On this day in military history....in 1942 and 1981

On this day in military history….in 1942. Nazi leaders meet in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, to discuss their “final solution” to the Jewish question. The Wannsee Conference will go down in history where the decision was made to start the systematic extermination of the Jewish people. Many proposals were put forward, including sterilization, deportation and simply working the prisoners to death in concentration camps, but the “final solution” came down to using poisonous gas. It was the most efficient manner that was thought off to kill large numbers of people. Nothing like German efficiency when it comes to killing people. To this day, there are still people who still believe that the murders who thought up the “final solution” should have only been imprisoned and not executed. People who think like this have no respect for human life.

On this day in military history….in 1981. The Iranian Hostage Crisis ends when the Iran releases the 52 American hostages just minutes after Ronald Reagan is swore in as the 40th president of the United States. The Iranian Hostage crisis lasted 444 days. It came about after Iranian students seized the American embassy in Tehran to protest the US allowing the Shah of Iran to travel to New York for medical treatment. Our then current president, Jimmy Cah-tah (can you say “inept”?), instead of using the American military to force their release, decided to negotiate (isn’t the way to hell paved by negotiations?) for their release. Ergo, the crisis lasted for 444 days since there was no “stick” hanging over the heads of the Iranians. The only rescue attempt failed miserably due to President Cah-tah’s delaying the execution of the plan to negotiate. From his comments and speeches, the Iranians knew that Ronald Reagan was an ardent anti-communist and that he was not afraid to use American military power to protect the interests of the United States. The Iranians could see that if they held the hostages when Ronald Reagan was president, there would much less negotiating and much more bomb-dropping (“Nuke their ass, take the gas”), so they saw the “writing on the wall” and released the hostages within minutes of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration.