Christmas is one of the most celebrated holidays on earth. But that doesn't mean that conflicts simply freeze every December 25th. 

Here's a look at some of the major military events that have fallen on Christmas, a date with a surprisingly rich history.

1776 — George Washington Crosses The Delaware River

Important events in both of America's most formative wars — the Revolutionary War and the Civil War — took place on Christmas.

Washington led his troops across a 300-yard stretch of the Delaware River in the dead of night between December 25 and 26, 1776. The surprise move would put Washington's men a 19-mile march away from a garrison of Hessians (German mercenaries hired by the British to help them in their effort to retain a hold on the rebelling colonies) that the Continental Army took completely by surprise.

The Hessians' quick surrender at the Battle of Trenton would be the first of two rebel victories in New Jersey (the other being the Battle of Princeton a week later) as the Continental Army regained control of the colony. This effectively reversed the British drive that had pushed the rebels across New Jersey in the previous months. The daring crossing of the Delaware ended up being one of the turning points of the war.

1868 — US President Andrew Johnson pardons former Confederate soldiers

Nearly a century later, on Christmas Day of 1868, US president Andrew Johnson extended a full pardon and amnesty"to all and to every person who, directly or indirectly, participated in the late insurrection or rebellion".

The internecine war had ended more than three years earlier, taking more American lives than any other conflict in history. But Union general Ulysses S. Grant's scorched earth tactics late in the war left much of the south in ruins, and the country emerged from the war in a state of deep division.

Johnson had been a Tennessee congressman, senator, and governor before joining Lincoln's presidential ticket.  He was tipped in part to attract southern votes. Yet at war's end he seemed bent on imposing harsh conditions on the defeated half of the country.

The day after being sworn in as the nation's president, he asserted that "treason must be made infamous, and traitors must be impoverished."

But according to the History Department at North Carolina State University, Attorney General James Speed tempered Johnson's punitive intentions: "Mercy must be largely extended. Some of the great leaders and offenders only must be made to feel the extreme rigor of the law," Speed advised.

Southerners enjoyed only conditional and limited pardoning (depending on their station during the war) — at least until this blanket amnesty on "the 25th day of December, A. D. 1868."

1914 — German, British, and French soldiers make temporary peace to celebrate Christmas together

On Christmas Day in 1914, the first Christmas of World War I, soldiers left their trenches to observe the holiday in peace.

In the midst of war, soldiers laid down their arms to sing Christmas carols, play soccer, and barter with the cigarettes and sweets they'd received in care packages from the nations they served.

In some places, the truce was limited to an occasion for each side to bury their dead strewn in no man's land, the stretch of earth between opposing trenches that too often served as a killing field. In others, the skirmishing continued.

But some made the Christmas Truce of 1914 what it was: An odd yet heartening case study in how people react to the pressures of war.

1941 — Japan seizes control of Hong Kong at the expense of the United Kingdom.

Japan's aggression during World War II began well before the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1931, Imperial Japan invaded Manchuria, a vast coastal region in northeast China. In 1937, it made advances on the rest of the country as well.

But it wasn't until 1941 that Tokyo confronted the West with its imperial ambitions.

And though American involvement started with the Pearl Harbor attack, the surprise assault was immediately followed by Japan's invasion of Hong Kong, a British holding, in late 1941.

Hundreds died in the eighteen-day battle for Hong Kong, and more were wounded or incarcerated in POW camps. Some would never return.

Japan announced the surrender of the colony by radio broadcast on Christmas Day, 1941.

1941 — Admiral Émile Muselier captures Saint Pierre and Miquelon, an archipelago near Canada, for the Free French Forces

The North American continent does not feature as a hot spot in the events of World War II.

But soon after France's fall to the Nazis, the colonial governor of a few small islands off the coast of Newfoundland started working with the resistance.

Writing back to the Vichy government — the Nazi's puppet regime in France — Baron Gilbert de Bournat wrote of "British pressure to rally to the British or de Gaullist causes."

That pressure would have found sympathizers on the islands. Its population was originally mobilized, in 1939, to help defend France's mainland, and some ship-owners docked there refused to return to Vichy France.

On Christmas Eve, 1941, a small task force under Admiral Émile Muselier stormed the island under the cover of night. They met no resistance and the island's administrative centers were taken within an hour, eliminating what otherwise could have served as a Nazi outpost deep among Allied nations while giving the Free French cause legitimacy.

"By five minutes past midnight on December 25 the story of the invasion was telegraphed to Canadian and American newspapers,"according to Douglas Anglin's "Free French Invasion: The St. Pierre and Miquelon Affaire of 1941".

SEE ALSO: US troops have been at war on Christmas since the nation's founding

Join the conversation about this story »

Two Polish teams will search this year for the Polish submarine ORP Orzel, which disappeared in the North Sea in May 1940 during a mission with the Allies in World War II.

The two searches will be conducted by the Culture Ministry and the Maritime Museum in the Baltic port of Gdansk.

Built in the Netherlands, ORP Orzel started service in 1939, and fought German ships after Hitler's army invaded Poland Sept. 1, 1939. The vessel was held that month in Tallinn by then-neutral Estonia, but escaped.

Working with the Allies, the submarine then took part in patrol and escort missions for the British navy. On May 23, 1940, it left Rosyth, Scotland, and never returned.

Searches undertaken since 2008 have been unsuccessful.

SEE ALSO: Switzerland is finally getting around to dismantling its Cold War-era defense system

Join the conversation about this story »

NEW YORK (AP) — A handwritten notebook by Alan Turing, the World War II code-breaking genius depicted by Benedict Cumberbatch in the Oscar-nominated "The Imitation Game," is going on the auction block.

The 56-page manuscript was written at the time the British mathematician and computer science pioneer was working to break the seemingly unbreakable Enigma codes used by the Germans throughout World War II. It is being sold by Bonhams in New York on April 13. It is expected to bring at least $1 million.

The notebook contains Turing's complex mathematical and computer science notations. It is believed to be the only extensive Turing manuscript known to exist, the auctioneer said.

It dates from 1942, when Turing was trying to break the seemingly unbreakable code with his team of cryptanalysts at Britain's World War II code and cypher school Bletchley Park.

In one entry Turing writes about a complex calculus notation.

"The Leibniz notation I find extremely difficult to understand in spite of it having been the one I understood the best once! It certainly implies that some relation between x and y has been laid down eg, y=x2+3x ..."

The notebook was among the papers he left in his will to friend and fellow mathematician Robin Gandy.

Gandy gave the papers to The Archive Centre at King's College in Cambridge in 1977. But he kept the notebook, using its blank pages for writing down his dreams at the request of his psychiatrist. Bonham describes Gandy's entries as highly personal; the notebook remained in his possession until he died in 1995.

At the beginning of his journal, Gandy writes: "It seems a suitable disguise to write in between these notes of Alan's on notation, but possibly a little sinister; a dead father figure, some of whose thoughts I most completely inherited."

In a statement through Bonhams, Turing scholar Andrew Hodges said the notebook sheds more light on how Turing" remained committed to free-thinking work in pure mathematics."

"The Imitation Game," which also stars Keira Knightley, is based on Hodges' book "Alan Turing: The Enigma."

Turing committed suicide in 1954. He was gay at a time when homosexuality was illegal in Britain and was convicted of indecency in 1952. He agreed to undergo hormone treatment as an alternative to imprisonment to 'cure' his homosexuality.

Bonhams said the seller wished to remain anonymous. Part of the proceeds will be donated to charity.

This article was from The Associated Press and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

Join the conversation about this story »

It was the silence, the smell of ashes and the boundless surrounding expanse that struck Soviet soldier Ivan Martynushkin when his unit arrived in January 1945 to liberate the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.

As they entered the camp for the first time, the full horror of the Nazis' crimes there were yet to emerge.

"Only the highest-ranking officers of the General Staff had perhaps heard of the camp," recalled Martynushkin of his arrival to the site where at least 1.1 million people were killed between 1940 and 1945 — nearly 90 percent of them Jews. "We knew nothing." 

But Martynushkin and his comrades soon learned.

After scouring the camp in search of a potential Nazi ambush, Martynushkin and his fellow soldiers "noticed people behind barbed wire."

"It was hard to watch them. I remember their faces, especially their eyes which betrayed their ordeal," he said.

The unit found roughly 7,000 prisoners left behind in Auschwitz by fleeing Nazis — those too weak or sick to walk. They also discovered about 600 corpses.

Ten days earlier, the Nazis had evacuated 58,000 Auschwitz inmates in sub-zero conditions over hundreds of kilometres towards Loslau (now Wodzislaw Slaski in Poland). Survivors later remembered the "death march" as even worse than what they had endured in the camp.

Prior to that retreat, Nazi units had blown up parts of the camp, but failed to destroy evidence of their genocidal work.

Among items discovered by Martynushkin and other Soviet troops were 370,000 men's suits, 837,000 women's garments, and 7.7 tons of human hair, according to Sybille Steinbacher, a history professor at the University of Vienna.

'We came to free Poland' 

January 27, 1945 — now commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day — had begun as a normal day for the 21-year-old Martynushkin and his company, until the order was given to move towards the Polish town of Oswiecim, where Nazis had set up a network of concentration camps.

That led to the machine gun commander and his peers taking Auschwitz, liberating its survivors and discovering the nightmarish crimes that had been committed in the camp. 

But despite that historic event, the war continued for Martynushkin's unit, which participated in the Red Army's Vistula-Oder offensive that captured much of Poland, and struck deep within the borders of the Third Reich. 

When the end of the war finally arrived, Martynushkin learned of it in a Czech hospital, after being wounded twice.

He returned to Auschwitz several times after the war — in 2010 travelling aboard Russian President Vladimir Putin's plane — yet Martynushkin says he and his fellow Soviet comrades have not been hailed as heroes.

Former Soviet satellite countries — including Poland and Baltic states — insist that Red Army troops that liberated Eastern European from Nazi totalitarianism merely replaced that with a Soviet form. 

Even with Eastern European nations living freely as democratic states, the anti-Soviet sentiment continues to influence how history is interpreted — including the liberation of Auschwitz.

On the 65th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz, Martynushkin recalls, the former European Parliament president, Jerzy Buzek, "compared us to occupation troops, but we came to free Poland."

On January 21 Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna sparked controversy with the claim Auschwitz was liberated by Ukrainians — a statement that angered Martynushkin.

"I do not want to answer. In fact, I am ashamed for him," said Martynushkin who, nevertheless plans to participate in the commemoration marking the 70th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation on January 27.

Join the conversation about this story »

January 27th marks the 70th anniversary of the Red Army's liberation of the infamous Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz.

An estimated 1.1 million people, most of them Jewish, were killed behind the massive walls of Auschwitz, and in the years since its liberation, Auschwitz has become a heart-breaking symbol of the atrocities of World War II. 

When the camp was taken from the Third Reich, 200,000 prisoners were still alive and freed. To commemorate the anniversary, Reuters photographer Laszlo Balogh photographed 20 survivors, along with photographs and artifacts from the nightmarish camp.

Eva Fahidi, 90, holds a picture of her family, who were all killed in the concentration camp during World War II, as she poses for a portrait in Budapest. Fahidi was 18 in 1944 when she and her family were moved from Debrecen, Budapest, to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Marian Majerowicz, 88, who was registered with camp number 157715, is originally from Myszkow, Poland. Majerowicz was 17 when he was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. At the camp he was briefly reunited with his father, who told him that his mother and younger brother were both killed in the gas chambers. Majerowicz's father didn't survive the war. 

Jadwiga Bogucka (maiden name Regulska), 89, was registered with camp number 86356. During the Warsaw Uprising in August, 1944, when Bogucka was 19, she and her mother were sent from their house to a camp in Pruszkow, Poland, and then moved on August 12, 1944 by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945.

Below, Bogucka holds a picture of herself from 1944.

lzbieta Sobczynska (maiden name Gremblicka), 80, who was registered with camp number 85536, gestures as she poses for a portrait in Warsaw. During the Warsaw Uprising, when Sobczynska was 10-years-old, she was sent with her mother and brother from their home to a camp in Pruszkow and then moved by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau. There they were separated into blocks for woman, girls and boys. Sobczynska said that she was robbed of her childhood, and lost the chance to experience a different kind of life.

Here, she holds her father's watch, which was kept by her brother while they were in the camp.

Stefan Sot, 83, who was registered with camp number 192705, was 13 years old during the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944. He was sent from his home to a camp in Pruszkow prior to being sent by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. He was later moved to a labour sub-camp, where he worked in a kitchen for S.S. officers. After the war he worked as a typesetter at a printing house.

Here's a picture of Sot taken during the wartime.

Maria Stroinska, 82, gestures as she poses for a portrait in Warsaw. Stroinska was 12-years-old during the Warsaw Uprising when she and her sister were sent from their house to a camp in Pruszkow before she was moved alone by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Below, Stroinska holds a family photo taken before the war.

Henryk Duszyk, 80, was 10-years-old during the Warsaw Uprising in August, 1944. He was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau with his father, brother and stepmother. The family were separated and Duszyk only saw his father once more before he was killed at the camp. Duszyk, his brother and stepmother were kept at Auschwitz-Birkenau until the camp was liberated.

Here is a wartime photo of his family.

Auschwitz death camp survivor Lajos Erdelyi, 87, holds a drawing made by a campmate. Erdelyi was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944 and was later moved to another camp. When he was freed he weighed under 66 pounds, but tried to walk home. He collapsed, and was taken to a hospital by a farmer.

Barbara Doniecka, 80, who was registered with camp number 86341, poses for a photo in Warsaw. Doniecka was 12-years-old during the Warsaw Uprising when she was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau with her mother.

Here, she holds a wartime photo of herself.

Janos Forgacs, 87, holds a document from Auschwitz below. Forgacs recalls that he was in a group transported to a camp in a cattle wagon, with the windows sealed with barbed wire. An military officer told them to hand over their belongings, telling them they would not need them anymore. 

Survivor Halina Brzozowska, 82, was 12-years-old during the Warsaw Uprising when her family was sent to a camp in Pruszkow. She and her 6-year-old sister were then moved by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Brzozowska said that it was hard to say what had happened to them, that they were taken from their homes, family and lost their childhood. 

Here is a picture of her during the war.

Danuta Bogdaniuk-Bogucka (maiden name Kaminska), 80, was 10-years-old when she was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp with her mother. Bogdaniuk-Bogucka was part of Josef Mengele's experiments when she was in Auschwitz. After the war she met her mother again and they discovered they had both been at Ravensbruck camp at the same time, but they had not realised this.

Below, she holds a photo of her family during the war.

Survivor Jacek Nadolny, 77, who was registered with camp number 192685, poses for a portrait in Poland. Nadolny was seven during the Warsaw Uprising, when he was sent with his family to Auschwitz-Birkenau by train. In January 1945 the family was moved to a labor camp in Berlin.

Imre Varsanyi, 86, holds up a photo of fellow survivors during World War II. Varsanyi was 14-years-old when he and his family were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was the only member of his family to survive. After the war Varsanyi did not talk about Auschwitz for 60 years because he felt ashamed of having survived.

Bogdan Bartnikowski, 82, was 12-years-old during the Warsaw Uprising, when he and his mother were sent to Auschwitz Birkenau camp. They were moved between camps several times. After the war Bartnikowski worked as a pilot and then became a journalist and writer. 

Laszlo Bernath, 87, credits his father being a practical man for his survival of Auschwitz. He was 15 when they were taken but his father told him to lie about his age so that they would not be separated. Even while in the camp, Bernath had no idea about the gas chambers.

Here, Bernath holds up a picture of his family, who were all killed in the concentration camp during the war.

Janina Reklajtis, 80, was 12-years-old during the Warsaw Uprising when she and her mother were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were sent to a labor camp in Berlin in January 1945 and were kept there until they were liberated.

Jerzy Ulatowski, 83, was taken by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau when he was 13-years-old. In January 1945 he managed to escape with his family, as there was a lack of power in the barbed wire surrounding the camp.

Erzsebet Brodt, 89, poses for a portrait in Budapest January 12, 2015. Brodt was 17-years-old when she was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau along with her family. Remembering the journey to the camp she said that those who were "sick or about to give birth were forced out and put into one wagon. When the wagon was opened in Auschwitz we saw that everyone was dead inside."

Here, Brodt shows a photograph of her family, who were killed in the concentration camp during the war.

Survivor Zofia Wareluk, 70, was born in Auschwitz two weeks before the camp was liberated. Her mother was sent to Auschwitz when she was four months pregnant. 

SEE ALSO: Check Out The Incredible Armored Trains Of World War I And World War II

FOLLOW US: Business Insider is on Twitter!

Join the conversation about this story »

Amazon Studios most likely has another hit with "The Man In The High Castle," one of many pilots being screened to Prime members. The show is smart, fun, and polished, and it sports a five-star user rating.

Produced by Ridley Scott, the show is based on a 1962 Philip K. Dick novel about a world in which the Nazis and the Japanese won World War II. Of all of Dick's classics, it was the only one to win science fiction's preeminent Hugo Award. Scott, who directed another Dick adaptation in "Blade Runner," started developing in 2010 what would surprisingly be the book's first screen adaptation.

It takes place in 1962 in a conquered America that has been divided into the Greater Nazi Reich, from the Atlantic to the Rockies, and the Japanese Pacific States, on the Pacific Coast.

The opening scene shows a propaganda film about life in America, which chillingly demonstrates how the Americans might come to accept Nazi overlords.

"It's a new day," the narrator says. "The sun rises in the east. Across our land men and women go to work in factories and farms providing for their families. Everyone has a job. Everyone knows the part they play keeping our country strong and safe. So today we give thanks to our brave leaders, knowing we are stronger and prouder and better."

Only the end of the film explicitly references the Nazi takeover:

"Yes, it's a new day in our proud land, but our greatest days may lie ahead. Sieg heil!"

 Here's a look at Nazi Times Square: 

Here's Japanese San Francisco:

As the propaganda film suggests, aspects of life in Nazi/Japanese America are not bad, even as the overlords are brutally repress all resistance. The winners of the war — particularly the Germans, who in the show's alternate history developed the first atomic bomb — are living in a technological and economic boom as great as anything America saw in the real postwar era.

Given this rosy portrayal, it's all the more shocking when there's a reminder of how inhuman the Axis powers could be. In one scene, a volunteer for the resistance is driving through the middle of the country for the first time. He is talking with a Nazi police officer, who helped him change a flat tire, when ashes began falling like snow.

"Oh, it's the hospital," the cop says. "Tuesdays, they burn cripples, the terminally ill — drag on the state."

Amazon Studios is putting out some of the best new TV. There's "Transparent," starring Jeffrey Tambor as a father who comes out as transgender, which won the Golden Globe for best TV series, musical, or comedy. I haven't watched that one yet, but I can personally recommend the underrated "Alpha House," a political comedy by Garry Trudeau, and the fantastic new "Mozart In The Jungle," a comedy based on a book about "sex, drugs, and classical music" in New York City.

NOW WATCH: This 20,000-Calorie Burger Is The Craziest Thing We've Ever Eaten

SEE ALSO: Netflix Is Also Kicking Ass When It Comes To Original Content

DON'T MISS: Here's The Weather Prediction That Won WWII

Join the conversation about this story »

The BBC on Tuesday flew a drone over Auschwitz — 70 years after it was liberated by Soviet troops.

The haunting video shows the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp as it stands today and the drone footage is now the most-watched video on BBC News YouTube channel ever. 

Now maintained as a World Heritage Site, Auschwitz hosts thousands of tourists and survivors every year, yet in the video, the site is empty.

Over one million people, the majority of them Jews, perished in the camp between 1940, when it was built, and 1945, when it was finally liberated.

Auschwitz was the largest concentration camp established by the Germans during World War II.

Join the conversation about this story »

German military leaders expected an Allied invasion on the Channel coast in late May, 1944, when there was high tide, a full moon, good visibility, and little wind. When it did not come, and when the weather turned in June with a depression bringing storms, they felt they could relax.

“There were all the less doubts that an invasion might happen in the meantime as the tides are very unfavorable in the following days and no air reconnaissance of any kind had given any hints of an imminent landing," Field Marshall Erwin Rommel wrote on June 4, 1944, before leaving France for Germany to celebrate his wife's birthday.

But while German weather forecasters saw no possibility for invasion, Allied forecasters were frantically looking for an opening. They found one on June 6 — and on the 7oth anniversary of the pivotal invasion, we're looking at how they did it.

How the Allied forecasters found the opening is a subject of controversy, and they almost screwed it up. For an authoritative account, we've sourced a 2004 article from James R. Fleming, professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Colby College.  

Looking at the weather maps shown above on June 3, two meteorologists at U.S. base Widewing in England, Irving Krick and Ben Holzman, said the planned invasion on June 5 was possible. However, teams of meteorologists at the British Admirality and the British Meteorological office, including most notably the Norwegian Sverre Petterssen, said an attempted landing would be unsafe. Chief meteorologist James Stagg persuaded General Dwight D. Eisenhower at the last moment to cancel the June 5 invasion. It's a good thing he listened — stormy weather would likely have made the landing a disaster.

“With some justification I could have been criticized for not being sufficiently ‘gloomy,’ for the weather and winds during the night of June 4th-5th turned out to be even more severe than Douglas and I had predicted," Petterssen wrote later.

But on June 4, the three teams recognized an opportunity on June 6 as storm 'F' was leaving and storm 'E' appeared to have stalled (at least according to Petterssen; according to Krick, Petterssen's team still refused to clear an invasion).

“A sudden and major reorganization of the atmosphere over the Atlantic sector” on June 4 “threw the forecasters into confusion” but by the end of the day the three teams “reached a state of harmony that had hardly ever been attained since February when conference discussions began,” Petterssen wrote (as contextualized by Fleming).

The Normandy landings were a go.

Around midnight on the evening of June 5, the Allies began extensive aerial and naval bombardment as well as an airborne assault. The intricately coordinated attack continued in the early morning, as minesweepers cleared the channel for an invasion fleet comprising nearly 7,000 vessels. Allied infantry and armored divisions began landing on the coast of France at 06:30. By the end of that day, they had gained a foothold in German-occupied Western Europe that proved critical to winning the war.

SEE ALSO: The D-Day invasion in photos

Join the conversation about this story »

Alan Turing's top secret documents that helped work out what the Nazis were up to during World War II would probably be the last thing you'd expect to find in the walls of an old hut. But that's exactly what the team at the former codebreaking fortress Bletchley Park discovered while restoring the site.

First reported in The Times, the revelation came during multi-million pound restoration work at the property in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. Bletchley Park is now a huge heritage attraction, more so since the film based on the life of the pioneering computer scientist, The Imitation Game, came out.

Now, projects and showcases are unearthing amazing new material which helps to further highlight the work of Turing and his colleagues. Between 1939 and 1945, more than 10,000 people were based at the UK Government Code and Cypher School HQ. 

The papers were used to break the Nazi's enigma code, and were found inside Hut 6, where Turing worked, Bletchley Park Trust told Business Insider UK. The charity, which runs the site, said the documents were found in the roof of the building, screwed up and stuffed into holes to stop draughts coming in through the roof.

Some of them are the only surviving examples of "Banbury sheets", The Times explains, which is a method created by Turing to help decipher Nazi messages more quickly. The fact they were stuffed inside wall cavities breaks security rules too, given that workings-out were supposed to be destroyed after use. 

Bletchley Park’s Director of Learning and Collections, Victoria Worpole, said in a statement: 

It’s quite rare for us to find new paperwork because any that survived is in either our archive, at GCHQ or the National Archive so to find actual materials that were used by the Codebreakers, shoved between beams and cracks in the woodwork is really exciting. We’ve had a conservator work on the materials to make sure we preserve them as best we can. It’s quite interesting to think that these were actual handwritten pieces of codebreaking, workings out. There are some pieces of paperwork that we can’t identify. Nobody seems to be able to work out what they are - we’ve sent things off to GCHQ — and there are a number of items that we’ve yet to understand properly. We’re unveiling a mystery.

The documents form part of a new exhibition called "The Restoration of Historic Bletchley Park." Bletchley Park Trust said that it will reveal "archaeology and codebreaking materials found stuffed into the eaves and the cracks in the huts," revealing how workers deciphered Nazi secrets. 

The trust mentions that more material was found: 

Amongst the fragmented codebreaking documents located in the roof of Hut 6 were also parts of an Atlas, a pinboard and a fashion article from a magazine. These will be displayed alongside other items that were discovered during the restoration project and these include a fragment of 1940s teapot, glass bottles including one for Chicory, archaeological items such as bricks from Block F (demolished in 1987) and a 'time capsule' left inside a door in Hut 11A.

The documents were actually uncovered in 2013 but have only just been released. At the time, they were frozen to prevent further damage, then cleaned and repaired.

Chief executive of Bletchley Park, Iain Stander, spoke to a local newspaper about the artifacts:

Discovering these pieces of code-breaking ephemera is incredibly exciting and provides yet more insight into how the codebreakers worked. The fact that these papers were used to block draughty holes in the primitive hut walls reminds us of the rudimentary conditions under which these extraordinary people were working. These are the actual documents used by codebreakers, and in terms of the codebreaking process they are pivotal,” added Gillian Mason, Bletchley Park curator. “I can just see these people beavering away. There is a lot of pencil and crayon activity.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A 13-Year-Old Made A Revolutionary Invention Out Of Legos And Now Intel Is Investing In His Company

Germany said on Monday there was "zero" chance it would pay World War II reparations to Athens, following a renewed demand from Greece's new leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

Tsipras, on Sunday in his first major speech to parliament, laid out plans to dismantle Greece's austerity program, ruled out any extension of its 240 billion euro international bailout, and vowed to seek war reparations from Berlin.

The demand for compensation, revived by a previous Greek government in 2013 but not pursued, was rejected outright by Sigmar Gabriel, Germany's vice chancellor and economy minister.

"The probability is zero," Gabriel said when asked whether Germany would make such payments to Greece, adding that a treaty signed 25 years ago had wrapped up all such claims.

Germany and Greece share a complex history that has complicated the debt debate. Greece was occupied by German troops in World War II, an issue that has resurfaced since Greece has been forced to endure tough reforms in return for a financial bailout funded partly by eurozone partners.

Many Greeks have blamed the eurozone heavyweight Germany for the austerity, leading to the revival of a dormant claim against Berlin for billions of euros of war reparations.

As part of a wider appeal to Europe for solidarity, Greece's new finance minister has suggested a parallel between his country and the rise of Nazism in a bankrupt Germany in the 1930s, referring to Greece's far-right Golden Dawn party.

Gabriel referred to the "Treaty on the Final Settlement with respect to Germany," also known as the "Two plus Four Treaty" signed in September 1990, by the former West and East Germanys and the four World War II allies just before German reunification.

Under its terms, the four powers renounced all rights they formerly held in Germany. For Berlin, the document, also approved by Greece among other states, effectively drew a line under possible future claims for war reparations.

Germany thus denies owing anything more to Greece for World War II after the 115 million deutsche marks it paid in 1960, one of 12 war-compensation deals it signed with Western nations.

But Athens has said it always considered that money as only an initial payment, with the rest of its claims to be discussed after German reunification, which eventually came in 1990.

(Reporting by Holger Hansen and Michael Nienaber; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: All The Amazon Haters Need To Hear This Quote From Warren Buffett

The last surviving officer of the USS Arizona, the ship that was bombed in the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, has died at 100 at a nursing facility in Northern California, his son said on Facebook.

Joseph Langdell was a 27-year-old ensign who was sleeping in quarters on shore when bombs rained down on the Arizona on Dec. 7, 1941, an attack that would draw the United States into World War II, according to a biography posted on a historical website honoring those who served aboard the ship.

"Rushing outside, he witnessed the Arizona sink in just nine minutes," the website said.

Langdell immediately began working to rescue his shipmates, 1,177 of who died in the attack, the website said.

Ultimately named a lieutenant commander in the US Naval Reserve, Langdell ran a furniture business in the Northern California community of Yuba City, north of Sacramento, until his retirement.

He and his wife, Libby, raised two sons, John Mark, a retired Navy commander, and Ted, who posts regularly about his father on Facebook and cowrote the biography on the USS Arizona website.

Ted Langdell wrote on Facebook that his father died on Feb. 4.

"He was 100 years, three months and 24 days old," Ted Langdell wrote. "A long-time listener to classical music, Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, the 'Eroica' played him off this life's stage."

Ted Langdell held his father's hand as he died, the son wrote on Facebook. Joseph Langdell's wife died two years earlier.

"During his 100 years, Joe Langdell had seen many things and changes," his son wrote.

"His skills ranged from the use of wood stoves and outhouses in cold, New Hampshire winters, milking cows in his father's barn, guiding horse-drawn buggies and driving early motor cars, building crystal radio sets and cranking party-line, operator-connected telephones, to using cell phones, e-mailing and surfing the Internet."

Langdell's ashes will be interred aboard the Arizona, his son said.

(Editing by Ken Wills)

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This Flying Car Is Real And It Can Fly 430 Miles On A Full Tank

Berlin (AFP) - Seventy years ago Allied bombing laid waste to the historic German city of Dresden, whose post-war image as a symbol of peace has been dented recently by anti-Islamic protests.

President Joachim Gauck will attend commemorations Friday in the eastern city's emblematic 18th-century Church of Our Lady, which has been rebuilt since it was reduced to rubble in the massive World War II raids.

Long left in ruins as a war memorial, the Lutheran church -- one of the architectural jewels of the Baroque city dubbed the "Florence on the Elbe" river -- was rebuilt with around 8,400 of the original bricks after German reunification and reconsecrated a decade ago.

From February 13, 1945, Allied forces unleashed a massive 37-hour bombing raid on Dresden, sparking a firestorm that destroyed much of the city centre.

Previously almost untouched by the Allied air assault on Nazi Germany, the city became a symbol of the horrors of war, even though others, such as the northern port of Hamburg, suffered far worse devastation.

In Dresden, up to 25,000 people died in the raids, which some critics said were strategically unjustified as Hitler's Germany was already effectively defeated and the bombs appeared to be aimed at civilians rather than military targets.

Far-right supporters sought for years to exploit the anniversary of the bombings, painting Germany as the victim. 

Annual neo-Nazi gatherings in the past drew up to 6,000 people and saw the staging of what they termed "funeral marches" through Dresden.

But the demonstrations have dwindled and only around 500 people joined last year's event, partly due to a strong anti-racist and pacifist counter-demonstration.

- 'Openness, tolerance' -

Anti-fascist organisations are again due to form a human chain in Dresden this year to pay homage to the victims of the massive bombing, as in past years, although no big far-right gathering is expected.

Dresden Mayor Helma Orosz has said that Friday's commemorations would be an opportunity to demonstrate the city's core values of "openness to the world and tolerance".

The city has hit international headlines for being the hub of an "anti-Islamisation" movement that emerged in October and brought thousands on to the streets for weekly protests.

At their peak just after the deadly Islamist attacks in Paris in early January, the PEGIDA marches saw 25,000 people take part.

But the movement has since fallen into disarray after its founder resigned when a picture of him looking like Hitler surfaced and other leading members subsequently quit.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has condemned the movement, which sprung up in a region where foreigners only make up around 2.5 percent of the population, mostly from Russia and eastern Europe.

Far-right groups had in the past claimed that up to 500,000 people were killed in the 1945 air assault on the Baroque city.

But an official commission of historians concluded in 2010 that about 25,000 people died in the raids.

After more than five years of research, the commission into the victims of the firestorm unleashed by British and US bombers aimed to resolve a bitter debate that had raged for decades.

It reviewed records from city archives, cemeteries, official registries and courts and checked them against published reports and witness accounts.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Research Reveals Why Men Cheat, And It's Not What You Think

BERLIN (AP) — A German court says a 93-year-old man has been charged with 170,000 counts of accessory to murder on allegations he served as an SS guard at the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp in occupied Poland.

The defendant, whose name wasn't disclosed in line with privacy laws, allegedly served in Auschwitz from January 1942 to June 1944, the Detmold state court said in a statement Monday.

He's alleged to have been assigned to the Auschwitz I camp, but also to have helped supervise new prisoners, largely Jews, as they arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the part of the camp complex where most of its 1.1 million victims were killed.

Defense attorney Johannes Salmen says his client has acknowledged being at Auschwitz I, but denies being assigned to Birkenau or being involved in killings.

This article was from The Associated Press and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

SEE ALSO: Israel calls for "massive immigration" of Jews after Copenhagen shooting

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 14 things you didn't know your iPhone headphones could do

The Battle of Iwo Jima kicked off 70 years ago, on Feb. 19, 1945.

One of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific theatre of World War II, the 35-day fight for the desolate island yielded 27 recipients of the Medal of Honor, along with one of the most famous photographs ever taken.

According to the The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, American military planners thought the battle would only be a few days. Instead, it dragged on for five weeks, at a cost of more than 6,800 American lives. The Japanese lost more than 18,000.

Here’s what the Marine Corps Historical Company wrote about the first day:

This Day in Marine Corps History. 19 February 1945: At 08:59, one minute ahead of schedule, the first of an eventual 30,000 Marines of the 3rd Marine Division, the 4th Marine Division, and the new 5th Marine Division, making up the V Amphibious Corps, landed on Iwo Jima The initial wave did not come under Japanese fire for some time, as General Kuribayashi’s plan was to wait until the beach was full of the Marines and their equipment. By the evening, the mountain had been cut off from the rest of the island, and 30,000 Marines had landed. About 40,000 more would follow.

SEE ALSO: Man Who Carried Famous Flag From Pearl Harbor To Iwo Jima Dies At 90

AND: The Most Iconic Photo Of World War II Is A Reminder Of How Deadly The Battle Of Iwo Jima Really Was

Join the conversation about this story »

“Never fear your enemy but always respect them.” — Gunnery Sgt. John Basilone

Seventy years ago, on February 19, Gunnery Sgt. John Basilone was killed in action during the battle of Iwo Jima and posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for heroism — making him the first and only enlisted Marine to receive the Medal of Honor as well as the Navy Cross during World War II.

Every Marine who came after Basilone knows his name and his story. He was a former soldier who joined the Corps because the Army “wasn’t tough enough” and rose to fame during the battle of Guadalcanal, when he ran ammunition along the lines to beleaguered and cut-off Marines.

At points during Guadalcanal, Basilone hefted a Browning machine gun and fired from the hip — sustaining third-degree burns on both hands from using the weapon without protective gloves.

He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his extraordinary heroism on October 24, 1942, while serving with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines for his extreme heroism and sacrifice during the battle of Guadalcanal .

“While the enemy was hammering at the Marines’ defensive positions, Sgt. Basilone, in charge of 2 sections of heavy machine guns, fought valiantly to check the savage and determined assault,” reads the Medal of Honor citation. “In a fierce frontal attack with the Japanese blasting his guns with grenades and mortar fire, one of Sgt. Basilone’s sections, with its guncrews, was put out of action, leaving only 2 men able to carry on.”

“Moving an extra gun into position, he placed it in action, then, under continual fire, repaired another and personally manned it, gallantly holding his line until replacements arrived. A little later, with ammunition critically low and the supply lines cut off, Sgt. Basilone, at great risk of his life and in the face of continued enemy attack, battled his way through hostile lines with urgently needed shells for his gunners, thereby contributing in large measure to the virtual annihilation of a Japanese regiment. His great personal valor and courageous initiative were in keeping with the highest traditions of the US Naval Service.”

On February 19, 1945 Basilone was killed while serving as the Leader of a Machine-Gun section of the 27th Marines during the battle of Iwo Jima. For his bravery, outstanding leadership, and self-sacrifice Basilone was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross in September 1945.

Nearly three quarters of a century later, John Basilone’s example continues to inspire the Marines who follow after him.

SEE ALSO: 2 US military veterans explain why they joined an anti-ISIS militia in Iraq

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 14 things you didn't know your iPhone headphones could do

If you think of bespectacled white men like J. Robert Oppenheimer when you think of the Manhattan Project, you're not alone. But you're also missing out on a critical part of the equation.

In fact, one of the most important contributors to the atom bomb was a Chinese woman named Chien-Shiung Wu.

Before she took her place as "the world's distinguished woman physicist of her time," Chien-Shiung Wu was an enthusiastic student in Shanghai. Though her school only went through the fourth grade, she managed to transfer to a boarding school, where she graduated at the top of her class before going on to receive her degree in physics from National Central University in Nanking in 1934.

Wu emigrated to the United States to pursue a postdoctorate education in physics and earned her doctorate in physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1940.

But given Wu's gender and her nationality, her road as an American physicist was a rocky one. Anti-Asian sentiment during World War II made it hard for her to find a job on the West Coast, so she went east. But the war that limited Wu's opportunities ended up expanding them, too.

She was offered jobs replacing MIT and Princeton faculty who had been called up for war work, and eventually recruited into Columbia University's super-secret Manhattan Project.

She wasn't the only woman there. As Maia Weinstock notes, "Contrary to public perception, a fair number of women — many hundreds, certainly, and possibly thousands — were involved in the technical reaches of the Manhattan Project. They were chemists, technicians, doctors, mathematicians, and more. But Wu was one of the very few women who contributed at the highest levels of physics research for this critical war effort."

Wu helped develop a process that used gaseous diffusion to isolate radioactive uranium isotopes for the Manhattan Project. Her initial experiments became the basis of huge separation efforts at the project's Oak Ridge, Tennessee facility and eventually helped fuel the bomb.

But the Manhattan Project wasn't Wu's only accomplishment in physics—in the 1950s, Wu performed experiments that led to the abandonment of the law of parity. And though the Nobel Committee gave the 1957 Nobel Prize in physics to her colleagues instead, her accomplishments were nothing to sneeze at.

This testimony from one of her colleagues when she died gives a sense of just how respected Wu was in her time: "C.S. Wu was one of the giants of physics. In the field of beta decay, she had no equal."

CHECK OUT: Rosetta just did an extreme maneuver to get closer than we ever have to a comet — and came back with incredible pictures

SEE ALSO: These high-resolution images of Chris Hadfield's view of Earth from the ISS will boggle your mind

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Scientists Discovered What Actually Wiped Out The Mayan Civilization

.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The New Mercedes Driverless Car Even Has The Driver's Seat Facing Away From The Road

The raising of the US flag atop Mount Suribachi on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima 70 years ago is perhaps the most iconic image of World War Two.

No other picture so succinctly and evocatively captures the triumph of the Allied forces, while also highlighting the critical role that US troops played in the Pacific. The picture has also become one of the enduring symbols of the US Marine Corps.

Joe Rosenthal, at the time an unknown Associated Press photographer, is the man behind the photo. Although it was technically the second flag raising on Iwo Jima, which shows five Marines and a Navy Corpsman, it is no less important. The first flag planted was replaced, as it was too small to be seen from the coast.

Rosenthal, in an attempt to position himself properly for the shot, almost actually missed the flag raising. In a desperate attempt to capture the scene, Rosenthal shot the image without the use of his viewfinder. His gut instinct certainly hit the mar. He went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for his image.

Almost immediately, though, the overall quality of the framing led to accusations that Rosenthal had framed the picture.

This controversy still remains. Fortunately, an official video of the flag raising by a Marine photographer shows that the events transpired naturally, and exactly as Rosenthal had claimed.

Rosenthal's photo has gone on to become a deeply ingrained cultural image for America. The US Marine Corps War Memorial, in Arlington, Virginia, is modeled after this photo. President Franklin D. Roosevelt also used the image to promote war bonds at the end of the war, and it was featured on stamps.

It's important to note that while the image evoked a feeling of American victory, it was shot only five days into the Iwo Jima campaign. The battle went on for many more weeks, and three of the Marines who raised the flag were later killed in action.

Although Rosenthal's image has become synonymous with the courage of the Marines, many still debate the value of invading Iwo Jima.

The battle was particularly bloody and was the only battle in which the US Marine Corps suffered more casualties than the Japanese Army. The Japanese were well entrenched on the island when the US decided to invade. Iwo Jima is also a mountainous island, and its topography proved extremely difficult for US troops.

Once taken though, Iwo Jima proved of significant tactical importance as the US military pursued its strategy of "island hopping" to the Japanese mainland. For pushing the US deeper into Japan's Pacific holdings, the military command decided that the 26,000 American casualties was worth the island.

Both the cost and the accomplishment of the campaign is forever immortalized in Rosenthal's photograph.

SEE ALSO: The most iconic photo of World War II is also a reminder of how deadly the battle of Iwo Jima was

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This 26-year-old from Baltimore took a 35,000-mile road trip and ended up fighting in the Libyan revolution

"Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima"— the black and white photo depicting five Marines and a Navy corpsman planting a US flag after a bloody battle for the island — may be the Second World War's most iconic photo.

Fifty years after its capture, the Associated Press wrote that it may be the world's most widely reproduced.

A Twitter account dedicated to sharing historical photos recently shared the photograph along with the names and status of its subjects.

The men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima in Joe Rosenthal's iconic photo from 1945. pic.twitter.com/Dk0DPI6VIf

— ClassicPics (@History_Pics) November 14, 2014

Though the image is one of triumph, it was taken just days into a battle that would last more than a month.

Half of the six soldiers depicted died — among 6,821 Americans — on the very same island they claimed as part of the US' island-hopping strategy of claiming the Pacific theater; Franklin Sousley, Michael Strank, and Harlon Block all left their lives in Iwo Jima.

The longest-lived was John Bradley, the only non-Marine, who died in 1994. The AP photographer behind the image, Joe Rosenthal, died in 2006. He'd been too nearsighted for military service, but had an eye for a photograph that would earn him a Pulitzer Prize the year it was taken.

It's worth noting that the tweeted photo contains an error. For a time it was thought that the soldier on the far right was Henry Hanson (he, too, would die on Iwo Jima). The sixth man was in fact Harlon Block.

SEE ALSO: We spoke to 2 veterans who served in World War II as teenagers — and here's what they remember most

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This 26-year-old from Baltimore took a 35,000-mile road trip and ended up fighting in the Libyan revolution

TOKYO (AP) — Diplomatically speaking, they may be the most important words Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe utters this year.

So much so that he convened a panel of experts this week to advise him on what to say to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II on Aug. 15.

A tug-of-war has emerged between those who want Abe to stick to the apologies made by past prime ministers for Japan's wartime aggression and colonial rule, and those who say such accounts are exaggerated or even fabricated.

Abe, known for harboring revisionist views, must strike a balance, as any statement viewed as watering down past apologies would anger China and South Korea and displease the United States too.

Here are some views on the issue:

The revisionists

Several members of the advisory panel reflect revisionist viewpoints, some more extreme than others.

Masashi Nishihara, who heads a national security think tank, wrote in the conservative Sankei newspaper in 2013 that charges of Japan's forcible use of Asian women as sex slaves in wartime military brothels are "fabricated in South Korea." He said a 1993 apology should be revised, though he cautioned Abe against full denial. He said Japan should fight back against criticisms that single out Japan over its wartime past.

Terumasa Nakanishi, a Kyoto University international politics professor, wrote in a conservative magazine that the war-renouncing Constitution "imposed" by the allies after World War II deprives Japan of its sovereignty and military. He added that China and South Korea use history issues to intimidate Japan and block any constitutional revision.

Businessman Yoshito Hori says Japan fought a war of self-defense: "Don't easily call it a 'war of aggression,'" he tweeted in 2012. He has said Abe's statement should be forward-looking and "totally different" from the past apologies.

The moderates

The panel also includes some more moderate academics such as Takashi Shiraishi, president of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

In a 2013 online column, he wrote: "On the international scene, there is virtually no support for the revisionist views of history expressed by some in Japan. ... We should not forget that remarks and actions by senior government officials and politicians about historical matters hurt international trust in Japan."

The crown prince

The Japanese crown prince appeared to weigh in this week with a statement that history should be passed down "correctly" to younger generations. Some interpreted that as a veiled message to stick with current versions of history, though it's impossible to say for sure.

"I myself was born after the war, and did not experience it, but today when memories of the war are gradually fading, I think it is important to look back humbly on the past and pass on correctly the tragic experiences and Japan's historical path," Prince Naruhito told a news conference to mark his 55th birthday.

The elder

A senior lawmaker with something of a sage's status in Abe's ruling party says the statement needs a balance.

Masahiko Komura, vice president of the Liberal Democratic Party, advises that Abe needs to make a clear apology in order to convince the audience with his forward-looking message in the statement.

"The clearer (Abe) makes his inheritance of the 50th and 60th anniversary apologies, the more spotlight there will be on the part about the future of Japan," Komura told reporters hours before Wednesday's launch of the panel.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 14 things you didn't know your iPhone headphones could do