RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/fdrs-massive-federal-overreach/

In his first inaugural address, on March 4, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” It sounded great, and is still presented as inspiring, but actually the statement made little sense, and wasn’t even true at a time when so many Americans were facing imminent financial ruin. Still, it gave the impression that the new president was a wise man who had matters well in hand during a time of crisis, and that reassured people.

The Roosevelt administration compounded the impression that it was working hard at reversing the nation’s massive economic downturn when it charged out of the gate in its first hundred days with a large number of initiatives designed to end the Great Depression. The Emergency Banking Act was the first federal bailout of the nation’s banks, and gave the federal government massive new power to regulate the banking system. Much more was to come.

On April 5, 1933, Roosevelt signed an executive order forbidding the hoarding of gold. This was a time of economic panic, with people withdrawing gold from the banks at a phenomenal rate. By ending the massive run on gold, Roosevelt saved the banks, and the American economic system (which was still on the gold standard), from wholesale collapse. He also established a number of new federal agencies designed to provide relief for the poor, get the unemployed working, enable American businesses to get on their feet, and more.

These included the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), the Public Works Administration (PWA), the National Recovery Administration (NRA), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). More of these new agencies and initiatives followed. The Social Security Act of 1935 established a plan to tax Americans to provide pensions for the aged.

All this and other New Deal initiatives made Roosevelt more popular than ever: it gave the impression that the administration was tackling the Depression with tremendous energy and would soon have America back on its feet. Yet the Depression continued through Roosevelt’s first two terms, only to be ended when the U.S. entered World War II after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

As it turned out, the cure just prolonged the disease. Many found the proliferation of New Deal agencies, all known by their three initials, bewildering, and ridiculed them as “alphabet agencies.” Al Smith, Roosevelt’s old rival in the Democratic Party, said that the government during the Roosevelt administration was “submerged in a bowl of alphabet soup.” Smith was making light of a situation that was actually quite serious: the New Deal was the impetus for a massive expansion of government regulation and federal bureaucracy.

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2025/06/06/intrepid-heroes-of-the-d-day-invasion-n4940498

June 6 is the 81st anniversary of the historic D-Day invasion of Normandy, when the Allies shifted the balance of World War II against the Nazis.

From Pointe du Hoc to Omaha Beach, and from Colleville Sur Mer to Sainte-Mère-Église, the heroism of American troops was on full display on June 6, 1944. Many of the Allied leaders were incompetent (Patton aside), but our men more than made up for that with their determination and courage. Nor did the fighting and dying end on the Normandy beaches, as troops fought their difficult way into the French countryside, pushing the Nazis back.

There are countless stories of bravery from D-Day and the following campaign — including that of my own great-uncle Jack Corley — but today I would like to share the stories of two Americans who won the Medal of Honor for their exceptional actions during the larger Normandy campaign. The first, as described by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society (CMOHS), was Army staff sergeant Arthur Frederick DeFranzo, who earned his medal on June 10 near Vaubadon, France. Scouts were moving across an open field when an abrupt hail of enemy fire wounded one scout.

SSgt. DeFranzo courageously moved out in the open to the aid of the wounded scout and was himself wounded but brought the man to safety. Refusing aid, SSgt. DeFranzo reentered the open field and led the advance upon the enemy. There were always at least two machine-guns bringing unrelenting fire upon him, but SSgt. DeFranzo kept going forward, firing into the enemy and one by one the enemy emplacements became silent. While advancing he was again wounded, but continued on until he was within 100 yards of the enemy position and even as he fell, he kept firing his rifle and waving his men forward. 

When his company had come up, however, SSgt. DeFranzo — seriously injured as he was — managed to raise himself up and take his place at the head of his men. 

But DeFranzo was now too great a target, and once more the relentless enemy fire hit him. The dying hero got his revenge, though:

In a final gesture of indomitable courage, he threw several grenades at the enemy machine-gun position and completely destroyed the gun. In this action SSgt. DeFranzo lost his life, but by bearing the brunt of the enemy fire in leading the attack, he prevented a delay in the assault which would have been of considerable benefit to the foe, and he made possible his company’s advance with a minimum of casualties. The extraordinary heroism and magnificent devotion to duty displayed by SSgt. DeFranzo was a great inspiration to all about him and is in keeping with the highest traditions of the Armed Forces.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-daring-polish-resistance-fighter-who-volunteered-to-be-sent-to-auschwitz-so-he-could-sabotage-the-nazi-death-camp-from-the-inside-180986559/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

“Pilecki’s life ended on a particularly bitter and darkly ironic note. As a man who had fought colonial and imperial lordship over Poland his entire life, he saw the Soviet occupation of his homeland after World War II as just another incarnation of foreign dictatorship. He went underground again, fighting until the Soviet-allied Polish secret police arrested him in May 1947. His own statesmen jailed and tortured him for over a year before executing him by firing squad on May 25, 1948. He was 47 years old.”

In September 1940, the Polish underground resistance fighter Witold Pilecki undertook a monumental act of bravery: He volunteered to allow the Nazi forces occupying Poland to arrest him, in the expectation that they would incarcerate him in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

At the time, the newly constructed Nazi facility in southern Poland hadn’t yet assumed its ultimate incarnation as Adolf Hitler’s seminal death camp. The internment center functioned more like a prison for convicted German criminals; a small number of Jews; and Polish oppositionists, including members of the Secret Polish Army, Pilecki’s outfit. Yet from its first days, Auschwitz bore a reputation for extreme brutality.

The Polish underground initially hoped that it could liberate Auschwitz from within the camp’s walls. The clandestine network selected Pilecki, a 39-year-old veteran and fervent Polish nationalist, to infiltrate Auschwitz, report on its operations and organize fellow prisoners with the object of overthrowing the German camp’s superintendents. Pilecki, the secret army’s chief of staff, carried out this Hail Mary mission over a period of two and a half years. Although the Polish freedom fighters couldn’t incapacitate the Nazis’ operation, Pilecki and his cohorts smuggled descriptive reports out of the facility as it morphed into Europe’s most heinous death factory, where more than 1.1 million people died, nearly one million of them Jews.

Over the course of 1942, Pilecki correctly grasped why the Nazis were enlarging the camp complex by adding gas chambers and crematoriums. He repeatedly urged the Polish exile government in London to convince the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force to bomb Auschwitz, even if it meant killing innocent victims in the camp, including himself. Pilecki’s reports provided some of the earliest evidence of the Nazi death camps and their function in what the Nazis labeled the “Final Solution,” or the extermination of Europe’s Jews, known since as the Holocaust.

Pilecki’s credentials made him a logical candidate for this harrowing job of subterfuge and sabotage. Born in 1901 to patriotic Polish Catholics living in the Russian Empire, the teenage Pilecki served as a scout for Polish self-defense units during World War I. After the global conflict ended in 1918, he fought in a cavalry unit in the Polish-Soviet War, a 1919 to 1921 conflict between Polish nationalist forces and the Soviet Red Army over territory in present-day Ukraine and Belarus. While serving as a reserve officer in the mid-1920s, he took over his family’s estate, and in 1931, he married elementary school teacher Maria Ostrowska. The couple had two children; Pilecki painted and wrote poetry in his free time.

But Hitler’s war machine shattered the family’s harmony. On September 1, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland, and two weeks later, the Soviets attacked from the east. Pilecki mobilized a reserve unit of local men he’d trained over the summer, but most of them were “peasants who had never seen action or fired a gun in anger,” writes journalist Jack Fairweather in The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz. In a little over a month, the Polish Army was defeated, and the country of Poland came under Nazi and Soviet occupation.

Pilecki, like thousands of other Polish soldiers and civilians, joined an underground opposition that battled the occupiers from forests, sewer systems and cellars, notes a permanent exhibition on Pilecki’s life at the Pilecki Institute in Berlin.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/holidays/articles/harry-truman-passover-message

With Hamas still holding Israeli hostages and global antisemitism rampant, as Jewish families sit down to read the Passover Haggadah this year on Monday evening, April 22, the passage “in every generation, there are those who rise up to destroy us” will no doubt be particularly resonant. While most Jews are aware that the phrase—like the phenomenon of Jew-hatred it describes—is centuries old, few fully appreciate the role the Passover story has played in offering Americans of all backgrounds comfort and inspiration during difficult times. The Haggadah, in fact, has long been America’s guidebook for liberty.

At 5 p.m. on March 26, 1945, in Washington, D.C., Vice President Harry S. Truman addressed the annual Passover service at the Jewish Welfare Board during WWII. The speech, broadcast to the Jewish men and women in the Armed Forces, praised both the miracle of Jewish historical survival and the contributions of Judaism to the West. It encapsulates how the story of the Exodus has left an indelible imprint on the American consciousness.

“Since biblical times,” Truman began, “people of the Jewish faith have made great contributions to the moral code of mankind.” He then described how, for centuries, the Jewish faith has served as an ethical beacon for humanity. “From the revelation of the Ten Commandments by Moses to the philosophical teachings of modern Jewish scholars,” he continued, “there has been a constant search for a better way of life for the benefit of all.” Fighting against the worship of “pagan idols,” the Jews “preached eternal faith in one God—the God in whom we all put our trust.”

The vice president then took the occasion, the beginning of the Festival of Freedom, to express gratitude, on behalf of America, for the gifts bestowed by the God of Israel. “All God-fearing people,” he said, “can well join with those of the Jewish faith to thank the Almighty for the many blessings received.” Millions of people, across Europe, Asia, and Africa, had already been “liberated by the forces of freedom.” Though the conflict was ongoing, great progress had been made toward victory over the Nazis.