38 Amateur Photos That Capture Daily Life of Paris Under Nazi Occupation

Paris started mobilizing for war in September 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, but the war seemed far away until May 10, 1940, when the Germans attacked France and quickly defeated the French army. The French government departed Paris on June 10, and the Germans occupied the city on June 14. During the Occupation, the French Government moved to Vichy, and Paris was governed by the German military and by French officials approved by the Germans.

For the Parisians, the Occupation was a series of frustrations, shortages and humiliations. A curfew was in effect from nine in the evening until five in the morning; at night, the city went dark. Rationing of food, tobacco, coal and clothing was imposed from September 1940. Every year the supplies grew more scarce and the prices higher. A million Parisians left the city for the provinces, where there was more food and fewer Germans. The French press and radio contained only German propaganda.

Jews in Paris were forced to wear the yellow Star of David badge, and were barred from certain professions and public places. On 16–17 July 1942, 13,152 Jews, including 4,115 children and 5,919 women, were rounded up by the French police, on orders of the Germans, and were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The first demonstration against the Occupation, by Paris students, took place on 11 November 1940. They wrote slogans on walls, organized an underground press, and sometimes attacked German officers. Reprisals by the Germans were swift and harsh.

Following the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, the French Resistance in Paris launched an uprising on August 19, 1944, seizing the police headquarters and other government buildings. The city was liberated by French and American troops on August 25, and General Charles de Gaulle led a triumphant parade down the Champs-Élysées on August 26, and organized a new government.

In the following months, ten thousand Parisians who had collaborated with the Germans were arrested and tried, eight thousand convicted, and 116 executed. On 29 April and 13 May 1945, the first post-war municipal elections were held, in which French women voted for the first time.

Take a look at these fascinating snapshots to see what daily life of Paris looked like during the Second World War.

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Amazing Photos of African American Women at Work During World War II

American women have participated in defense of this nation in both war and peacetime. Their contributions, however, have gone largely unrecognized and unrewarded. While women in the United States Armed Forces share a history of discrimination based on gender, black women have faced both race and gender discrimination. Initially barred from official military status, black women persistently pursued their right to serve.

African American women served in many military career and held every position, ranging from nurses to spies to postal clerks. Despite their effort and contribution towards the war, the Army policy did reflect segregationist policies during World War II. Basic training was segregated, as well as living and dining.

African American women, though highly skilled, were often assigned to the dirtiest industrial tasks and received the lowest pay.

African American women fight for a change

African Americans learned that they would have to fight for their own rights. As early as 1940, at a civil rights convention in Chicago, an African American women called for integration of the defense industries, where blacks were segregated into the worst jobs. Soon there after, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, which 'outlawed discriminatory hiring practices by defense contractors and established the Committee of Fair Employment Practices'. This was the first significant presidential action on behalf of African American civil rights since Reconstruction.

Although African Americans did fight for the passage of Executive Order 8802, Eleanor Roosevelt, President Roosevelt's very influential wife, was a strong supporter of rights for African Americans and did help with the passage of this act. Eleanor Roosevelt strongly opposed the Navy policy that kept African Americans enlisted in servile support jobs such as cooks and waiters.

New opportunities were finally given to African American women not only in the factories, but also in the flourishing black communities as well. The presence of blacks were apparent in the factories and in the blues clubs that began to proliferate. Many of these clubs were owned and ran by African American women who had migrated to California during World War II. Within these African American community, blacks could 'organize politically and form networks for their own social and economic needs'. This greatly contributed to the legacy of African American women from World War II.

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56 Haunting Photos of World War II Taken by James Allison

It's hard to imagine what World War II was really like if you were born long after it ended. As more veterans die every day, fewer people are alive that can remember it. While books can teach you everything there is to know about the war, nothing can capture the reality as well as photos of the real people who were affected by it.

During World War II, James Allison, a sports writer working for the Houston Press, noticed that many photographs not printed in the daily newspaper were routinely discarded. He received permission to save these images, and by war's end he had amassed a collection of more than 4,600 photographs. In August 1977, Allison donated his collection to the Arkansas Museum of Science and History, located in the historic Arsenal building in MacArthur Park. Today, the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History owns and preserves these images.

A Bit of Chiselling for Der Fueher

A Nazi Souvenir

American Dead in Italy

Behind Wires of a Nazi Camp

Bombs rain on London's west end

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The Incredible Story of the Girls in the Iconic Photograph “Trafalgar Square Fountains on VE Day”

It’s an iconic photograph - one that has been used across the world to highlight the celebrations on VE Day, the end of the Second World War in Europe. But there’s always been one big question surrounding this particular image: what was the story behind those two young women smiling for the camera in the Trafalgar Square fountains on 8 May 1945?

Joyce and Cynthia with the sailors (Imperial War Museum)

In 2015, seventy years later, the Imperial War Museums (IWM) wanted to find out more about the women in the picture, so they put an appeal out on Twitter for help. Twenty-four hours later, they were contacted by a relative: their names were Cynthia Covello and Joyce Digney, who had met in the Women’s Land Army in the summer of 1944, when Cynthia was 20 and Joyce was 18.

Cynthia sadly passed away in 1983 and her friend Joyce passed away in November 2015. Both the women married Canadian soldiers shortly after the war and moved to Canada. Joyce knew of the photograph’s existence, but said she was “amazed” at the resonance of the image.

According to IWM, both Joyce and Cynthia had seen photos of the First World War armistice parades in London, and they decided that if they were still alive at the end of the war they would make the trip to London and join in the inevitable celebrations.

Joyce and Cynthia wading in one of the fountains in Trafalgar Square, 8 May 1945. (Imperial War Museum)

Victory in Europe was announced on Monday 7 May 1945, and the following day was declared a public holiday in Britain. The two women held true to their word, taking the early train into London that Tuesday morning. Their first stop was St Paul’s Cathedral, where they each said prayers for the family members they had lost during the war. After paying their respects, they headed out into the crowds to have some fun. In a letter Joyce wrote to Cynthia’s family in 2006, she recalled the atmosphere on the streets: “We walked all over London, and unless you were there, you could not believe the euphoria; hugs, kisses, smiles and laughter. It was like a gigantic family coming together.”

The two eventually reached Trafalgar Square, where celebrations were in full swing. The roads were closed to traffic, and policemen looked the other way as revelers climbed on Nelson’s Column and the four lion statues.

Joyce and Cynthia dipped into The Chandos, a pub just off the square on St. Martins Lane. The pub was packed with people and glasses were in short supply, but Cynthia somehow managed to secure drinks for the two of them. Joyce described the scene in her letter:

“We went into the pub that was crowded to overflowing. They had beer but not enough glasses. I am laughing thinking about it. [Cynthia] and I managed to get two glasses from people who had finished their drinks. No glasses were washed. Just filled up again!”

After the pub, the two women headed into Trafalgar Square, where Joyce remembers a giant Conga line snaking its way around the statues and fountains. It was a warm, humid day, and people were sitting on the fountains, wading their feet in the water. To cool off, Joyce and Cynthia decided to join them. They took off their shoes, rolled up their trousers and stepped into the water. In her letter to Cynthia’s family, Joyce described what happened next:

“Two sailors came into the fountain to join us. [One of them] climbed up into one of the fountains and dived into the two feet of water. How he didn’t kill himself, I don’t know! He [put] his arms around me and fell back, taking me under the water with him. I grabbed the chap by the shirt and dunked him up and down screaming: ‘Look what you’ve done to me. How am I going to get home?’”

Joyce dunking a soldier in one of the fountains in Trafalgar Square, 8 May 1945. (Photo courtesy of the Digney family)

After the dunking, the two women worked their way south to Waterloo station, where they dried off next to a bonfire lit by another reveller, before taking the train back to Surrey.

Both photographers and film cameramen present in Trafalgar Square that day captured Joyce and Cynthia in the fountain, as still images and film footage of their exploits have since been used in articles and documentaries around the world.



Joyce remembers seeing a film of their fountain escapades in a cinema newsreel shortly after the war, but it wasn’t until much later that the two families discovered just how famous that film footage and photograph had become, regularly spotting Cynthia and Joyce’s familiar faces in television programs, books and newspaper stories.

In her letter to Cynthia’s family, she wrote: ‘How I wish she were alive to share all this with me. She would have thought it was a hoot!’

Joyce with the famous photo of her and Cynthia in the fountain in 2015. (Rupert Thorpe/The Telegraph)

10 Interesting Photographs of VE Day Celebrations in London

On 7 May 1945 the formal act of military surrender was signed by Germany, ending the war in Europe. The next day celebrations broke out all over the world to mark Victory in Europe or VE Day. In Britain, Churchill marked the occasion by declaring 8 May a public holiday. People held parties, danced and sang in the streets. Huge crowds gathered in London, both on Whitehall to hear Churchill speak and outside Buckingham Palace where King George VI and the Royal Family appeared on the balcony.

For many though, the celebrations were bitter-sweet. People mourned their lost friends and loved ones, while others were still engaged in combat, as the war in the Far East continued.

Here are 10 photos of some the celebrations that took place that day in London.

1. Truck Ride on the Strand

Revelers ride a truck along the Strand in London.

2. Dancing in the Streets

Soldiers and civilians dance on a street near Berkeley Square in London.

3. Party in Piccadilly Circus

A mass of civilians and servicemen crowd around Piccadilly Circus in London.

4. Children on VE Day

Two small girls wave their flags in the rubble of Battersea.

5. In the Fountains at Trafalgar Square

Two British sailors and their girlfriends wading in the fountains in Trafalgar Square on VE Day.

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The Nazi Board Games of World War II

During World War II, the Nazis fueled children’s enthusiasm for both their war effort and genocide partly by stocking toy stores with cheerful-looking but insidious board games. As budding potential members of the Hitler Youth rolled dice, they competed with miniature weaponry to conquer Allied lands and clear gaming boards of pieces depicting caricatures of helpless or greedy Jews. After the war, German families tossed out the incriminating games in untold numbers, but in the last few years dozens have surfaced in institutional collections and on the market.

Swastikas studded the path to victory on a pachisi game made in Germany.

In Wir Fahren Gegen Engeland (“We Are Driving Against England”), players invaded England using make-believe U-Boats, while in Adler Luftkampfspiel players could act out their own bombing raid. Other war-centric board games of the Third Reich included Der Adler, an air-defence game, and this unusual military chess game. Darkest of all though was a board game that depicted soldiers being rewarded for turning in Jews.

This board game for children from about 1941 depicts a bombing raid. Using special dice that specifies particular flying movements, bombing and outbreaks of fire, the players have to drop their bomb loads, avoid anti-aircraft flak and reach the other side of the board.

This board game produced around 1939 enabled the players to invade England using submarines (U-boats) and aircraft. Militarism permeated all levels of German society under the Nazi regime.

(via Atlas Obscura)

22 Rare Photographs That Capture the Brutal Life of American Troops During the Battle of Buna-Gona

From mid-November 1942 to the end of January 1943 the Australians and the Americans reduced the Japanese base in the Gona-Buna-Sanananda area. Called the Battle of Buna-Gona this three month struggle had the characteristics of a siege...

The Battle of Buna–Gona was part of the New Guinea campaign in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. It followed the conclusion of the Kokoda Track campaign and lasted from 16 November 1942 until 22 January 1943. The battle was conducted by Australian and United States forces against the Japanese beachheads at Buna, Sanananda and Gona.

From these, the Japanese had launched an overland attack on Port Moresby. In light of developments in the Solomon Islands campaign, Japanese forces approaching Port Moresby were ordered to withdraw to and secure these bases on the northern coast. Australian forces maintained contact as the Japanese conducted a well-ordered rearguard action. The Allied objective was to eject the Japanese forces from these positions and deny them their further use. The Japanese forces were skillful, well prepared and resolute in their defence. They had developed a strong network of well-concealed defences.

American troops, Buna, New Guinea Campaign, World War II.

An American soldier stands over a dying Jap whom he has just been forced to shoot. The Jap had been hiding in the landing barge, shooting at U.S. troops. New Guinea Campaign, 1942.

A wounded Jap lies in a destroyed pillbox at Buna Mission. A minute later, he rose up, tried to throw a grenade which he had hidden in his left hand.

Over Jap-built bridge walk Americans on patrol. It connects Entrance Creek Island with Buna Mission and one end of it was blown by Japs. Americans repaired it.

Lieut. General Robert Eichelberger fires a tommy gun at the Japs.

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Everyday Life of the U.S in 1943 Through Esther Bubley's Lens - A Look at the American Home Front During WWII

Military and political events overseas were not the only subjects reporters and photographers covered during World War II. Photographer Esther Bubley (1921-1998) found ample subject matter to explore on the American home front as the nation mobilized for war.

Twenty-year-old Bubley arrived in Washington, D.C., in 1941, fresh from art school and a short stint with Vogue and eager to earn a living with her camera. Although she soon found work as a lab technician at the National Archives, Bubley's ambition was to work for Roy Stryker. Stryker, head of the documentary photography project of the Historical Section, Farm Security Administration (FSA) Documentary Photo project from 1935 to 1943, was an outstanding mentor and teacher, who attracted young photographers to work for him.

During her off-hours, Bubley set out to prove her camera skills by snapping wartime subjects around the nation's capital. Her unvarnished images of life in the city's boarding houses for war workers impressed Stryker enough to recruit the aspiring photographer into the Office of War Information (OWI), where the Historical Section had been relocated.

OWI sent Bubley on at least one cross-country bus trip, during which she produced hundreds of images of a country in transition from the doldrums of the Great Depression to the fevered pace of war. Unlike many of her colleagues, however, Bubley was not drawn to the awesome industrial complex spawned by the war, preferring instead to focus on average Americans.

“Put me down with people, and it's just overwhelming,” Bubley said of her focus on the human dimension of mobilization.

A look at the American home front during the Second World War through Esther Bubley's lens in 1943.

Indiana. A soldier and a girl saying goodbye at the Greyhound bus station, Indianapolis, 1943

Indiana. A Greyhound bus station in Indianapolis, 1943

Indiana. At the Greyhound bus terminal, Indianapolis, September 1943

Indiana. Parents of one of the soldiers on a special bus, climbing onto the baggage cart to look into the bus until the moment it departs from the Greyhound terminal, Indianapolis, 1943

Maryland. Sailors at Glen Echo amusement park,  March 1943

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French Man Found a Box of 35mm Film Rolls in the Trash That Capture Life Inside Nazi POW Camp for Polish Officers

It was a winter night in 1999 and Olivier Rempfer, then 19, was walking back to his town of Cagnes-sur-Mer in southeastern France after an evening spent with friends in the neighboring town of Saint-Laurent-du-Var, when a wooden box on top of a trash container caught his eye. Curious, he opened the box and saw a number of cylindrical objects wrapped in paper.

Rempfer waited until he was back home to unwrap the objects. When he did, they turned out to be rolls of black and white 35mm film. Holding the filmstrips up to the light, he saw uniforms, barracks, guard towers -- and men in costume onstage. Assuming the pictures must have been taking during the filming of a war movie, and the men in them to be actors, Rempfer set the box aside and forgot about it.

Years later his father, Alain Rempfer, came across the box. The elder Rempfer, a photographer, was also unsure what the film negatives showed -- until 2003, when he bought a film scanner and eventually found the time to take a closer look at the images, around 300 of them. “I quickly realized that these were real, historical photos, taken during the war in a prisoner-of-war camp,” said Rempfer. “The brand name 'Voigtländer' was written on the edge of the film. That name wasn't familiar to me from movies, but I knew Voigtländer was a German camera manufacturer.”

Rempfer looked for some clue as to where the pictures might have been taken. One showed a truck with several men seated on its bed. On the back of the truck, Rempfer made out the words “PW CAMP MURNAU” in white letters, then the letters “PL.” A little research showed that from 1939 to 1945, the German town of Murnau was the site of a prisoner-of-war camp for Polish officers.

Father and son studied the photographs closely and with fascination. “All these young men looked right at us through the camera, during the time they lived in the camp,” Alain Rempfer said. “And we don't know their names or what their daily life was like there, we don't know anything about their hopes, their feelings.” It was a strange experience as if someone had turned off the sound and left him watching a silent film.

The father and son decided a website would be the best way to show the pictures to the world. They hoped the images would reach anyone who might be interested in them, but especially family members of the former prisoners of war who might be looking for information, or might recognize someone in the photographs.

The Polish officers imprisoned in Murnau were allowed to put on plays and operettas as entertainment. Since there were no female inmates at the camp, men took on the women's roles in drag, apparently having much fun with it.

The eyewitness Tom Wodzinsky, who got in touch with the Rempfers after the publication of the pictures, said this photo likely shows the accommodations for junior officers and regular soldiers in blocks E, F, G, H and K in the camp.

A scene from a marionette theater.

An orchestra was also part of the officers' camp Oflag VII-A in Murnau. The officers' audiences were composed of German soldiers at the camp, who occasionally brought their families with them to the shows.

A group of officers poses on the stage of the camp theater, with the orchestra in the foreground.

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"Three Dead Americans on the Beach at Buna" – The First Image of Dead U.S Troops to Appear in Media During WWII

Photo That Was Hard to Get Published, but Even Harder to Get

LIFE photojournalist George Strock captured an iconic image of three American soldiers lying on the sand of Buna Beach, New Guinea. The small wave breaking provides a stark contrast to the stillness of the men and the half-submerged landing craft behind them.

Bodies of three dead American soldiers in the sand on the shore of Buna Beach, New Guinea, after a Japanese ambush attack. 1943. (George Strock—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

As the Office of War Information has a strict policy about images of the dead being dispatched by the media, LIFE Washington correspondent Cal Whipple argues the case to publish Strock's photograph. The battle of censorship would escalate from an army captain all the way to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who finally gives approval.

The photo would finally be published in the September 20, 1943 edition of LIFE magazine, helping to steel American resolve in the war effort, as well as earning the distinction of being the first image of dead U.S. troops to appear in the media during World War II. The accompanying editorial is a fitting complement for such an image:

Here lie three Americans [the editorial began].

What shall we say of them? Shall we say that this is a noble sight? Shall we say that this is a fine thing, that they should give their lives for their country?

Or shall we say that this is too horrible to look at?

Why print this picture, anyway, of three American boys dead upon an alien shore? Is it to hurt people? To be morbid?

Those are not the reasons.

The reason is that words are never enough. The eye sees. The mind knows. The heart feels. But the words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens. The words are never right. . . .

The reason we print it now is that, last week, President Roosevelt and [Director of the Office of War Information] Elmer Davis and the War Department decided that the American people ought to be able to see their own boys as they fall in battle; to come directly and without words into the presence of their own dead.

And so here it is. This is the reality that lies behind the names that come to rest at last on monuments in the leafy squares of busy American towns.

Shocking Photos Show How French Women Were Punished by Having Their Heads Shaved Publicly for Collaborating With Nazis

At the end of World War II, many French people accused of collaboration with Germany endured a particularly humiliating act of revenge: their heads were shaved in public.

There are thousands upon thousands of joyful pictures of the liberation of France in 1944. But among the cheering images there are also shocking ones. These show the fate of women accused of “collaboration horizontale”. To sum it up, when a woman who had engaged in collaboration horizontale — that means having sex with occupying troops — was punished, her head was forcibly shaved as the first step. Depending upon how the partisans felt, she also might have been disrobed, tarred and feathered, and perhaps beaten.

The punishment of shaving a woman’s head had biblical origins. In Europe, the practice dated back to the dark ages, with the Visigoths. During the middle ages, this mark of shame, denuding a woman of what was supposed to be her most seductive feature, was commonly a punishment for adultery. Shaving women’s heads as a mark of retribution and humiliation was reintroduced in the 20th century. After French troops occupied the Rhineland in 1923, German women who had relations with them later suffered the same fate. And during the Second World war, the Nazi state issued orders that German women accused of sleeping with non-Aryans or foreign prisoners employed on farms should also be publicly punished in this way.

The humiliating scenes often took place in front of jeering crowds. Members of the resistance were suppose to be doing the shaving but in fact many of them weren’t from the resistance - they were in fact collaborators themselves seeking to divert attention away from themselves. Many of the collaborators were prostitutes or young mothers whose husbands were in prisoner of war camps. The only way they could feed themselves and their children was to have a liaison with a German.

French female collaborator punished by having her head shaved to publicly mark her, 1944.

A French woman with a bloody face is forced to look at the camera while French soldiers do nothing.

A woman who collaborated with the Nazis has her hair cut as a sign of public disgust.

Two women, partially stripped, their heads shaved and with swastikas painted on their faces, are marched barefoot down the streets of Paris, to shame and humiliate them for collaborating with the Germans during the Second World War. August 27, 1944.

A sobbing French woman with a swastika smeared on her face is paraded through the streets with civilians and a soldier.

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