Images of the Second World War - Possibly NSFW

Morlar

You can choose to believe he is firing at the woman if you like, I do not believe he is. I already pointed out the other obvious discrepancies with the picture, such as the shadows on the soldiers face when compared with those on the womans. They are in completely different lighting conditions and lighting directions (ie taken at different times of the day) despite being apparently only a few feet apart. This is also notwithstanding the fact that over the years there have been various versions of this picture published on holocaust sites, some with the extra rifles some without, some with extra people some without etc.

gizmo555

Morlar wrote: »

You can choose to believe he is firing at the woman if you like, I do not believe he is.

Fair enough. Can you explain though, how you reached the conclusion below? What evidence is there from the photo or elsewhere of these enemy soldiers? Would you also not agree that a soldier who engaged enemy troops in the way this man does, completely exposing himself to return fire, would not last long in combat?

Morlar wrote: »

You do know that he is shooting at enemy soldiers right ?

Morlar wrote: »

I already pointed out the other obvious discrepancies with the picture, such as the shadows on the soldiers face when compared with those on the womans. They are in completely different lighting conditions and lighting directions (ie taken at different times of the day) despite being apparently only a few feet apart. This is also notwithstanding the fact that over the years there have been various versions of this picture published on holocaust sites, some with the extra rifles some without, some with extra people some without etc.

I accept the photo might have been doctored, I'm no expert. I think, however, the "obviousness" of the "discrepancies" is in the eye of the beholder. I don't, for example, see how you conclude the soldier and the woman are lit from completely different directions - they look much the same to me, especially if you look at the soldier's left leg and the dangling legs of the child being held by the woman.

Morlar

gizmo555 wrote: »

I accept the photo might have been doctored, I'm no expert. I think, however, the "obviousness" of the "discrepancies" is in the eye of the beholder. I don't, for example, see how you conclude the soldier and the woman are lit from completely different directions - they look much the same to me, especially if you look at the soldier's right leg and the dangling legs of the child being held by the woman.

No - I posted that he was shooting off the screen - the 'at enemy soldiers' part is irrelevant, though looking at in detail it may have been incorrect.

That 'at enemy soldiers' point was made was several weeks ago when I knew somewhere from memory that it was a doctored photo.

At the time I mentioned that 'at enemy soldiers ' part - I could not remember exactly in which way it had been doctored but knew for example that the angle and lighting did not line up/add up & that it is most likely a composite picture, where elements do not belong and are missing.

He does appear to be shooting at something not in frame, it could be a barn or a donkey for all I know & yes it could be enemy soldiers.

To address your main point a soldier standing up straight shooting down at enemy soldiers would probably not last very long. Unless they were for example, fleeing. If you go back through the thread you will see a link to a 8+mb high resolution copy of this picture, in that the detail around the direction of the lighting and the amount of lighting on the soldier's face (and angle etc) compared to the womans face is far clearer to see. You can make the point that such discrepancies are in the eye of the beholder but it is a weak point in my view. There are far as I remember discrepancices around the womans/soldiers legs (which were also mentioned on the site you didn't approve of) so there is probably not much point in throwing that into the mix at this point.

marcsignal

There are a few other things I noticed about this picture.




A) look at the difference in Black White Contrast between points 1 & 2. In point 2 the shadow side seems to be darker.
In fact, the shadow side of everything on the RHS of the picture seems to be darker than on the left side.

Examine the soil, there seems to be a line running up the centre of the picture (where I have the arrows @ point 3)
Examine the contrast difference on both sides.

C) There doesn't seem to be any shadow falling on the right side of the womans head (point4),
but there is a distinct shadow on the right side of the firing soldiers head (point 5).

D) There seems to be 2 buttons on the tunic cuff of the soldiers uniform (point 6).
German uniforms didn't have 2 buttons on the cuff like this, but these
Russian ones did have a very similar button arrangement on the cuff.

Overall, the soldier does seem to be firing in a vector that would travel behind the woman with the child.
Also, if you were shooting someone so close, why take full aim with the rifle, from the shoulder ?
surely you couldn't miss from that distance.

Nothing new about faking photos, the example fuinseog posted on the Auschwitz thread
with the crematorium smoke is a prime example, just my own thoughts anyway.

gizmo555

There are many different copies of this photo available online - as has been noted it has been reproduced in many books and other publications. Presumably the online copies are scans of these and they vary greatly in the quality of how they replicate what was in the first place a pretty grainy and low-res photo. For example, the vertical line Marcsignal notices going up the middle could easily be a scan of a crease in a poor copy.

There is no doubt that doctored pictures abound. Consider, for example, the controversy over the famous photo by Robert Capa of a falling Republican soldier in Spain, a picture about which much more is known of its provenance and yet there is still doubt as to its authenticity. In this case the authenticity or not of the photo will probably never be known, but I would suggest, if you'll excuse the pun, it's not as black and white as Marcsignal and Morlar believe. What is beyond doubt, however, is that many hundreds of thousands of victims - men, women and children - died at the hands of Einsatzgruppen in very similar circumstances to those shown in this picture.

By the way, Morlar, I neither approve nor disapprove of CODOH - I was making the point that they have an agenda and are not neutral, disinterested commentators.

marcsignal

gizmo555 wrote: »

For example, the vertical line Marcsignal notices going up the middle could easily be a scan of a crease in a poor copy.

Hmm.. I dunno, if you follow that line from the bottom up to the horizon line, and then move slightly right
and look from the horizon line to the top, there is another line in the sky, the right side is darker than the left.
The Black White contrast differences between the left and right of this pic don't sit well with me at all I have to say,
and now that I look at them more closely, those 'Breeches' on that soldier, and the height of those boots, seem to me
to be to be more fitting of a Russian infantryman,than a German.

For example, check this, it only took me 10 mins, and I'm only scratching the surface with photoshop,
so for a trained professional, with the proper equipment and loads of time, it would be a cake walk to fake this picture.
In fact if I spent 24 hours, I reckon I could do a pretty convinvcing job on any half decent pic.


Another thing that's odd is the soldiers right hand, and how it grips the stock of that rifle, his wrist doesn't seem to marry up with his sleeve.
It's as if his wrist has a right angle on it(green dot). His trigger finger is clearly visible (red dot) but the other fingers on his right hand,
that should be below his trigger finger, and wrapping around the stock of the rifle, seem to be missing (blue dot).
The only thing I'd put money on being German in this pic is the Rifle (a 98K),
and even the 'blackness' on the shadow side of that, looks darker than the 'blackness' anywhere on the shadow side of his uniform or boots.

Morlar

gizmo555 wrote: »

There are many different copies of this photo available online - as has been noted it has been reproduced in many books and other publications. Presumably the online copies are scans of these and they vary greatly in the quality of how they replicate what was in the first place a pretty grainy and low-res photo.

I would refer you to the 8mb version above which is probably as good as any available. Also worth noting that the picture above which as you say 'is reproduced extensively' is sold as proof of the barbarity of the German army when it is in my view nothing of the sort.

gizmo555 wrote: »

There is no doubt that doctored pictures abound. Consider, for example, the controversy over the famous photo by Robert Capa of a falling Republican soldier in Spain, a picture about which much more is known of its provenance and yet there is still doubt as to its authenticity. In this case the authenticity or not of the photo will probably never be known, but I would suggest, if you'll excuse the pun, it's not as black and white as Marcsignal and Morlar believe. What is beyond doubt, however, is that many hundreds of thousands of victims - men, women and children - died at the hands of Einsatzgruppen in very similar circumstances to those shown in this picture.

By the way, Morlar, I neither approve nor disapprove of CODOH - I was making the point that they have an agenda and are not neutral, disinterested commentators.

I would make the point that they do have a stated agenda (in the case of CODOH it is in their title). Holocaust websites also have a clear agenda in my view and some have been known to be unscrupulous about using faked photographs in advancing that agenda.

Re the Capa picture - I recall reading (possibly on the bbc site about a month or maybe 2 months ago) about how the Capa spanish civil war picture of the republican being shot was indeed staged.

There have been other WW2 war and atrocity pictures faked, staged & also mis-captioned. One example was captioned 'Jewish refugees enroute to auschwitz' (the picture taken in 1946 of german refugees displaced after the war ), the holocaust site which ran that picture later removed it and I can not find it online at the moment.

There was another famous one of a picture of 'jewish heads' collected in the back of a truck. It turned out that the reality was that they were bodies of executed prisoners (Germany pre-war had the death penalty as USA still has - however their method of execution was Guillotine). The bodies went to anatomy schools and the heads went to dental schools if I recall correctly. So my point would be it is not just 'faked' ie composite pictures, or staged ones, but also mis-captioned ones are equally misleading.

Another example which is relevant to this discussion is an author called Wolfram Wette who published a book called 'Warcrimes of the Wehrmacht' (the cover of which shows a painting of a German soldier in Stalingrad and on the back a picture of an SS officer in Serbia executing partisans).

That entire book came about from a photography exhibition in the mid 90s in Germany of Wehrmacht atrocity photographs. What the author barely even alludes to is the fact that the exhibition was withdrawn after it was discovered that (going from memory here) approximately 1/3 of all pictures were miscaptioned, ie they were NKVD (Soviet).
I have experience working in a photography darkroom and it is not that difficult to change pictures even in the days before photoshop. You could probably argue that the terminology of photoshop is based largely on darkroom manipulation, layers (composite elements, say a soldier from one photograph and a woman from another etc), dodging and burning (smoke over chimneys). The Soviets were very well known for this and there are famous examples of pictures of Stalin with a party colleague, then after a purge the same picture minus the now executed colleague etc. This is relevant if you consider that postwar half of europe was in Soviet control and the 'de-nazification' process was in full swing, anything which could deter from soviet warcrimes and paint the german army in an even worse light was par for the course in my view.

marcsignal

Morlar wrote: »

I would make the point that they do have a stated agenda (in the case of CODOH it is in their title). Holocaust websites also have a clear agenda in my view and some have been known to be unscrupulous about using faked photographs in advancing that agenda.

I'm about to go into that in some detail soon enough on the Auschwitz Thread, as it happens.

citizen_p

what about this?
its one of my favourite internet finds....the subject matter seems too good to be true


along with the new german super weapon

citizen_p

Morlar wrote: »

I have experience working in a photography darkroom and it is not that difficult to change pictures even in the days before photoshop. You could probably argue that the terminology of photoshop is based largely on darkroom manipulation, layers (composite elements, say a soldier from one photograph and a woman from another etc), dodging and burning (smoke over chimneys). The Soviets were very well known for this and there are famous examples of pictures of Stalin with a party colleague, then after a purge the same picture minus the now executed colleague etc. This is relevant if you consider that postwar half of europe was in Soviet control and the 'de-nazification' process was in full swing, anything which could deter from soviet warcrimes and paint the german army in an even worse light was par for the course in my view.

even on portrait photos the removal of moles or spots or the adding in of a medal the soldier never recieved before his death.

even after 1916 this photo of pearse surrendering has a woman beside him (cant think of her name) edited out. but they left her shoes and legs.

Morlar

Mousey- wrote: »

what about this?
its one of my favourite internet finds....the subject matter seems too good to be true

Not a bad movie that !



These on the other hand are from a photo album from the Western and Eastern front veteran I got last week, these show Wehrmacht and Russian living side by side. In fact throughout the album there are portraits of russian civilians and he seems to have had a fascination with photographing their houses too - so they don't all live up to the propaganda cliches.

Morlar

Here are another couple





The full unedited album is online here if anyone is interested;

http://www.militaria-archive.com/west-ost/index.html

It covers France and Russia and is in the original sequence from the album which means the pictures are in the order of france-Russia-France Russia etc.

Dr_Phil

You may want to check this http://www.bagnowka.com/index.php?m=ww


EDIT: You'd love to talk to my granny. She still lives in Poland, about 9x years of age.. She remembers everything, every single detail of how it all started, when the food prices soared, so that she couldn't afford to buy a piece of bread for my uncle, Wermaht patrols, Jews and shooting - every Tuesday and Friday firing sqads used to kill those caught during the week. Gestapo headquarter in basements of school of music.. I know all those places, I've seen the wall of death with thousands of bullet holes. My granny is like a living history.

I also remember like my grand father (born in 1910-died 98 years old) used to say about two young German soldiers who used to patrol their street. He said "They were good lads. Good people. Not Germans, Russians. They were friends. Putting their own lives on risk always brought us some eggs, cheese, sausages... It was very tough then, I don't know how would we end up without them..."

Morlar

Dr_Phil wrote: »

You may want to check this http://www.bagnowka.com/index.php?m=ww


EDIT: You'd love to talk to my granny. She still lives in Poland, about 9x years of age.. She remembers everything, every single detail of how it all started, when the food prices soared, so that she couldn't afford to buy a piece of bread for my uncle, Wermaht patrols, Jews and shooting - every Tuesday and Friday firing sqads used to kill those caught during the week. Gestapo headquarter in basements of school of music.. I know all those places, I've seen the wall of death with thousands of bullet holes. My granny is like a living history.

I also remember like my grand father (born in 1910-died 98 years old) used to say about two young German soldiers who used to patrol their street. He said "They were good lads. Good people. Not Germans, Russians. They were friends. Putting their own lives on risk always brought us some eggs, cheese, sausages... It was very tough then, I don't know how would we end up without them..."

I am sure your grandparents would have some very interesting stories to tell.

Re the site you posted the mission statement of theirs makes for interesting reading ;

The history of the Jews in Poland and also their Jewish cultural legacy is our specialty.
........

Nowadays it is not enough simply to condemn the institutions of Nazi power alone, we must also reflect more deeply on German identity and on the responsibility of the societies and ordinary, anonymous individuals involved. Confronted by such unimaginable crimes, we cannot excuse them by saying we knew nothing about them, seeking to absolve ourselves by claiming: it had nothing to do with me - it was him; it had nothing to do with us - it was them...

This is another library site ;

http://www.v-like-vintage.net/en/search~result/ww2/

This one is in Russian but also has complete albums

http://reibert.info/gallery/v/foto_album/

citizen_p

thought it was too good to be true.

Dr_Phil

It also proves that Poland used to have multicltural society before the war - there are Jewish as well as Muslim cementaries.. I welcome and support the idea and I look forward for multiculturalism to come back. Roumours that apparently "Poles are anti semitic" is an utter lie. So looking back in the history, there is a light in the tunnel.

Bloody communism, ruined everything. I'd hazard a guess that the Russians were worse than the Germans.

iceage

A quick link for you. I came across some aeriel photographs only to realise that they had recently been declassified, some of the bombing in Normandy prior to the Invasion, other of major landmarks and Prisoncamps.. this hasn't a lot of the ones I found, if I can dig them up I will. The last one shows Gliders on the ground, some with major damage to them.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2009/11/23/vivid-wwii-pictures-from-the-air-bring-war-to-life-91466-25231848/

Actually this will make it easier for you. http://aerial.rcahms.gov.uk/

Just follow your nose by Country.

Dr_Phil

Morlar wrote: »

I am sure your grandparents would have some very interesting stories to tell.

It was actually quite scary, all the details they remembered..

"I remember I was walking down the main street trying to get some vegetables to make a soup for your grand father. I keep walking, I am pushing a buggy with your uncle, and then I saw people running towards me screaming, kids, some little girl collapsed in the crowd but no one cared - chaos.. And then before I got a chance to run off I saw that Jewish boy, maybe 7 or 10 he was, very skinny though, who was punched in the face and kicked by the Wehrmacht soldier. And then I saw that black car and gestapo. The minute I saw them I started to pray for a chance, so that I could go back home safely. I don't know what they did to this little boy, but I think they killed him. He used to haunt me in my dreams for months."

That's just one of them.. I find it very interesting and it's a pity I didn't actually record any of these. Just think how many details they remember for all those years, how they life were affected...

And we complain about the recession and a few quid...

marcsignal

@ gizmo555

I've been looking at different copies of the image we were discussing in post #125, and to be fair to you, many of the copies I've seen, don't seem to have the same contrast issues as the version I posted, that we were analysing. However most of the others i've been looking at do include the mysterious additional rifle barrels on the LHS, which make me a little wary of them.

example link
http://www.warantiques.com/images/710_war_execution_mother_and_child_by_Einsatzgruppe_high_res.jpg

some other pretty graphic pics on this site I found NSFW
you will need to scroll down about 40% for the first of many WW2 related photos.

http://www.russian-victories.ru/

How Stalin is portrayed, and the Anti German language is interesting.
Something tells me this site is not very old.

.

gizmo555

marcsignal wrote: »

However most of the others i've been looking at do include the mysterious additional rifle barrels on the LHS, which make me a little wary of them.

If you look at the versions shown on the CODOH website, the one captioned USHMM adds two rifles, one body is simply a wider image. In other words, the simplest explanation is that rather than these elements being added to that version, they were cropped from other versions.

In all versions, at least part of the body in front of the soldier's right foot is visible and to my untrained eye, they are all at least in this respect consistent with each other.

FiSe

marcsignal wrote: »

@ gizmo555
some other pretty graphic pics on this site I found NSFW
you will need to scroll down about 40% for the first of many WW2 related photos.

http://www.russian-victories.ru/

How Stalin is portrayed, and the Anti German language is interesting.
Something tells me this site is not very old.

.

That webpage. That's scary, I mean really scary. There's something seriously wrong with whoever put it together.
Not surprisingly, no mention of 1956, 1968, Afghanistan, Chechnya... and some of those pictures and their captions are pretty 'good' too. Especially the one showing shoot-up 'German' column and Russian nurse helping wounded German POW... ah well, nothing has changed in Soviet Union, ehh, pardon me, Russia.

Fuinseog

the picture with the russian guy raising the flag over the Reichstag origianlly showed him wearing three watches. it was later airbrushed down to only one.

marcsignal

FiSe wrote: »

That webpage. That's scary, I mean really scary. There's something seriously wrong with whoever put it together.

It's unreal isn't it ? the Language used would be stereotypically funny if it wasn't for real. Some of the post Stalingrad photos are inconceivable, the amount of corpses lying everywhere. It really brings the intensity of that battle to the fore, and it's no surprise, after that defeat, the Wehrmacht morale plummetted. just imagine being trapped in that place for months, knowing you'd most likely end up as one of the corpses piling up around you.

The clean up operation afterwards doesn't even bare thinking about, most likely carried out by captured German soldiers.

If you look closely, there are plenty of 'Half/Limbless Bodies' lying around.... Horrific :eek:

They came to kill us, to enslave our children and wives
These damned godless murderous invaders well deserved
their ghastly fate to remain here as the manure for our fields

.

FiSe

Yes and you can see, what looks like German POW's in the top right corner unloading /?/ the bodies from the truck /?/
Without trying to make WH look better than they were, the question, which has to be asked is, how many of those corpses actually belongs to Germans, Russian civilians or Red Army soldiers. Impossible to tell...

Stinks of Russian Nazism to me. Mixture of Putin, misinterpreted war photographs and Aryan girls with nostalgia for the soviet era, pretty awful.

Funny is that the author repeats the formula 'God is on our side' all the time, forgetting that exactly the same motto was present on every WH belt buckle

marcsignal

Found these on a WW2 archeology forum. They're pics of a pilot recovered from a Hawker Hurricane that crashed in Russia during WW2, he was remarkably well preserved, but, jesus, poor bastard....

marcsignal

This one, on the other hand, I thought was pretty funny



.

Mahatma coat

I thinkmaybe a few Lighter moments after all the images of horror :D

Morlar

I have an SS + Kittens picture somewhere - must put it online when I get the chance In the meantime here is a wehrmacht one 'Yea though I walk . . . . . ' ;

marcsignal

.

bealbocht

some candidates for the LOL-cats, forum in After hours, they wont know what hit them.
One of those kitties has just got to be saying "NEIN NEIN NEIN, We attack at dawn from the south, surrender is not an option, defeatists will be hung like dogs" (kittie on the map)



Otherwise, re the "russian victory" site... didnt Stalin/Commies ban religion ??

Very interesting site, I like the way he equates "no photos of Russian atrocities" as equalling the non-existing of atrocities.

Dont ya just love a bit of propaganda. (still I can see why he might be pissed off with the Nazis)