Analysis

It was a bad year to be any kind of socialist in Europe. The decline has been long and agonizing for a once-dominant force, but in 2019 falling popularity reached new depths and raised questions over whether reinvention can lead to a revival.

On Dec. 21, 1944, Robert Potach celebrated his 21st birthday in a foxhole outside the Belgian town of Bastogne. It was several days after the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. Potach celebrated his 96th birthday last week.

It was just after 8 a.m. on Christmas morning, 1944, outside the village of Echternach, Luxembourg, when a bullet from a Nazi machine gun found its way into Lt. James P. Teehan’s helmet.

The news broke most places on Christmas Day 1944, crammed onto front pages amid the blaring war headlines: Glenn Miller was missing.

We dipped into our archives for some of our memorable holiday photos through the years.

Seventy-five years ago this week, the biggest and most deadly single battle of World War II for American soldiers climaxed during what became known as the Battle of the Bulge.

Important matters of international security aren’t usually what sitting presidents discuss with 8-year-old girls. But on a fall day in 1961, John Kennedy felt compelled to do just that after receiving a letter written in pencil.

As a combat veteran and a retired, award-winning TV news and sports camera operator, George Larsen told good stories. An old one recounted how he first thought it was an earthquake that rattled him awake in Hawaii on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941.

Thousands of years ago, long before modern industry began to heat the planet, rising seas threatened a community on the coast of Israel. The villagers needed to defend their home, so they built a wall. It failed. People abandoned the village. The Mediterranean sea swept inland and drowned the buildings.

Visitors to Home of the Brave Hawaii can hop aboard a 1945 Ford Jeep featured in the 2001 movie “Pearl Harbor,” grab a vintage bottle of Coca-Cola and flip through a scrapbook of the USS Saratoga featuring personal letters from a World War II sailor.

For years, not even her family knew the pivotal role Mitsuye Endo played in the only successful Supreme Court challenge to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

The only World War II veteran who ended up participating in Monday's Battle of the Bulge 75th Anniversary commemoration, 95-year-old George Arnstein, took a taxi to the National World War II Memorial, then braved the rain and cold wind.

Roger Taylor died on Jan. 6, 1945, while attacking high ground east of Lutrebois in Belgium as a member of the 134th Infantry Regiment.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper and European leaders gathered Monday at the Luxembourg American Cemetery to honor those killed in the Battle of the Bulge, and to thank veterans on hand to mark the 75th anniversary of the pivotal battle.

American and Belgian flags flew side-by-side Saturday in commemoration of U.S. soldiers who fought 75 years ago in the six-week Battle of the Bulge, a victory that thwarted the last major German offensive on the Western Front during World War II.

PHOTO GALLERY

Wreaths Across America came to the U.S. Naval Academy cemetery a day early on Friday, as volunteers placed more than 2.500 wreaths at the final resting places of sailors and Marines of all ranks.

Minority World War I veterans whose actions during the war were overlooked because of their race or religion could have their service records reviewed to determine whether some of them deserve the Medal of Honor.

A newly-opened exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture chronicles the black experience before, during and after World War I, and tells how the war opened a new front in the struggle for equality that echoes to today.

Pushing through dense foliage toward the site of the bygone ambush, Michael McDonald-Low felt like he was floating through time.

Sgt. Marshall Edgerton died Dec. 11, 2003 while doing a force protection shift on Combat Outpost Champion Main in Ar Ramadi, Iraqi. Edgerton had volunteered to escort an incoming vehicle so that his fellow soldier could finish his meal.

When the Battle of the Bulge ended after 40 days of frozen, frenzied fighting, one of the largest and longest American battles in Europe had impacted both the future of that continent, and the lives of thousands of soldiers, including many Northeast Ohioans.

Y.C. Jao was a Chinese correspondent working in April 1949 when Mao Zedong's Red Army stormed into Nanjing, defeating the Nationalist forces of leader Chiang Kai-shek. The new authorities ordered his execution in April 1951.

Kevin Riley, the current editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is disputing the film's depiction of the newspaper's reporting and decision-making processes, especially the portrayal of reporter Kathy Scruggs, who the movie implies traded sex with an FBI agent for a tip on the story.

Pfc. Paul W. Shrewsbury of the United States Army, 1st Cavalry Division, died March 11, 1969. The Army sent his mother’s last letter to him back.

Wilfred K. Hussey Jr., the football-playing son of a University of Hawaii football-playing father, volunteered for the Army in July 1949 a month after graduating from Hilo High School.

In unusually candid interviews, officials who served under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama said both leaders failed in their most important task as commanders in chief — to devise a clear strategy with concise, attainable objectives.

In a trove of confidential government interviews obtained by The Washington Post, U.S., NATO and Afghan officials described their efforts to create an Afghan proxy force as a long-running calamity.

The scale of the corruption was the unintended result of swamping the war zone with far more aid and defense contracts than impoverished Afghanistan could absorb. There was so much excess, financed by American taxpayers, that opportunities for bribery and fraud became almost limitless, according to the interviews.

Of all the failures in Afghanistan, the war on drugs has been perhaps the most feckless, according to a cache of confidential government interviews and other documents obtained by The Washington Post.

A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.

For a generation of Chicagoans, their opinion of what happened in 1969 when Chicago police raided the West Side apartment of Black Panther Party members depended greatly on what neighborhood they called home.

Analysis

Perhaps no other country has poured as many resources into studying Germany's unification as South Korea. Its bureaucrats, academics and politicians have parsed the German example from every possible angle.

Then-Brig. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower awoke to an urgent call from military higher-ups informing him of the news from Pearl Harbor. Four hectic, harried days after that, Eisenhower received another call - this one demanding he "hop a plane" and travel to Washington to develop the U.S. response to Japanese aggression.

When does a one and five zeros cause an audience to erupt in cheers and applause? When there's a dollar sign attached.

Saturday, Bob Henry will visit Beaver Cemetery. He'll pause at the grave of a man he never met, but one to whom he owes plenty. He comes to honor and remember the sacrifice of 2nd Lt. Louis Gustav Moslener Jr., Beaver County's first casualty Dec. 7, 1941, in a surprise attack by Japanese forces on Pearl Harbor.

On the windswept plains of eastern Colorado, dust storms rattled the barracks of the Granada War Relocation Center. It was 1944, and Esther Takei didn't understand why she had to be languishing there, alienated by the only country she knew.

On Nov. 29, 1924, the nation's first aircraft carrier, the Langley, arrived at San Diego to join the Pacific Battle Fleet. The ship was originally built to carry coal for the World War I fighting fleets but had been converted into an experimental aircraft carrier.

The Cold War fallout bunker built by the U.S. Navy in 1961 for President John F. Kennedy today remains closed to the public. The Peanut Island shelter and nearby historical Coast Guard station and house, which were closed to public tours in October 2017, are showing the signs of abandonment.

Could new evidence solve once and for all the mystery of Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance? A leading Hoffa expert, author Dan Moldea, says yes. Moldea said a former NJ landfill may hold the grave of the former Teamsters boss.

It was probably a sapling when George Washington returned to Mount Vernon in 1783, triumphant after his victory in the Revolutionary War. On Nov. 4, the night caretakers at Mt. Vernon heard it fall, the tree was about 115 feet tall, 12 feet around, and roughly 230 years old.

The National Medal of Honor Monument Act tasks the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation with the creation of a monument in Washington to honor the more than 3,500 recipients of the nation’s highest award for military service.

James Wormley Jones, who had served as a captain in the Great War abroad and as a police officer in the District of Columbia became the FBI’s first documented black special agent.

Lt. Kayla Barron never imagined she might one day become an astronaut, let alone be one of the first people to visit Mars, until she served on a submarine.

The Connecticut Wartime Service Medal was established in 2005 by the state's General Assembly to honor veterans who served for at least 90 days on active duty in a time of war and were honorably discharged.

Obituary

Holocaust survivor Branko Lustig's film career took him to movie sets across Europe and to Hollywood, where in 1994 he shared the Academy Award for best picture as a producer of "Schindler's List." Lustig died Nov. 14 in Croatia. He was 87.

Seventy-six years after he was killed in action on a little-known island in the Pacific during World War II, the remains of U.S. Marine Pfc. Joseph Robert Livermore arrived in Bakersfield by motorcade Thursday as hundreds of residents lined the streets and gathered on freeway bridges to welcome him home.

Bass, a Belgian Malinois, served more than six years in Marine Corps special operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. During his time in Iraq, Bass conducted more than 350 explosive detections with his handler, Staff Sgt. Alex Schnell. On Thursday, Bass was awarded the Medal of Bravery.

In four videos, entertainer Ann-Margret talks with Stars and Stripes' Ken-Yon Hardy about the time she spent entertaining the troops in Vietnam and elsewhere, a record of service that earned her the USO's first Bob Hope Legacy Award.

A two-decade journey led 1st Lt. Loren Hintz's descendants to the spot where his plane and remains lay entombed 15 feet below ground. Three generations of his family will bury the last of his remains this weekend.

The SS John W. Brown, which has been docked in Baltimore for decades, was part of a frenzied American shipbuilding effort that dispatched thousands of the vessels carrying supplies then troops to Europe and Asia during World War II.

World War II veteran A. Russell Hinchee was taken prisoner by the Nazi SS. Charles "Bob" Swain fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Here is how one family connects them.

GALLERY

It was a Parade of Heroes during Veterans Day at the World War II Memorial in Washington Monday. Time may have stolen their youth, but as their names were announced and their battle history told, they stood tall after rising from their chairs on their own accord.

Construction of the post began in 1919, and it was dedicated in 1920. White paint coats its bricks, made by World War I veterans from Donna using sand from the river bottom.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of several major events in World War II, and perhaps the most noteworthy events in the military career of a Missouri county's most famous veteran, Gen. Omar Bradley.

“As we look back 75 years, across America and around the world many, many veterans and their families discover that they are in possession of personal items ... and they want to give them back to the family in Japan,” said Rex Ziak, co-founder of OBON Society.

The USS Grayback, one of World War II's most effective submarines, was found in the ocean off Okinawa, Japan, more than 1,400 feet below the surface.

On Nov. 1, 1952, after watching an island get vaporized by the world's first hydrogen bomb, Alan Jones and the crew on the research vessel Horizon were doused in a shower of radioactive fallout.

At an auction in Connecticut, antiques dealer James Kochan expected to sell a sword carried in 1811 by future President William Harrison at the Battle of Tippecanoe for at least $100,000. But then local police seized it, saying it was stolen.

The oldest veteran in attendance was Sgt. Sophie Yazzie, 105, who enlisted in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in 1943 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

John Lehman was a radar operator on the USS Barb, which was credited with sinking 25 Japanese merchant vessels, four warships — including an aircraft carrier — and more than 50 other, smaller vessels during World War II.

Growing up in Golden Valley, Gregg Peppin only heard bits and pieces of his father’s Korea experience. “When I asked my mom about it, she said, ‘Your dad saw a lot of dead people,’” Peppin recalled.

When the border between East and West Germany opened on the night of Nov. 9, 1989, revelers hacked and chiseled at the Berlin Wall, which had divided the city for decades. They were trying to make way for people to cross over, but also revolting against a structure that had been a symbol of oppression and division for decades.

The discovery last month of the long-lost Kaga and another Japanese carrier, the Akagi, came three weeks before the release of the new $100 million movie "Midway," which opens Friday.

Cities and towns across the United States have done their part to honor those who served their country from the Revolutionary War through the current Global War on Terrorism, and the twin cities of Lewiston and Auburn, Maine, are no exception.

Forty years after having been taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, some survivors of the 444-day ordeal say that despite their own deep-seated scars, and those that remain between the U.S. and Iranian governments, it would be beneficial for the two nations to get beyond the enmity of the past.

Michael Strank was a Czechoslovakia native with Carpatho-Rusyn heritage, beloved family member, immigrant, devout Byzantine Catholic, Marine’s Marine and an individual who – in less than a second – was immortalized in what may be the most famous photograph ever taken.

Secret cities. Secret work. During World War II, about 130,000 people were involved in the Manhattan Project, a highly classified collective effort that produced the first nuclear weapons and changed science, and war, forever. But those working on the project didn't necessarily know what they were working on.

Simone Arnold Liebster can still remember being 12 years old and forced to stand alone in front of 500 fellow students while her school principal demanded she give the Seig Heil salute. Liebster refused to pledge her allegiance to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and the regime that persecuted her family for being Jehovah's Witnesses.

For 50 years the would-be Marines who headed to boot camp on Parris Island first traveled through a sleepy Lowcountry town via a train depot the military built specifically for the purpose.

As shredders that were available jammed or broke down, Stasi officers resorted to tearing documents by hand, stuffing them into bags to later be burned or pulped. But the effort came to a premature halt when citizens groups stormed and occupied Stasi offices to preserve the evidence.

Sam Storms was driving his brush to the dump when he got the call from Fort Knox. "I've got some good news for you," the man said. "We found your Daddy," Maj. Harvey Storms, who was presumed killed in action at the Chosin Reservoir 66 years ago.

Vietnam, led by a government the 81 soldiers had fought against, twice declined to accept their remains for burial. They became “men without a country,” former U.S. Sen. Jim Webb said.

Just over 54 years after it was originally launched, the USS Mariano G. Vallejo is back home for good at Mare Island. Hundreds of veterans, along with their family and friends were joined by numerous city officials to witness the sail dedication of the USS Mariano G. Vallejo, which was decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in March of 1995.

For years, a former Argentine naval officer was living in a $1 million waterfront home in North Miami. At 7 a.m. Friday, U.S. Marshals Service deputies knocked on his door and took him into custody to send him back to Argentina over a massacre he's accused of leading nearly 50 years ago.

A song performed at a Saturday ceremony told of the deaths of Ensigns George Kraus of Wisconsin and Merle Longnecker of North Dakota, who were respectively 22 and 20 when their Hellcat Grumman F6F-5N fighter planes collided in a training exercise above Preston, Conn., on Oct. 19, 1944.

"We always knew this day was going to happen," Martha Kloecker, 79, said of her brother, U.S. Army Sgt. Gerald B. Raeymacker. "We never gave up and we waited a long time for this."

Prior to going overseas, Carlyle Harris sat in a classroom and listened as an instructor spoke of World War II prisoners having communicated by tapping on a water pipe. The young fighter pilot’s learning – and remembering – the tap code would later change the course of his eight years in captivity in North Vietnam.

All his life, Rene Gagnon has told his children and grandchildren about their proud family heritage: His father and namesake, Rene Gagnon Sr., was one of the U.S. Marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima in what has become an iconic image of American triumph. A few days ago, Gagnon learned that his father was not one of those men.

At these fairs, premature babies were medical oddities, the disabled were sideshow "freaks" and primitive tribes were billed as "savages."

Chet Furtek is now 93. And the story of his rescue after the sinking of the USS Corry, which he described as a miracle, has not been forgotten.

As the legend goes, Colonel William Prescott ordered his militia “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes!” as British forces embarked on Bunker Hill nearly 250 years ago. The musket used by the man who disobeyed that order is now up for auction.

Military museums face challenge of telling service stories to disparate audiences with varying purposes.

For over an hour Monday, dozens of female soldiers and veterans at the Association of the United States Army annual meeting in Washington took turns shaking the hand of Indiana Hunt-Martin, a 97-year-old World War II veteran whom many of them credited for “paving the way” for their service.

Twenty-one shots from an honor guard. The haunting sound of a bugler playing Taps. Then, total silence as two more Michigan Army National Guard honor guard members folded the flag draped over U.S. Army Sgt. David Feriend’s casket.