By September 1942, a brutal hand-to-hand battle was being waged inside Stalingrad. As they fought from house to house and street to street, the Germans found that all of the tactical advantages they had possessed in fighting across the steppes were lost in…
The cheerful German soldiers in the trenches filled the autumn rains spread the food for their comrades. Water is pumped out of the trench using a mechanical pump. Photo taken during Battle for Velikiye Luki, October 1943. With the advent of mechanized …
It looks like a thousand-yard stare, it's like there's nothing there. The rank insignia indicates that he is an Austrian-Hungarian soldier, not German, he's a Lance corporal. In case you're wondering, those lugs on the side of his Stahlhelm helmet were …
The Mangbetu people had a distinctive look and this was partly due to their elongated heads. At birth, the heads of babies’ were tightly wrapped with cloth in order to give their heads the elongated look. The custom of skull elongation called by the nat…
The Battle of Caporetto (also known as the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo or the Battle of Karfreit as it was known by the Central Powers) took place from 24 October to 19 November 1917, near the town of Kobarid (now in Slovenia), on the Austro-Italian front…
In 2005 Oxford University Press published Donald Bloxham's The Great Game of Genocide. Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. The book included nine photographs printed on glossy paper. Eight of the photographs were cred…
Panzer III design was composed of four sections – hull, turret, and front superstructure with the opening for the turret and rear superstructure with the engine deck. Each section was of a welded construction and all four were bolted together. The hull …
Marina Ginestà became famous due to the photo taken by Juan Guzmán on the rooftop of Hotel Colón, Barcelona during the July 1936 military uprising in Barcelona. As she was a reporter, it was the only time Ginestà was carrying a gun. The rifle she is car…
Soldiers from the French African colonies holding a position at Boucle du Doubs, near Besancon, France, winter of 1944. These soldiers are part of Senegalese Free French troops. They are armed with a British Bren and an American 1903 Springfield. The…
Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, strikes a pose for photographer Heinrich Hoffmann whilst rehearsing and listening to his recorded speech. The album, features black and white images of the Nazi leader in a series of poses, using expressive face a…
These two men are manumitted slaves. Manumission is the act of a slave owner freeing his or her slaves. They borrowed the clothes and the hats just for the picture. It's a posed photograph and a statement about being manumitted rather than a picture of …
These human remains were unearthed in 1973 at the Teppe Hasanlu archaeological site, located in the Solduz Valley in the West Azerbaijan Province of Iran. The site was burned after a military attack. The “head wound” is actually from modern-day excavators.…
Love him or hate him, Edwin Rommel screams class in every photo. Rommel was a gallant enemy. He didn’t order his men to execute troops. He didn’t set out to oppress Jewish populations. In fact, he is said to have ripped up an order from Hitler that orde…
This picture is a demonstration of the soldier as a human. They’re using WWII-era Russian equipment: Mosin Nagants and a helmet. They’re not part of the People’s Army of Vietnam judging by their civilian clothing. The photo was taken by German photojour…
At a time when censors used a heavy hand to keep the American public from knowing and seeing the carnage in the Pacific during World War II, this ground-breaking photograph of dead American soldiers confronted the American public for the first time with th…
The photo was taken directly after Yamaguchi stabbed Asanuma and is seen here attempting a second stab though he is restrained before that happens. Otoya Yamaguchi was a member of a right-wing ultranationalist Japanese group. Inejiro Asanuma was the lea…
Despite being targeted by law enforcement across the globe at the start of the 20th century, opium and opium dens were prevalent fixtures in east Asia, the United States, and Europe up until the mid-1950′s. In this photograph, opium smokers in Singapore…
Before World War I Germany was a prosperous country, with a gold-backed currency, expanding industry, and world leadership in optics, chemicals, and machinery. The German Mark, the British shilling, the French franc, and the Italian lira all had about e…
A German World War II prisoner is released by the Soviet Union and reunited with his 12-year-old daughter, who has not seen him since infancy. The child has not seen her father since she was one year old. The event, where this famous photo was taken, wa…
These photos were taken between May and December 1944, and they show the officers and guards of Auschwitz relaxing and enjoying themselves — as countless people were being murdered and cremated at the nearby death camp. In some of the photos, SS officers c…