World War II in Photos "A retrospective of World War II in large-size photo stories. 900 photos in all, over 20 chapters, telling many of the countless millions of stories from the biggest conflict and biggest story of the 20th century."
[via
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[more inside]
posted by bru
on Nov 1, 2011 -
34 comments
Nearly seventy years ago, 10,000 Japanse Americans were forcibly relocated to
Heart Mountain, just outside Cody, Wyoming; they were part of a larger group of more than 120,000 men, women, and children
incarcerated in War Relocation Authority (WRA) camps due solely to their ancestry. This past weekend, about 100 survivors of the camp -- led by the delightfully named
Bacon Sakatini -- returned to this remote corner of Wyoming to celebrate the grand opening of the
Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center.
Of the ten WRA camps, Heart Mountain had the only
organized resisters movement, which was started in 1944 by seven men who formed the
Fair Play Committee to protest the drafting of Japanse American men while their families remained imprisoned -- leading to the largest draft resistance trial in U.S. history.
posted by scody
on Aug 25, 2011 -
43 comments
Think your taxes are high now? A list of the top ten salaries in the US in 1941, and the taxes they paid (spoiler: 65-73% tax rate! but, still doesn't include total compensation, though, which makes it a little sketchy). Interestingly, the NYTimes couldn't figure out two of the names, C.S. Woolman (who is probably
C.E. Woolman, one of the founders of delta airlines) and another mysterious name, J.C. Owsley, that seems to be
unidentifiable...
posted by yeoz
on Dec 1, 2010 -
91 comments
Color Photos of the Russian Front Even though color photography was no longer entirely a novelty by the time of the Second World War, it is still uncommon and intriguing to see color photos from the war. Even moreso in this case, as the pictures in this EnglishRussia.com post are mainly of the German army fighting in Russia. The images include scenes of actual combat as well as behind the lines, though there was only one I noticed that featured a wounded soldier. There's even a picture of some GIs near the end of the series.
posted by briank
on Oct 7, 2010 -
30 comments
Metafilter's own
JF Ptak has an
interesting post on the Life magazine issue of March 2nd, 1942, readers of which were confronted by some startling maps detailing possible Axis invasion strategies for North America. There was invasion down the
St. Lawrence valley, there was invasion via
Trinidad, via
Bermuda,
full frontal west coast, and down the
west coast as well - note the mapping of the large "fifth columns". As Ptak notes, maps such as these with huge arrows pointed menancingly at the American homeland were very much not the norm of the day.
[more inside]
posted by Rumple
on Jan 3, 2010 -
44 comments
Suvorov’s argument is simple. Stalin cleverly lured Hitler into war by offering to divide Poland. This act, Stalin knew, would prompt Britain and France to declare war on Germany. Stalin expected to pick up the pieces. -
Eric Margolis [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese
on Sep 14, 2009 -
30 comments
If you've ever heard the song Aquarela do Brasil (often called simply "Brazil" -- here's my favourite
cover), then you'll probably enjoy
this classic 1942 animation which first made it famous. The clip is the finale from the feature
Saludos Amigos (hello friends), created during a US government-funded goodwill tour of South America aimed at strengthening Pan-American relations, which
some argue may have helped bring South America onto the side of the Allies in World War II.
[more inside]
posted by PercussivePaul
on May 14, 2009 -
25 comments
When her Japanese-American husband was sent to internment camps in California and Wyoming, Estelle Peck Ishigo chose to accompany him. An art-school teacher fired for her interracial marriage, she documented the three-and-a-half-year ordeal in
a short memoir and hundreds of
sketches and
paintings.
[more inside]
posted by Knappster
on Dec 30, 2008 -
6 comments
Wartime wandering through the Eastern states by bicycle, truck, and riverboat. 1944.
In 1944, a dear friend, Doris Roy, and I undertook an adventurous journey that we dreamed of during countless hikes together over our college holidays. We had been Camp Fire Girls together, loving the out-of-doors, camping and hiking the open road. Our dreams finally developed into a plan to ride bicycles from our home in Buffalo, New York, to Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio River met the Mississippi. We admired Mark Twain’s adventures, had read his Life on the Mississippi, and sought to follow his path to the Midwest.
We were 21 years old...
posted by Fuzzy Skinner
on Dec 28, 2008 -
9 comments
Voices and Music of World War I and
Voices of World War II: Experiences From the Front and at Home both feature spoken word, sheet music and songs galore (all audio RealPlayer). The Great War site has plenty of stuff, but the core is the collection of songs,
anti-war,
patriotic,
France-themed,
Kaiser-knocking and so forth. The WWII site also has a whole bunch of music, demonstrating the changing mood of the US, from
conflicted feelings about the start of the war to
conflicted feelings about the atomic bomb. Among the artists are Nat King Cole, Leadbelly, Benny Goodman and Fats Waller. But in addition the wonderful songs there are newscasts, speeches, propaganda and other radio broadcasting of all kinds.
posted by Kattullus
on Oct 17, 2008 -
10 comments
JARDA: Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives is a collection of photographs, diaries, letters, camp newsletters, personal histories and a wealth of other material relating to the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The site is divided into four categories:
People, the men, women, and children who were incarcerated.
Places, prewar neighborhoods and wartime camps.
Daily Life, eating, sleeping, working, playing, and going to school.
Personal Experiences, letters, diaries, art and other writing by internees. Among the photographers hired by the War Relocation Authority was famed dust bowl photographer Dorothea Lange.
855 of her photos are on the site. Even though she was working as a propagandist many of her images captures a starker reality, for instance
this picture of a glum little girl.
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 3, 2008 -
10 comments
"Japanese Relocation" - A short propaganda film created by the US government & the "Office of War Information - Bureau of Motion Pictures."
The subject has been much discussed previously on MetaFilter.
Here and
here, among other threads.
posted by The Deej
on Jul 25, 2007 -
21 comments
A Nazi Christmas Since its most ancient days, the Christmas holiday has been continually reshaped to serve commercial, social, and political ends. These Nazi-era Christmas materials, including an
Advent calendar and an
essay on how to turn Christian holidays into National Socialist ones, come from the
German Propaganda Archive of the Calvin College library. Of course, the Allies also enlisted Christmas in both pop culture and propaganda with
cards,
V-Mails,
and posters.
posted by Miko
on Nov 29, 2006 -
21 comments
Johnny Red was a story appearing in Battle and Battle Action magazine back in the late 70's and early 80's. Telling the story of a young British fighter pilot serving with the Falcons; a Russian squadron in World War II; Johnny Red was remarkable for it's time (in the midst of the Cold War) giving a positive image of Soviet Russian heroism in the fight against Nazi Germany. Scans of almost every issue are contained within - enjoy!
posted by longbaugh
on Sep 2, 2006 -
12 comments
The Real-Life Vesper Lynde. Known to history as Christine Granville, Krystyna Skarbek was first Polish nobility and later Churchill's favorite spy. Undaunted by weather, Christine skied over the
Tatras from Hungary to Poland to gather intelligence and participated in the liberation of France. She was awarded the
Croix de Guerre, but found herself ill-suited to normal employment, and worked as a saleswoman at Harrods and as a telephonist before becoming an oceanliner stewardess. Along the way, Christine met
Ian Fleming, who may have
based his first "Bond Girl" on the intrepid spy. Want to know more? Read her recently republished
biography or
order her file from the Briish National Archives.
posted by Medieval Maven
on Aug 6, 2006 -
6 comments
Secret agent Huub Lauwers was
parachuted into occupied Holland in 1941 to relay intelligence back to London. His capture by the Germans marked the beginning of the
Englandspiel, a deadly game of cat-and-mouse intelligence that cost the lives of over fifty agents. Lauwers frantically tried to inform the
SOE that he had been caught, but the
Baker Street Irregulars just didn't get it. Or
did they? [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Aug 6, 2006 -
16 comments
