MOST DISTURBING IMAGES OF WAR

Share your viewings here-i know we have all seen disturbing pictures and newsreels of the wars on all theatres, i would love to hear some that we have seen...

 

What still gets me are the concentration camps. But images of war are the photos of atrocities committed by both sides to each other's prisoners. Looking at the faces, I can almost imagine what feelings were going through their minds. Also, the atrocities the Japanese committed during the rape of Nanking. I recently saw a documentary on the History Channel on this and it was so saddening how the Japanese treated the innocent civilians.

 

Yeah, the book the Rape of Nanking really infuriates me. There are quite a few shots from the Pacific that are like that - executions, beatings, and all of the fellas that were POWs of the Japanese. In addition to that, it seems that the US was really big on publishing shots of dead Japanese at the time. I've seen some mighty nasty shots of difigured Japanese soldiers, too.

 

Hallo!

I think the most shocking images of WWII for me are quite a lot:

There are Stalingrad photos which are disturbing. Like a mountain of corpses (alike Bergen-Belsen's or so...) with Stlingrad's ruins at the back. Along there is a photo of a frozen Generalmajor, which shows the scale of the German defeat.

Also, the famous scenes at Saipan? where Japanesse civilians prefered to jump from cliffs before surrendering to the Americans. But I am more amazed everytime I see the Kamikaze being chopped to pieces in the air or in ship's decks. All those images show Japanesse's will to fight.

To their memoir...

 

There is one picture I can never forget...

I think it's from the Russian Front, and it shows the upper half of a charred corpse sticking out of the drivers compartment of a tank. Kind of brings the horror of war right into your living room...sort of like Blackhawk Down. Chilly!

This brings me to another point. Have any of you ever had to defend your interest in military history to someone who asked something moronic like "why are you so interested in (insert conflict here)? Do you like war?"
God, that infuriates me!

 

Yes, oddball. I remember that picture. It is a destroyed Panzer III. The driver is death, coming out from the tank, in the part between the wheels and the caterpillar. Then, there is another death German, laying on the grass like amtre away from the tank and there is another tank far away. Are we talking about the same photo?

And yes. I hate those pricks who call me nazi just because I like WWII and because I stand at my country's side!!! Isn't that stupid? But it bothers me so much more when people who do not know a damn about History at all have made conclusions already... Like some idiot guy told me the other day that WE provoked WWI alone... Come on! You believe what all scholar History books say? Blšd!

 

Might be the same picture. I'll look when I get home...

 

There is a very similiar photo, reproduced in colour, in Carell's book 'Hitler's War On Russia'. The corpse is still burning ; the image is unforgettably horrible. Somewhere in my collection is a photo captioned 'Horror at Falaise' showing a knocked-out Panzer IV,the burnt remains of the commander trapped in the turret cupola. I saw this many years ago since when armoured warfare has seemed much less romantic.

 

Too many to list but, Rape of nanking, Bataan Death March "Survivors", an unwounded Frozen G.I. Sergeant who is in a crouched postiion holding his Garand and you can see the water melting off of his rifle (in the book by Roland Gaul on the Battle of the Bulge vol. 2, malmedy massacre, and many others.

 

The one that gets me most would have to be the photo taken by the US signal Corps at Buchenwald. It shows the charred remains of some poor fellow in one of the ovens.
But the really bad ones are ones like Stephen Ambrose's film of a mine explosion in Normandy that continues to roll as the wounded plead for help, and the death of a German destroyer in which we see men flung 50 feet into the water. They are truly sobering images, and remind us that war is ghastly business...

 

I believe that is Okinowa.

You guys were talking about some tatank pic. I remember some tank picture...a german tank that was just hit...a man comes out of the burning thing...having had his leg blown off minutes earlier.
Another picture that always gets me is the famous pics of allied soldiers walking into the beach at normandy...you can actually see bullets hitting the water...i always wonder what was going through thier heads as they see those bullets hitting the water all around and all they can do is slowly walk through the water with no cover..yikes!
Frankly the 2 images that have disturbed me most are not ww2 related...one was of the south vietnamese soldier executing a north vietmanese prisoner...he shoots the guy point blank in the temple only feet from the camera...it's in color and blood pours at like a faucet...
The other is the graffic autopsy pics of JFK and the color videa of him being shot...
those two ALWAYS get me.

 

There is one pictue I saw that realy sticks out in my mind. It is a color picture with some german vehicles going through a mud road on the eastern front, but the main thing in the picture is a dead german soldier in the road and he s crushed from being run over so many times and he is covered in mud. That picture summed up so many sad, wasted and terrible things of war that I couldn't really put into words. It just reminds me how wasted and unimportant a human life can be.

 

Yes, Ron. Thank you. I had that doubt about where it was. And I had thought it was Okinawa, but I put saipan. Sorry!

 

Seeing an old Soviet newsreel for the battle of Berlin with an HJ not more then 14 surrending and tossing down a Panzershreck... Showed what happened to the Germanic youth by the end of the war. Sad to know that half the nation had to live under Communism for a half century, and the repurcussions that followed with the occupation.

 

Panzergrenadiere,
I know the photo - it's reproduced in Carell's 'Hitler's War in Russia - Bildband'.
It's quite surreal - the corpse is totally flattened.

 

Yes, film and pictures have captured death at its extreme. I have a video series called The World At War, documenting World War II. One picture from it still haunts me. There is a burnt out tank and next to it on the desert sand are the charred remains of a German, like a silohuette, still smoldering, with another German laying dead nearby.

 

You know? The images of the killing of Mussolini are also pretty disturbing. Seeing the most powerful men of Italy being hit and kicked, and hanging from a hook...

Another would be Joseph Goebbel's corpse all burnt, with a shoe still on...

 

Dear Martin, is there anyway you could possibly show me this pic?

 

I think I know thepic Martin is talking aboput; the burned corpse is lying on the , how do you call it, the aft-deck of the tank. Basically on top of the engine. He is completely burned. That's a horrible picture.

Also that piece of film Ron talks about; the execution in Vietnam, really sticks in my head. Usually any film or pics of (summary) executions of either soldiers or civilians is always shocking to me.

I vividly remember footage from Normandy, when, I think British, troops with quite an amount of gear are running onto the beach and you see impacts of bullets. One of the guys just seem to fall over, like he tripped over something. I just expected him to get up, but he didn't. Kept lying motionless. Then I realized I just saw somebody get killed. I was like 16 at the time. It kept mauling in my head for days. Still is THE example for me how outragous war is. That guy had lived half or a quarter of a life, trained his butt off for the big day and was shot and killed a few feet onto the beach...