Pictures of War

A personal hero of mine named Arn Chorn-Pond is currently doing...

Sat, 04 May 2013 12:17:53 -0400

A personal hero of mine named Arn Chorn-Pond is currently doing an AMA on Reddit right now.

Mr. Chorn-Pond is a human rights activist who as a child was forced to play music by the Khmer Rogue regime in order to survive while the rest of his family, and millions more across Cambodia were killed. He later became a child solider before escaping to freedom.

Please check it out!

fractalized: A Burger King surrounded by blast barriers in...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 17:38:57 -0400

fractalized:

A Burger King surrounded by blast barriers in Baghdad in 2008. Photo by Donovan Wylie.

Image used to illustrate “How cities reshape themselves when trust vanishes” by Thanassis Cambanis.
“At root, cities depend on constant leaps of faith. Each act of violence—a mugging, a murder, a bombing—erodes that faith. Over time, especially if there are more attacks, a city will adapt in subtle but profound and insidious ways.”

A CBS World News bulletin announcing the death of President...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:16:12 -0400

A CBS World News bulletin announcing the death of President Roosevelt on April 12, 1945.

WWII propaganda re-imagined for the 21st century. (The Guardian)

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:51:05 -0400

WWII propaganda re-imagined for the 21st century.

(The Guardian)

Residential areas of Stalingrad after the bombings.

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 16:24:09 -0500

Residential areas of Stalingrad after the bombings.

Live coverage of US Marines landing on Iwo Jima (Part II) (Iwo...

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 21:00:59 -0500

Live coverage of US Marines landing on Iwo Jima (Part II)

(Iwo Jima, Japan - February 19, 1945)

Live coverage of US Marines landing on Iwo Jima (Part I) (Iwo...

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 20:01:02 -0500

Live coverage of US Marines landing on Iwo Jima (Part I)

(Iwo Jima, Japan - February 19, 1945)

A special news bulletin from Guam announcing the beginning of...

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 19:24:57 -0500

A special news bulletin from Guam announcing the beginning of the Battle of Iwo Jima.

(February 19, 1945)

unhistorical: February 19, 1942: Franklin D. Roosevelt issues...

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:53:06 -0500

unhistorical:

February 19, 1942: Franklin D. Roosevelt issues Executive Order 9066.

The order provided for the designation of military areas (to be decided by the Secretary of War and commanders of the U.S. armed forces) from which “any or all persons” could be relocated. No specific ethnic groups or sections of the nation were singled out in the text of the order, but it stated that these new powers would serve as “protection against espionage and against sabotage”. In practice, it resulted in the internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans, nearly two-thirds of whom were American-born citizens; smaller numbers of German- and Italian-Americans were interned as well, but no ethnic group was targeted by the government to the extent that the Japanese were.

Virtually every Japanese-American living on the West Coast was interned, while a small fraction of those living in Hawaii - just over a thousand - suffered the same fate. The justification for the executive order was practical; it was believed that many Japanese, Issei and Sansei alike, could not possibly remain loyal to the United States if it went to war with Japan. It was outwardly practical (the Ni’ihau Incident seemed to prove American suspicions), and it was deeply rooted in racial prejudice. Many white farmers were glad to see their Japanese competition uprooted and displaced; several newspapers printed opinion pieces that supported wholeheartedly the internment based on their own personal feelings toward the Japanese; the American public (including even Theodore Geisel/Dr. Seuss) generally supported the move; and the Supreme Court, the ultimate defender and interpreter of the U.S. Constitution, upheld the constitutionality of the executive order in Korematsu v. U.S. (also see: Hirabayashi v. U.S.). Camps were run by the Wartime Civil Control Administration and the War Relocation Authority; the largest of these by population were Tule Lake and Poston, but the most well-known today is Manzanar.

Some Japanese-Americans escaped internment by volunteering to serve in the U.S. Army, and many of them served in the famous 442nd Infantry Regiment, a unit that fought in Europe after 1944. Ironically, while many of its members’ families remained interned at home based on widespread racism and suspicions of disloyalty, this all-Japanese unit eventually became the most decorated infantry regiment in the history of the U.S. Army: twenty-one of its members were awarded the Medal of Honor.

Executive Order 9066 was eventually rescinded in 1976, and surviving Japanese internees received payments and apologies from the U.S. government in the 1990s. But money paid four decades later could not compensate for the time lost in the camps; the businesses, homes, farms, and other property sold last-minute at ridiculously low prices by their owners or vandalized and destroyed in their absence; and the humiliation and disillusionment at having been denounced by their own countrymen and rounded up by their own government.

Images compiled by The Atlantic

girloverhere: Three men who stood in the same line in Auschwitz...

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 19:31:00 -0500

girloverhere:

Three men who stood in the same line in Auschwitz have nearly consecutive numbers: From left, Menachem Shulovitz, 80, bears B14594; Anshel Udd Sharezky, 81, was B14595; and Jacob Zabetzky, 83, was B14597.

“We were strangers standing in line in Auschwitz, we all survived different paths of hell, and we met in Israel,” Mr. Sharezky said. “We stand here together now after 65 years. Do you realize the magnitude of the miracle?”

Audio of the first Jewish service to take place at Belsen-Bergen...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 15:01:00 -0500

Audio of the first Jewish service to take place at Belsen-Bergen concentration camp following its liberation by British forces on April 15, 1945.

unhistorical: January 27, 1945: Soviet troops liberate...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 14:34:00 -0500

unhistorical:

January 27, 1945: Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz concentration camp.

The Auschwitz concentration camp network, which included Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Auschwitz III-Monowitz, and dozens of smaller satellite camps, collectively made up the largest concentration camp run by the Third Reich over the course of the war. The first prisoners arrived at Auschwitz in May of 1940; by 1945 millions of people had passed through - and died - in Auschwitz, with Rudolf Höss estimating a total death toll at 3,000,000 Jews, plus hundreds of thousands of Poles, Roma, prisoners of war, and any other social and political “undesirables”. Because the Nazis destroyed records and many of the camp facilities in an attempt to mask the extent of their crimes as Red Army forces approached, exact numbers are difficult to ascertain, but the generally accepted death toll is around 1.3 million people, who died from gassing, sickness, and starvation.

The original camp, Auschwitz, served a variety of purposes: a prison to hold enemies of the Third Reich/General Government; a steady source of enslaved laborers; a relatively small-scale extermination camp. Medical (in the loosest sense of the word) experimentation was also performed on prisoners at Auschwitz I, including those conducted by the notorious “Angel of Death”, Josef Mengele. Construction began on Auschwitz-Birkenau in late 1941 in preparation for the implementation of the “Final Solution”. Although it was referred to as a prisoner-of-war camp, there was no hiding what purpose this second camp would serve, thanks to the gas chambers and crematoria that made up the tools of Auschwitz-Birkenau’s murder machine. There was even a separate “Gypsy camp” where thousands of Roma and Sinti prisoners were sent to be exterminated.

When liberation by oncoming Soviet forces became imminent (which it seemed by late 1944), orders were sent out to blow up the camp’s facilities, along with orders to exterminate the remainder of its prisoners. The latter orders were never carried out, but evacuations (i.e. death marches) to other camps did take place. Sadly, the only prisoners the 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army managed to free by the time they arrived on January 27, 1945, were those too sick to walk with the rest. They numbered around 7,500, compared to the 50,000 plus who had been forced on the march. One Russian officer describes the scene of the liberation:

They [the prisoners] began rushing towards us, in a big crowd. They were weeping, embracing us and kissing us. I felt a grievance on behalf of mankind that these fascists had made such a mockery of us. It roused me and all the soldiers to go and quickly destroy them and send them to hell.

A child survivor, only ten years old at the time, describes his own experience:

We ran up to them and they gave us hugs, cookies, and chocolate. Being so alone a hug meant more than anybody could imagine because that replaced the human worth that we were starving for. We were not only starved for food but we were starved for human kindness. And the Soviet Army did provide some of that.

In 1947, Rudolf Höss was hanged near Crematorium I of the original Auschwitz camp.

shortformblog: We’re still looking for more info on the story,...

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:32:13 -0500

shortformblog:

We’re still looking for more info on the story, but this is a pretty big deal guys. The decision reverses a combat exclusion policy passed back in 1994. source

Photo

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 16:46:33 -0500

peerintothepast: Cockpit of a Handley-Page Hampden.

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:52:16 -0500

peerintothepast:

Cockpit of a Handley-Page Hampden.

ppsh-41: “We’re in Berlin!” Written by Soviet soldiers on a...

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 15:01:26 -0500

ppsh-41:

“We’re in Berlin!”

Written by Soviet soldiers on a column in the Reichstag

US Military suicide rate hit record high in 2012; one service member died every 25 hours

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:25:33 -0500

US Military suicide rate hit record high in 2012; one service member died every 25 hours

Soviet Veteran World War II veteran from Belarus Knostantin...

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 20:11:34 -0500

Soviet Veteran

World War II veteran from Belarus Knostantin Pronin, 86, sits on a bench as he waits in hopes of finding other men from his unit at Gorky park during Victory Day in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2011.

This picture made me sad. To think that there will be a few less friends from your unit until that one year you’re the last one, just waiting.

The “Momo” and “Uzeir” twin towers burn in downtown Sarajevo as...

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 20:02:00 -0500

The “Momo” and “Uzeir” twin towers burn in downtown Sarajevo as heavy shelling and fighting raged throughout the Bosnian capital in Yugoslavia on June 08, 1992.

gojiguy: A miniature model of Hiroshima before and after the...

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 19:01:06 -0500

gojiguy:

A miniature model of Hiroshima before and after the bomb hit. At the Memorial Peace Museum in Hiroshima.