War photos WW II

[Joao]

I found this huge series of soviet war photos from the WWII, from different photographers. Some great images there IMO, not all of them fit in the "propaganda photos" category.
http://2photo.ru/en/post/26283
My apologies if this link has been previously posted.
Different series in the same website are also worth looking at
Regards
Joao

 

[Mr_Flibble]

Great find, thanks for sharing. I've seen a lot of Battle of the Bulge "never seen before" photos appear on news sites today too.

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

wow...makes me want to buy a fed-2.....can i ask what film was likely to be used in russia ? and what iso ?

 

[Highway 61]

IMO, not all of them fit in the "propaganda photos" category.

Really ? You should look at #22 more closely then : clearly one of the photostitches the Soviets got used to.

😉

#79 was shot by the German photographer Richard PETER.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Peter

 

[maddoc]

Really ? You should look at #22 more closely then : clearly one of the photostitches the Soviets got used to.

😉

#79 was shot by the German photographer Richard PETER.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Peter

#79 looks apocalyptic ... Dresden must have looked like this.

EDIT: I just followed the link and realized that it was Dresden indeed.

 

[Mr_Flibble]

Raytoei,

Tasma (or Tacma in Cyrillic) was the main manufacturer of film for Soviet Military as I recall. http://www.tasma.ru/en/about/history/

 

[bigeye]

The 'photographer' on the tank needs to pull the lens out on the Leica...

I do like the Harley mortar rig, though.

.

 

[Joao]

Really ? You should look at #22 more closely then : clearly one of the photostitches the Soviets got used to.

😉

#79 was shot by the German photographer Richard PETER.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Peter

Thanks for clarifying the authorship of post 79.
Concerning the "propaganda" use of those pictures, I just intended to say that some of them do not look like being intended for that purpose. But I may be wrong...
Regards
Joao

 

[Mr_Flibble]

bigeye: 35mm lens? Would explain the 'imarect' style finder 😉

 

[Out to Lunch]

Thanks for sharing the link which, indeed also includes many other interesting series. Richard Peter's "Dresden, Ein Kamera klagt an" is available (2nd hand), on amazon.com.

 

[bigeye]

bigeye: 35mm lens? Would explain the 'imarect' style finder 😉

Ah, yes.

Re: propaganda. These are real war shots, but are ideal, probably by Red Army photographers, so by nature "propaganda". By omission you can also make the claim that they are propaganda. That front was a perfect hell.

Just before the war, fearing the military he created, Stalin killed off nearly the entire officer corps of the Red Army. They had little institutional knowledge or leadership when the war came, so the rank-and-file paid dearly, losing ~9 million soldiers in the field. The opening scene in "Enemy at the Gates" probably represents the tactics as well as has been done. Just imagine 100 divisions all doing same.

I met a man who had been a machine gunner on the eastern front. He said they had 2 problems: they couldn't keep the field of fire clear because the bodies piled so high, and they never had enough barrels or ammunition.

It must have been an incomprehensible horror.

 

[Mr_Flibble]

Yes, absolute horror.

Regarding Enemy at the Gates: by the time of the Battle of Stalingrad, most men in the Red Army would've been armed, none of this every-1-in-2-gets-a-rifle malarkey. There still were massed infantry charges against machine guns though.
I can recommend watching "Fortress Brest" with regards to the chaos in the opening days of the war.

 

[Sparrow]

Whether they are propaganda or not one must always remember that the Russian army and people broke the back of the German military and those photographs simply record that victory from the viewpoint of the victor

 

[Highway 61]

My point about #22 was that it seems to be the very same kind of photostitch than the one displaying Soviet soldiers with a red flag over the Reichstag in Berlin. This photo :

http://www.famouspictures.org/mag/index.php?title=Flag_on_the_Reichstag

Image #22 looks like it has been "hand made" the very same way, so this is clearly a propaganda image for me.

Nice and interesting series anyway, thanks for sharing.

 

[bigeye]

Whether they are propaganda or not one must always remember that the Russian army and people broke the back of the German military and those photographs simply record that victory from the viewpoint of the victor

No question about it.

The western front was far smaller. It's about the awful way the Soviets accomplished it...

 

[Sparrow]

No question about it.

The western front was far smaller. It's about the awful way the Soviets accomplished it...

No it is not, it's about a record made by, what must have been, some very brave photographers of ordinary soldiers and civilians reacting to aggression ... Uncle Joe was undoubtedly an evil man but his countrymen I would imagine were the same as the rest of humanity and deserve some credit for their sacrifices

 

[bigeye]

I don't think anyone can argue about the courage of those people to die for their country, or the willingness of their leadership to have them do so.

.

 

[eleskin]

I have Russian blood and I am touched!

I have Russian blood and I am touched!

My grandparents came from Russia. I always had a soft spot for the Russian people, even when they were demonized in America during the cold war where i live. I have been to Russia twice, once in 1986 during Soviet times and again in 2006 to photograph their first presidential election after the fall of the Soviet Union. What a great, strong and wonderful people they are, and how much they sacrificed for the world. Even today, i cannot understand why the USA has to encircle them with anti-missile defense systems and lie about it saying it is because if a threat from Iran. I believe the russian people, after what they went through in WW2 are the least likely people to want war. The USA's last memory of whole cities being bombed out with massive death on its soil was the Civil War. Iraq, Afghanistan, Lybia, and maybe Iran next seem to prove the United States needs to step back an look at photos like these and think about what they like to start!

 

[Sparrow]

I don't think anyone can argue about the courage of those people to die for their country, or the willingness of their leadership to have them do so.

.

I'm sorry but I don't think the photographs linked by the OP have anything at all to do with the Russian "leadership" and it is disingenuous to conflate the two.

 

[mooge]

cool link; that site has some other good stuff too, like this for example.