Hitler's Third Reich and World War II in the News is a daily edited review of WWII news, providing thought- provoking collection of hand-picked WW2 information.

Category: American and Nazi Flag in War  -- See latest WWII news here. See also 'Nazi signs, symbols - Swastika', 'Military Uniforms', 'Nazi Helmets', 'Military Scale Models'.

Not much truth in the Reichstag photo showing hammer and sickle flag over Berlin
Another piece of the tale behind the iconic 1945 photo of Red Army soldiers lifting the hammer and sickle flag on the Reichstag in Berlin, has been revealed. Photographer Yevgeny Khaldei took the picture after the Red Army marched into Berlin and flew the negatives to Moscow. When he developed them he saw that one of the Soviet soldiers was wearing 2 watches - a clear sign of looting which did not fit with the heroic image of the army. He scratched the second watch from the negative. Later he added more clouds of smoke, and even replaced the original flag with a large one - filled with wind.     [ thelocal :: 2008-05-05 :: American and Nazi Flag in War ]

Raymond Jacobs, last man in iconic Iwo Jima flag-raising photo, dies
Raymond Jacobs, the last member of the Marines photographed during the original U.S. flag-raising on Iwo Jima during World War II, has died at 82. He had spent his later years proving that he was the radio operator photographed looking up at an American flag as it was being raised by Marines on Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945. He was on the mountain during the raising of a smaller American flag, though he had returned to his unit by the time the renowned AP photo was taken of a second flag-raising. The radioman's face isn't fully visible in the first photo by Lou Lowery, but other negatives from the same film roll show the radioman is Jacobs.     [ cnn :: 2008-02-05 :: Battle of Iwo Jima : Facts ]

Photo collection of SS Daggers, Nazi Flags and other militaria
Collection of World War II memorabilia photographs (86 images), including SS daggers, Hitler Youth german helmets, nazi swastika flags and various firearms.     [ ws :: 2008-01-28 :: Nazi Daggers ]

Mikhail Minin, who raised the USSR flag over Reichstag in 1945, died
World War II veteran Mikhail Minin, a Hero of the Soviet Union, who set up the USSR flag, the banner of Victory, over Nazi Germany's Reichstag in May of 1945, died. He took part in battles to free Leningrad from blockade and made his way across the fronts to Berlin. When the Soviet army was assaulting Reichstag on April 30, 1945 Minin broke into the building and became the first man to raise the Red Banner on its tower. However, the famous picture does not show Minin but a Georgian soldier, because it was not taken at the actual event. Minin was recognized for his effort, but not rewarded, as there were no photos taken when the flag was put on the roof on 10 p.m.     [ pravda :: 2008-01-12 :: The Red Army & russian partisans ]

Nazi flag captured by the 2nd Anti-Tank Regiment found in Alberta
Dennis Coburn was expecting the spiders and old books when he was cleaning out at a Royal Canadian Legion office. What he didn't expect was finding a large flag with a swastika. Coburn came across a plastic bag, and a casual look revealed a photo of a soldier and some folded material. "I could see it was some kind of a flag." He didn't think much of it, presuming the flag might be the Union Jack. When he arrived home, he spread out the flag: In addition to the giant Nazi symbol that unfolded before him, the flag was signed by Canadian soldiers from the 2nd Anti-Tank Regiment that fought in Normandy. It lists battles and the soldiers killed in action.     [ theglobeandmail :: 2008-01-04 :: American and Nazi Flag in War ]

Wayne Downey uncovers Japanese flag uncle got during WWII
Wayne Downey talks about the Japanese flag his uncle Arnold Walton got from a medieval castle after the Battle of Okinawa in June 1945. The Japanese flag was signed by over 20 Marines from all over the America and Downey would like hunt down the veterans or their families and send them a picture of the flag and then see where the story leads.     [ bentoncourier :: 2007-11-27 :: American and Nazi Flag in War ]

War relics returned to Japanese soldiers
As Yasuhiko Kaji shuffled through the boxes of flags, diaries, senninbari and pictures that he has collected over the past 30 years, he came across an illustrated Japanese flag. He has sent this flag's photograph twice to the government of Japan, which has a department for war victims, but it has yet to find the soldier who owned this flag. Kaji amassed his entire collection of Japanese artifacts from WW2 in the hopes of returning the militaria to the original owners or their families. Even when the flag has a name, it can be difficult to trace because 5-7 million Japanese soldiers were drafted and the ministry will sometimes find 6-7 soldiers with the same name.     [ scrippsnews :: 2007-07-07 :: American and Nazi Flag in War ]

Japanese flag taken down from the summit of Mount Suribachi
Linda Byak will take a special item to be appraised at 'Antiques Road Show'. It's a Japanese flag taken on Iwo Jima by her late father who led the most forward patrol moving up Mount Suribachi. In its place other Marines raised an American flag. "I just want someone to authenticate it and tell me what the Japanese writing on the flag says." Her father, Sherman Watson, a sergeant in the Marines, led 3 other men to the top of the mountain as his company fought its way up the steep sides on Feb. 23, 1944. Reaching the top the patrol removed the flag and was called back down the mountain by the platoon leader.     [ theledger :: 2007-06-29 :: American and Nazi Flag in War ]

Honoring The Life Of The Last Iwo Jima Flagraiser Charles Lindberg
Charles "Chuck" Lindberg, the last survivor of the first American flag-raising over Iwo Jima, died at 86. He helped raise the first American flag on Mount Surabachi. "Down below troops started to cheer. You should've heard 'em. Ship whistles out in the ocean went off. It was quite a day," Lindberg recounted in a 2005 WCCO-TV documentary "The Last Flagraiser". His accomplishment was overshadowed when a replacement flag was raised a few hours later. Lindberg spent decades explaining that it was his patrol, not the one captured in the photograph by Joe Rosenthal, that raised the first flag.     [ wcco :: 2007-06-26 :: American and Nazi Flag in War ]

First Iwo Jima Flag on Display - Flag In Photo Was Not The First
At 29 by 56 inches, it goes unnoticed next to its famous replacement, but the first flag raised over Iwo Jima got its due at the National Museum of the Marine Corps. The center of the museum's Flag Day celebration, the flag joined an exhibit on the battle of Iwo Jima. Though it was replaced after 2 hours by the larger flag captured in the Pulitzer photograph, the first flag remains an important symbol for the Marine Corps. Raised under fire using a pipe as a flagpole, the smaller flag helped boost morale by commemorating the occupation of Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945. The second flag raised had been part of the World War II gallery exhibit since the museum's opening.     [ fredericksburg :: 2007-06-16 :: American and Nazi Flag in War ]

A Marine's courage saved flag at Guadalcanal
The Marine Corps League, Seacoast detachment, honored a flag that has been in its keeping for 30 years, telling its story for the first time. It was the first American flag flown on the island of Guadalcanal. "When the Japanese launched a ferocious counterattack, Marine Cpl. George Doore, not wanting our colors to fall into enemy hands, dodging hostile fire, climbed to the roof of the beach master's shed, and removed and saved our flag from seizure and humiliation at the hands of the enemy. It's a very, very honorable situation ... the fact that he had the courage to do that and the patriotism to do that is very significant."     [ seacoastonline :: 2007-06-04 :: American and Nazi Flag in War ]

Vandals burned American flags, leave swastika flags at grave sites
Investigators are lifting fingerprints to try to find the vandals who trashed a Washington Woodlawn cemetery twice during Memorial Day weekend. Vandals burned dozens of American flags at veterans' grave sites and replaced them with hand-made swastika flags. Volunteers discovered the damage Sunday and replaced the flags, but the vandals came back Monday.     [ katu :: 2007-05-31 :: American and Nazi Flag in War ]

Unlocking World War II flag mystery
World War II digger Charles Farquharson fought the Japanese on the Kokoda Track, and was shot by the enemy there, ending his part in WWII. In the late 1960s he took a nostalgic trip back to the scene of his wounding, and searched around the area a bit, it's full of relics and artefacts, and discovered a satchel with two Japanese flags in it. One of the flags had calligraphy written across its silken sheen. It was a list of names from a wartime Japanese soldier's home town, or prefecture, called Niigata. "Each soldier carried one of these flags, which was presented by the mayor of the prefecture they came from."     [ sunshinecoastdaily :: 2007-03-16 :: American and Nazi Flag in War ]

Japanese flag from World War II battlefield returned
A Japanese flag that had been collected from a battlefield in World War 2 and kept ever since by a U.S. sailor was returned to its original owner's family in Niigata. The Hinomaru flag had been identified by writings on it as belonging to Heitaro Kodama, who died in the battle on Guadalcanal Island. It was entrusted to a group of students who were in the US on an exchange program by the family of Jerry Costa, who was enrolled in the U.S. Navy in 1941 and took back the flag from the battlefield. Receiving the flag after 64 years, Katsue said, "My husband carried it around him, so it is as if my husband himself came back. I am very thankful."     [ kyodo :: 2007-01-19 :: American and Nazi Flag in War ]

Historical Treasures - Looted Japanese WWII flags
Inside the shirt of a Japanese military officer; in a submarine and in a military building near Nagasaki after the second atomic bomb was dropped. These were all places of Japanese flags - flags now owned by Mike Swarbrick. His father, James C. Swarbrick, was a U.S. Marine Corps sergeant, who snagged them as memorabilia. The flag with the design of Japan's national flag was taken off a military building in a town near Nagasaki. "My dad was on Nagasaki, like a week or two after the atomic bomb was dropped. And the military commanders said 'Just don't pick up anything and put it in your pocket,' because obviously they didn't even know what radiation was at that point."     [ the-signal :: 2006-12-13 :: American and Nazi Flag in War ]

Nazi flag off the wall in a Munich beer hall - Smuggled memorabilia
For more than 60 years, Walter Christensen did not talk about the Nazi flag he took off the wall in a beer hall in Munich where Adolf Hitler began his rise to power in the 1920s. But when he saw a story in a veteran's magazine about another soldier from the 4th Infantry Division who had brought home a Nazi flag, he knew it was time to talk about it. Members of his unit signed the flag, which the military considered contraband. A friend sewed a fake bottom into Christensen's duffle bag and the red, white and black flag was secreted away.     [ democratherald :: 2006-11-13 :: American and Nazi Flag in War ]

A WWII relic comes home -- Iwo Jima flag
The fierce 72-hour battle for Iwo Jima resulted the deaths of 6,000 Marines and an image that would come to symbolize American determination. "The fighting was so intense the firing was almost like going through a rain of bullets," Marine Col. Avery Chenoweth, a military historian and combat artist, said of the famous World War II invasion. He came to the museum off Interstate 95 to see the installation of the U.S. flag raised on Iwo Jima. He said the Iwo Jima flag is as historic as the one raised over Fort McHenry in 1814 that inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner."     [ fredericksburg :: 2006-10-15 :: American and Nazi Flag in War ]

What photographs spring to mind if you think of World War II
The death of Joe Rosenthal reminds us of one of the most enduring images of that war, the raising of the US flag on Iwo Jima - a photograph taken by him on 23 Feb 1945. He followed a US Marine group up to the summit of Mount Suribachi, and snapped six men raising the Stars and Stripes. But this was the second flag raised on the spot, a smaller flag having been erected 3 hours earlier. The next iconic image of war is the raising of another flag during WWII: over the Reichstag in Berlin. It was shot by Soviet photographer Yevgeni Khaldei on 2 May 1945, as the last Nazi forces resisted. But it, too, is controversial: image was staged a couple of days later.     [ bbc :: 2006-08-26 :: World War II Photographs ]

Combat photographer who took the flag raising photograph
Combat photographer Joe Rosenthal who captured the Pulitzer image of World War II marines raising an American flag over Iwo Jima, died. He didn't realize he had shot anything special until days later when the praise started pouring in. "Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen the men start the flag up. I swung my camera and shot the scene. That is how the picture was taken, and when you take a picture like that, you don't come away saying you got a great shot. You don't know." The photo became the subject of posters, war-bond drives and a postage stamp. Rosenthal captured the second raising of the flag after the Marines decided the first flag was too small.     [ startribune :: 2006-08-22 :: American and Nazi Flag in War ]

Poland producing replica nazi uniforms and Third Reich flags
Berlin presses Poland to close production of replica uniforms, weapons, flags and symbols of the Third Reich. There is a certain irony that Poland is the centre of a thriving post-Nazi industry. Bans don't stop the stuff being manufactured and pouring across the border from one country to another. One factory near Poznan makes swastika flags, swastika-bearing steel helmets, SS runes and the most popular item of all: copies of the standard-issue shirt worn by Wehrmacht soldiers in World War II.     [ theage :: 2006-07-11 :: American and Nazi Flag in War ]

Flag fight with Marines: WWII photograph of five Marines
Eugene Foley is taking on a Leatherneck icon: the famous World War II photograph by Joe Rosenthal of five Marines and a Navy medical corpsman raising the US flag on Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945. Foley says the flag came from his vessel, the USS Eldorado, an amphibious force command ship and the flagship for Adm. Richmond K. Turner, who led the 500-ship invasion fleet. The Marines say the flag came from LST 779, a tank-carrying transport ship that beached at the base of Suribachi. The Navy's official account squares with the Marines', but the Coast Guard has its own version: The flag came from LST 758.     [ leatherneck :: 2006-06-15 :: Unsolved Mysteries of WWII ]

Flag from Nazi Headquarters and souvenir from Hitler's desk
Mike Viechec and his comrades took a flag off of a Nazi Headquarters in World War II, and replaced it with an American Flag. The signatures of his fellow soldiers on the torn down Nazi flag show the pride taken in their country, but one of Viechec's most prized possessions is a letter opener he says he took as a souvenir off of Hitler's desk. "He won't be opening up any more mail," laughed Viechec. The images of human suffering are burned in his memories, and his medals and memorabilia act as a constant reminder of his struggle.     [ winktv :: 2006-05-27 :: Nazi Memorabilia, collectibles, militaria ]

Don't Fly the Flag - Germans still have a fear of patriotism
Over six decades after the end of World War II, Germans still have a pathological fear of patriotism. Flying the flag is still a faux pas. It's almost as though Berlin was following a capital city checklist when the city was revived as Germany's political hub in the late 1990s. Dramatic government quarter complete with flashy architecture? Check. Headquarters of major think tanks and foundations? Check. National monuments? Check. Lots of flags? Ummmm. Wait a sec. Flags? Somebody forgot the flags.     [ spiegel :: 2006-04-22 :: Germanic Culture Now ]

Why German authorities have the wrong end of the swastika
Few people would argue with Germany's ban on Nazi symbolism. But two recent cases involving a Nigerian footballer and left-wing anti-fascists show that public prosecutors are going after the wrong people. While opinions differ between Germany and, say, the US about where the limits should lie, one German restriction on freedom of expression seems uncontroversial: the ban on Nazi symbols under Article 86a of the German Strafgesetzbuch (criminal code).     [ expatica :: 2006-04-19 :: Opinions and Views of World War II ]

The first American flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima
A WWII hero whose accomplishments were forgotten for years may soon have a veterans' health clinic named in his honor. Lindberg helped raise the first American flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima. His accomplishment was later overshadowed when a replacement flag was raised a few hours later.     [ wcco :: 2006-03-04 :: Pacific War - Allied powers ]

Flying the swastika is to stay legal
It is not an offence to burn the Australian flag. Neither is it an offence to fly the Nazi swastika and the Government has no plans to make it one. But Prime Minister John Howard did say today that there were occasions when displaying a swastika flag could result in prosecution. The swastika issue surfaced when a couple displayed a Nazi flag for a week in their backyard, only removing it after intense pressure. Jenni Duncombe told the media she did not know what the flag signified. Mr Howard said many people would be offended by display of the swastika, the symbol of the Nazi regime responsible for about 35 million dead during WWII.     [ thesundaymail :: 2006-02-22 :: Germanic Culture Now ]

23 Feb 1945: US flag raised over Iwo Jima battlefield
US troops have raised the Stars and Stripes over Iwo Jima four days after landing on the Japanese-held volcanic island. The 28th Regiment of the 5th Marine Division took Mount Suribachi at 1030 local time. The extinct volcano offers a strategic vantage point for the ongoing battle for control of the island. Iwo Jima would serve as a useful base for long-range fighters to cover B-29 Superfortresses in a bombing campaign against the Japan's capital. Although the Stars and Stripes are flying over the island the battle is far from over and the Japanese are defending every inch of the island using elaborate underground defences.     [ bbc :: 2004-05-23 :: Battle of Iwo Jima : Facts ]

See also

'Nazi signs, symbols - Swastika'

'Military Uniforms'

'Nazi Helmets'

'Military Scale Models'.

What's new - recent & interesting categories.

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