What are /r/wwiipics' favorite Products & Services?

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This isn’t a colorized image, nor is the image from WW2. This is the January (and cover) image for the Ghosts 2021 calendar. It is a modern photo of a war bird.

A few months back I read this book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005586WRW/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

At one point a small group of Germans surrendered to some Americans, one of the Americans commented that they would be turned over to the Russians, so 3 of the guys in their group risked death to escape. The 4th guy stayed behind because he didn't believe the Americans, and apparently spent the next 10 years in a hard labor camp in Siberia. He chose... poorly.

So what should he have done? Refuse to follow orders? Run away and be shot for desertion? Not every German was an evil human being during that war.

I’d recommend reading up on it. One of my all time favorite books about WWII is A Higher Call by Adam Makos which is about a German fighter pilot who escorted a damaged American Bomber back home instead of shooting it down. Check it out!

I strongly recommend the book <em>Farthest Field - An Indian Story of the Second World War.</em> It's written by a guy who - just like you - found out about men in his family who had fought for the British during WW2, leading him to thoroughly investigate and find out what he can about those men and their service.

It's a brilliant book IMO, mixing personal and historical prose, and it really opened my eyes to the theaters in which the BIA fought.

I also strongly recommend this BBC documentary about the BIA as a whole and what happened to the veterans afterwards.

Here's a great book about it. Compelling.

https://smile.amazon.com/Rape-Nanking-Forgotten-Holocaust-World/dp/0465068367/

This is a GREAT book: Red Acropolis, Black Terror: The Greek Civil War and the Origins of the Soviet-American Rivalry, 1943-1949 by André Gerolymatos

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Acropolis-Black-Terror-Soviet-American/dp/0465027431

Those Navy Guys and Their PBY's is an interesting book by a WW2 PBY pilot about the PBYs stationed in Alaska. My grandpa was part of a ground crew during the Aleutian Campaign.

If you have Amazon Prime Video, there is a very good documentary called <em>March 1945: Duel At The Cathedral</em>. Interviews with the participants, family members of some Cologne citizens that were caught in the crossfire, newsmen... fascinating stuff.

Though to nitpick a bit, that phrase was used by Tom Brokaw to describe Americans, not Australians.

> The young Americans of this time constituted a generation birth-marked for greatness, a generation of Americans that would take its place in American history with the generations that had converted the North American wilderness into the United States and infused the new nation with self-determination embodied first in the Declaration of Independence and then in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

(Not to take away from that particular soldier's feats)

No, this is an open top Tank Destroyer and the follow-up of the Ferdinand, it's a Tiger II (King Tiger) TD called the Trumpeter, where the Ferdinand is based on the Porsche prototype of the Tiger I.

Model kit here: https://www.amazon.com/Trumpeter-German-Geschutzwagen-Tiger-17cm/dp/B000WZ39SI

Yes, in terms of pure penetration the 17pdr was the best gun the western allies had in quantity, however it was inferior in other aspects to the 76mm such as accuracy, reload rate etc.

Crappy domain but the image itself is from US comparisons between the 17pdr, 76mm and 90mm when mounted in a Sherman.

https://worldoftanks.com/dcont/fb/image/tmb/comparisons_808x887.jpg

Awesome book I found from Reddit was Spearhead.

I read most of the books listed in this thread and this one flew under the radar and is really good. All about tank warfare in the Wester European Front of WW2 from an American and German gunner perspective. Both of whom were in the Battle of Cologne and the two gunners faced each other in a Pershing and Panther tank and their dual was actually filmed by Andy Rooney.

>To the original point, remember that a.) most Red Army soldiers could neither read nor write

That's a heavy [X] DOUBT from me. Education was vastly expanded after the revolution and I'm fairly certain literacy was near-universal by WW2.

>b.) the USSR would not let any sort of memoir that didn’t tow the Soviet line to be published at all or without censorship

Published, maybe not. That does not rule out much later memoirs and interviews when the climate of the Soviet Union thawed a bit. Besides, this book is SPECIFICALLY detailing interviews conducted during and just after the battle of Stalingrad. The interviews were not published because of the Stalinist regime's priorities on extravagant idealistic heroism, but the interviews WERE diligently typed out (from stenographs) and archived.

I think the book is a great addition to WW2 research but it's getting forgotten because of its ridiculously non-descript English title (the original, German title translates to "the Stalingrad transcripts/protocols", and at least the Swedish edition had headshots of ordinary private Soviet soldiers on its cover).

There’s a great book on the unit too, I’ve read it and loved every page. Stories of combat, heroism, cowardice, and the racism they faced despite being a great fighting unit.

Savage Continent has a few chapters and great detail about what happened to collaborators. All kinds, too like romantic, financial, business, etc.

I. Melnikov, a veteran of the battle recalls

• "What did people feel in those steel boxes under fire? I once saw ten or eleven burned-out T-34s in one place, a ghastly sight. Almost all the bodies lying nearby were badly burnt, while those who had stayed in their tanks had turned into firebrands, lumps of charcoal..."One night a reconnaissance section from his unit was caught in the open under German flares; four of its six men were killed, and next day the Germans amused themselves by using the bodies for target practice. "They were a terrible sight by evening: shapeless, torn by bullets, their faces blown off, arms severed."

- pg. 446, All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939-1945

- photo credit to M. Markov-Grinberg.

Shell fragments from another gun, the 21 cm K 12 (E), were recovered as far as Rainham in Kent - map

Although written for a different picture, I thought it was suitable none the less. Here - http://worldwar2database.com/gallery/wwii0230

edit: The excerpt by Lt. Weiner comes from the book *20th Century Battlefields*on page 121, second paragraph.

"Postwar" by Tony Judt. It was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Read this and you guys can answer all your own questions about the end of the war: https://www.amazon.com/Retribution-Battle-1944-45-Max-Hastings/dp/0307275361/ref=pd_sim_14_3/132-6370175-6170745?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=0307275361&amp;pd_rd_r=a8ce1a4b-ba8b-11e8-a904-6bfe9a9fef2d&amp;pd_rd_w=BUzyi&amp;pd_rd_wg=TDVrt&amp;pf_rd_i=desktop-dp-sims&amp;pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_p=18bb0b78-4200-49b9-ac91-f141d61a1780&amp;pf_rd_r=6XVV33RTYCH490BRYHBZ&amp;pf_rd_s=desktop-dp-sims&amp;pf_rd_t=40701&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=6XVV33RTYCH490BRYHBZ

&#x200B;

The Greatest Generation originated as a title of Tom Brokaw's best- selling book https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Generation-Tom-Brokaw/dp/0375502025

Brokaw apparently coined the term Greatest Generation and applied it to the age group that fought WWII. When the book was published the title quickly captured the imaginations of many Americans and quickly became accepted as fact amongst the general population who in their ignorance chose to ignore the men who actually gave the world it first modern Democratic Republic by defeating, what was at the time, the most powerful military in the world.

I have the complete Lend Lease catalogue of shipments during WWII. Trust me when I tell you they did not receive enough equipment to cover their losses in a single year. Look up the total tonnage sent to the USSR and compare it to the 48,000,000 tons sent to Eisenhower in the ETO. https://www.amazon.com/Million-Tons-Eisenhower-Randolph-Leigh/dp/B001N8K8KK

"Too old to waste my time on you."

Translation… I don’t have a reliable, academic source to support my claim.

Have you read Gerhard Weinberg’s A World at Arms? https://www.amazon.com/World-Arms-Global-History-War/dp/0521618266

You might find it enlightening.

PS If your citing the Historynet as a source I suggest you read more academic material.

Iwo Jima provided American pilots with a good emergency airfield if they could not make it back to airfields in the Marianas.

An academic work by a professor at the Naval College who is also a retired Marine Corps officer pretty well demolished the myth that Iwo was fought to provide an emergency field for bombers returning from Japan. Turns out the whole thing was created after the battle as a cover for the high Marine casualties. And only a handful of battle damaged bombers used the airfield on Iwo. The vast majority of the recorded landings occurred during training missions which were mostly touch and go. https://www.amazon.com/Ghosts-Williams-Ford-University-Military-History/dp/160344517X

Not without reason. The Japs were so brutal that even the fucking NAZIS told them to cut it out. The Japs beat, raped, and murdered both captured soldiers and civilians alike without pause. They beheaded, tortured, starved, and otherwise abused POWs to such an extent that their depravity is to this day well known.

Do read The Knights of Bushido: A History of Japanese War Crimes During World War II.

Seems like a good place to mention this book by an academic historian, Marine officer, and professor at the Naval College.

His thesis is that the Battle of Iwo Jima was strategically unnecessary and that it’s capture to provide an airfield that saved thousands of bomber crew lives is a myth.

https://www.amazon.com/Ghosts-Williams-Ford-University-Military-History/dp/160344517X

Check this out:

https://www.amazon.com/Rhineland-Battle-W-Denis-Whitaker/dp/0773732578/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3QZK3PSLFWVPG&amp;keywords=rhineland+whitaker&amp;qid=1653515802&amp;sprefix=rhineland+whitaker%2Caps%2C57&amp;sr=8-1

Those were absolutely crazy missions. Those Privateers flew alone deep into Japanese territory. Their main purpose was supposedly reconnaissance, but the crews were often very aggressive and would attack any enemy target of opportunity.

Here is a solid book about one squadron. It is the only book length work I have ever seen on them. It is not about your great uncle's squadron, but it will give you a real appreciation for what he flew.

https://www.amazon.com/Solo-into-Rising-Sun-Dangerous/dp/0811739201

Read A Time For Trumpets. There were dozens of Alamos at the Bulge where American troops decided they were not giving up or going backwards no matter what the odds.

You need to open a book and educate yourself. They ALL knew what was happening.

If you aren't trolling and actually want to be more informed, check out this book: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Old-Days-Perpetrators-Bystanders/dp/1568521332/ - it's a collection of diary entries and interviews of "regular people" like truck drivers, office workers, cooks, etc. who were stationed on the eastern front. They all knew what was happening, some of them were horrified but most of them were somewhat nonchalant. It'll be eye opening for you.

Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front https://www.amazon.com/dp/0760321981/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_TXDJKEK7JTGTFHSSG20M

Here is the amazon link to the book. I highly recommend as well.

I believe this is a crew member from Sharon Linn 44-70116

Of the 11 crew 7 are listed as POW survived while 4 are listed as "hanged".

There is actually a book published a few years back, &quot;Field of Spears&quot; specifically about the fate of the crew. Reading a few summaries of it I believe the 4 killed were actually killed by villagers before the rest were taken by the Japanese soldiers. I believe all those men did survive the war.

I would recommend The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich for more info about Soviet women's experiences during the Second World War; it's a fantastic book. Gunther von Kluge and Walter von Reichenau were two Field Marshals who ordered Soviet women be killed.

While I'm not a huge fan of his (specifically don't like that he doesn't bother to put sources in his videos or even the descriptions), this video on Mark Felton's channel does provide a good summary and peek into the treatment of Soviet women soldiers by the Germans. Specifically he includes that these orders were issued by the Wehrmacht and weren't given specifically by Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, etc. countering the clean Wehrmacht myth that gets thrown around all too often here and other places.

This excerpt from a book titled <em>Alaska at War</em> that I found on Google Books says that Soviets went on a mission to Nome, Alaska in 1942 to pick up lend-lease aircraft from the U.S. Looks like the Soviets sent a bunch of pilots and airmen to airfields in Alaska to pick up American lend-lease aircraft and to test them before flying them back to the USSR.

It seems that Nome was also a part of a route for supplies to be flown between the U.S. and USSR.

Check out the part that begins on the bottom left with the title "The Russians Are Coming."

Seems like Ancestry.com does military records searches? A name(especially if somewhat unique) and rank can go a long way. I don’t know if this is a deeply personal thing or just a historical curiosity to you, but either way — there has to be some way to find out, ya know?

They building White Sea - Baltic canal

There are a lot of mass graves near that canal...

UPD: STOP. Why? /r/wwiipics ?? IT WAS BUILT IN 1931-1932. It's irrelevant, delete it from here.

OP, try to make post with in /historyporn with photos of famous Rodchenko from here: https://meduza.io/feature/2015/07/07/ya-sam-zahotel-byt-dyavolom

Sadly books about the Continuation War in English are really hard to come by. But I do recommend a novel called The unknown Soldier, It's a good read learning about the average Finnish soldier during the Continuation War. The latest movie adaptation is also a must watch in my opinion. Now how you want to get you're hands on this movie is up to you but here are some well made amateur subtitles you can use with it.

The only books I have about the Winter War are Swedish so I don't know of any particular English book that I could personally recommend but I've seen people recommending A Frozen Hell by William Trotter.

<em>Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland</em> by Christopher R. Browning. is absolutely a must read

Metz disproved the myth of Patton’s tactical and operational genius. See "https://www.amazon.com/Patton-At-Bay-Lorraine-Campaign/dp/1574887823 and https://history.army.mil/html/books/007/7-6-1/index.html for more information on this topic.

There was a debate at the time within government circles and especially the Office of War Information about releasing these photos and the documentary made at the time, With the Marines at Tarawa which the National Archives has fortunately placed on YouTube. It was the first time that depictions of American dead were released to the public. It was finally decided that Americans needed to know that this was a brutal war that was going to require great sacrifice if victory was to be achieved. To say the public was shocked would be an understatement, given that they had only previously seen the Hollywood version.

There's a good book on this episode and other aspects of what we now know as information warfare called "Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War" by Paul Fussell. Highly recommended.

Fascinating! There’s a book about another unlikely friendship between a German ace and an American bomber pilot he helped return to his base in England. If you haven’t read it I think you’d really enjoy it.

A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II https://www.amazon.com/dp/0425255735/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_0P9XCTMSWTN2G5N8NRC8

This image was / is used on a book by Dave Grossman, called On Killing.

“On Killing was hailed as a landmark study of the techniques the military uses to overcome the powerful reluctance to kill, of how killing affects soldiers, and of the societal implications of escalating violence.”

Worth the read if you haven’t already.

https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Psychological-Cost-Learning-Society/dp/0316040932

The Condor Legion were issued lookalikes of or actual Spanish Uniforms as to "blend in" with Franco's forces and continued to wear them at the homecoming parade in 1939. I highly recommend "Legion Condor" by Roger Bender further information.

https://www.amazon.com/Uniforms-Organization-History-Legion-Condor/dp/0912138505

If you're more interested in print this book is written by the speaker in the second lecture I linked. Part of it goes over how the Allies also became guilty in perpetuating the myth that no Germans knew what was happening. That's an idea which has already been repeated several times in this thread and were well received by people.

Analyze everything you read and look into who wrote them and you'll be amazed at the new stuff you learn.

Edward Miller’s "A Dark And Bloody Ground: The Hurtgen Forest and the Roer River Dams, 1944-1945" is the best work to date on this subject. It is well worth the read if you want to gain a better understanding of your uncle’s experiences there. 🇺🇸

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Bloody-Ground-Hurtgen-1944-1945/dp/1585442585

Couple of important details that I think add to the story: One, Apparently Baker was 'completely fearless' throughout the campaign, not just on this day; and Two, that his final act occurred during the a terrifying dawn 'banzai' attack of over 4000 Japanese soldiers, the largest of the war - which achieved near total surprise, and caused 900 US casualties.

Great book on the battle, if you are interested here

One Square Mile of Hell: The Battle for Tarawa

by John Wukovits | Aug 7, 2007

It’s a cheap cloth bandolier used to hold ammo. They came in ammo can like that and still do even today. They’re usually discarded immediately but can be used in such a manner.

WWII replica for sale.

WWII US Army Cloth Bandolier for M1 Garand (Reproduction) X 10 Units (PCS) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HGX7C4Z/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_6RBZSZP05F17SQNJT83T

I wrote a novel about modern-day kids having to go back in time and fight World War II for themselves. They meet up with The Maquis. I wish there were more stories about them. WORLD WAR 2.1

The history of the Jews in Thessaloniki is truly vast. It housed a major Jewish community, dating back from 1492 where Sephardic Jews found shelter from their expulsion from Spain. You can read more here

One of the greatest books written for Thessaloniki (one of the biggest ports in the Byzantium) is from Mark Mazower, Salonica, city of ghosts

My grandpa was also captured on Wake Island and sent to Shanghai ( Woosung). I did a lot of research about his experience in college. You might find this book especially interesting...it describes the conditions in the Woosung camp and subsequent journey to Japan later in the war. My grandpa actually left behind a copy of the photos that secretly taken in the Japanese prison camp. Pretty crazy. https://www.amazon.com/dp/159228826X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fab_W6aCFbX9ZA7RT

Yea they were escaping west and were relieved to have been caught by Americans until they were told they were going to be handed over to the Russians. One guy in their group refused to believe it and stayed, the author mentions that the guy ended up spending 6 years in a lead mine and was basically a broken man the next time they met. He wasn't a soldier, either, just an office drone working for the army.

It's a good book, and interesting to read things from the perspective of one of the bad guys. Another good read is D-Day Through German Eyes - https://www.amazon.com/DAY-Through-German-Eyes-Book/dp/B071NTXK2H/ref=sr_1_1 , basically a bunch of stories of German soldiers describing how they got their shit pushed in during the landings. Pretty graphic and disturbing at parts.

I just read this: https://www.amazon.com/Burma-Longest-1941-1945-Louis-Allen/dp/1842122606 Lots of discussions of the use of Armor in it. Heartbreaking awful conflict. which pretty much describes the whole war but....

Anyone interested in the desert war should read Derek Robinson's <em>A Good Clean Fight</em>. It's a sequel to his more well known story Piece of Cake. Excellent story even though it's historical fiction - highly recommended.

This picture is on the cover of one of my favorite books on this topic.

Here's a link for $15-$20 it is totally worth it for anyone wanting to learn more about the SS!

I finished reading To Hell &amp; Back recently. Really great book but he was at Anzio & had to scout out the German line's a few times. Interesting to see.