
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id%3D55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K_WhJtiUZw7LF1PwSIHtH">books</a>. Follow him on <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/bschaeffer123&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P6pRoAqcBhUQ1W0qwN5rH">X/Twitter</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
This article originally appeared on the author&#8217;s <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/p/for-eastern-europe-v-e-day-commemorates">Substack.</a>

Stalin In Moscow

From Reich To Red: Why Stalin Still Haunts Us 80 Years After V-E Day

Communism

Europe

Germany

Leftism

The following is an excerpt from the book &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/At-First-Light-Bravery-Amazing/dp/1642939595" target="_blank" rel="noopener">At First Light: A True World War II Story of a Hero, His Bravery, And An Amazing Horse</a>&#8221; by Walt Larimore and Mike Yorkey (Knox Press, April 19, 2022). 
***
On Saturday evening, December 6, 1941, “Phil,” as Marilyn called him and as he now liked to be called, took her out for dinner at the Bungalow, a popular seafood restaurant in Biloxi, Mississippi that overlooked the calm, brown waters of the Mississippi Sound. The menu had something for every taste: fresh seafood, choice steaks, Southern fried chicken, Cajun specials, and even Chinese dishes. After enjoying the surf-and-turf special, the young couple decided to go to the cinema. 
Marilyn had wanted to see the romance, Johnny Eager, starring Lana Turner and Robert Taylor. In contrast, Phil had a yearning to watch Tarzan’s Secret Treasure, starring Maureen O’Sullivan alongside his favorite movie star, Johnny Weissmuller, one of the world’s fastest swimmers. They compromised with Ball of Fire, starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck.
The next morning dawned clear with unlimited visibility and an unseasonably warm fifty-nine degrees predicted as the high. Rather than attending church together, which was their habit, Phil and Marilyn decided to play hooky. He picked her up early, and they trailered their horses to the nearby De Soto National Forest, where they rode through the gently rolling terrain. When they located Black Creek, Mississippi’s only National Scenic River, they followed the meandering ribbon of water until they found a wide white sandbar. There they set out a picnic lunch and talked for hours in the warm sunshine about their hopes and dreams—and, for the first time, about the prospects of a life together. 
Late in the afternoon, they returned to the stable and found a group of people gathered around a radio. “Whatcha listening to?” Phil asked. The men shushed him as he and Marilyn leaned closer to listen. 
The announcer blurted, “This is KTU in Honolulu, Hawaii. I am speaking from the roof of the Advertiser Publishing Company Building. We have witnessed this morning the severe bombing of Pearl Harbor by enemy planes, undoubtedly Japanese…. This is no joke. It is a real war… There has been serious fighting going on in the air and on the sea.” 
Phil and Marilyn’s eyes met, and he pulled her close. There was another second or two of static. Then the announcer continued, “We cannot estimate just how much damage has been done, but it has been a very severe attack.” 
The sound of rustling papers came through the small radio as the announcer took a deep breath. “Oh, this is much worse than we’ve heard up to now. The BBC is now reporting, and I quote, ‘At oh seven fifty-five local time, the first wave of between fifty and one-hundred-fifty planes struck the naval base for thirty-five minutes, causing several fires and untold damage to the Pacific Fleet. The Japanese squadrons dropped high explosive and incendiary bombs. A second strike followed at about oh nine hundred when a force of at least one hundred planes pounded the base for an hour,’ end quote.” 
Phil looked at his watch. This meant the attack had started just before 1 p.m. in Gulfport, located in the Central Time Zone. 
The broadcaster continued, “The BBC also says, and I quote, ‘The Times newspaper’s Washington correspondent says the U.S. government expects Germany and Italy to declare war on the U.S. within hours. Although the attack has shocked the American people, there is little doubt that it has been brewing for some years,’ end quote.” 
Marilyn began to cry; Phil pulled out his handkerchief and handed it to her. “Oh, Phil,” she muttered, “This can’t be happening, can it?” He could only hold her close as a zillion thoughts raced through his mind. Their shared disbelief mirrored their astonishment.
The announcer paused a moment, and the clacking of a teletype machine could be heard. “This just in. This just in. Japan declares war! Japan declares war!” 
Someone whispered to the man. The pitch of his voice increased as he announced, “This wire is just in from Hirohito, the Emperor of Japan. Here are his words, and I quote, ‘We, the Emperor, hereby proclaim unto our loyal and valorous subjects that we have now declared war upon the United States of America and Great Britain,’ end quote.” 
Phil’s mind swirled. He thought, So, this is it. This is really it. Soon, I’ll be off to war. I’ll be going into battle. He couldn’t have imagined such a confluence of excitement and horror occurring in one moment. Marilyn continued to weep in his arms. 
“I have to get back to GCMA. Now!” he said. 
She nodded. They ran to the car and sped away. 
The next morning, Monday, December 8, the nation awoke to even more bad news: the extent of the damage from the surprise attack on Hawaii. At that point, no one knew that the Japanese attack had killed 2,403 U.S. personnel, including sixty-eight civilians, and destroyed or damaged nineteen U.S. Navy ships, including eight battleships, and destroyed or damaged 328 aircraft. 
Not even the U.S. government was aware that the ship with the most lives lost, the battleship USS Arizona, would report 1,177 dead—meaning that about one half of those who perished at Pearl Harbor were on the Arizona. What everyone did know was that Japan also attacked the Philippines, Wake Island, and Midway on the morning of December 7. The only good news was that the three aircraft carriers of the U.S. Pacific Fleet had been out to sea on maneuvers. 
After a hastily arranged Protestant church service at GCMA, Phil received a call from his father. He had been working on the train running between New Orleans and Memphis. At a stop in Water Valley, Mississippi, Phil Sr. had been given a handwritten note:
Do not permit any Japanese to ride your train. Orders of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Then Phil and his fellow cadets attended a solemn assembly at 11:30 a.m., during which they listened intently to the nationwide radio broadcast of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s address to a joint session of Congress inside the U.S. Capitol. The President started his speech with these memorable words: 
Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. 
After recounting details of the aerial assault, the President concluded his speech with this: 
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us. 
With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God. I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.
The roars of approval and tsunami of applause from the members of Congress could be heard over the speakers, and was joined by the young GCMA cadets as they bounded to their feet, throwing their caps toward the ceiling, and hugging and swatting one another on the back. As the cheers faded, though, they became aware that America was about to face an extraordinary test—one that would potentially threaten her very being. The young men at GCMA knew that their training put them in a position to quickly make a difference and play a significant role in the days ahead.
The next five months flew by, and on a beautiful, cloudless, and calm seventy-degree Saturday, May 16, 1942, Phil graduated with honors from GCMA and the Reserve Officers Training Corps, or ROTC.
Before Pearl Harbor, he had planned to begin pre-med studies that fall, but with America in the midst of a global conflict against the Axis powers, he realized that he would not be studying medicine anytime soon. 
Philip Larimore Jr. understood that he was destined for war.

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From Picnic To Peril: How A Young Couple’s World Was Shattered By Japan’s Attack On Pearl Harbor

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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Thursday that he was moving a historic painting of Jesus back to a “place of prominence” at the Merchant Marine Academy after the Biden administration relegated it to the basement, he told The Daily Wire. 
Duffy said in a video addressed to midshipmen that the World War II-era painting “Christ on the Water,” which depicts Jesus Christ appearing to sailors adrift at sea, would be returning to its original location at the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York. The Biden administration moved the painting from its decades-old location to the basement in 2023 after a complaint that its presence violated the Constitution. 
“We are moving Jesus out of the basement. To all the great midshipmen at the Merchant Marine Academy, you let me know how important this painting was to all of you,&#8221; Duffy said in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/H0WJQyB83JA?si=rnn8AtzLAifg94VN%22" target="_blank" rel="noopener">video</a>, which was shared with The Daily Wire. &#8220;Now, we all know it was taken out of a place of prominence and put in down in the basement.&#8221;
Duffy, whose Maritime Administration operates the academy, said he was working with leadership at the institution to facilitate the move.
“I worked with the Academy, and because this is such a historic painting, I’m announcing that through that work with the academy, this painting is going to go from the basement back to its place of prominence. It will be a moment to celebrate,” the devout Catholic said. 
<div id="attachment_920607" style="width: 759px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-920607" class="size-large wp-image-920607" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/Screen-Shot-2025-05-12-at-10.18.22-AM-1-749x576.png" alt="" width="749" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/Screen-Shot-2025-05-12-at-10.18.22-AM-1-749x576.png 749w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/Screen-Shot-2025-05-12-at-10.18.22-AM-1-300x231.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/Screen-Shot-2025-05-12-at-10.18.22-AM-1-768x590.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/Screen-Shot-2025-05-12-at-10.18.22-AM-1.png 787w" sizes=" (max-width: 749px) 100vw, 749px" />&#8220;Christ on the Water&#8221; by Lt. Hunter Wood, USMS</div>
&#8220;Christ on the Water&#8221; was completed in 1944 by artist Hunter Wood, who joined the Coast Guard just 10 days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Wood saw action in North Africa before working on a Coast Guard Combat Artist Unit. In 1947, his painting was installed at the Merchant Marine Academy’s Wiley Hall Elliot See Room. It was displayed at that location for almost 80 years, when the Biden administration moved it because of a complaint from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.  
Duffy said that the painting will be returned to its original location the Elliot See Room. Last month, he received a vigorous round of applause from midshipmen at the Merchant Marine Academy after he called for they painting to be restore to its original location. 
“Can we bring Jesus up from the basement?” Duffy said. “Let’s not put Jesus in the basement! Let’s get Him out! Let’s bring Him up!”
Mikey Weinstein, of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has promised to start &#8220;World War Eight&#8221; if the painting is moved, calling Duffy a &#8220;piece of s***&#8221; for advocating for the move. Weinstein claims that displaying the painting violates the Constitution and forces Christianity on students. 
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ted-cruz-backs-trump-officials-attempt-to-bring-jesus-up-from-the-basement-literally">sent a letter</a> last week to Duffy, praising him for the plans to move the painting and noting that there were no Constitutional reasons to keep the painting out of public view. Cruz said returning the painting would be an important step to protecting America&#8217;s religious heritage.

Department Of Transportation Chief Sean Duffy Holds News Conference On Ongoing Issues At Newark Airport

The Biden Admin Banished This Historic Jesus Painting. Sean Duffy’s Moving It Back To Spotlight.

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