These interesting pictures, taken by photographer Harf Zimmermann, revolve around Hufelandstraße, a bustling neighborhood street in the heart of communist East Germany. The neighborhood was an anomaly in the increasingly drab Soviet-administered city. B…
On September 1, 1939, the world was shocked as Nazi troops invaded Poland. Tensions soared in Europe, and world leaders recognized that this invasion could be the final straw that would lead to war. German military leaders had begun planning for war with P…
It began with a simple boycott of Jewish shops and ended in the gas chambers at Auschwitz as Nazi Germany attempted to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe. In January 1933, after a bitter ten-year political struggle, Adolf Hitler came to …
In June 1941 Hitler ordered a surprise invasion of the Soviet Union, and for most of the next year the German army routed the Soviet troops, capturing thousands of square kilometers of their country in the process. In August 1942 the German VI Army had …
The story of the tank began in World War I when armored all-terrain fighting vehicles were first deployed as a response to the problems of trench warfare. In Britain, tanks were first referred to as landships. The Landships Committee was set up in 1915 …
By the beginning of 1945, the war which Germany had unleashed throughout the world had come back to consume it. In sharp contrast with what had occurred in 1918 in 1945, Germany fought, literally, to the bitter end. The Germans held out, although by ear…
The battles on the Eastern Front constituted the largest military confrontation in history. They were characterized by unprecedented ferocity, wholesale destruction, mass deportations, and immense loss of life due to combat, starvation, exposure, disease, …
Four-year-old Michael Finder of East Germany is tossed by his father into a net held by residents and firemen across the border in West Berlin. The father, Willy Finder, then prepares to make the jump himself. Pictures taken from the booklet "A City Tor…
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…
Operation Barbarossa (Unternehmen Barbarossa) was the German codename for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, which commenced on June 22, 1941. It was to be the turning point for the fortunes of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich, i…
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…
After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese quickly gained control over a huge area of the Pacific, from the Philippines to Burma to the Aleutians to the Solomons. While the Japanese enjoyed the advantage of interior lines of communication, they had somewhat overe…
For most of Finland's history, the country had lived on the periphery of world events, but for a few weeks during the winter of 1939-40, Finland stood at the center of the world stage. Finland's stand against Soviet aggression aroused the world's admira…
Covering 1,216 acres, in Flushing Meadows, New York, the 1939 New York World's Fair, like the legendary Phoenix rising from the ashes, was erected on what was an ash-dump. The theme, "Building the World of Tomorrow" echoed in virtually every corner of the …
Fighting in North Africa stemmed from the area’s strategic importance to the Commonwealth. Egypt’s Suez Canal, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, was a vital transport artery. Oil in particular had become a critical strategic commodity due…
By 1945, the Japanese had suffered an unbroken string of defeats for nearly two years in the South West Pacific, the Marianas campaign, and the Philippines campaign. In June, after more than 80 days of fighting, Allied forces captured the Japanese islan…
This is Afghanistan of 1950s and 1960s. Lots of people would think that they will see pictures of a wild, underdeveloped and medieval country with life conditions worse than now. Think again. Fractured by internal conflict and foreign intervention for c…
These photos taken by Johannes Hähle depict the civilian population of Kharkov under occupation by Nazi Germany (all pictures are taken in October and November 1941). As a member of Construction Battalion 146, Hähle participated in the invasion of Franc…
On December 18, 1879, in the Russian peasant village of Gori, Georgia, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (later known as Joseph Stalin) was born. The son of Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, and Ketevan Geladze, a washerwoman, Joseph was a frail child. A…