World War II

In October 1938, a woman from the Czech region of Sudetenland bitterly salutes the triumphant Adolf Hitler.

Time magazine chooses Adolf Hitler as Man of the Year for 1938 but does not feature his face on the cover.

In September 1939, German troops march through Warsaw, Poland as part of the German Blitzkrieg (Lightning Warfare).

Fire and smoke billow above an airfield in Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941.

A series of cartoons printed in American newspapers in 1942 depict Japanese military men as children and brutes forced to swallow the "medicine" of Allied air attacks.

A child's soldier father returns home for the Christmas holiday season, December 1944.

A Women's Army Corps (WAC) recruiting poster, c.1942.

In England, Major Charity Adams and Captain Abbie Campbell inspect the first wave of African-American WACs that have arrived for overseas service, c. 1944.

U.S. Army Nurses practice "abandoning ship" as part of their basic training in Camp Beale, California.

Hazel Ying Lee, an America WASP pilot, flew fighter aircraft during the war. In 1944, while flying a P-63 Fighter, Lee was killed in a mid-air collision.

Betty Grable's beauty and sensuality appealed to young, homesick American GIs stationed abroad. Taken in 1943, this photo has been cited as the first "pinup."

An American sailor rests in his bunk aboard the USS Capelin, August 1943.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Josef Stalin, leader of Russia, meet in Yalta, 1945.

An illustration of various size bombs for an Allied Lancaster fighter plane.

United States General Dwight D. Eisenhower prepares troops in England for D-Day, 6 June 1944.

A company of black U.S. Army soldiers work below the columns of an ancient Greek temple in Italy, September 1943.

African-American soldiers George Cofield and Howard Davis guard a U.S. Army site built over the Rhine River in Germany, 1945.

Japanese-American infantrymen for the U.S. Army run for cover from German fire in Italy, 1945.

Allied map of the Normandy invasion, June 1944.

United States troops pass below the Arc de Triomphe following the liberation of Paris, France, August 1944.

French civilians shave a young woman's head to punish her for having had a sexual relationship with a German, August 1944.

A Frenchman who collaborated with Nazi Germany is blindfolded, strapped to a wooden post, and shot to death by a French firing squad, November 1944.

A Nazi soldier carries ammunition boxes into Belgian territory, December 1944.

American soldiers lie dead in the slush on the western front, December 1944.

A young American GI leads a line of American prisoners captured by Germans during a surprise attack, December 1944.

This startling image of concentration camp victims appeared in Life magazine, 1945.

One victim of 150 burned to death by Nazi SS troops in a brick kiln. In this image the man still rests in the position in which he died, 1945.

The bones of anti-Nazi German women are discovered by the. U.S. Army in a crematorium in a German concentration camp, 1945.

U.S. troops entering a German concentration camp discovered slave laborers, many of whom had died from malnutrition before their arrival.

An American soldier watches over captured Germans, 1944.

A group of U.S. Marine raiders gather before a recently captured Japanese military hideout, January 1944.

The battleship USS Bunker Hill burns after a Japanese suicide attack near Okinawa, 11 May 1945.

In the United States, two men load the "Fat Man" plutonium bomb onto a trailer, August 1945.

In Hiroshima, Japan, thermal rays from the atomic bomb penetrated the dark patterns of this woman's clothing leaving her with these burns on her upper body.

As this photo taken in September 1945 illustrates, the atomic bomb decimated the city of Hiroshima, Japan.

The remains of Nagasaki, Japan after the United States dropped an atomic bomb in August 1945. The ruins of Roman Catholic cathedral appear in the distance.