Glimpse history through old images of Grantham, Lincolnshire, England. Dennis Kendall (1945) During World War II, Dennis Kendall was the Managing Director of British Manufacture and Research Co (BMARC), an armaments firm. From 1942 until 1950 he was also the M.P. for Grantham. Born in 1903 as William Dennis Kendall,

[Photo] Jackie Cochran in the cockpit of P-40 Warhawk fighter, circa 1942-1945

Part 14 of a weekly 20-part retrospective of World War II

Part 9 of a weekly 20-part retrospective of World War II

For most of Finland’s history, the country had lived on the periphery of world events, but for a few weeks during the winter of 1939-40, Finland stood at the center…

During World War II, more than 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry were relocated and incarcerated for years following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor...

For Marxists the Chinese Revolution was the second greatest event in human history, second only to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Millions of human beings, who had hitherto been the beasts of burden of imperialism, threw off the humiliating yoke of imperialism and capitalism, and entered the stage of world history.

These are rarely seen color pictures from the Second World War featured in the book “The Second World War in Colour” by the Imperial War Museum. Many are being published…

A map showing the major concentration camps in Poland during World War II, February 1944. Published in 'Oswiecim Camp Of Death - Underground Poland Speaks', a pamphlet published in Poland in 1942 and...

In the summer of 1942, the U.S. Army called up a skinny California boy barely out of his teens. But at 5’9’’ and 125 pounds, Private Glenn W. Eve was deemed unfit for combat. He might have spent the duration of World War II at a desk, except that he had field skills the Army needed – he was a gifted artist, draftsman and photographer who'd spent the previous four years working for the Walt Disney Co. In July 1944, they promoted him to private first class (Pfc) and assigned him to the Signal Photo Corps, bound for the Pacific to document the engagement. This is his collection, never before published. For better contexts, please see pacificwarphotos.com.

Part 10 of a weekly 20-part retrospective of World War II

World War II in the Dutch East Indies After the Dutch surrender to Japanese troops and the handing-over of Java: von Starkenborgh, Dutch Governor-General, and major general Ter Poorten entering a...

A German unit at Stalingrad BACKGROUND The Battle of Stalingrad is considered by many historians to have been the turning point in World War Two in Europe. The battle at Stalingrad bled the German army dry in Russia and after this defeat, the Germany Army was in full retreat. The Battle for Stalingrad was fought during the winter of 1942 to 1943. In September 1942, the German commander of the Sixth Army, General Paulus, assisted by the Fourth Panzer Army, advanced on the city of Stalingrad. His primary task was to secure the oil fields in the Caucasus and to do this, Paulus was ordered by Hitler to take Stalingrad. Stalingrad was also an important target as it was Russia’s centre of communications in the south as well as being a centre for manufacturing. The battle for the city descended into one of the most brutal in World War Two. Individual streets were fought over using hand-to-hand combat. The Germans took a great deal of the city but they failed to fully assert their authority. Areas captured by the Germans during the day, were re-taken by the Russians at night. On November 19th, the Russians were in a position whereby they could launch a counter-offensive. The failure of the German Army was nothing short of a disaster. A complete army group was lost at Stalingrad and 91,000 Germans were taken prisoner. With such a massive loss of manpower and equipment, the Germans simply did not have enough manpower to cope with the Russian advance to Germany when it came. LETTERS FROM GERMAN SOLDIERS AT STALINGRAD...... From Corporal’s letter to his wife: “…Every day we ask ourselves the question: Where are our saviors and when will the hour of deliverance come? Will Russians kill us till this moment or not…” One more letter: “…We are going through the great crisis and nobody knows how it will end. The situation is so critical that, in my humble opinion, it looks like what was happening near Moscow a year ago. “ October 28. Here is a real hell. Diving bombers and artillery. October 29. Hot day for me… Terrible activity of Russian aviation. November 2. At night colossal aviation. The thought of my soon death can’t go out of my mind. Our attacks are unsuccessful. The company commander Sergeant Lar is killed. November 3. Noncommissioned officer Friedrick was killed. November 8. The air raids again and again. No one knows whether he is alive in an hour…” The Russians used dogs as weapons too. Explosives were strapped on the backs of the dogs. They were trained to crawl under tanks and under other vehicles for their food. When the dog did so under a panzer, the bomb went off. So the Germans shot any dog they saw coming towards their tanks. LETTERS...... “January 15. How long will we still eke out that miserable existence and will it ever be better? We are always waylaid by the enemy. One wishes the other to die. Since we are surrounded and we do not have enough ammunition, we are forced to sit still. There is no exit from the boiler and will never be. “ “January 10. At exactly 6 am a terrible hurricane of fire begins in the west. I’ve never heard such a roar. During the whole day the countless number of planes fly over us and drop bombs. January 13… Such strange foreboding. Will we ever leave this place or not?” Starving men of a once proud Sixth Army shuffle along in Stalingrad after the surrender Stalingrad By Antony Beevor (Page 357) "The anger of Russian soldiers and officers was vented on their German prisoners,skeletal and lice-infested. Some were shot on the spot. Others died when they were marched off in small columns, and Soviet soldiers sprayed them with machine-gun fire. In one case, the wounded commander of a company forced a captured German officer to kneel before him in the snow, cried out the reasons why he was seeking revenge, then shot him" ---------------------------- GERMAN LETTERS FROM SATLINGRAD “December 8. The situation with food provision becomes more and more lamentable. One loaf of bread for seven people. We are forced to eat horses. December 9. All feeble horses are slaughtered and eaten. December 10. To starve is damn hard. December 11. No hope for improvement. Now we know the price of bread. December 12. Today I found an old piece of moldy bread. It was a real delicacy. We eat only once a day when food is distributed, and then starve for 24 hours…” “… I would be extremely happy to get a piece of stale bread. But we don’t have even that.” “… Three enemies make our lives very difficult: Russians, hunger and cold. Russian snipers keep us under constant control…” “…Yesterday, we received vodka. At that time we were just cutting the dog so vodka was very handy. I have already killed four dogs but my friends can’t still eat their fill. I once shot a magpie and cooked it…” People of Stalingrad with Red Army soldiers. Seems like a propaganda image. The Russians treated the civilians as ruthlessly as the Germans did. Page 161 The Red Army again proved itself pitiless towards its own civilians.During the fighting for the Barrikady workers' settlements, a sergeant in the 389th Infantry Division (a former police sergeant from 161 'The Fateful City' Darmstadt) observed that 'Russian women who came out of the houses with their bundles and then tried to seek shelter from the firing on the German side, were cut down from behind by Russian machine-gunfire'. LETTERS FROM STALINGRAD “…Josef Gross had a dog. Well, it’s done – I’m not kidding…” “…December 26. Today we cooked a cat.” “…Elsa (the wife’s name), I do not want to make you sad thus won’t tell much… I just want to tell you that I will soon die from hunger…” “…Many of those who didn’t even think about death last year today are dead. Many people lost their lives this year. In 1943, it will be even worse. If the situation doesn’t change and surroundings are not broken then we all will perish from hunger… There is no perspective.” Russian tanks in Stalingrad Red Army attacks German positions in Stalingrad Grinning Red Army soldiers pose for pictures. The fighting in Stalingrad had been bestial and cruel. August 1942. Russians fire at Luftwaffe bombers who flattened Stalingrad. The bombing was led by the ace Richthofen. But the bombing finally worked against the Germans as the ruins of the city enabled the Russians to resort to urban hand-to-hand combat Russians fire from the roof of a building Stalingrad: A city in flames Germans soldiers hated the urban street-by-street fighting in Stalingrad. The Germans lost their main card, Blitzkrieg Much of the fighting consisted not of major attacks, but of relentless, lethal little conflicts. The battle was fought by assault squads, generally six or eight strong, from 'the Stalingrad Academy of Street Fighting'.They armed themselves with knives and sharpened spades for silent killing, as well as sub-machine-guns and grenades. German POW in Stalingrad Page 430 Since 1945, some 3,000 or so of the Stalingrad prisoners had been released, either individually or in batches and allowed home, usually because they were deemed unfit for labour. In 1955 there were still 9,626 German prisoners of war, or 'convicted war criminals' as Khrushchev described them, of whom some 2,000 were survivors of Stalingrad. These prisoners were finally set free after Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's visit to Moscow in September 1955.

Around 80,000 British, Indian and Australian troops based in Singapore became Prisoners of War after the fall of Singapore, perhaps Britain's greatest military defeat since the 1781 Battle of Yorktown.

After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese quickly gained control over a huge area of the Pacific, from the Philippines to Burma to the Aleutians to the Solomons. While the Japanese enjoyed…

Though most Western depictions of World War II focus on soldiers rescuing helpless victims from German oppression, the truth is very different. The human species doesn't take kindly to genocide or oppression, and the Jews are no exception. 10 The Treblinka Rebellion 1943 About 800,000 to one million people were murdered at Treblinka Death Camp

General Douglas MacArthur arrived in Australia in March, 1942 after a harrowing escape from the Philippines where his command had been handily defeated by a much smaller invading Japanese force. Placed in charge of the newly created Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA), MacArthur was desperate to retain his new post so that he might reconquer the Philippines and in so doing, reclaim his honor. Thus began the daily issuance of communiques from his headquarters which related a grueling campaign of more than a thousand days of World War II in which Allied forces fought a relentless enemy from the northern shores of Australia back to the heart of Manila. Never before available in print, this volume of communiques brings to life the regular updates issued to an anxious public hungry for news of progress in the great advance across the Southwest Pacific. Not only a record of the campaign, these daily pronouncements also represent a master class of public relations management as MacArthur attempted to write the first draft of history in which he was the great hero deserving of enduring fame regardless of the truth prevailing on the battlefield. ca. 60 photos, notes, bibliography, index

An history of the switch automobile manufacturers made during World War II, from producing automobiles to producing war materiel.

The Second World War changed the United States for women, and women in turn transformed their nation. Over three hundred fifty thousand women volunteered for military service, while twenty times…

[Photo] Manila, Philippines was declared an open city on 26 Dec 1941 to prevent unnecessary destruction

H 21135. Home Guard soldiers load an anti-aircraft rocket at a 'Z' Battery on Merseyside 6 July 1942.

Lucian King Truscott, Jr. was born in Texas in 1895. When he was 16-years-old, he lied and said that he was 18 so that he could attend the summer term of the state normal school in Norman, Oklahoma. He got his certification and worked as a teacher until the United…