World Wars

Sharing some of my more interesting pics from World War 1 and 2. Will post some additional information for each pic

This first pic is of German and British soldiers playing soccer during the Christmas Day ceasefire in World War 1. The ceasefire was declared by officers in trenches on both sides, who had no further orders at the time and believed it was unacceptable to be fighting each other on Christmas. Soldiers exchanged gifts, food, and played games.

The following day, high command on both sides ordered that fighting resume.

Berlin at the end of World War 2.

For years, Germans learned about Albert Speer's models of what the 3rd Reich would look like. This is not what they had expected.

Albert Speer was commissioned by Hitler to be the chief architect of the 3rd Reich, This is what Berlin was intended to look like if Germany had won the war.

And here's one of Speer's original models, made in the 1940s. Berlin was to be "Welthauptstadt Germania", meaning "World Capital Germania", where this was the literal capital city of Earth

bump

Duke Ferdinand approximately 5 minutes before he was assassinated, starting World War 1

Many believe this to be the single most significant event in human history

Footage from Nazi Germany's documentary "Triumph of the Will", remastered in color

Documentary showcasing Hitler's rise to power and the resulting superpower that was Nazi Germany

The earliest moments of Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941

Hitler's blitzkrieg doctrine did not apply well to the Russian front. Enormous battlegrounds, massive differences in army sizes, and harsh weather made the invasion ultimately a failure.

A parade held on Hitler's 50th birthday

Allied bombardment of Monte Cassino monastery in Italy during World War 2. They believed a German garrison was present inside the monastery, despite Germans insisting they would never use a holy place for war. Allied forces carried out the siege anyway, destroying the monastery that was built in the year 529.

No German garrison was ever present in the monastery

thats actually really depressing

Actually that picture is not Brits and Germans playing football, only Brits.

I think that Britain was the greatest factor for allied victory in the First World War.

The fact that the BEF was deployed frustrated and ultimately was a key factor why the Germans failed at the first battle of the Marne in 1914.

The very presence and rapid deployment of the BEF into France and Belgium in 1914 confused and caused the carefully organised Schlieffen Plan to become unstuck. The presence of these extra arguably elite battalions by 1914 standards seriously undermined the morale of the average German soldat and confused the German plan as it had calculated only on encountering French and limited Belgian strength.

>No German garrison was ever present in the monastery.

Fun fact, after the allies bombed the monastery, German troops moved into the ruins and it took the allies even more time dislodging the Germans than before. The rubble of the bombed monastery gave incredible amounts of cover and concealment for defending troops with overlapping fields of fire throughout.

>This first pic is of German and British soldiers playing soccer during the Christmas Day ceasefire in World War 1.
akchtchually brits only
the whole christmas ceasefire is one giant meme
a feel good story with very little basis in fact/very few and isolated cases basically

Didn't it coincide with massive general strikes by the soldiers of several allied nations, instigated by russian troops declaring their allegiance to the revolutionary government which had just overthrown the czar?

No, the Christmas truce was a 1914 thing. The Russian Revolution hadn't even started yet.

how many times in history has a loser been so completely and utterly btfo?
what are some other examples?

Carthage
Tenochtitlan
Did Rome even get hit that bad when it fell for good?

I'm reading Beevor's Stalingrad right now and his imagery of the men advancing on the steppe is great. Many German officers compared their tank crews to ships on the sea

the bombing/ruins/creating cover was also a huge factor in Stalingrad. Krauts were happy to hear the stuka screams (when they weren't worried about being bombed themselves, at least) but it became all too apparent that the bombings were truly helping the soviets

What about the personalities?
Gulyaev Fedor Stepanovich with Budyonny, great red marshal of Russian Civil War.
Gulyaev led white guard squad in impassable swamp, like Ivan Susanin. Awarded Order of the Red Banner in 1922, very rare and honorable decoration (early soviets dont have another).

Clara Zetkin and Gulyaev

Again Gulyaev with others red partisans and commanders.

I think the population of Rome fell down to only around 30,000 people at one point during the middle ages. But that didn't happen suddenly.

Sorry if too many photos

keep em coming, Ivan

Hitler inspecting Kek's statue, the only true god, may he grant me these digits

Tank "General Drozdovsky", Russian Civil War. Great Britain supplied the white guard with various armament.

what a fascinating photograph