SECOND WORLD WAR: Dramatic moments: A PICTURE ALBUM

Nothing is worse than war? Dishonor is worse than war. Slavery is worse than war.
—Winston Churchill

GERMAN INVASION OF POLAND, 1939

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VIDEO: INVASION OF POLAND: Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

GERMAN INVASION OF FRANCE, 1940

EVACUATION FROM DUNKIRK, 1940

VIDEO: DUNKIRK

HITLER IN PARIS

LONDON BLITZ, 1940

ST. PAULS CATHEDRAL DURING THE BLITZ, 1940

AFRIKA CORPS: ROMMEL IN AFRICA

GERMAN INVASION OF RUSSIA, JUNE, 1941

PANZERS IN RUSSIA

GERMAN CAVALRY IN RUSSIA

German Army relied On Horses

Despite highly ballyhooed emphasis on employment of mechanized forces and on rapid movement, the bulk of German combat divisions were horse drawn throughout World War II. Early in the war it was the common belief of the American public that the German Siegfrieds of Hitler's Blitz rode forth to battle on swift tanks and motor vehicles. But the notion of the mechanized might of the German Wehrmacht was largely a glamorized myth born in the fertile brains of newspapermen. Actually, the lowly horse played a most important part in enabling the German Army to move about Europe.

Public opinion to the contrary, so great was the dependence of the Nazi Blitzkrieg upon the horse that the numerical strength of German Army horses maintained during the entire war period averaged around 1,100,000. Of the 322 German Army and SS divisions extant in November 1943, only 52 were armored or motorized. Of the November 1944 total of 264 combat divisions, only 42 were armored or motorized. The great bulk of the German combat strength—the old-type infantry divisions—marched into battle on foot, with their weapons and supply trains propelled almost entirely by four-legged horsepower. The light and mountain divisions had an even greater proportion of animals, and the cavalry divisions were naturally mainly dependent on the horse. 

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WAR IN THE WINTER IN RUSSIA

BATTLE FOR STALINGRAD

ENTRANCE TO AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

DACHAU LIBERATED, 1945

BUCHENWALD CONCENTRATION CAMP

D-DAY BEGINS, JUNE 6, 1944

LIBERATION OF PARIS, AUGUST 1944

DRESDEN AFTER THE BOMBING 

VIDEO: DRESDEN BOMBING

AMERICANS CROSS THE SIEGFRIED LINE, 1945

GERMAN SURRENDER, 1945. JODL SIGNS

VICTORY PARADE IN MOSCOW BY THE RUSSIANS

ART HIDDEN BY THE NAZIS

TREASURES HIDDEN BY THE NAZIS

It is no idle statement that when the Third Reich began to crumble in 1945, many German fanatics went about their task as advised by Hitler in December of 1944: the hiding of vast Nazi riches for future use by Fourth Reich posterity. The statement that the bulk of this huge treasure hoard came from concentration camp inmates seems to be a safe bet...that billions of dollars worth of jewelry, gold, and money was taken from the hapless Nazi victims is a gruesome, but true, fact of history.
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AXIS POWERS CASUALTIES

ALLIED CASUALTIES

THE NUREMBERG TRIALS

Video: Nuremberg Trials

The trial of Hermann Goering

Goering was captured shortly after the end of the war with large quantities of his looted artworks. He thought he could negotiate with the Allies as Germany's most senior politician, but he found himself under arrest, stripped of everything, and held in an improvised prison camp before his transfer to Nuremberg to stand trial.

He was a big personality in every sense. The guards nicknamed him 'Fat Stuff' and bantered with him. He was charming, aloof and confident, and from the start was determined to dominate the other prisoners and make them follow his line of defence.

Goering insisted that everything that they had done was the result of their German patriotism. To defy the court was to protect Germany's reputation and to maintain their loyalty to their dead leader.

From the start Goering was determined to dominate the other prisoners and make them follow his line of defence.

With the start of the trial, Goering assumed at once the informal role as leader and spokesman for the whole cohort of prisoners. He was given the most prominent position in the dock.

When it came to his cross-examination he prepared carefully and in the opening exchanges with the American chief prosecutor Robert Jackson he emerged an easy winner.

So frustrated did Jackson become with Goering's clever, mocking but evasive responses that at the end of the session he threw down the headphones he had been wearing to hear the translated answers and refused to continue.

'If you all handle yourselves half as well as I did,' Goering boasted to the other prisoners, 'you will do all right.' Only after his cross-examination by the more experienced British barrister, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, was Goering at last cut down to size.

For the prosecution teams, Goering's domineering role among the prisoner body posed a problem. In mid-February 1946, on the recommendation of the psychologist who monitored prisoner behaviour, Goering was forced to exercise and take his meals on his own.

His isolation allowed the other prisoners to talk freely to each other and in the courtroom. The united front that Goering wanted soon collapsed.

During the long summer months, when he had to listen to the catalogue of crimes and atrocities laid at the door of the system he had served, he became less confident. But he maintained his loyalty to Hitler until the very end, when he finally confessed to the prison psychologist his realisation that in the eyes of the German people Hitler had 'condemned himself'.

Goering was found guilty on all the charges laid against him and condemned to death. He regarded the whole trial as simply a case of victors' justice and had not expected to escape with his life. At the very end he cheated his captors. On 14 October 1946, the night before he was to be executed, he committed suicide with a phial of cyanide either hidden in his cell or smuggled in by a sympathetic guard.

BBC

Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his dog, Koni

Putin walks, Koni faithfully follows.

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Russian girls greet Koni as Vladimir Putin looks on during the New Year show at the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow, December 28, 2004.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin look at Koni before talks at Sochi in January 2007

Putin watches his dog Koni demonstrate a GPS device in the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow October 17, 2008.

Koni joins Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder for a stroll at the presidential Black Sea residence in Sochi in 2004.

talian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi follows Vladimir Putin as Koni looks on in 2004.

Putin and Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko walk with Koni in 2005 at Sochi.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel greets Koni as she arrives at the Russian presidential residence near the Black Sea resort of Sochi, January, 2007.

Vladimir Putin watches Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman cosmonaut in space, pets Koni in 2007

Vladimir Putin greets leaders of international non-governmental organizations in 2006. Koni seems bored.

Tajikistan's President Rakhmonov stands with Vladimir Putin at the Black sea resort of Sochi. And of course the omnipresent Koni!

Putin, Tony Blair and Koni at the then Russian president's residence in 2005

Vladimir Putin is followed by his dog Koni at the presidential country residence in Zavidovo, northwest of Moscow

Image copyrights: Reuters

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Battle of Stalingrad: It changed the fortunes of the Second World War

The Russians (Soviet) move
Captured German tanks

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German POW
The Germans launch an attack
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DRAMATIC PICTURES: Second World War: Russians enter Berlin: Four

The Russian front saw some of the most savage fighting ever seen during the Secind World War. Most of it has gone unpublicised because of the US-Soviet Union cold war.



FROM THE BBC
Stalin's attempt to take Berlin ahead of his allies in 1945, led to the death of 70,000 Russian soldiers. Tilman Remme followed historian Antony Beevor as he examined the conquering army's conduct, and unearthed evidence that might explain why the Soviet leader took such risks.
Germany 1945
On 2 May 1945, after one of the most intense battles in human history, the guns at last stopped firing amongst the ruins of Berlin. According to Soviet veterans, the silence that followed the fighting was literally deafening. Less than four years after his attack on the Soviet Union, Hitler's self-proclaimed thousand-year Reich had ceased to exist. The German Führer himself was dead.
Europe would never be the same again. Despite years of Cold War tension, the continent would remain free of war for decades to come, unprecedented in European history. Crucially, by the time that Germany re-emerged as a single and united nation in 1990, the megalomania that had brought death and destruction to the continent in the first half of the century had been well and truly purged.
But the human cost of the battle for Berlin had been enormous. Millions of shells were fired into a city that was already devastated after two years of relentless bombing raids by British and American warplanes. Nearly a quarter of a million people died during the last three weeks of World War Two, almost as many as the United States lost during the entire war.
The battle of Berlin has never been told from the point of view of the ordinary Russian soldier ...
Some 54 years after the war, the acclaimed British military historian, Antony Beevor, embarked on one of the most ambitious projects of his career. His aim was to discover new material on the battle for Berlin, following the success of his award-winning book on the battle of Stalingrad.
'The battle of Berlin has never been told from the point of view of the ordinary Russian soldier,' Beevor said when I first interviewed him in 1999. 'Nor has it been told from the point of view of the revenge they took on the population of Berlin when they captured the city.'

Beevor's research
There were tens of thousands of unexplored documents in the Russian archives relevant to the Battle of Berlin. Would the new material shed light on controversial issues such as the alleged mass rape of German women by Red Army soldiers?
Why did Stalin sacrifice the lives of tens of thousands of his soldiers in order to be in Berlin before the Americans? After all, he was already committed to sharing the city with his Western allies after the war.
Our first filming trip to Germany took us to the river Oder, 60 miles east of Berlin. In April 1945, over two years after the German defeat at Stalingrad, the Oder and its tributary, the Neisse, had become the front line between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Two and a half million Red Army troops, 6000 tanks and over 40,000 artillery pieces were deployed for the final onslaught against the German capital.
The German resolve to fight was largely due to fear of Russian retributions.
In contrast, the German armed forces, the Wehrmacht, was a shadow of its former self. But its 300,000 German troops were determined to hold out against the vastly superior Red Army. The German resolve to fight was largely due to fear of Russian retributions. Since 1941, Nazi forces had laid waste to large parts of the Soviet Union. More than 23 million Soviet soldiers and civilians had died. Fuelled by Nazi propaganda, the Germans were terrified of what would happen if Berlin fell into Soviet hands.

RELATED ARTICLES---

-- Pictures: Russians enter Berlin: WW 2: Part 1
-- Russians enter Berlin: Part 2
-- Russians enter Berlin: Part 3
-- Russian army enters Berlin: Part 4

DRAMATIC PICTURES: Second World War: Russians enter Berlin: Three

The Russian front saw some of the most savage fighting ever seen during the Secind World War. Most of it has gone unpublicised because of the US-Soviet Union cold war.

Russians in Berlin (By Anthony Beevor, BBC)

The final advance, May 1945
Meanwhile, Zukhov's and Konev's troops were punching their way into the German capital, sometimes accidentally firing at each other in their bid to win the race for Berlin. Ironically, the Soviets' use of tanks in the street fighting was not dissimilar to the tactics used so disastrously by the Germans in Stalingrad. Soviet T-34s were highly vulnerable to the Panzerfaust, the German bazooka, fired by soldiers hiding in destroyed buildings. It meant further unnecessary losses for the Red Army. But the 90,000 German defenders - mainly old people or members of the Hitler Youth - stood little chance against more than a million Red Army troops.
Already, the civilian population was bearing the brunt of the Red Army's revenge. Though the first wave of Soviet troops was generally considered to be disciplined, it was the second that indulged in orgies of rape and violence, fuelled by large stocks of alcohol found in the city.
... up to two million German women were raped during the last six months of World War Two ...
Based on contemporary hospital reports and on surging abortion rates in the following months, it is estimated that up to two million German women were raped during the last six months of World War Two, around 100,000 of them in Berlin. One woman remembered hiding in the loft of her apartment block, ready to jump out of the window if she was detected, whilst her best friend was being gang raped by Soviet soldiers in the apartment below.
The authorities in Moscow traditionally deny German allegations of mass rape at the end of the war. But during his research, Beevor discovered internal Red Army documents that prove that the Soviet High Command was well aware that some of their soldiers were running out of control. Even more shocking is Beevor's discovery in the Red Army files that Red Army troops also raped Russian women after their release from Nazi slave labour camps in Germany.

 

RELATED ARTICLES---

-- Pictures: Russians enter Berlin: WW 2: Part 1

-- Russians enter Berlin: Part 2

-- Russians enter Berlin: Part 3

-- Russian army enters Berlin: Part 4