Color photographs of the Second World War. Archival photos of the Second World War
Wow. We continue to look at extremely rare photographs and fascinating stories associated with them. The post is long, there are a lot of photos. Enjoy!
1. Searchlights over Gibraltar during a drill. November 20, 1942
2. The side of the heavy cruiser HMS Sussex with a print left after a Japanese kamikaze hit a Ki-51
3. Captured Japanese equipment on the deck of the aircraft carrier Barnes (CVE-20)
4. A tug pulls the USS Barnes (CVE-20) through the Panama Canal. Captured Japanese equipment is displayed on the flight deck.
In the foreground is the experimental J5N Tenrai naval interceptor.
5. On the restored border of the USSR
Corporal Gureev I.A. on the border with East Prussia. 1944.
6. German submarine U-156 dies under attack by an American Catalina flying boat.
The boat completed 5 combat cruises, during which it sank 20 ships with a total cargo capacity of 97,504 GRT.
7. British light bomber Fairey Battle
8. German aircraft technicians examine holes in the side of the Bf-109 fighter
The pilot was very lucky: between the place where the aircraft number was written and the cockpit of the Messer there was the main fuel tank.
9. German heavy tanks are crossing a shallow river
10. A group of “fortresses” blindly bombs a German radar near Bremen
11. Reconnaissance aerial photograph showing a group of transport aircraft at a German airfield
The photo is notable for what kind of aircraft they are: a twin He-111Z (marked with the letter A), a Me-321 glider (letter B) and six heavy transport aircraft Me-323 “Giant”.
12. Waffen SS infantryman with a Panzerwaffen grenade launcher in his hands. A Soviet T-34 is burning in the background. 1944
13. Explosions of phosphorus Japanese anti-aircraft bombs over a formation of American B-24 bombers in the Iwo Jima area, 1944
The bombs turned out to be completely useless. Structurally, in addition to the phosphorus filling, they were equipped with a high-explosive fragmentation part. The effective radius of destruction with phosphorus was only about 20 meters, with a land mine - even less, and the fragments themselves were ineffective due to the small caliber of the bomb. But you still had to approach the group and accurately drop bombs on the planes, which in itself is very difficult. However, the Japanese, with their characteristic senseless persistence, continued to use these bombs from the moment they were put into service in 1942 until the very end of the war.
14. A battery of German 88-mm anti-aircraft guns fires at an illuminated target
I don't know how real the photo is. The target is very low, and the gun was somehow very successfully caught at the moment of the shot...
15. Life of the soldiers of the 2nd Guards Army in the location of their units. Operation to liberate Crimea, 1944
16. Killed German machine gun crew. The helmet didn't save...
17. Soviet soldiers kindly return the weapons they lost to the Wehrmacht
18. "Comet" in the parking lot
19. Warrior
20. Dead soldiers of the Red Army.
21. Post-war photo. Artist on the ruins of Stalingrad. 1945
22.
23. Corporal Bodger reads a poster warning of the possibility of coming under enemy fire. April 1945
The photograph is notable for the fact that it was taken against the backdrop of the famous Panther, which was shot down on Komödienstraße in Cologne. And this car became famous thanks to the battle with American tanks, which was captured on film by Sergeant Bates.
24. Soviet sappers are establishing a crossing across the Oder River. 1945
25. American B-24 Liberator from the 15th Air Force bombs a synthetic fuel plant in Bratislava. January 1945
26. Soviet troops cross Sivash. Liberation of Crimea, 1944.
27. Tanks of the 6th Guards Motorized Corps at the railway junction. Dresden, 1945
28. American paratroopers with a group of prisoners of war. 1944
The camouflage uniform attracts attention. Due to the similarity with the equipment of SS units, after some time the Americans were forced to abandon it.
29. Soviet tanks with troops on board in attack
30. Bf-110C from the 6th group of the 76th heavy fighter squadron over the English Channel during the Battle of Britain. 1940
31. Still respect
The inscription on the cross is in German: “Here lies an unknown Russian soldier.” Summer of 1941.
32. 7th Panzer Division of the Wehrmacht fights Russian roads
33. Soldiers of the 82nd US Airborne Division train on cats. The damaged Royal Tiger No. 213 is under distribution
34. Part of the cockpit with windshield and hood of the Il-2 attack aircraft, demonstrating the “boot-by-boot” targeting system
35. T-34, crushing a German light tank Pz.II
36. Janusz Korczak with children before execution in the gas chamber
Janusz Korczak is an outstanding Polish teacher, writer, doctor and public figure. On August 6, 1942, he entered the gas chamber at Treblinka, telling fairy tales to unsuspecting children.
37. Canadian Air Force Supermarine Strander flying boat with survivors on the left wing.
During a rescue operation while landing in the open sea, the boat lost its right float. Trying to balance the plane, several people positioned themselves on the left plane.
38. Equipment of a German soldier from the Afrika Korps
39. M3A1 tanks from the 241st Tank Brigade on the attack. Don Front, September 1942
In a few hours the brigade will be completely destroyed.
40. Antonina Lebedeva (1916-1943), fighter pilot
41. A pilot of the 332nd Guards Transport and Combat Helicopter Regiment is photographed against the background of the remains of a German Ju-87 bomber. Murmansk region, 80s
Not a military photo, I know, but still...
42. The crew of the IS-2 tank from 62GvTTP fires from a safe distance at identified crews with faust cartridges. Danzig, 1945
43. Ceremony for accepting the surrender of the Empire of Japan on board the battleship Missouri. September 2, 1945
44. The first and only successful landing of an amphibious seaplane on the deck of an aircraft carrier. 1940
In the photo, the Swordfish floatplane from the English battleship Valiant, which did not have time to return to the ship (Valiant went after the French Strasbourg when the British attacked the French fleet in Mers-el-Kebir so that it would not fall to the Germans), is not having the opportunity to be picked up from the water, makes an emergency landing on the deck of the Ark Royal. Pilot John Edward Breeze.
45. British experimental analogue of the German Schrage Muzik multiple launch rocket system, installed on the fuselage of the Mosquito heavy fighter
46. German paratroopers parachute from a DFS-230 glider
47. American A-20 light bomber parked at a field airfield
Judging by the bow section, which has been converted to accommodate 12.8 mm machine guns, this is an assault version of the vehicle.
48. "A little
1. Bound Jews protected by Lithuanian auxiliary guards. 1941
2. A column of Jewish women and children under the escort of the Lithuanian “self-defense”.
Time taken: 1941
Filming location: Lithuania, USSR
3. Jewish residents of the city of Siauliai before being sent to be shot near the Kuzhiai station.
Time taken: July 1941
Filming location: Lithuania, USSR
4. The famous photograph of the execution of the last Jew of Vinnitsa, taken by an officer of the German Einsatzgruppen, which was engaged in the execution of persons subject to extermination (primarily Jews). The title of the photograph was written on the back of it.
Vinnitsa was occupied by German troops on July 19, 1941. Some of the Jews living in the city managed to evacuate. The remaining Jewish population was imprisoned in a ghetto. On July 28, 1941, 146 Jews were shot in the city. In August, executions resumed. On September 22, 1941, most of the prisoners in the Vinnitsa ghetto were exterminated (about 28,000 people). Artisans, workers and technicians whose labor was needed by the German occupation authorities were left alive.
5. Sending Slovak Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Time taken: March 1942
Filming location: Poprad station, Slovakia
6. Rabbis in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
7. Jewish rabbis in the Warsaw ghetto
8. SS soldiers guard a column of Jewish prisoners in the Warsaw ghetto. Liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto after the uprising.
Photo from Jürgen Strop's report to Heinrich Himmler in May 1943. The original German headline reads: "Forcibly pushed out of shelter." One of the most famous photographs from World War II.
9. Fey Shulman with Soviet partisans in the forest. Fay Shulman was born into a large family on November 28, 1919 in Poland. On August 14, 1942, the Germans killed 1,850 Jews from Lenin's ghetto, including Faye's parents, sister, and younger brother. They only spared 26 people, including Faye. Faye later fled into the forests and joined a partisan group consisting mainly of escaped Soviet prisoners of war.
———————Prisoners——
10. Line of Red Army prisoners of war.
1941
The propaganda caption for the photo read: “Among the captured Soviet soldiers there is a woman - even she has stopped resisting. This is a “woman soldier” and at the same time a Soviet commissar who forced Soviet soldiers to fiercely resist until the last bullet.”
11. A German patrol leads captured Soviet soldiers in disguise. Kyiv, September 1941
Time taken: September 1941
Filming location: Kyiv, Ukraine, USSR
12. Killed Soviet prisoners of war on the streets of Kyiv. One of them is dressed in a tunic and riding breeches, the other in underwear. Both took off their shoes, bare feet in the mud - they walked barefoot. The dead have emaciated faces. Eyewitnesses recall that when the prisoners were driven through the streets of Kyiv, the guards shot those who could not walk.
The photo was taken 10 days after the fall of Kyiv by German war photographer Johannes Höhle, who served in the 637th propaganda company, which was part of the 6th German Army that captured the capital of the Ukrainian SSR.
13. Soviet prisoners of war, under the supervision of the SS men, cover the area of Babi Yar with earth where the executed people lie. The photo was taken 10 days after the fall of Kyiv by German war photographer Johannes Höhle, who served in the 637th propaganda company, which was part of the 6th German Army that captured the capital of the Ukrainian SSR.
Babi Yar is a tract in Kyiv that became notorious as the site of mass executions of civilians and prisoners of war carried out by German occupation forces. Here, 752 patients of the psychiatric hospital were shot. Ivan Pavlov, at least 40 thousand Jews, about 100 sailors of the Dnieper detachment of the Pinsk military flotilla, arrested partisans, political workers, underground workers, NKVD workers, 621 members of the OUN (A. Melnik faction), at least five gypsy camps. According to various estimates, from 70,000 to 200,000 people were shot at Babi Yar in 1941-1943.
Half-covered trees and bushes at the bottom indicate that the slopes of the ravine were blown up. Some of the prisoners are in civilian clothes. These are probably those who managed to change clothes to escape captivity, but were identified. Along the edges of the ditch stand SS guards, with rifles on their shoulders and helmets on their belts.
14. Soviet soldiers captured near Vyazma. October 1941.
Time taken: October 1941
15. Captured Soviet colonel. Barvenkovsky boiler. May 1942.
In the area of the city of Barvenkovo, Kharkov region, at the end of May 1942, the 6th and 57th Soviet armies were surrounded. As a result of the unsuccessful offensive, 170 thousand soldiers and officers of the Red Army were killed or captured, including the commander of the 6th Army, Lieutenant General A. Gorodnyansky, and the commander of the 57th Army, Lieutenant General K. Podlas, who went missing.
Time taken: May 1942
16. A captured Red Army soldier showing the Germans the commissars and communists.
17. Red Army prisoners of war in the camp.
18. Soviet prisoners of war. There are two wounded in the center.
19. A German security guard lets his dogs have fun with a “live toy.”
20. Soviet workers during forced labor at a mining enterprise in Beuthen (Upper Silesia) during a break.
Time taken: 1943
Filming location: Germany
21. Captured Red Army soldiers at work in winter.
22. Captured Lieutenant General A.A. Vlasov, the future head of the Russian Liberation Army, being interrogated by Colonel General Lindemann after surrendering to German captivity. August 1942
Time taken: August 1942
23. Soviet prisoners of war with German officers in Germany. Disposal of unexploded bombs.
24. A Soviet prisoner of war, after the complete liberation of the Buchenwald camp by American troops, points to a former guard who brutally beat prisoners.
Time taken: 04/14/1945
25. A US Army doctor examines a Soviet forced laborer suffering from tuberculosis. He was taken to forced labor in Germany in the coal mines in the city of Dortmund.
Time taken: 04/30/1945
26. Soviet child next to his murdered mother. Concentration camp for civilians "Ozarichi". , Ozarichi town, Domanovichi district, Polesie region. March 1944
Time taken: March 1944
27. Liberated children from the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Time taken: January 1945
------Germans-----
28. Captured German soldiers in Leningrad.
Time taken: 1942
Filming location: Leningrad
29. French from SS and Wehrmacht units in front of General Leclerc from the Free French
French prisoners from SS and Wehrmacht units in front of General Leclerc, commander of the 2nd Armored Division of the Free French.
The prisoners behaved with dignity and even defiantly. When General Leclerc called them traitors and said: “How could you, the French, wear someone else’s uniform?” one of them replied: “You yourself wear someone else’s uniform - an American one!” (the division was equipped by the Americans). They say this angered Leclerc, and he ordered the prisoners shot.
30. German prisoners of war in line to receive food. South of France.
Time taken: September 1944
Filming location: France
31. German prisoners of war are led through the Majdanek concentration camp. In front of the prisoners on the ground lie the remains of death camp prisoners, and the crematorium ovens are also visible. Outskirts of the Polish city of Lublin.
Time taken: 1944
Filming location: Lublin, Poland
32. Return of German prisoners of war from Soviet captivity. The Germans arrived at the Friedland border transit camp.
Friedland.
Filming time: 1955
Location: Friedland, Germany
——————-Hitler Youth———-
33. Captured young German soldiers from the 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitlerjugend" under the escort of the military police of the 3rd US Army. These guys were captured in December 1944 during the Allied operation in the Bulge.
Time taken: 01/07/1945
34. Fifteen-year-old German anti-aircraft gunner from the Hitler Youth - Hans Georg Henke, captured by soldiers of the 9th US Army in the city of Giessen, Germany.
Time taken: 03/29/1945
Filming location: Giessen, Germany
35. Fourteen-year-old German teenagers, soldiers from the Hitler Youth, captured by units of the 3rd US Army in April 1945. Berstadt, province of Hesse, Germany.
Time taken: April 1945
Filming location: Berstadt, Germany
36. Adolf Hitler awards young members of the Hitler Youth in the garden of the Imperial Chancellery. This is one of the last photographs of Hitler. In the center, awarded with Iron Crosses 2nd class, are young natives of Silesia: second from right is 12-year-old Alfred Czech, third from right is 16-year-old Willi Hubner, the latter also known from a photograph with Dr. Goebbels in Lauban.
Time taken: 03/23/1945
37. Adolf Hitler awards young members of the Hitler Youth in the garden of the Imperial Chancellery.
38. A boy from the Hitler Youth, armed with a Panzerfaust grenade launcher. The so-called “Last hope of the Third Reich”.
39. Sergeant Francis Daggert with a German soldier, the soldier is only 15 years old. A dozen of these were caught in the German city of Kronach.
Filming time: Kronach, Germany
Location: 04/27/1945
40. Column of prisoners on the streets of Berlin. In the foreground are the “last hope of Germany” boys from the Hitler Youth and Volkssturm.
Time taken: May 1945
Filming location: Berlin, Germany
------Our------
41. Soviet children clean the boots of German soldiers. Bialystok, November 1942
Time taken: November 1942
Filming location: Bialystok, Belarus, USSR
42. 13-year-old partisan intelligence officer Fedya Moshchev. Author's annotation to the photo - “A German rifle was found for the boy”; It's probably a standard Mauser 98K with the stock sawed off to make it easier for the boy to handle.
Time taken: October 1942
43. The commander of the rifle battalion, Major V. Romanenko (in the center), tells the Yugoslav partisans and residents of the village of Starchevo (in the Belgrade area) about the military affairs of the young intelligence officer - Corporal Vitya Zhaivoronka. Back in 1941, near the city of Nikolaev, Vitya joined a partisan detachment, in 1943 he voluntarily joined one of the units of the Red Army that stormed Dnepropetrovsk, and was awarded the Order of the Red Star for participating in battles with the Nazis on Yugoslav soil. 2nd Ukrainian Front.
Stars. 2nd Ukrainian Front.
Time taken: October 1944
Location: Starčevo, Yugoslavia
44. Young partisan Pyotr Gurko from the detachment “For Soviet Power”. Pskov-Novgorod partisan zone.
Time taken: 1942
45. The commander of a partisan detachment presents the medal “For Courage” to a young partisan reconnaissance. The fighter is armed with a 7.62 mm Mosin rifle.
Time taken: 1942
46. Soviet teenage partisan Kolya Lyubichev from the partisan unit A.F. Fedorov with a captured German 9-mm MP-38 submachine gun in a winter forest.
Nikolai Lyubichev survived the war and lived to an old age.
Time taken: 1943
47. Portrait of 15-year-old partisan reconnaissance Misha Petrov from the Stalin detachment with a captured German 9-mm MP-38 submachine gun. The fighter is belted with a Wehrmacht soldier's belt, and behind his boot is a Soviet anti-personnel grenade RGD-33.
Time taken: 1943
Location: Belarus, USSR50. The regiment's son Volodya Tarnovsky signs an autograph on a Reichstag column
The son of the regiment, Volodya Tarnovsky, signs an autograph on a Reichstag column. He wrote: “Seversky Donets - Berlin,” and signed for himself, the regiment commander and his fellow soldier who supported him from below: “Artillerymen Doroshenko, Tarnovsky and Sumtsov.”
51. Son of the regiment.
52. Sergeant S. Weinshenker and Technical Sergeant William Topps with the son of the 169th Special Purpose Air Base Regiment. Name unknown, age - 10 years old, served as an assistant weapons technician. Poltava airfield.
Time taken: 1944
Filming location: Poltava, Ukraine, USSR
The Second World War was the most brutal and bloody in the history of mankind. It pulled dozens of countries and peoples into its deadly cycle. And, seeing with your own eyes the documentary evidence, pictures of the deaths of people, dispassionately recorded by a camera, it is impossible not to shudder. It's hard to say what's scarier in this collection - the images of mass slaughter or the terrible, unstoppable moment of death of a single person.
Katyn
Removing bodies from a mass grave in the Katyn Forest. According to documents, more than 21 thousand Poles were shot here - both captured officers and political prisoners. Only several decades after the tragedy, Russia officially admitted the guilt of the NKVD in this atrocity.
Warsaw ghetto
Residents of the Warsaw ghetto before execution. Murders in the ghetto took place every day: the old and infirm, children and women were killed... In addition, terrible overcrowding and hunger reigned in the ghetto. Not wanting to meekly wait for death, the inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto rebelled. From April 19 to May 16, 1943, fierce battles took place in the ghetto. The Germans brought Jewish units into the ghetto and, cutting off block after block, brutally suppressed resistance. In total, more than 7,000 rebels were killed during this time.
Malmedy massacre
During the fighting in the Ardennes near the Belgian village of Malmedy, 84 American soldiers were captured. The SS men shot them all right there in the field. Several prisoners managed to escape. They brought the news of the massacre in Malmedy to the American command.
Shark attack on the Indianapolis crew
On July 28, 1945, the American warship Indianapolis left port towards Japan, carrying on board parts of an atomic bomb that was planned to be dropped on enemy territory. However, a day later, the Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and sank. But this was only the beginning of the nightmare. The sailors caught in the water were attacked by a school of hungry sharks. According to very rough estimates, up to 150 people died from the teeth of hungry predators. The death of the Indianapolis sailors is considered the largest mass death in history from the teeth of sharks. In the picture, a doctor examines the terrible wounds from shark teeth on one of the survivors.
Nanjing massacre
Murder on the streets of Nanjing in 1938. When the Japanese captured Nanjing during the Sino-Japanese War, they, irritated by the stubborn resistance of the Chinese, behaved with unprecedented cruelty. Almost one hundred thousand soldiers who surrendered were shot. Soldiers attacked civilians and beat, tortured, maimed and killed them. The number of women raped and then killed numbered in the thousands. In total, up to 600 thousand Chinese died during the Sino-Japanese War.
Leningrad blockade
During the siege, corpses on the street were such a familiar part of the landscape that no one paid attention to them.
Bombing of Dresden
The persistent bombing of Dresden in 1945, which practically razed the city to the ground, is still considered by many to be a humanitarian crime by the Anglo-American allies. In Dresden, culture in general, which, alas, did not have strategic and military enterprises, but there were many masterpieces of world architecture and culture, which, alas, humanity had to say goodbye to forever.
Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad is considered the largest land battle in the history of warfare. The losses of the Red Army in killed and wounded amounted to more than a million people. The Germans had similar losses. There seems to be nothing human left in the eyes of this German prisoner.
Kamikaze
At the end of the war, in 1945, the first detachments of kamkaze pilots appeared in Japan, heeding the call of Emperor Hirohito to die with honor for their homeland. Typically, young, often poorly trained, suicide pilots flew their aircraft against Allied bases and ships in the Pacific. The bitter irony is that kamikaze strikes did not always reach their target - both because of the Allied air defenses and because of their own poor preparation. Young fanatics died in vain.
"Sea Wolves"
During the Battle of the Atlantic, “Sea Wolves” were the name given to detachments of German submarines that roamed the ocean and sank both military and merchant ships with equal ruthlessness. During the war years, "sea wolves" sank about 4,000 ships, on which approximately 75 thousand people died, because there was practically no salvation for people in the open ocean. In the photo, a ship torpedoed by one of the “sea wolves” goes under water.
Italians in Ethiopia
Even before the outbreak of World War II, in 1935, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini declared war on Ethiopia. Mussolini deliberately chose the weakest opponent. For example, the Italian army had 1,400 units of tanks and aircraft, while the Ethiopian army (pictured) had only two dozen units of equipment, and a large part of the army was still armed with spears. About a million Ethiopians died during the fighting.
Polish cavalry against German tanks
Desperate and suicidal attacks by Polish cavalry on German tanks led to the massive death of Polish soldiers. In the photo: the consequences of such an attack.
Massacres in Odessa
A few days after the capture of Odessa, a powerful mine planted by retreating Soviet troops exploded at the headquarters. This explosion was the signal for the beginning of the massacre carried out by the Romanians in Odessa. The repression primarily affected Roma and Jews. Over the course of several weeks, over 15 thousand Roma and more than 34 thousand Jews were killed in the city. The picture shows one of the places of mass executions.
Crocodile attack on Ramri Island
During the battle on Ramri Island, about a thousand Japanese survivors, pressed by British troops, decided under the cover of darkness to escape from the pursuing enemy through the swamps. It was a fatal decision. Witnesses say that wild screams and gunshots were heard from the swamp all night. By morning, only about 50 survivors came ashore. According to them, the rest were dragged under the water by voracious local crocodiles.
Tragedy in the village of Stavelot
The command of the SS unit that occupied the Belgian village of Stavelot accused its residents of hiding American soldiers. The Americans were not found in the village, but the angry SS men, confident that the locals had deceived them, shot all the village residents - 67 men, 47 women and 23 children. The photo shows the execution site in Stavelot.
The results of the Second World War led to major political changes in the international arena and the gradual development of a tendency towards cooperation between states with different social systems. In order to prevent new world conflicts, create a system of security and cooperation between countries in the post-war period, at the end of the war the United Nations Organization (UN) was created, the Charter of which was signed on June 26, 1945 in San Francisco by 50 states (USSR, USA, Great Britain, China and others).
The Second World War was the largest military conflict in human history. More than 60 states with a population of 1.7 billion people took part in it; military operations took place on the territory of 40 of them. The total number of fighting armies was 110 million people, military expenditures were $1,384 billion. The scale of human losses and destruction was unprecedented.
More than 46 million people died in the war, including 12 million in death camps:
The USSR lost more than 26 million, Germany - approx. 6 million, Poland - 5.8 million, Japan - approx. 2 million, Yugoslavia - approx. 1.6 million, Hungary - 600 thousand, France - 570 thousand, Romania - approx. 460 thousand, Italy - approx. 450 thousand, Hungary - approx. 430 thousand, USA, UK and Greece - 400 thousand each, Belgium - 88 thousand, Canada - 40 thousand. Material damage is estimated at 2600 billion dollars.
The terrible consequences of the war strengthened the global tendency to unite in order to prevent new military conflicts, the need to create a more effective system of collective security than the League of Nations. Its expression was the establishment of the United Nations in April 1945.
Photo archive:
SS soldiers during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising. They are armed with an MP-40 submachine gun and shortened Mauser 98K rifles. 1944 Warsaw Poland
A Soviet civilian convoy bombed by German aircraft. The photo was taken in the area of the Khutor Mikhailovsky railway station (now the town of Druzhba, Yampolsky district, Sumy region of Ukraine). Ukraine, USSR
Setting a combat mission for a German infantry squad near Moscow. 1941
The first Soviet commandant patrol in Berlin. May 1945 Berlin, Germany.
A Soviet soldier walks past the murdered SS Hauptsturmführer in Berlin at the intersection of Chaussestrasse and Oranienburgerstrasse. April-May 1945 Berlin, Germany
A Hungarian tanker next to a 38M wedge (CV35 from the Italian company Ansaldo, purchased by Hungary).
One of the Japanese coastal bunkers covering the Kataoka naval base on Shumshu Island. It houses a 76mm Type 41 naval gun. The photograph was taken in August 1945, after the Japanese surrender. Shumshu Island, Kuril Islands
Soviet soldiers before the attack at Stalingrad. 1942 Author: Emanuil Evzerikhin
An underground plant for the production of mortar mines in Sevastopol. 1942 Sevastopol
Marines of the Black Sea Fleet read newspapers. 1942 Sevastopol
German heavy tank Pz.Kpfw. VI "Tiger" with tactical number "211" from the 503rd Tank Battalion, in the Belgorod area. German offensive Operation Citadel. 08/01/1943 Author: Bernd Lohse
German soldiers and a damaged (missing roller) Pz.Kpfw tank. IV 15th Panzer Division of the Wehrmacht in the Mersa Matruh area. June 1942
Night attack of Soviet T-34 tanks. Flares are used for lighting.
German soldiers next to a burning Soviet village. 1941
Soviet officer (captain) near a destroyed German Pz.Kpfw tank. VI Ausf. H "Tiger". April 1945
Soldiers of the Leningrad Front after a difficult battle. January-February 1944
Victory Parade of the Allied Forces in Berlin on September 7, 1945, dedicated to the end of World War II. A column of 52 Soviet IS-3 heavy tanks from the 2nd Guards Tank Army passes along the Charlottenburg Highway.
In addition to Soviet troops, the Victory Parade on September 7, 1945 was attended by American, British and French troops stationed in Berlin to ensure the occupation of Germany. The parade was hosted by Marshal G.K. Zhukov.
A front-line cameraman films a column of German prisoners in Stalingrad. The column moves along the bank of the Volga. 1943 Stalingrad
American B-17 bombers in flight against the background of the evening sky.
Senior political instructor Yolkin reports on the current military situation to the tank crews of the 3rd Tank Division. In the background two T-28 tanks with L-11 cannons are visible. July 1941
Residents of the Bulgarian town celebrate liberation from the Nazis. The name of the man in the foreground is Kocha Karadzhev, a Bulgarian partisan. September 1944 Bulgaria. Author: Evgeniy Khaldey
Fireworks at the grave of fellow pilots who died near Sevastopol on April 24, 1944.
The inscription on the tombstone from a fragment of the plane's stabilizer: “Here are buried those who died in the battles for Sevastopol, Guard Major Ilyin - attack pilot and air gunner of the Guard, Senior Sergeant Semchenko. Buried by comrades on May 14, 1944.” The photo was taken in the suburbs of Sevastopol.
Machine gunner V. Pavlov with a DP light machine gun at a firing line near Leningrad. October 1942 Author: Vsevolod Tarasevich
An American B-25 Mitchell bomber from the 500th Squadron of the 345th Bombardment Group, having dropped a bomb (the bomb is visible in flight), leaves the attack on the Japanese CH-39 submarine hunter. 02/16/1944 Three Island Harbour, New Hanover, New Ireland
Lunch of Soviet soldiers on the street of a German city. 1945
A salvo of Guards BM-13 Katyusha rocket launchers, mounted on the chassis of American Studebaker US6 trucks. Carpathian region, western Ukraine. 1944 Author: Arkady Shaikhet
Partisans of the Kotovsky detachment return from a combat mission. 1943 Author: Mikhail Trakhman
Human remains in the oven of the crematorium of the Stutthof concentration camp. Filming location: surroundings of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). May 1945 Author: Mark Markov-Grinberg
A Soviet machine gunner covers the infantry attacking near Tula. November 1941
A group of flamethrowers from the unit of Major I.D. Skibinsky moves to a firing position. The fighters are armed with ROKS-3 backpack flamethrowers. 1st Ukrainian Front. 1945 Breslau, Germany
Soldiers of the assault battalion from the unit of Colonel Zalichansky, on the ruins of a tram depot in the capital of lower Silesia - the city of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland). 1st Ukrainian Front. March 1945 Breslau, Germany. Author: Rafail Mazelev
Former Reich Minister of Aviation Hermann Goering in the hall of the Nuremberg Tribunal. 1945 Nuremberg, Germany. Author: Evgeniy Khaldey
During the liberation of the city of Karachev, Private Shirobokov met his sisters who had escaped death. Their father and mother were shot by the Germans. 1943 Karachev, Bryansk region. Author: Arkady Shaikhet
After battle. The Soviet KV-1C (high-speed) tank that shot at a German tank column and its dead tanker. Voronezh Front. January-February 1943
Attack of Soviet soldiers of the Southwestern Front with the support of BT-7 tanks. 1942
Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen Elizabeth II, at the christening ceremony (rechristening) of a B-17G bomber of the 306th Bomb Group. The bomber was renamed "Rose of York" in honor of the House of York, one of the branches of the English royal Plantagenet dynasty, which reigned from 1461 to 1485: a white rose is their family coat of arms.
The aircraft was later lost in the North Sea after a raid on Bremen. July 1944
Soviet soldiers on a Berlin tram. The author's title of the photo is “The first “passengers” of the Berlin tram.” May 1945 Berlin, Germany.
The liberated child prisoners of Buchenwald emerge from the main gate of the camp, accompanied by American soldiers. 04/17/1945 Buchenwald, Germany
A British soldier leaves his autograph among the autographs of Soviet soldiers inside the Reichstag. 1945 Berlin, Germany
American soldier with various US Army weapons.
In the picture (counterclockwise):
1. Self-propelled howitzer NMS M7. Considering the prefabricated bow piece (not one piece) and the lack of folding sides of the wheelhouse, this cannot be a later model M7B1. The familiar name "Priest" is not suitable, since it was used in the UK, not in the USA. On the turret is a 12.7 mm (50 caliber) Browning M2HB machine gun.
2. 37 mm M3 anti-tank gun.
3. Easel 7.62 mm (30 caliber) Browning M1919A4 machine gun.
4. Thompson M1928A1 submachine gun.
5. Browning M1918A2 Automatic Rifle (BAR).
6. "Browning" M1917A1. Like the M1919, a 7.62 mm heavy machine gun.
7. 60 mm M2 mortar.
8. 81 mm M1 mortar.
In the inner circle are an M1 self-loading carbine, a Springfield M1903 rifle and a Colt M1911 A1 pistol; in the soldier’s hands is a Garand M1 self-loading rifle.
The liberation by Soviet soldiers of the surviving prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp (Auschwitz). Above the gates of the camp you can see the famous sign-slogan “Arbeit macht frei”, which means “Work sets you free”. The concentration camp was occupied on January 27, 1945 by units of the 100th Infantry Division of General F.M. Krasavina (1st Ukrainian Front). February 1945 Author: Boris Ignatovich
Sniper of the 203rd Infantry Division (3rd Ukrainian Front), senior sergeant Ivan Petrovich Merkulov at a firing position. In March 1944, Ivan Merkulov was awarded the highest award - the title of Hero of the Soviet Union; during the war years, the sniper destroyed more than 144 enemy soldiers and officers. 1943 Ukraine, USSR. Author: Dmitry Baltermants
Anti-aircraft gun (85-mm model 1939) against the backdrop of St. Isaac's Cathedral in besieged Leningrad. Author: Nikolay Khandogin
A column of German prisoners of war escorted by Soviet soldiers.
Arrival of prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The guards form a column of prisoners. In the distance, an already formed column is moving towards crematoria 2 and 3. Behind the column closest to the viewer, the prisoners' belongings are being loaded into a truck.
Night anti-aircraft fire from an American airfield in Okinawa. The silhouettes of F4U Corsair fighters are visible in the foreground. 1945 Okinawa, Japan
Soviet female soldiers at the firing line. The girls are armed with 7.62 mm Mosin rifles with attached tetrahedral needle bayonets and a 7.62 mm PPSh-41 submachine gun.
London children look at their home, destroyed after a German raid on the city on September 15, 1940.
British Beaufighter attack aircraft from the 236th and 404th squadrons of the Royal Air Force attack German destroyers Z-24 and T-24 with missiles at the mouth of the Gironde River, near the port of Le Verdon (France). As a result of the attacks, both destroyers were sunk. Z-24 and T-24 at the time of the attack were the last two large ships remaining with the Germans in the West. 08/24/1944 France
A Soviet officer checks the documents of surrendered German soldiers. Berlin, April-May 1945
Friends and readers of the site about the most interesting facts in the world is approaching 70th anniversary of the victory V . In 2011, it was published on our portal A series of rare photographs dedicated to the Great Patriotic War. This year we decided to supplement this series with several dozen, and maybe hundreds of interesting photographs taken during the war. In this article we publish 37 rare photographs.
Lieutenant Sergei Vasilievich Achkasov (1919 - 03/14/1943), which carried out two air rams on the Voronezh front, against a MiG-3 fighter.
Lieutenants Pyotr Andreevich Adkin (far right) and Alexander Andreevich Guivik (second from left) with colleagues.
Leonid Utesov on the wing of a La-5F fighter, built at the expense of his ensemble “Jolly Fellows”. The moment the vehicle was handed over to the troops.
Flying boat PBY-5A "Catalina" (PBY-5A Catalina) US Coast Guard for repairs in a frozen bay on Kodiak Island, Alaska.
Pilot Boris Eremin on a Yak-1B fighter with a dedicatory inscription “To the pilot of the Stalingrad Front of the Guard, Major Eremin, from the collective farmer of the Stakhanovets collective farm, comrade. Holovaty."
Pilot Semyon Sibirin congratulates his French colleague Albert Littolf on another victory.
Pilots of the separate aviation squadron "Normandy" and the 18th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment near the Yak-1B aircraft.
Aces pilots of the 9th Guards Aviation Division from the Bell P-39 Airacobra fighter G.A. Rechkalova.
Battleship Arizona (USS Arizona), sunk by Japanese aircraft on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
A London boy on the ruins of his house, where his parents died after being hit by a German V-2 rocket.
A boy of about seven years old at the site of the last battle, near the exploded Soviet T-34-85 tank. Two more of the same tanks are visible behind.
Maria Dementyevna Kucheryavaya, born in 1918, medical lieutenant. At the front from June 22, 1941. In September 1941, during the fighting on the Crimean Peninsula, she received a shell shock.
Maria Dolina, Hero of the Soviet Union, Guard captain, deputy squadron commander of the 125th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment of the 4th Guards Bomber Aviation Division.
Maria Timofeevna Shalneva (Nenakhova), a corporal of the 87th separate road maintenance battalion, regulates the movement of military equipment near the Reichstag in Berlin.
March of captured Germans across Moscow - ahead of thousands of columns of soldiers and officers are a group of 19 German generals.
Marshal of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov and General D. Eisenhower in Leningrad. D. Eisenhower's visit to Moscow and Leningrad took place in mid-August 1945 after the personal invitation of G. K. Zhukov.
Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov photographed outdoors.
Marshal of the Soviet Union Ivan Stepanovich Konev(1897-1973) and American General Omar Bradley (1893-1981) at a meeting in April 1945.
Marshal of the Soviet Union, commander of the 2nd Ukrainian Front Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky, getting out of the car on the street of Budapest, receives a report from a subordinate.
A medic from the 48th Medical Battalion, 2nd Armored Division, bandages a wounded German soldier.
Less than six months later, during the Soviet offensive at Stalingrad, this army would be surrounded and defeated. On February 2, 1943, the 6th Army surrendered.
Mikhail Egorov and Meliton Kantaria come with a banner to the roof of the Reichstag. Although this was not the first red banner installed on the Reichstag, it was the one that became the Victory Banner.
Japanese Intelligence Junior Lieutenant Hiro Onoda surrenders to Philippine authorities.
Junior Sergeant Konstantin Aleksandrovich Shuty(06/18/1926-12/27/2004) (left), brother of Mikhail Shutoy, with a fellow soldier, also a junior sergeant.
Junior sergeant, mortarman - Nikolai Polikarpov at a firing position near Kyiv. 1st Ukrainian Front.
The grave of an American pilot made from 12.7 mm caliber cartridges from the machine guns of his P-47 Thunderbolt aircraft. The grave was made on August 8, 1944 by a French refugee couple.
The grave of Soviet soldiers (judging by the three Soviet helmets) and the Maxim machine gun. In the background you can see more than a dozen graves - already German (the helmets on the posts are German).
A US 5th Division Marine killed by a Japanese sniper, shot in the head (a bullet hole is visible on his helmet).