Fuck Yeah World War II

kateoplis: Rare color photos of London in ruins during The...

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:19:24 -0400

Rare color photos of London in ruins during The Blitz of 1940-1941 (via: ck/ck)

Only a few of the thousands of wedding rings the Nazis removed...

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 01:29:21 -0500

Only a few of the thousands of wedding rings the Nazis removed from their victims to salvage the gold. Among the rings, US troops found watches, precious stones, eyeglasses, and gold fillings, near the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Germany, May 5, 1945.

"The task will be hard. There may be dark days ahead, and war can no longer be confined to the..."

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 06:52:07 -0500

“The task will be hard. There may be dark days ahead, and war can no longer be confined to the battlefield; we can only do the might as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God. As long as we, one and all, keep resolutely faithful to it, then, with God’s help, we shall prevail.”

- George VI of the United Kingdom (via dead-irish-writers)

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Mon, 28 Feb 2011 09:19:16 -0500

realhorrorshowlike: Swimming through a rough surf swept by...

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:16:16 -0500

realhorrorshowlike:

Swimming through a rough surf swept by machine gun and mortar fire, Coast Guardsman Gene Oxley, now coxswain, of Indianapolis, Indiana carried a guide line to the beach of Normandy on D-Day and survived heavy Nazi fire that mowed down many soldiers following the line to the beach. This photo depicts how Oxley wrapped the end of the line around his middle and served as a “human anchor,” in the midst of terrific enemy fire. Of the 36 invaders who attempted to follow the line ashore, only six made it. Meanwhile, the ramp of the Coast Guard-manned LCI had been shot away by shellfire.

realhorrorshowlike: Standing in the grassy sod bordering row...

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 03:34:09 -0500

realhorrorshowlike:

Standing in the grassy sod bordering row upon row of white crosses in an American cemetery, two dungaree-clad Coast Guardsmen pay silent homage to the memory of a fellow Coast Guardsman who lost his life in action in the Ryukyu Islands. Benrud, ca. 1945.

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Fri, 18 Feb 2011 07:22:52 -0500

realhorrorshowlike: Captured in the battle of St. Lo, a group...

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 19:38:25 -0500

realhorrorshowlike:

Captured in the battle of St. Lo, a group of Nazi prisoners are gathered on a French beach for transfer in the Coast Guard-manned LST (background) to England for internment. The group includes Poles, Austrians, and Czechs. They were willing prisoners but expressed disappointment when they were sent to England instead of the United States.

demons: B-29 Superfortress bombers near Mount Fuji, Japan,...

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 16:17:00 -0500

demons:

B-29 Superfortress bombers near Mount Fuji, Japan, circa Jul 1945

demons: A map showing the extent of the fire and blast damage...

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 16:13:47 -0500

demons:

A map showing the extent of the fire and blast damage to Hiroshima, Japan.

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Fri, 04 Feb 2011 09:37:04 -0500

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Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:22:36 -0500

greatestgeneration: The German paratrooper exited the plane...

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 21:01:43 -0500

greatestgeneration:

The German paratrooper exited the plane headfirst…

greatestgeneration: Rattenkrieg Eventually consuming some 3...

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 16:28:07 -0500

greatestgeneration:

Rattenkrieg

Eventually consuming some 3 million casualties, the Battle of Stalingrad was brutally harsh on the common soldier. Often times the fighting descended to the sewers where men killed one another with knives, clubs, bottles, and brass knuckles. The Germans called this type of warfare “Rattenkrieg” or “The Rat War.”

If captured, you stood a very good chance of dying in a German concentration camp or a Russian gulag where both sides treated their prisoners as subhuman.

Entire divisions disappeared in the city. One Russian infantry division sent 10,000 men into Stalingrad and only 300 walked out alive. That figure constitutes 1/4 of Australia’s fatalities from six total years of fighting.

Lesson Learned: Stalingrad was not a place you wanted to be.

For more information, read:

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege

War of the Rats

untouchableme: “And there will be begging and pleading for...

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 23:54:02 -0500

untouchableme:

“And there will be begging and pleading for mercies that will go unheard…”

Dente’s Inferno

demons: After the liberation of Paris, shaving the head of the...

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 22:15:58 -0500

demons:

After the liberation of Paris, shaving the head of the women who had become ‘Kraut whores’ was a common occurrence in places such as Belgium, Luxembourg, and where this photograph was taken, the Netherlands. At the Netherlands National Archives, this photograph’s own description is simply kept as “Shaving and tarring [pitch] of [‘Kraut whores’] after the liberation of Holland.”

The origins of shaving a woman’s head as a punishment has biblical origins. In Europe, the practice dates back as far as the dark ages, to the Visigoths. During the middle ages, it was considered a mark of shame, that denuding a woman of what was supposed to be her most seductive feature, was a common punishment for adultery. In the 20th century shaving a woman’s head was reintroduced to a mark of retribution and humiliation; In 1923 after French troops occupied the Rhineland, German women who had relations with them later suffered the fate. In the Spanish Civil War, Falangist shaved the heads of women from republican families, treating them as if they were nothing but prostitutes. During the rise and rule of the NAZI party, the government issued orders that German women accused of sleeping with non-Aryans or foreign prisoners employed on farms should be publicly punished in the same manner.

It seems strange that head shaving, essentially a far right-wing phenomenon should have become the weapon of the leftist liberation in Europe as the Germans were pushed back in 1944 and 45. However it is important to note that many of the head-shavers were not members of the resistance but that quite a few had been petty collaborators themselves and sought to divert the attention from their own lack of credentials. It’s not to be ignored however that threats of head-shaving had been made across many resistance underground presses since 1941 in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

A large number of the victims were prostitutes, women who had simply conducted their trade with Germans as they would with those who weren’t. However, in some cases in Paris there were cases where prostitutes were kicked to death for having accepted German soldiers as clients. Other victims of the shears were teenagers, silly young girls who had associated with German soldiers out of bravado or boredom. In a number of cases, female school teachers, who living alone, had German soldiers billeted on them, were falsely denounced for having been a “mattress for a Kraut”. Women who were suspected or accused of having an abortion were assumed to have consorted with Germans and were punished as well, collected in a lorry or grabbed off the street to have their head shaved.

In other cases, many victims were young wives and mothers, whose husbands were in German prisoner of war camps. During the war, they often had no means of support and their only hope of obtaining food for themselves and their families was to accept an liaison with a German officer or soldier. In the Nazi occupied countries, food was power.

The Liberation of Paris, August 1944. Submitted by jimlikes.

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 01:34:00 -0500

The Liberation of Paris, August 1944.

Submitted by jimlikes.

greatestgeneration: Killed at Pearl Harbor, this young sailor...

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 01:06:36 -0500

greatestgeneration:

Killed at Pearl Harbor, this young sailor strikes a dashing pose in his uniform days before the attack

demons: On average, 3000 Poles died each day under German...

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 02:38:53 -0500

demons:

On average, 3000 Poles died each day under German occupation.

"The ultimate objective must, however, be the irrevocable removal of the Jews in general."

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 19:32:50 -0500

“The ultimate objective must, however, be the irrevocable removal of the Jews in general.”

- Adolf Hitler’s first known anti-Semitic writing, September 16th 1919 (via demons)