Al Capone started one of the first soup kitchens. The kitchen employed a few people but fed many more. In fact, preceding the passage of the Social Security Act, “soup kitchens” like the one Al Capone founded, provided the only meals that some unemployed A…
This powerful photo taken by Robert C. Wiles was published as a full-page image in the 12 May 1947 issue of Life Magazine. It ran with the caption: “At the bottom of the Empire State Building the body of Evelyn McHale reposes calmly in grotesque bier, h…
Supposedly 22,000 Nazi supporters attended a German American Bund rally at New York's Madison Square Garden in February 1939, under police guard. Demonstrators protested outside. Aside from its admiration for Adolf Hitler and the achievements of Nazi Ge…
A punt gun is a type of extremely large shotgun used in the 19th and early 20th centuries for shooting large numbers of waterfowl for commercial harvesting operations and private sport. A single shot could kill over 50 waterfowl resting on the water's surf…
Born a male but raised as a female, Dora Ratjen competed on the female German track team. He set a world record for the high jump at the 1938 European Athletics Championships but competed as a female at that event. His true identity was discovered while ri…
A room full of women are working hard at emulating the “real danger” present in the master poster hanging in the background. It looks like some kind of class, like a high school or college art class. They may be all working on the same poster because th…
It’s interesting to see the range of emotions displayed by these men: anguish, defiance, stoicism, acceptance, and fear, the third one from the left is even smiling. The execution took place during the Bloody Sunday in Bydgoszcz, Poland, 1939. Bloody Su…
The short-barreled version of the Thompson was Winston's personal favorite weapon of all time. He looks like a gangster from an old Hollywood movie. This photo was taken during an inspection of invasion defenses near Hartlepool, on July 21, 1940. The in…
Women in uniform have always an appeal. She is so amazingly beautiful. The uniforms were meant to be professional, feminine, attractive, and functional. Women were encouraged to be feminine (like wearing red lipstick) for morale. The Women's Army Corps …
Heinrich Himmler looks at a young Soviet prisoner of war during an official visit to Shirokaya Street Concentration Camp in Minsk, Belarus, on or about August 15, 1941. You had to be a hard man to look Himmler in the face like that. This is standing for…
This is Second Chechen War, shot from Kirovo, near Grozny. They are not marines, just motorized infantry. Regarding the helmet, the German Nazi helmet was seen as a talisman, as a good omen sign. These soldiers' drab-olive gear and black beanies look ju…
Her name is Lam Thi Dep (Dep means beautiful in Vietnamese), the picture was taken in 1972 at Soc Trang Province by Vietnamese journalist Minh Truong. "You could find women like her almost everywhere during the war", said the photographer. "She was only 24…
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…
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 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 …