The immobility of the trench warfare characterizing the First World War led to a need for a device that would protect soldiers from enemy fire and could help them move on the extremely irregular terrain of battlefields. Apart from a few exceptional case…
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…
The photograph is taken during a battle of Saipan that claimed the lives of 22,000 Japanese civilians – many by suicide – and nearly all 30,000 Japanese troops on the island. Of the 71,000 American troops who landed on Saipan, 3,426 perished, while more th…
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…
This picture of Willie, Patton’s dog, was taken a few days after the General’s death as preparations were made to send home his effects. Cartoonist Bill Mauldin describes the moment: "Beside him, lying in a big chair was Willie, the bull terrier. If eve…
Looks like this man has seen some horror, a little bit like one thousand-yard stare. Note silver badge on his chest, that badge represents Infantry Assault Badge which was awarded in Silver and Bronze. This decoration was instituted on 20 December 1939 …
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. …
In the beginning, the war was still fun and the soldiers were not fully engaged in action. So they had some fun with this German Shepherd dog, who has no idea what he's doing. Still looks classy though. Dressing dogs as humans have always been funny. Th…
This last known picture of Hitler was taken approximately two days prior to his death as he stands outside his Berlin bunker entrance surveying the devastating bomb damage. With Germany lying in ruins after six years of war, and with defeat imminent, Hitle…
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 Cathedral of Light was a main aesthetic feature of the Nazi Party rallies in Nuremberg starting in 1933. It consisted of 130 anti-aircraft searchlights, at intervals of 12 meters, aimed skyward to create a series of vertical bars surrounding the audien…
On the reverse of this photograph reads: "Zum ewigen Andenken an den Spartakisten Krieg in München Bayern". English: “As an eternal memento of the Spartacist War in Munich, Bavaria”. According to some sources, this is a real situation, other sources cla…
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…
A sixteen-year-old German anti-aircraft soldier of the Hitler Youth, Hans-Georg Henke, taken prisoner in the state of Hessen, Germany. He was a member of the Luftwaffe anti-air squad who burst into tears as his world crumbled around him. His father died…
The facility is the Luftfahrtforschungsanstalt Hermann Goering. It was located in Volkenrode, a suburb of Braunschweig and it was the most advanced wind tunnel test facility in the world at the time, though they were never able to fully calibrate most of t…
At a ceremony in Dearborn, Michigan, Henry Ford is presented with the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle on his 75th birthday. Henry Ford was the first American recipient of this order, an honor created in 1937 by Adolf Hitler. This wa…
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 …
On 28 June 1919, the peace treaty that ended World War I was signed by Germany and the Allies at the Palace of Versailles near Paris. Allied interests were represented by the ‘Big Three’: British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, French Premier George …