World War II Album: The War in View #1

Captured German rifles taken by the 11th Armored Division are examined by American soldiers, in Andernach, Germany. Note that some of the rifles are likely secondary-reserve, nonstandard arms issued to the Volks Sturm civilian conscripts, and that the soldier on the left is armed with an M3 Grease Gun. March 13, 1945.

Survivors of the 157th Infantry Regiment of the 45th Infantry Division, gather for a group portrait after the end of a one-week siege in Bundenthal, Germany that resulted in brutal fighting against attacking German forces, December 1944.

US 45th Infantry Division camp. Venafro, Italy, December 1943.

Company M, 45th Inf Div, Anzio.

Colonel William O. Darby, seen here as a regimental commander in the 45th Division in April 1944.

M101 105mm howitzer.

Group of Army nurses of the 10th Field Hospital posing in front of a ¼-ton truck.

The 522nd Field Artillery Battalion was only one of three battalions comprised mostly of Japanese Americans.

Captured Japanese soldiers, Soviet-Japanese war, 1945.

Victims of atrocities committed against Filipinos and Spaniards living in Manila by the Japanese military in early 1945.

Maj General Maltby surrenders Hong Kong to the Japanese, by candlelight, December 25, 1941.

British troops of the 151st Infantry Brigade (left) talk with a U.S. paratrooper of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment in Avola, Sicily on June 11, 1943.

A wounded German prisoner of the 15th Panzergrenadier Division offers a light to one of his captors, a wounded British Army soldier of the 6th Durham Light Infantry, 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division, XXX Corps. The two soldiers wait to be taken to a field hospital following hostilities at the Mareth Line during Operation Pugilist, the British campaign to destroy the Italian and German forces opposing the Eighth Army in southern Tunisia and capture the city of Sfax. Tebaga Gap, near Medenine, Medenine Governorate, Tunisia, 23 March 1943.

British soldiers with German POWs, Normandy, 1944.

German POWs surrender to British troops, Normandy, 1944.

Ranville, Normandy, 1944.

British soldier guarding German POWs, Normandy, 1944.

Montgomery in victory, North Africa. The Eighth Army commander accepts the surrender of General Ritter von Thoma and invites him to dinner. Standing between them is Captain Singer of the 10th Hussars, who captured von Thoma and who was killed the next day. Some weeks later from prison camp, von Thoma wrote a letter of condolence to Singer’s widow.

British infantry with fixed bayonets charging an Axis position move past a dead Italian soldier, North Africa.

An American soldier makes out an identity tag for a young German prisoner of war.

German troops, likely of the Sixth Army, surrender en masse to Soviet troops during the defense and subsequent encirclement of Stalingrad.

Hitler meeting a severely frostbitten soldier. This photo was originally not released by Goebbels’ German Ministry of Propaganda due to the graphic nature.

U.S. troops stand at attention behind the flag-draped coffins of their countrymen killed in the Battle of Midway, Midway Island, June 1942.

A painting by the Japanese artist Miyamoto Saburo, immortalizing the famous scene at 5 pm on Sunday 15th February 1942 when the British surrender party led by General Percival (on right) marched with their Japanese escort to meet General Yamashita at the Ford factory along Bukit Timah Road. The personnel in the painting were: (Left to Right) Major Cyril Wild (carrying white flag) interpreter; Brigadier T. K. Newbigging (carrying the Union flag) Chief Administrative Officer, Malaya Command; Lieutenant-Colonel Ichiji Sugita; Brigadier K. S. Torrance, Brigadier General Staff Malaya Command; Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, General Officer Commanding, Malaya Command.

Meeting of Generals Yamashita and Percival (1942) by Miyamoto Saburo. Commissioned by the Japanese army, Meeting of Generals Yamashita and Percival (1942) by Miyamoto Saburo immortalizes probably one of the darkest moments in the British history. In 1942, the Japanese government sent Miyamoto Saburo to Singapore to create a painting based on the surrender incident. “But he did not witness the actual surrender; he came after it was done,” said Low. Therefore, he made sketches of the room where the event took place. He also had the chance to make detailed sketches of Yamashita and Percival. However, some elements of the painting are fictitious. “We know that the British were carrying a white flag and a British flag, but they were not allowed to bring those flags into the room where the ceremony took place,” said Low. However, the flags were later inserted into the painting at the request of Japanese military authorities. In addition to the actual event, the painting became proof that Japanese art is equally as impressive as Western works. “One idea that we want to bring forward in the exhibition is [that] painting is a subjective expression for artistic activity. So we have to understand how the arts were produced, [by] whom they were produced, and why they were produced,” Low explained.

A Bishop 25-pdr self-propelled gun of 142nd Field Regiment Royal Artillery operating at a captured airfield among the wreckage of German Gotha Go 242 aircraft, 12 October 1943.

A glider team from the SS-Fallschirmjäger-Bataillon 500 clears its glider after landing at Drvar on 25 May 1944 at the start of Operation Rösselsprung. These gliders brought in combat teams together, and were tasked with attacking specified objectives important to the overall effort.

Canadian Grizzly I plan view showing all hatches open, arrangement of turret periscopes and ventilator, aerial bases at rear of turret and general stowage arrangement of ancillary equipment.

Driving controls in a Canadian Grizzly.

Canadian Grizzly.

Canadian Firefly.

Nazi leader Alfred Rosenberg speaking at a Handel memorial concert in Halle, Germany.

Joseph Goebbels.

Joseph Goebbels, shortly after his appointment as Reich Minister for Information and Propaganda.

Joseph Goebbels.

Magda Goebbels.

The wedding of Magda Quandt and Joseph Goebbels, which took place on Günther Quandt's Severin estate near Parchim on 12 Dec 1931. Next to Goebbels stands Harold, Magda's son by her first marriage, and behind him is Hitler, who acted as one of the witnesses at the wedding.

Newly-married couple, Magda and Joseph Goebbels.

German Secretary of State Karl Hanke and deputy to Goebbels in the Promi. Later transferred to be Gauleiter and Oberpräsident of Lower Silesia.

German Secretary of State Karl Hanke.

Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler Youth until August 1940, then Gauleiter and Defense Commissioner of Vienna until the end of the war.

Members of Mussolini’s Fascist Youth welcome a member of the Hitler Youth (center) to a meeting in Italy.

Girls’ jacket of Hitler Youth organization. Brought home by an American veteran.

The shoulder sleeve insignia of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) commanded by General Dwight Eisenhower.

Dead livestock, Normandy, June 1944.

Frenchmen with captured German soldier, Normandy, June 1944.

Molotov with German officers inspecting German troops.

Eisenhower after signing of armistice, May 1945.

Eisenhower, Montgomery and Zhukov drink a toast.

Eisenhower with Zhukov during victory parade, Berlin, May 1945.

Eisenhower with Montgomery, Zhukov and other Allied officers, Berlin, May 1945.

Montgomery with Soviet officers inspecting British troops, Berlin, 1945.

Truman, Churchill and Stalin at Potsdam Conference, 1945.

Hitler enters Austria, 12 March 1938.

Justice is meted out: the scene in a Vienna court as the sentences on four men convicted of murdering over 100 Jews are passed. The man crying has been given eight years’ gaol. The other three were sentenced to death.

Australia's Parliament debating the National Emergency Bill by which the country's resources were placed at the government's disposal.

Queen Elizabeth, surrounded by officers and men of the navies, armies and air forces of all the Dominions, poses for a picture at the Victoria League Club in London, June 1940.

Map of Kiska Island in the Aleutians showing the Japanese installations.

The main hall of the ruined Reichschancellery in 1945.

Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal on his visit to Berlin, late July 1945. Note John F. Kennedy in background.

Martin Bormann.

King Boris of Bulgaria returns the salute of the enthusiastic subjects who greeted him at the conclusion of the annual maneuvers of the Bulgarian Army that this year marked both the anniversary of the ascension to the throne and the anniversary of Bulgaria’s independence, 10 December 1938.

Canadian Distinguished Service Order. This order was established to reward officers who exhibited individual instances of meritorious or distinguished service in war. It was usually awarded for service under fire or under conditions equivalent to service in actual combat with the enemy. However, from 1914 to 1916 it was awarded under circumstances which could not be regarded as under fire. After 1 January 1917 commanders in the field were instructed to recommend this award only for those serving under fire. Prior to 1943, the order could be given only to someone who had already been Mentioned in Despatches. The order is generally given to officers in command above the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Awards to ranks below this are usually for a high degree of gallantry just short of deserving the Victoria Cross. A bar is awarded for a second act which would have earned the order in the first place. The bar is plain gold with an Imperial Crown in the center. The year of the award is engraved on the reverse.

Combined Chiefs of Staff confer in Cairo, Egypt, 1943.

Prisoners line up in a Nazi concentration camp.

Two prisoners, in foreground, support a comrade during roll call at a German concentration camp because fainting could result in punishment or even death.

Gestapo officials record data on incoming prisoners at a German concentration camp. Those waiting to be questioned are seated on the ground at left under guard.

A day after the surrender Polish Jews wait deportation at a railroad station, 1939.

SS troops round up Warsaw Jews for shipment to Treblinka concentration camp.

This photograph has been claimed to show Adolf Eichmann (right) with Hitler, Himmler (center), and Kaltenbrunner (left) at Mauthausen concentration camp.

Mother with her children at Auschwitz.

Concentration camp inmates celebrate their liberation by Allied troops.

Kentucky Senator Alben Barkley at Buchenwald on 24 April 1945.

Crematory oven, Belsen.

Patton, Bradley and Eisenhower viewing a demonstration of how prisoners were flogged at Ohrdruf concentration camp.

British soldiers force SS men and women to bury the corpses found at Belsen after the camp's liberation in April 1945.

German civilians forced to bury the dead from a concentration camp.

Obeying German orders, a Czech policeman gets ready to change a street sign in the city of Brno from “Freedom Avenue” to Adolf Hitler Place.

Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, hero of Verdun, greets the new conqueror of France. Petain would head the government at Vichy, in southern unoccupied France.

American film actress Veronica Lake, illustrates what can happen to women war workers who wear their hair long while working at their benches, in a factory somewhere in America, on November 9, 1943.

Japanese air raids drove mobs of Chinese into Chungking’s cave shelters.

A German bombing raid on a French Moroccan town damaged these Arabian quarters.

Bombed-out survivors wander down a littered street among the shells of Warsaw buildings, September 1939.

The results of the German bombing of Warsaw; such bombing, and the invasion of Poland from the east by Russia, made further resistance impossible. Warsaw surrendered on September 27.

Warsaw was reduced to rubble in history’s first large-scale bombing of a major city.

GIs attend services in bombed-out English church.

British civilians aid rescue workers in carrying a stretcher with a woman removed from the rubble of her house after a V-1 rocket hit nearby.

The remains of the Guards Chapel in London after being hit by a V-1 bomb.

Combat engineers of the U.S. Army salvage steel from the Fallersleben factory, which had been turned from Volkswagen to V-1 production during the war.

The Foreign Ministry in Berlin, pictured on 21 August 1945.

The billboard at the entrance to the Oak Ridge atomic development center.

Four Chinese airmail postage stamps with Japanese overprint of aerial bomb and Japanese message about air raid precaution.

Lindbergh with Hugo Eckener, the guiding spirit of German airship development, who opposed the course down which Hitler was leading the German nation.