Bletchley Park: A WWII juggernaut. It decrypted German Enigma (try one!) and Japanese messages on an industrial scale in huts and blocks, had an outpost in Mombasa, and built one of the first modern computers (it helped that Alan Turing was on staff). Now a diverse museum with or without a funding problem, it generated yet more intrigue in 2000 when an Enigma was stolen, and hosts a rebuilt, working Colossus that launched a cipher challenge. Beating it wasn't easy!
posted on Jun 5, 2008 - View this thread

Britain's Maunsell Sea Forts [wiki] were built during WWII as part of the coastal defense system. They were decommissioned in the 1950's, but many of them remain in use for non-military purposes (this is arguably the most famous). Some great photos here. [previously on metafilter]
posted on Apr 25, 2008 - View this thread

The Armed Forces of World War II, a flash presentation of rank insignia. The creator implies that it's a work in progress, but what I've clicked through seems pretty complete to me. Bonus Babylon 5 link on the left.
posted on Mar 26, 2008 - View this thread

Upon the Nazi invasion of Poland, pediatrician Eugeniusz Łazowski and his friend Stanisław Matulewicz fabricated a fake typhus epidemic to save Polish Jews from the Nazis. Knowing that typhus-infected Jews would be summarily executed, non-Jews were injected with the harmless Proteus OX19, which would generate false positives for typhus.
posted on Oct 19, 2007 - View this thread

Today's post of tenuously related audio brings you ten historic radio broadcasts, 529 eternal questions in popular music, and one mildly amusing black metal band prank call.
posted on Aug 29, 2007 - View this thread

Hand drawn Tarot Cards created by a Boris Kobe, a prisoner at Allach Concentration Camp, a sub-camp of Dachau. Each card depcits an aspect of life in the camp - click each image for high-res versions.
posted on Aug 25, 2007 - View this thread

Dutch East Indies. "After a wonderful youth in the Dutch East Indies, today Indonesia, my family and I went through three and a half years Japanese occupation. I lost my father, I lost the country I loved, I lost everything, but I kept my memories. ... So here I am, 79 years old, sitting behind my computer, going back to the Dutch East Indies."
posted on Aug 16, 2007 - View this thread

Huge Collection of WWII Propaganda Posters (Axis & Allied powers represented). Via.
posted on Aug 1, 2007 - View this thread

LA6NCA's WW2 German Radio Collection Pictures and a little history on many WW2 German radios including a cute as a button spy radio and the Lichtsprechgerät 80, an incoherent light audio transceiver. Also featured are a few photo essays of the equipment in use (Enigma, Luftwaffe Signals unit redeploying). [dorian
posted on Feb 8, 2007 - View this thread

One man: one plan, one stove, hundreds of accomplices, 200 tonnes of sand, 4,000 bed boards, 600 feet of rope.

76 men: 50 murdered, 23 recaptured, only three got away.

The real story behind the Great Escape.
posted on Sep 26, 2006 - View this thread

Who knew Hitler sang reggae? View (YouTube, in German but with moustached rubber ducks).
posted on Sep 20, 2006 - View this thread

Paula Hitler: "He was still my brother."
posted on Aug 25, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Aug 6, 2006 - View this thread

Please, do mention the war. Really, it's hard not to. After all, in a sense football is war, as the General famously joked. Sometimes it's peace. Same goes for that other football, by the way.
posted on Jun 3, 2006 - View this thread

Japanese Propaganda from WWII I've seen & been fascinated by a fair amount of Allied propaganda from the second World War, including an exhibit at the Smithsonian a decade back, but this is the first bit of "enemy" propaganda I can remember running across. It's a pamphlet detailing Japan's plans for a better future. Another piece, "Farewell American Soldiers" piece which was leafleted to the troops is in English and is particularly chilling.
posted on Aug 15, 2005 - View this thread

Our Victory, Day by Day. Russian news agency RIA Novosti counts down to the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, with songs, posters, photos, and stories. Be sure not to miss the first-person accounts in English (under "Frontline Album").
posted on Apr 9, 2005 - View this thread

The Serpeant's Wall - a new photo essay about the tragic history of Kiev during The War. From the same motorcycle-riding woman whose Chernobyl photos we've discussed before.
posted on Nov 21, 2004 - View this thread

"Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear." He is one of America's great novelists, but you don't expect Philip Roth to be barreling up the best-seller list with a book that hasn't even been published yet. And yet "The Plot Against America" is in the top 3 at amazon.com. It spins a what-if scenario in which the isolationist and anti-Semitic hero Charles Lindbergh runs for president as a Republican in 1940 and defeats F.D.R. "Keep America Out of the Jewish War", reads a button worn by Lindbergh supporters rallying at Madison Square Garden. And so he does: he signs nonaggression pacts with Germany and Japan that will keep America at peace while the rest of the world burns. The Lindbergh administration hatches a nice plan to prod assimilation of the Jews. Innocuously called Just Folks, it's a relocation program for urban Jews, administered by an Office of American Absorption fronted by an obliging and pompous rabbi of radio celebrity. The teenage Roth character is shipped off to a Kentucky tobacco farm, to finally live among Christians. The book is about American Fascism, but while Roth is no fan of President Bush ("a man unfit to run a hardware store let alone a nation like this one"), he points out that he conceived this book (LATimes registration: sparklebottom/sparklebottom) in December 2000, and that it would be "a mistake" to read it "as a roman à clef to the present moment in America." (more inside)
posted on Sep 28, 2004 - View this thread

The Online Reference Guide to World War II German Helmets 1933-1945.
posted on Jun 15, 2004 - View this thread

Museum of World War II.
posted on Feb 21, 2004 - View this thread

The Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal "...to provide a searchable registry of objects in U.S. museum collections that were created before 1946, and changed hands in Continental Europe during the Nazi era (1933-1945)." Families who had art confiscated by the Nazis can search US collections for it here.
posted on Sep 8, 2003 - View this thread

The last World War Two Japanese soldier surrendered in the Philippines in 1980, ending a stream of holdouts. This is their story.
posted on Aug 5, 2003 - View this thread

Dr. Seuss, politcal cartoonist. Before the Cat strode in wearing a Hat, and before Horton heard a Who, Dr. Seuss drew for a liberal New York newspaper called PM. Through most of 1941 he drew images that criticized isolationists who thought we could sit out the war. He already had developed his idiosyncratic style, and the University of California at San Diego has all 400 of his PM cartoons on its site. Here's what he drew Dec. 5, 1941, and this is his cartoon of Dec. 8. Later in the war, he wrote scripts for 28 "Private Snafu" animated cartoons, which taught servicemen what not to do. Some were directed by Chuck Jones.
posted on Jul 31, 2003 - View this thread

"V" -- a science-fiction allegory for World War II -- may return to television. NBC has commissioned a three-hour movie script from writer-director Kenneth Johnson (who was responsible for the excellent first miniseries, but not the second miniseries or the dreadful series) that promises "a metaphor for the new millennium." Will Johnson might tackle unilateralism and WMD? And might a letter-writing campaign be in order to encourage production?
posted on Jun 10, 2003 - View this thread

"Hemp for Victory!" A USDA educational film from 1942 extolling the patriotic virtues of growing the crop that, a half-century later, over 600,000 people would be arrested for possessing. (Gotta love the official "Producer of Marihuana" license.) How times have changed.
posted on May 4, 2003 - View this thread

Battlefield 1942 Propaganda Posters are very handy for the times when you need to call someone a smacktard.
posted on Mar 26, 2003 - View this thread

What do you do with an eyesore built by a madman? [Geocities site, caress lovingly before clicking] During WWII, Hitler built several Flakbunkers around the city of Hamburg, to act as self-contained civilian shelters and defensive posts. After the war, the British tried to blow them up. And failed, on two accounts. The buildings still stand today, squat and romanesque remnants of a horrible period in the city's history. So, in a show of Hanseatic League moxie, the citizens of Hamburg have converted one of them into a disco. [warning: Flash, and starts with music]. There are better pictures of the truly hideous exterior here and here. A timely reminder, this Tuesday morning, that poor decisions can have long-reaching and unintended consequences. What will your grandchildren have to turn into a disco?
posted on Nov 5, 2002 - View this thread

Almost sixty years after the end of the Second World War, the battlefields of Western Europe, Scandanavia, Russia and the Pacific continue to reveal poignant relics of the men who fought and died. These links may be of interest to anyone with even a passing interest in military history.
posted on Oct 25, 2002 - View this thread

Boycott France? An American Jewish Congress trade ad placed in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter compares anti-Semitic violence to that experienced during WWII. Some groups are also calling for a boycott of the Cannes Film Festival. Woody Allen doesn't agree. Can the actions of an idiotic  minority really justify a boycott?
posted on May 15, 2002 - View this thread

the grave of the unknown rapist. does the brutality of war result in man sinking to the depths of depravity
posted on May 9, 2002 - View this thread

The US’ World War II Monument is expected to open in 2004. The 7.4 acre monument has been roundly criticized as both “seriously flawed” and “off-key”. Apart from these critiques, I wonder if the US memoralizes too many wars and not enough peace.
posted on Nov 25, 2001 - View this thread

Dr. Seuss Went to War. This page has many of the comics that show up in the book of the same name. WWII era political cartoons from Dr. Seuss.
posted on Oct 7, 2001 - View this thread

BUY WAR BONDS! An archive of vintage WWII posters, in case you've got a hankerin' for a little bit of that ol' timey propaganda.
posted on Sep 15, 2001 - View this thread

Nazis planned Palestine subversion. British secret intelligence files have been released in London about a German wartime plan for subversion in Palestine. Nazi Gold, secret parachute drops and the Grand Mufti.
posted on Jul 5, 2001 - View this thread

The "Tuskegee Airmen" of the Marine Corps. This is sort of a self-link; the history of the Washington DC Chapter of the Montford Point Marine Association is a project I'm working on, but I have nothing to do with their website. The Montford Point Marines were the first black Marines specifically trained to serve in combat, but very few people seem to know about them. I decided to link this after watching a special on A&E about the men who raised the flags (there were two flag raisings) at Iwo Jima. Nothing was mentioned about the black Marines who served and died there, since none of the flag-raisers were black, but they should be remembered nonetheless.
posted on Jun 21, 2001 - View this thread

D-Day was 57 years ago yesterday. It was 16 years before an article in the Atlantic finally provided Americans an unvarnished account of the carnage that was Omaha Beach that day. I'm in awe of what these 19-year-olds went through.
posted on Jun 7, 2001 - View this thread

Whitwell Middle School Holocaust Group: Paperclip Project: During World War II, Norwegians wore paper-clips on their clothes to silently show their opposition to Nazism and anti-Semitism. The eighth-graders at this Tennessee middle school are learning about the Holocaust and are collecting 6 million paperclips as a reminder of what happened. [More inside]
posted on May 1, 2001 - View this thread

Mexicans sue for U.S. farm work reparations from WWII Another group suing for reparations. This time, Mexicans who worked as farm help during World War II....a just claim or hopping on reparations bandwagon?
posted on Apr 28, 2001 - View this thread

The Last Expression project is a forum to explore the roles, functions, meanings and making of art in the Nazi concentration camps of World War II, focusing on the notorious site of Auschwitz-Birkenau. ... It is neither widely recognized in the realm of Holocaust history, nor in the discipline of art history, that concentration camp prisoners -- victims of the Nazis -- produced works of art during their incarceration. [from the Introduction.]
posted on Feb 12, 2001 - View this thread

And you thought Microsoft was evil. There appears to be pretty significant evidence that IBM was involved in automating the persecution of Jews by the Nazis. Read more about it here, here and here.

And since we haven't even settled the question of when a nation has atoned for its sins, what exactly is the statute of limitations for a company's sins?
posted on Feb 11, 2001 - View this thread

You thought the Holocaust was sickening? Read about the Nanjing Massacre. A very graphic account of the massacre of Chinese citizens by Japanese soldiers in World War 2. I found this tale to be far more sickening than that of the Holocaust.

Don't read it if you don't wish to read and see accounts of how Japanese soldiers sliced up pregnant women and beheaded children in the streets. It is truly awful.
posted on Jan 29, 2001 - View this thread