By the time the first Japanese bomber appeared over Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, tensions between Japan and the United States had been mounting for the better part of a decade, making war seem inevitable. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chie…
It’s 1918 and France was caught in the final year of World War I. American photographer Lewis Hine traveled across the country for the American Red Cross, documenting their work with refugees, orphans, and wounded soldiers. Lost for decades, his poignant w…
The Lodz ghetto became the second largest ghetto created by the Nazis after their invasion of Poland – the largest was the Warsaw Ghetto. The ghetto was only originally intended to be a temporary feature in Lodz but the sheer number of people involved m…
Late during the summer of 1914, train stations all over Europe echoed with the sound of leather boots and the clattering of weapons as millions of enthusiastic young soldiers mobilized for the most glorious conflict since the Napoleonic Wars. In the eye…
The decisive year was 1968. In the early morning of 30 January, Vietcong forces launched the Tet Offensive, named for the Vietnamese holiday then being observed. In coordinated attacks throughout South Vietnam, the Vietcong assaulted major urban areas a…
Erected in the dead of night on August 13, 1961, the Berlin Wall (known as Berliner Mauer in German) was a physical division between West Berlin and East Germany. Its purpose was to keep disaffected East Germans from fleeing to the West. When the Berlin…
Until the atomic bomb could be tested, doubt would remain about its effectiveness. The world had never seen a nuclear explosion before, and estimates varied widely on how much energy would be released. Some scientists at Los Alamos continued privately to h…
The Second World War changed the United States for women, and women in turn transformed their nation. Over three hundred fifty thousand women volunteered for military service, while twenty times as many stepped into civilian jobs, including positions pr…
The second part of the American Civil War photo collection covers the people of the Civil War: the generals, slaves, civilians, politicians, and soldiers that lived through those turbulent years. For other parts: The American Civil War in pictures (part…
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 culminating in the Tiananmen Square Massacre were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in the People's Republic of China (PRC) between April 15 and June 4, 1989. They were mainly led by Beijing st…
While the First World War witnessed the development of modern, technological warfare, it also made unprecedented demands on what we might see as archaic methods of campaigning. Despite the tanks, planes, and machine guns, fighting still depended on the …
In the summer and fall of 1940, German and British air forces clashed in the skies over the United Kingdom, locked in the largest sustained bombing campaign to that date. Victory for the Luftwaffe in the air battle would have exposed Great Britain to in…
Aerial warfare was by no means a First World War invention. Balloons had already been used for observation and propaganda distribution during the Napoleonic wars and the Franco-Prussian conflict of 1870-1871. Planes had been used for bombardment mission…
Recommended Historical Reading List. (Temporary list - More books will be added). General World War I World War II Eastern Front: General Accounts Red Army German Army Barbarossa For Stalingrad/Leningrad Kursk …
During the final days of the war, a platoon of machine gunners entered a Leipzig building looking for positions to set up covering fire points that would protect foot soldiers of the 2nd U.S. Infantry advancing across the bridge. Two members of the plat…
Portrait of a young Soviet prisoner of war in a steel breastplate SN-42, made of 2mm steel (.08") and weighing 3.5 kg (7.7 lbs), captured by Finnish troops during the Finnish-Soviet Continuation War. A testament to the breastplate’s effectiveness, the y…
Chased by youth armed with clubs, this woman is fleeing from a "death dealer" whose left leg can be seen at the left-hand edge of the photograph. The Lviv pogroms were the consecutive massacres of Jews living in the city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), per…
The shot was taken on Einstein’s 72nd birthday right after an event in his honor was finished at Princeton on March 14, 1951. While walking with Dr. Frank Aydelotte, the former head of the Institute for Advanced Study, and Mrs. Aydelotte back to their c…
This interesting picture, taken in 1919, shows employees of the New York Central Railroad at a celebration in Victory Way, showing off a pyramid of recovered German helmets in front of Grand Central Terminal. There were over 12,000 German Pickelhaubes on t…
This picture shows the end of a brutal boxing match between Ray Campbell and Dick Hyland. Take a look at the condition of the two fighters, battered, bloodied, bruised, and staring down at each other at the end of the fight. Boxing in those days was …