Letters From A Private: "...[19 year-old Pvt. D. Bruce Hirshorn] was in the Army in 1944 and 1945. He wrote home almost every single day.... Today, Uncle Bruce is the same upbeat, funny guy. He’s 87 and he loves syrup and ships!"
[more inside]
posted by knile
on Mar 18, 2013 -
8 comments
Why We Fight is a series of seven documentary films commissioned by the United States government during World War II whose purpose was to show American soldiers the reason for U.S. involvement in the war. Later on they were also shown to the general U.S. public to persuade them to support American involvement in the war. Each of them is in the common domain having been produced by the US government, available online, and linked below the fold:
[more inside]
posted by Blasdelb
on Sep 16, 2012 -
24 comments
In the spring of 1945, three weeks after VE Day, Private First Class Kurt Vonnegut, Jr wrote a letter home to inform his family that he was alive. His infantry unit had been smashed by Panzer divisions in the Ardennes; his unmarked POW train attacked by the RAF; miraculously, he and a handful of fellow prisoners escaped incineration by American and British bombers. "Their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden – possibly the world’s most beautiful city", Vonnegut wrote. "But not me."
-
Survivor:
How Kurt Vonnegut created a novel, a cult following and one of the most loyal readerships in American Fiction by Thomas Meaney in The Times Literary Supplement.
posted by Kattullus
on Mar 11, 2012 -
85 comments
World War II was a time that called for many things from many different people. However, one Polish soldier stepped above and beyond the call of his nature. He carried ammunition, he helped his squad members get better at wrestling, and he drank and smoked with the rest of them -
Wojtek, the soldier bear.
[more inside]
posted by lizarrd
on Aug 12, 2010 -
48 comments
Night witches. "Russia's three all-female air regiments flew more than 30,000 missions along the Eastern Front in WWII. At home they were known as Stalin's Falcons, but terrified German troops called them the Night Witches."
[more inside]
posted by shetterly
on Nov 6, 2009 -
32 comments
Charley Fox, two-time recipient of the Distinguished Cross, died on October 18th in a car accident. Another WWII veteran gone, and as with many, an
interesting tale exists in his past. Credited with injuring
Rommel (although
he didn't know it at the time and it was denied by Germany), it's often thought that the loss of Rommel from Hitler's strategy team helped sway the war for the Allies (though it's wondered if has Rommel lived the
July 20 plot against Hitler might have succeeded). After the war, Charley was an advocate for veterans and trained many.
He died wearing his uniform.
posted by Kickstart70
on Nov 11, 2008 -
12 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
'Films from the Homefront' is a (new) collection of amateur documentaries, newsreels, government films, and home movies documenting life for the ordinary people in Britain during World War II, with background text descriptions/explication.
Browse the themes. The films are QT and wmv format. I found it both poignant and funny, for instance, seeing kids don gasmasks during air raid drills then attempt to continue writing in their lessons.
[via Glasgow School of Art Library]
posted by peacay
on Feb 16, 2007 -
4 comments
Hitler's "
fountain of life." In 1935, Heinrich Himmer and the SS launched a network of
Lebensborn maternity centers to increase birthrates among Aryans, where German soldiers were encouraged to mate with genetically desirable local women in occupied countries like Norway. These women were given the option of raising their kids themselves or turning them over to SS-run homes where they would be "Germanized." The lives of these kids was hell after the war, when they
were shunned and worse by the Nazis' previous victims. To those who are nostalgic for the Reich, like this veritable
eBay of Nazi memorabilia, the Lebensborn program represented "
wonderful social experimentation."
posted by digaman
on Mar 20, 2005 -
38 comments
Munich Bans Memorial Plaques Munich has decided to ban memorial plaques to Jewish, Sinti and German citizens deported and murdered during World War Two. Jewish leaders, fearful that the plaques would stir up anti-Semitic fervor, supported the ban.
These plaques are the work of a German artist,
Gunter Demnig.
”He first had the idea in the early 1990s when he was unveiling a memorial for the Sinti and Roma victims of the Holocaust.
“An elderly woman approached him and insisted that "no Gypsies ever lived here". "It is so easy for people to deny something. I wanted to ensure that this would not happen," he says. (BBC).”
This reminder of the holocaust brought to mind the
Pinkas Synagogue in Prague, as well as the
Viet Nam Memorial
and the
AIDS quilt -- monuments that really changed me.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk
on Aug 14, 2004 -
22 comments
