Reporter Who Whacked Trump With Mic Identified

The reporter who whacked Trump in the face with an fuzzy microphone at Joint Base Andrews on Friday has been identified.
Investigative journalist Laura Loomer identified the clumsy journalist as NPR White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben.
(We paid her to do that, by the way. We fund NPR.)
Why the Secret Service allows reporters so close to Trump is looking for a situation. Kurtzleben has compared Trump to Hitler so I guess he’s lucky it wasn’t one of those Russian poison dart umbrellas, know what I’m talking about.
He handled it well:

https://x.com/ericmmatheny/status/1901390299445838254?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1901390299445838254%7Ctwgr%5Efc176fad901a71c6595a08c60181f219df5336a9%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmoonbattery.com%2F

LOOK ! LOOK ! NAZI ! NAZI !

 

Sometimes The Unadulterated Asininity Of The Libtards Just Astounds The Mind

Elon Musk made an arm gesture during a Trump event along with the comment 'My heart goes out to you.' The liberals associate ANYTHING patriots do with being a Nazi. I wish Trump would rip a thunderous fart in front of a bunch of reporters so that farting would be labelled 'Nazism'. Then all the libtards would be running around with butt plugs to keep from farting which would expose them as Nazi's and we would have the ultimate satisfaction of watching them randomly explode from gaseous build up. It would be YUGELY hilarious. YUGE !!

 

 

And then they caught Elon replicating an action that Hitler was known to do frequently and they were sure it sealed his fate. ...... ROFL

And then I saw this post from an obvious moron, Dame Katy Denise, wanting an explanation ... seriously, this was no satire or joke, from J.K. Rowling on why she would interview Hitler. Talk about extinction level low IQ.

J.K. Rowlings perfect response:

 

 

Trump Is Hitler ... And So Are ...

All of these other Hitlers who have been featured on the TIME Person Of The Year issue.

Greta Thunberg, Pope Francis, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and even Kamala Harris, because all you have to do to be qualified as Hitler is to be named Person of the Year ... right?

https://metro.co.uk/2024/12/12/donald-trump-time-person-year-club-hitler-stalin-khrushchev-khomeini-22176995/

 

But there is help for those of you who are triggered by the fact that many of your cult idols are Hitler also:

Morning Joe And Mika Detail Their Trip To The Eagles Nest,

aka Kehlsteinhaus, where they spoke directly to literal Hitler and told him they don’t see eye to eye with his plan for world domination. It’s a wonder they made it out alive.*

*I stole that statement from somewhere, modified it slightly and now can't remember where I got it. When I find it again, I will attribute.

Heil Komrade Kamitler

Watch:

https://x.com/PapiTrumpo/status/1847084404377534845

A live look inside the Deep State war room after RFK Jr. dropped out and endorsed Trump.
If Clandestine did this he did a really good job on this one.

https://x.com/WarClandestine/status/1827385796304716158

 WOW !! Joy Reid is fried.

https://x.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1808850085423558740

 You are missing out if you miss this great video clip by @TheHoleTweet, Trust me.

https://twitter.com/Denosko1/status/1786536410196943075

 On This Date In History

On March 15, 1939, Hitler’s forces invade and occupy Czechoslovakia, a nation sacrificed on the altar of the Munich Pact, which was a vain attempt to prevent Germany’s imperial aims.
On September 30, 1938, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact, which sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia, virtually handing it over to Germany in the name of peace. Although the agreement was to give into Hitler’s hands only the Sudentenland, that part of Czechoslovakia where 3 million ethnic Germans lived, it also handed over to the Nazi war machine 66 percent of Czechoslovakia’s coal, 70 percent of its iron and steel, and 70 percent of its electrical power. Without those resources, the Czech nation was left vulnerable to complete German domination.
No matter what concessions the Czech government attempted to make to appease Hitler, whether dissolving the Communist Party or suspending all Jewish teachers in ethnic-German majority schools, rumors continued to circulate about “the incorporation of Czechoslovakia into the Reich.” In fact, as early as October 1938, Hitler made it clear that he intended to force the central Czechoslovakian government to give Slovakia its independence, which would make the “rump” Czech state “even more completely at our mercy,” remarked Hermann Goering. Slovakia indeed declared its “independence” (in fact, complete dependence on Germany) on March 14, 1939, with the threat of invasion squelching all debate within the Czech province.
Then, on March 15, 1939, during a meeting with Czech President Emil Hacha, a man considered weak, and possibly even senile, Hitler threatened a bombing raid against Prague, the Czech capital, unless he obtained from Hacha free passage for German troops into Czech borders. He got it. That same day, German troops poured into Bohemia and Moravia. The two provinces offered no resistance, and they were quickly made a protectorate of Germany. By evening, Hitler made a triumphant entry into Prague.
The Munich Pact, which according to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had purchased “peace in our time,” was actually a mere negotiating ploy by the Hitler, only temporarily delaying the Fuhrer’s blood and land lust.

Adolph Hitler at Prague Castle.

From left to right: Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano pictured before signing the Munich Agreement, which gave the Sudetenland to Germany.

Ethnic Germans in Saaz, Sudetenland, greet German soldiers with the Nazi salute, 1938.

First German poster in Prague, 15 March 1939. English translation: "Notice to the population. By order of the Führer and Supreme Commander of the German Wehrmacht. I have taken over, as of today, the executive power in the Province of Bohemia. Headquarters, Prague, 15 March 1939. Commander, 3rd Army, Blaskowitz, General of infantry." The Czech translation includes numerous grammatical errors (possibly intentionally, as a form of disdain).

On This Date In History

On January 30, 1933, with the stirring notes of the William Tell Overture and a shout of “Hi-yo, Silver! Away!” The Lone Ranger debuts on Detroit’s WXYZ radio station.
The creation of station-owner George Trendle and writer Fran Striker, the “masked rider of the plains” became one of the most popular and enduring western heroes of the 20th century. Joined by his trusty steed, Silver, and loyal Native American scout, Tonto, the Lone Ranger sallied forth to do battle with western outlaws and Native Americans, generally arriving on the scene just in time to save an innocent golden-haired child or sun-bonneted farm wife.
Neither Trendle nor Striker had any connections to or experience with the cowboys, Indians, and pioneers of the real West, but that mattered little to them. The men simply wanted to create an American version of the masked swashbuckler made popular by the silent movie actor Douglas Fairbanks in The Mark of Zorro, arming their hero with a revolver rather than a sword. Historical authenticity was far less important to the men than fidelity to the strict code of conduct they established for their character. The Lone Ranger never smoked, swore, or drank alcohol; he used grammatically correct speech free of slang; and, most important, he never shot to kill. More offensive to modern historical and ethnic sensibilities was the Indian scout Tonto, who spoke in a comical Native American patois totally unrelated to any authentic Indigenous dialect, uttering ludicrous phrases like “You betchum!”
Historical accuracy notwithstanding, the radio program was an instant hit. Children liked the steady stream of action and parents approved of the good moral example offered by the upstanding masked man. Soon picked up for nationwide broadcast over the Mutual Radio Network, over 20 million Americans were tuning into The Lone Ranger three times a week by 1939. In an early example of the power of marketing tie-ins, the producers also licensed the manufacture of a vast array of related products, including Lone Ranger guns, costumes, books, and a popular comic strip.
The Lone Ranger made a seemingly effortless transition from radio to motion pictures and television. The televised version of The Lone Ranger, staring Clayton Moore as the masked man, became ABC’s first big hit in the early 1950s. Remaining on the air until 1957, the program helped define the golden age of the TV Western and inspired dozens of imitators like The Range Rider, The Roy Rogers Show and The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok.

 

The Lone Ranger 1949 - 1957 Opening and Closing Theme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9lf76xOA5k

On January 30, 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg names Adolf Hitler, leader or führer of the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party), as chancellor of Germany.
The year 1932 had seen Hitler’s meteoric rise to prominence in Germany, spurred largely by the German people’s frustration with dismal economic conditions and the still-festering wounds inflicted by defeat in the Great War and the harsh peace terms of the Versailles treaty. A charismatic speaker, Hitler channeled popular discontent with the post-war Weimar government into support for his fledgling Nazi party. In an election held in July 1932, the Nazis won 230 governmental seats; together with the Communists, the next largest party, they made up over half of the Reichstag.
Hindenburg, intimidated by Hitler’s growing popularity and the thuggish nature of his cadre of supporters, the SA (or Brownshirts), initially refused to make him chancellor. Instead, he appointed General Kurt von Schleicher, who attempted to steal Hitler’s thunder by negotiating with a dissident Nazi faction led by Gregor Strasser. At the next round of elections in November, the Nazis lost ground, but the Communists gained it, a paradoxical effect of Schleicher’s efforts that made right-wing forces in Germany even more determined to get Hitler into power. In a series of complicated negotiations, ex-Chancellor Franz von Papen, backed by prominent German businessmen and the conservative German National People’s Party (DNVP), convinced Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor, with the understanding that von Papen as vice-chancellor and other non-Nazis in key government positions would contain and temper Hitler’s more brutal tendencies.
Hitler’s emergence as chancellor on January 30, 1933, marked a crucial turning point for Germany and, ultimately, for the world. His plan, embraced by much of the German population, was to do away with politics and make Germany a powerful, unified one-party state. He began immediately, ordering a rapid expansion of the state police, the Gestapo, and putting Hermann Goering in charge of a new security force, composed entirely of Nazis and dedicated to stamping out whatever opposition to his party might arise. From that moment on, Nazi Germany was off and running, and there was little Hindenburg or von Papen, or anyone, could do to stop it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 On This Date In History

On January 12, 1943, Soviet troops create a breach in the German siege of Leningrad, which had lasted for a year and a half. The Soviet forces punched a hole in the siege, which ruptured the German encirclement and allowed for more supplies to come in along Lake Ladoga.
Upon invading the Soviet Union in June 1941, German troops made a beeline for Leningrad, the second-largest city in the USSR. In August, German forces, approaching from the west and south, surrounded the city and rendered the Leningrad-Moscow railway useless. A German offensive attempted to occupy the city but failed; in light of this, Hitler decided to impose a siege, allowing nothing to enter or leave the former capital of Old Russia. Hitler intended to wait the Soviets out, then raze the city to the ground and hand the territory over to Germany’s Finnish allies, who were advancing on the city from the north. (Finland would stop short of Leningrad, though, happy with regaining territory lost to the USSR in 1939.)
The siege began officially on September 8, 1941. The people of Leningrad began building antitank fortifications and succeeded in creating a stable defense of the city, but they were also cut off from all access to vital resources in the Soviet interior. In 1942, 650,000 Leningrad citizens died from starvation, disease, exposure, and injuries suffered from the siege and the continual German bombardment with artillery. Barges offered occasional relief in the summer and ice-borne sleds were able to do the same in the winter. A million sick, elderly, or especially young residents of Leningrad were slowly and stealthily evacuated, leaving about 2 million people to ration available food and use all open ground to plant vegetables.
A Soviet counteroffensive pushed the Germans westward on January 27, 1944, bringing the siege to an end. It had lasted for 872 days.

 

‘Democracy,’ He Cried
Joe Biden was at his demagogic worst this weekend, railing against Donald Trump and obsessing about January 6.

The contrast couldn’t have been any more stark. There, during the brutal winter of 1777, General George Washington, leader of the Continental Army, kneeled in prayer in the snow of Valley Forge. And there, this past Friday, decrepit Joe Biden, leader of an out-of-touch political party, disgracefully pitted one group of Americans against another and railed against his predecessor as president.
Indeed, Biden’s obsession with Donald Trump is pathological.
That Biden chose Valley Forge to make his first speech of the 2024 campaign was disgraceful but not surprising. He has no shame, and his voters tend to be incurious and ill-informed. General Washington lost some 2,000 men during that six-month encampment at Valley Forge, but Biden didn’t mention this. All he wanted to do was invoke the name of the great leader, the Indispensable Man, so as to add gravity and vitality to a tired and tiresome speech.
He failed. So did his accompanying campaign ad.
We will say this, though: By inviting Dauphin County Commissioner Justin Douglas to introduce him, Biden locked up the all-important men-with-spacers vote. This goes to the weirdness of today’s Democrat Party. Pennsylvania has a Democrat governor and two Democrat senators, but Biden chose to be introduced by a guy with see-through earlobes.
Commissioner Douglas talked about “the bedrock of our democracy” and about how Trump is “unfit to be president,” which, frankly, left Biden very little to talk about.

Biden’s Speech:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVe2VjI8c-I&t=1295s

Undeterred, Biden began by — surprise! — rehashing January 6. “Today,” he said, “we gather in a new year, some 246 years later, just one day before January 6, a day forever seared in our memory because it was on that day that we nearly lost America, lost it all.”
What kind of dolt believes “we nearly lost America” on January 6? And what kind of American president thinks so little of his audience?
Biden continued: “Today, we’re here to answer the most important of questions. Is democracy still America’s sacred cause? I mean it. This is not rhetorical, academic, or hypothetical. Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time.”
If this was the point of Biden’s speech, we could’ve saved him some time. Democracy is not America’s “sacred cause” and it never was. We get tired of saying it, but ours is a republic, not a democracy, which Founding Fathers like Washington expressly rejected.

As our Mark Alexander noted recently, Joe Biden is the greatest threat to our republic precisely because he keeps calling it a democracy.
Democracy is a euphemism for mob rule, and history shows that mob rule always ends badly. And yet Biden uttered the word “democracy” 28 times during his speech without even once mentioning the word “republic.”
“Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past,” said the guy who can’t seem to stop talking about the 2020 election, or about January 6, 2021. Indeed, that’s pretty much what Biden’s entire speech was about. He continued:
“Three years ago tomorrow, we saw with our own eyes the violent mob stormed the United States Capitol. It was almost in disbelief as you first turned on the television. For the first time in our history, insurrectionists had come to stop the peaceful transfer, transfer of power in America. First time. Smashing windows, shattering doors, attacking the police. Outside, gallows were erected as the MAGA crowd chanted, ‘Hang Mike Pence.’“
Okay, we’ll bite. First, that "gallows” Biden mentions looked like it was made by a fifth-grader. Second, more than three years after it was erected there on the Capitol Mall, the world’s most elite investigative agency hasn’t solved the mystery of who the five guys were who built it. That’s right: We know that precisely five guys built it because they were captured on video doing just that. And yet. In the most heavily surveilled part of the world’s most heavily surveilled city, the same FBI that went coast-to-coast to track down and round up more than 1,200 J6 participants hasn’t been able to determine who these five gallows-builders were.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/2447016/new-suspicions-on-who-built-jan-6-gallows/

How on earth can the FBI not know who the guy in this series of pictures is? And how can investigators not know the identity of the guy who left the fivesome at 6:45 a.m. to fetch coffee from a shop directly across the street from the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover Building? Answer: They can’t not know — not unless they don’t want to know. And why hasn’t FBI Director Chris Wray been hauled before one congressional committee after another and asked to explain this?
Why, it’s almost as if these five mysterious guys were somehow in cahoots with the guy who planted those pipe bombs in front of the DNC and RNC headquarters nearby. Somehow, that guy, that would-be pipe-bomber, hasn’t been identified either. What are the odds?
Back to Biden’s speech: “Trump lost the popular vote by seven million,” he complained. But wethinks he doth protest too much. Biden failed to inform his clapping seals that Trump actually lost the election by a razor-thin 43,000 votes across three swing states: Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. And he didn’t bother to mention that a sufficient number of votes in those three states would almost certainly have flipped to Trump had the FBI not colluded with Twitter and Facebook to suppress the New York Post’s pre-election bombshell about Hunter Biden’s laptop and his family’s influence-peddling operation.
That’s to say nothing of the bulk-mail ballots that grossly inflated Biden’s seven-million-vote spread.
“I’ll say what Donald Trump won’t,” said Scranton Joe. “Political violence is never, ever acceptable in the United States political system. Never, never, never.” Unless, of course, the political violence comes from the Left — as it did with the Black Lives Matter riots, as it does with antifa’s mayhem, and as it did on the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2017, when, as CNN reported, rioters “smashed storefronts and bus stops, hammered out the windows of a limousine, and eventually launched rocks at a phalanx of police.” Six cops were injured that day, and 230 rioters were arrested. But on July 6, 2018, the Associated Press reported that the government had dropped the charges against all inauguration protesters.
And yet, as Biden put it, “We’re living in an era where a determined minority is doing everything in its power to try to destroy our democracy for their own agenda.”
Finally, we bring you the idiocy of Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats — in this case, former New Hampshire Governor and current Senator Jeanne Shaheen. In a since-deleted X post, Shaheen attributed the following quote to Ben Franklin: “A democracy, if you can keep it.”

Franklin, of course, said nothing of the sort. When on September 17, 1787, Elizabeth Willing Powel asked him outside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
A republic, if you can keep it.
When it comes to “democracy,” the Democrats are stuck on stupid.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/103364-democracy-he-cried-2024-01-08

Back to Philly – Joe Biden Scheduled to Deliver Another “Threat to Democracy” Speech in Philadelphia

When it comes to the people around Joe Biden and elections, Philadelphia is oddly the only venue they use with frequency.
As NBC announces that Joe Biden will deliver another “threat to democracy” campaign speech, the venue is once again Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  This is the fifth time Philly has been used as the backdrop for advancing the narrative of MAGA extremism as a threat to the authoritarian control state of the Biden administration.
(VIA NBC) – President Joe Biden will cast former President Donald Trump as a threat to democracy Saturday in a speech set to be delivered on the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, the Biden campaign said this week.
The speech is expected to be a key component of the campaign’s efforts to highlight the stakes of the presidential election, one that’s shaping up to be a rematch of the 2020 contest.
On a call with reporters announcing Saturday’s event, campaign officials used dire terms in warning against a potential Trump victory.
Communications director Michael Tyler said that if Trump wins in November, he “will use all of his power to systematically dismantle and destroy our democracy.”
Campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez added, “Our message is clear, and it is simple: We are running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it. Because it does.”
Biden will deliver his remarks in the Philadelphia area near Valley Forge, a historic Revolutionary War site where George Washington worked to rally troops into a unified army in the late 1770s.
“There, the president will make the case directly that democracy and freedom — two powerful ideas that united the 13 colonies and that generations throughout our nation’s history have fought and died for a stone’s throw from where he’ll be Saturday — remains central to the fight we’re in today,” said Quentin Fulks, a deputy campaign manager.
Biden campaign officials also argued that Trump has grown more dangerous since the previous election.
"The threat Donald Trump posed in 2020 to American democracy has only grown more dire in the years since," Chavez Rodriguez said.
Trump himself plans to hold two campaign events Saturday, setting the stage for a split-screen moment.
Next week, Biden will deliver campaign remarks at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where nine people were killed in a mass shooting by an admitted white supremacist in 2015.
"Whether it is white supremacists descending on the historic American city of Charlottesville, the assault on our nation's capital on January 6 or a white supremacist murdering churchgoers at Mother Emanuel nearly nine years ago, America is worried about the rise in political violence and determined to stand against it," Fulks said.
Biden and Trump were neck and neck in a hypothetical matchup in the most recent NBC News poll. In the November survey, 44% of respondents picked Biden, while 46% picked Trump — a difference that's within the poll's margin of error. At the same time, Biden's approval rating dipped to 40%, the lowest of his presidency.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/biden-campaign-casts-trump-threat-democracy-ahead-jan-6-speech-rcna131987?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma&taid=6595534cb7f0c900016db780&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

 On This Date In History

On December 19, 1984, in the Hall of the People in Beijing, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang sign an agreement committing Britain to return Hong Kong to China in 1997 in return for terms guaranteeing a 50-year extension of its capitalist system. Hong Kong, a small peninsula and group of islands jutting out from China’s Kwangtung province, was leased by China to Great Britain in 1898 for 99 years.
In 1839, in the First Opium War, Britain invaded China to crush opposition to its interference in the country’s economic, social, and political affairs. One of Britain’s first acts of war was to occupy Hong Kong, a sparsely inhabited island off the coast of southeast China. In 1841, China ceded the island to the British with the signing of the Convention of Chuenpi, and in 1842 the Treaty of Nanking was signed, formally ending the First Opium War. At the end of the Second Opium War (1856-1860), China was forced to cede the Kowloon Peninsula, adjacent to Hong Kong Island, along with other area islands.
Britain’s new colony flourished as an East-West trading center and as the commercial gateway and distribution center for southern China. On July 1, 1898, Britain was granted an additional 99 years of rule over the Hong Kong colony under the Second Convention of Peking. Hong Kong was occupied by the Japanese from 1941 to 1944 during World War II but remained in British hands throughout the various Chinese political upheavals of the 20th century.
On December 19, 1984, after years of negotiations, British and Chinese leaders signed a formal pact approving the 1997 turnover of the colony in exchange for the formulation of a “one country, two systems” policy by China’s communist government. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called the agreement “a landmark in the life of the territory, in the course of Anglo-Chinese relations, and in the history of international diplomacy.” Hu Yaobang, the Chinese Communist Party’s secretary-general, called the signing “a red-letter day, an occasion of great joy” for China’s one billion people.
At midnight on July 1, 1997, Hong Kong was peaceably handed over to China in a ceremony attended by numerous international dignitaries, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Prince Charles, Chinese President Jiang Zemin, and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. A few thousand citizens of Hong Kong protested the turnover, which was otherwise celebratory and peaceful. The chief executive of the new Hong Kong government, Tung Chee Hwa, did enact a policy based upon the concept of one country, two systems, thus preserving Hong Kong’s role as a principal capitalist center in Asia.
Massive anti-government protests in Hong Kong began in June 2019, when more than 1 million people marched to protest a bill that would allow the extradition of people to mainland China to stand trial. The bill was later dropped, but anti-government unrest remains.

On December 19, 1732, Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia first published Poor Richard’s Almanack. The book, filled with proverbs preaching industry and prudence, was published continuously for 25 years and became one of the most popular publications in colonial America, selling an average of 10,000 copies a year.
Franklin was born in Boston in 1706 and was apprenticed to his brother, a printer, at age 12. In 1729, Franklin became the official printer of currency for the colony of Pennsylvania. He began publishing Poor Richard’s, as well as the Pennsylvania Gazette, one of the colonies’ first and best newspapers. By 1748, Franklin had become more interested in inventions and science than publishing. He spent time in London representing Pennsylvania in its dispute with England and later spent time in France. He returned to America in March 1775, with war on the horizon. He served on the Second Continental Congress and helped draft the Declaration of Independence. He was also instrumental in persuading the French to lend military assistance to the colonies. He died in Philadelphia in 1790.

 

On December 19, 1941, in a major shake-up of the military high command, Adolf Hitler assumes the position of commander in chief of the German army.
The German offensive against Moscow was proving to be a disaster. A perimeter had been established by the Soviets 200 miles from the city, and the Germans couldn’t break through. The harsh winter weather, with temperatures often dropping to 31 degrees below zero, had virtually frozen German tanks in their tracks. Soviet General Georgi Zhukov had unleashed a ferocious counteroffensive of infantry, tanks, and planes that had forced the flailing Germans into retreat. In short, the Germans were being beaten for the first time in the war, and the toll to their collective psyche was great. “The myth of the invincibility of the German army was broken,” German General Franz Halder would write later.
But Hitler refused to accept this notion. He began removing officers from their command. General Fedor von Bock, who had been suffering severe stomach pains and who on December 1 had complained to Halder that he was no longer able to “operate” with his debilitated troops, was replaced by General Hans von Kluge, whose own 4th Army had been pushed into permanent retreat from Moscow. General Karl von Runstedt was relieved of the southern armies because he had retreated from Rostov. Hitler clearly did not believe in giving back captured territory, so in the biggest shake-up of all, he declared himself commander in chief of the army. He would train it “in a National Socialist way”, that is, by personal fiat. He would compose the strategies and the officers would dance to his tune.

 

 

On December 19, 1776, Thomas Paine publishes “The American Crisis.” ”These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
When these phrases appeared in the pages of the Pennsylvania Journal for the first time, General George Washington’s troops were encamped at McKonkey’s Ferry on the Delaware River opposite Trenton, New Jersey. In August, they had suffered humiliating defeats and lost New York City to British troops. Between September and December, 11,000 American volunteers gave up the fight and returned to their families. General Washington could foresee the destiny of a rebellion without an army if the rest of his men returned home when their service contracts expired on December 31. He knew that without an upswing in morale and a significant victory, the American Revolution would come to a swift and humiliating end.
Thomas Paine was similarly astute. His Common Sense was the clarion call that began the revolution. As Washington’s troops retreated from New York through New Jersey, Paine again rose to the challenge of literary warfare. With American Crisis, he delivered the words that would salvage the revolution.
Washington commanded that the freshly printed pamphlet be read aloud to his dispirited men; the rousing prose had its intended effect. Reciting Paine’s impassioned words, the beleaguered troops mustered their remaining hopes for victory and crossed the icy Delaware River to defeat hung-over Hessians on Christmas night and on January 2, the British army’s best general, Earl Cornwallis, at the Battle of Princeton. With victory in New Jersey, Washington won not only two battles, but also the love and thanks of man and woman.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 On This Date In History

On December 11, 1941, Adolf Hitler declares war on the United States, bringing America, which had been neutral, into the European conflict.
The bombing of Pearl Harbor surprised even Germany. Although Hitler had made an oral agreement with his Axis partner Japan that Germany would join a war against the United States, he was uncertain as to how the war would be engaged. Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor answered that question. On December 8, Japanese Ambassador Oshima went to German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop to nail the Germans down on a formal declaration of war against America. Von Ribbentrop stalled for time; he knew that Germany was under no obligation to do this under the terms of the Tripartite Pact, which promised help if Japan was attacked, but not if Japan was the aggressor. Von Ribbentrop feared that the addition of another antagonist, the United States, would overwhelm the German war effort.
But Hitler thought otherwise. He was convinced that the United States would soon beat him to the punch and declare war on Germany. The U.S. Navy was already attacking German U-boats, and Hitler despised Roosevelt for his repeated verbal attacks against his Nazi ideology. He also believed that Japan was much stronger than it was, that once it had defeated the United States, it would turn and help Germany defeat Russia. So at 3:30 p.m. (Berlin time) on December 11, the German charge d’affaires in Washington handed American Secretary of State Cordell Hull a copy of the declaration of war.
That very same day, Hitler addressed the Reichstag to defend the declaration. The failure of the New Deal, argued Hitler, was the real cause of the war, as President Roosevelt, supported by plutocrats and Jews, attempted to cover up for the collapse of his economic agenda. “First he incites war, then falsifies the causes, then odiously wraps himself in a cloak of Christian hypocrisy and slowly but surely leads mankind to war,” declared Hitler, and the Reichstag leaped to their feet in thunderous applause.

 

 

 

 

On December 11, 1961, The first U.S. helicopters arrive in Vietnam. The ferry carrier, USNS Core, arrives in Saigon with the first U.S. helicopter unit. This contingent included 33 Vertol H-21C Shawnee helicopters and 400 air and ground crewmen to operate and maintain them. Their assignment was to airlift South Vietnamese Army troops into combat.