The Anschluss (German for “union”) was the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in March 1938. One of the Nazi's ideologies was to re-unite all Germans either born or living outside of the Reich in order to create an "all-German Reich". From the e…
In 1936 Jesse Owens arrived in Berlin to compete for the United States in the Summer Olympics. Adolf Hitler was using the games to show the world a resurgent Nazi Germany. Nazi propaganda promoted concepts of "Aryan racial superiority" and depicted ethn…
Maoris of 'C' Company, 28th Maori Battalion of the 2nd New Zealand Division perform the 'Haka' (ancestral war dance) for the visit of King George II of Greece, his wife the Queen, his cousin Prince Peter and Major General Freyberg. The location was at an a…
These photographs show SUB 110, a German submarine that was sunk and risen in 1918. We can see the control room in the submarine, including the manhole to the periscope well, hand wheels for pressure gear, valve wheels for flooding and blowing, and air pre…
The hospital is running a drill to make sure that they can implement the procedures for poison gas and in this case, the nurses are testing out infant gas masks. This gas mask was for children up to two years old and the design covered the whole of the …
The gun players are WH Murphy and his assistant, of the Protective Garment Corporation of New York. By 1923, the Protective Garment Corporation of New York manufactured a lightweight vest for police use and they held a live demonstration in DC. The live…
When the people of the town of Hastings awoke one morning to see one of the Kaiser’s U-boats on their beach, it caused some shock. Thousands of visitors flocked to see the beached submarine. The Admiralty allowed the town clerk to charge a fee for peopl…
An American tank crew stands beside Bernard Herzog - an American citizen who lived in the Philippines - after his liberation from the Santo Tomas internment camp run by the Japanese in the old University of Santo Tomas campus, Manila. As you can see, he…
Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was cheerful and without a care when he first met photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. In a close-up image, the Third Reich politician was caught off guard smiling at the League of Nations meeting in Geneva in Septem…
When Winston Churchill entered the Royal Military College (Sandhurst) few could foresee that he would become one of Great Britain’s greatest war leaders. He tried three times before passing the entrance exam; he applied to be trained for the cavalry rat…
Within days of taking power, the Nazis called for Germany to boycott all Jewish businesses. This surprised many people as they had not expected the Nazis to act on their anti-Jewish ideas. This is the start of years of anti-Jewish propaganda. Nazi propa…
The picture was taken during the Battle of Verdun, one of the deadliest battles of the Great War. The concentration of so much fighting in such a small area devastated the land, resulting in miserable conditions for troops on both sides. The shells turn…
In the summer of 1944 the Soviet Union launched Operation Bagration, a large-scale, complex offensive against the Nazi invaders in Belarus, Poland and the Baltic republics. This vital Soviet offensive was launched just after Allied troops had landed in …
On August 25, French General Philippe Leclerc entered the free French capital triumphantly. Pockets of German intransigence remained, but Paris was free from German control. Two days earlier, a French armored division had begun advancing on the capital. …
A picture from an Einsatzgruppen soldier’s personal album, labeled on the back as "Last Jew of Vinnitsa". It shows a member of Einsatzgruppe D just about to shoot a Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1941. All 28,000…
The nuclear test of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon was codenamed Trinity, but the atomic device was nicknamed The Gadget. The date of the Trinity test is usually considered to be the beginning of the Atomic Age. The gadget was an implosion-typ…
Although Adolf Hitler claimed the Germans were of a superior Aryan race of white, tall, blonde hair, blue-eyed individuals, he himself was of modest height, blue-eyed, and brown-haired. Traudl Junge, his last secretary often told in interviews, that peo…
The boy did in fact survive the war and became a truck driver. In the photo he's sitting outside where his house used to be. Photographer Toni Frissell regarding this picture: “I was told he had come back from playing and found his house a shambles—his …
The "Soviet flag over Reichstag" photograph is full of symbolism and represents a historic moment. Erected in 1894, the Reichstag's architecture was magnificent for its time. The building contributed much to German history and was considered by the Red …
This soldier and his companions just arrived and liberated her village. She is greeting the Soviet Army. Photo taken after the Battle of Moscow, Soviet counteroffensive, December 1941. Original title: "In the liberated village". Author: Ivan Shagin…