ILLUSTRATED HISTORY: RELIVE THE TIMES: Rare Unseen Images From WW2: Part 3

Among the lucky ones. German soldiers who were taken prisoner in Russia. They lived to see another day

VIDEO: GERMAN POW IN RUSSIA

Starving pathetic men in Stalingrad. They were once part of the invincible German Army

STALINGRAD. Russian soldiers

Street fighting in Stalingrad

One of the aces of Luftwaffe. KLAUS MIETUSCH

MIETUSCH, THE ACE

Klaus Mietusch (5 August 1918 – 17 September 1944) was a German Luftwaffe ace and recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves during World War II. The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and its higher grade Oak Leaves was awarded to recognise extreme battlefield bravery or successful military leadership. Klaus Mietusch claimed 75 victories in 452 combat missions. Klaus Mietusch was shot down on 17 September 1944 and was posthumously awarded the Oak Leaves to his Knight's Cross on 18 November 1944.
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A Russian woman gives a German POW a drink of water near Kiev

THE DEATH OF A B-17

An American B-17 faces a lot of German flak

Bang! A hit!

The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was a four-engine heavy bomber aircraft developed in the 1930s for the then-United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Competing against Douglas and Martin for a contract to build 200 bombers, the Boeing entry outperformed both competitors and more than met the Air Corps' expectations. Although Boeing lost the contract because the prototype crashed, the Air Corps was so impressed with Boeing's design that they ordered 13 more B-17s for further evaluation. From its introduction in 1938, the B-17 Flying Fortress evolved through numerous design advances.

The B-17 was primarily employed by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in the daylight precision strategic bombing campaign of World War II against German industrial and military targets. The United States Eighth Air Force based at Thorpe Abbotts airfield in England and the Fifteenth Air Force based in Italy complemented the RAF Bomber Command's nighttime area bombing in Operation Pointblank to help secure air superiority over the cities, factories and battlefields of Western Europe in preparation for Operation Overlord. The B-17 also participated to a lesser extent in the War in the Pacific where it conducted raids against Japanese shipping and airfields.

From its pre-war inception, the USAAC (later USAAF) touted the aircraft as a strategic weapon; it was a potent, high-flying, long-range bomber that was able to defend itself, and to return home despite extensive battle damage. It quickly took on mythic proportions, and widely circulated stories and photos of B-17s surviving battle damage increased its iconic status With a service ceiling greater than any of its Allied contemporaries, the B-17 established itself as an effective weapons system, dropping more bombs than any other U.S. aircraft in World War II. Of the 1.5 million metric tons of bombs dropped on Germany by U.S. aircraft, 640,000 tons were dropped from B-17s

VIDEO: B 17, FLYING FORTRESS

German paratroopers before jumping

West of Stalingrad. Kotelnikovo. During World War II, the town served as a base for the German troops of Field Marshall Erich von Manstein during the Battle of Stalingrad. A Red Army counteroffensive liberated the town on December 29, 1942.

An American gun fires

British commandoes

Americans and Russians meet on the Elbe

American women soldiers smartly salute a Russian lady soldier. Berlin 1945

Americans, a Briton and a Frenchman jointly patrol Vienna. 1945

SS men watchful at Narva in Estonia expecting the Russian tide. 1944

VIDEO: BATTLE OF NARVA 1944: GERMAN NEWSREEL

THE END OF BRITISH BATTLESHIP BARHAM.

HMS Barham (pennant number 04) was a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship of the Royal Navy named after Admiral Charles Middleton, 1st Baron Barham, built at the John Brown shipyards in Clydebank, Scotland, and launched in 1914. She was sunk by the German submarine U-331 in 1941

The ship tilts over.....

....and explodes

VIDEO: SINKING AND END OF BATTLESHIP BARHAM

Japanese marines in action during WW2

Japanese fire mortar

Japanese paratroopers

A Japanese anti-aircraft gun in action

WHY THE GERMANS HATED THE RUSSIAN WEATHER. Rains created an awful slush of mud in which the German war machine got stuck. Russia did not have good roads. This was one of the reasons for Germany's defeat in Russia.

Oops!

God!

A Russian road today. Imagine what the German army went through moving through Russia during WW2!

A German paratrooper with a FG-42 machine gun.

WHAT WAS THE FG-42 MACHINE GUN?

The FG 42 (German: Fallschirmjägergewehr 42 or "paratrooper rifle 42") was a selective fire battle rifle produced in Nazi Germany during World War II. The weapon was developed specifically for the use with Fallschirmjäger airborne infantry in 1942 and was used in very limited numbers until the end of the war.

It combined the characteristics and firepower of a light machine gun in a lightweight form no larger than the standard-issue Kar 98k bolt-action rifle. Considered one of the most advanced weapon designs of World War II, the FG 42 influenced post-war small arms development and ultimately helped to shape the modern assault rifle concept.

VIDEO: FG-42

A German soldier with a machine gun. 1941-42

Japanese soldiers with a machine gun

Japanese soldiers have a bite to eat during flight

Japanese await American bombers

A German keeps watch

This man has tonights dinner in mind. Soldier with a boar

Japanese take rest

Russian soldiers fire at desperate German defences. Breslau. March 1945

HISTORY OF BRESLAU

For most of World War II, the fighting did not affect Breslau. In 1941 the remnants of pre-war Polish minority in the city, as well as Polish slave labourers organised resistance group called Olimp. As the war lengthened, refugees from bombed-out German cities, and later refugees from farther east, swelled the population to nearly one million., including 51,000 forced labourers in 1944, and 9876 Allied PoWs, at the end of 1944 an additional 30,000-60,000 Poles were moved into the city after Germans crushed the Warsaw Uprising In February 1945 the Soviet Red Army approached the city. Gauleiter Karl Hanke declared the city a Festung (fortress) to be held at all costs. Hanke finally lifted a ban on the evacuation of women and children when it was almost too late. During his poorly organised evacuation in January 1945, 18,000 people froze to death in icy snowstorms and −20 °C (−4 °F) weather. By the end of the Siege of Breslau, half the city had been destroyed. An estimated 40,000 civilians lay dead in the ruins of homes and factories. After a siege of nearly three months, Hanke surrendered on 6 May 1945, just before the end of the war.