Eger, Czechoslovakia, 2 October 1938
Three women raise their right arms to salute the German army as it enters the Sudentenland, the ethnically German western fringe of Czechoslovakia, ceded to Hitler under the Munich agreement of three days earlier. The betrayal of the Czechs marked the nadir of the Anglo-French policy of appeasement intended to forestall a war with the fascist powers of Germany and Italy. The ensuing U-turn by London and Paris came too late to save the rest of Czechoslovakia and Poland from Hitler.
Flanders, August 1914
Act one, scene one of the event that shaped the 20th century: the world’s strongest army on the march at the beginning of the first world war in August 1914. Confident, unbloodied German troops make their way through a Flanders field. They personify the Schlieffen Plan, the great swing through Belgium and north-western France intended to encircle Paris. Instead, stubborn resistance by French, Belgian and British troops, and errors by German generals, blunted the thrust and led to four years of bloody stalemate on the western front.
Podoli, Prague, 1912
These young people from the urban middle class have come to Podoli, south of the centre of Prague and on the eastern bank of the Vltava river, to enjoy the summer weather. The first world war led to the extinction of four imperial regimes including the Ottoman-Turkish, the Russian and the German. A federal Czechoslovakia (made up of Czechia and Slovakia, now separate) emerged from the “Czech lands” as one of several republics spawned by the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire of the Habsburgs in 1918.
Woolwich, London, 1917
Like milk bottles in a dairy, these heavy shells await delivery to a British army that could never get enough. All major belligerents underestimated shell expenditure, especially Britain, which started the war with a tiny army. A huge scandal over “bungling in high places,” notably about shells deficient in quantity and quality, erupted in London in May 1915. Asquith’s Liberal administration fell, forcing him into coalition with the Conservative party. David Lloyd George was appointed to a new ministry of munitions, to control an industry notable for employing large numbers of women.
Anatolia, Turkey, circa 1914-18
Turkey was “the sick man of Europe” for decades before war broke out in 1914. But Turkish troops distinguished themselves against stronger enemies on several fronts, as here, entrenched against Russia in Anatolia. With German help, they also defeated British, French and ANZAC forces when they invaded the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915. The Ottoman empire died after the war but Turkey was reborn as a modern, secular republic under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Berlin, March 1920
Defeated Germany underwent years of unrest after 1918, including a number of coup attempts by leftists wanting Soviet-style revolution, and rightwing revolts using ex-soldiers formed into “free corps”. The latter staged the “Kapp Putsch” in Berlin in March 1920, when aircraft dropped leaflets over the Potsdamer Platz in the heart of the city. A weak democratic government had decided to disband the Ehrhardt Brigade and other free corps. Captain Hermann Ehrhardt marched his men into town and declared Wolfgang Kapp the new chancellor of Germany. In a rare moment of unity, socialists and communists called a swift general strike. The revolt collapsed within a week.
Berlin, 1925
Adolf Hitler runs through his repertoire of rhetorical gestures while listening to a recording of his own speeches, for the benefit of his personal photographer. Despite his Austrian accent and harsh voice, Hitler was by all accounts a mesmeric speaker. The newsreels do not necessarily make this clear, but countless Germans attest to this dangerous gift. Hitler ordered Hoffmann to destroy the negatives, but Hoffmann disobeyed. Heinrich Hoffmann/Getty [This is a corrected version of the original caption]Photograph: Heinrich Hoffmann/Hulton Getty
Berlin, 1936
The staging of the 1936 summer Olympics in Berlin was a propaganda coup for Hitler. The Nazis explicitly saw sport as training for war, and gymnastics as an expression of – and means of achieving – bodily purity. Here, German gymnasts perform en masse in the sort of choreographed demonstration characteristic of the Nazi era.
Warsaw, 1943
Terrified Jewish families surrender to German soldiers in the Warsaw ghetto in the spring of 1943. In January of that year, the residents of the ghetto rose up against the Nazis and held their ground for several months, but they were defeated after fierce fighting in April and May. This is perhaps the most famous photograph of the Holocaust, principally because of the small, neatly dressed boy in the large cap on the right of the picture. For almost 70 years, people have attempted to identify the boy. Numerous names have been suggested, but the mystery remains unsolved.
Lodz, Poland, circa 1940-45
Ghetto workers employed to clean up faeces. An assignment as a “faecal worker" was usually a death sentence, as workers soon contracted typhus. Henryk Ross was a Polish Jew who worked for the Jewish Council in the quasi-autonomous Lodz ghetto, and took thousands of photographs of life under the Nazis. In 1944, when it became clear that the ghetto was to be liquidated, Ross buried his 6,000 negatives, returning after the war to reclaim them. Explaining why he had catalogued life in the ghetto, he said in 1987, four years before he died: “I was anticipating the total destruction of Polish Jewry, and wanted to leave a historical record of our martyrdom.”
Kerch, Crimea, January 1942
Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union launched on 22 June 1941, flung some 150 divisions and 3 million men into battle along an 1,800-mile front from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Here, seven months later, at the southern end of the front, at Kerch in the Crimean peninsula (now part of an independent Ukraine), families identify the Soviet dead. Barely one week later, on 10 January 1942, Marshal Zhukov launched the great Red Army counterattack on the central front that forced the Germans to retreat for the first time.
Berlin, May 1945
A deceptively peaceful scene as a group of German officers huddle in a Berlin wood during the talks leading to the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich on 8 May 1945. The German forces in the north, Scandinavia and Holland, had surrendered to Field Marshal Montgomery on the 4th; on the 7th, General Jodl of the High Command surrendered all German forces to the allies at Reims in northern France; on the 8th (VE Day), Field Marshal Keitel signed the final surrender document after a delay caused by wrangling between the Americans and the Russians over who should sign on behalf of the allies.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/gallery/2011/mar/15/europe-in-pictures-1900-1945
Women from London’s war information office dance with US soldiers on 8 May 1945.
Princess Elizabeth is greeted by crowds as she tours the London’s East End on the day after VE Day
Children in London carry union jacks
St Paul’s Cathedral is illuminated on the night of VE Day
Crowds celebrate in London
A VE Day party in Nottingham
A VE Day party in Netherfield, Nottinghamshire
Londoners celebrate
A V-shaped table for a children’s party in south London
Londoners celebrate
Soldiers from the Women’s Royal Army Corps drive through Trafalgar Square in London
Winston Churchill joins the royal family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in London on VE Day
Winston Churchill is mobbed after his VE Day broadcast
Crowds gather in Piccadilly Circus, London, to celebrate VE Day
US soldiers hug a woman in Piccadilly Circus, London, as they celebrate Germany’s surrender on 7 May 1945
A young woman is interviewed in London on VE Day
Crowds pack Times Square in New York on 7 May 1945 to celebrate the news of Germany’s unconditional surrender.
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