Pictures of War

WWII propaganda re-imagined for the 21st century.

(The Guardian)

unhistorical:

February 19, 1942: Franklin D. Roosevelt issues Executive Order 9066. 

The order provided for the designation of military areas (to be decided by the Secretary of War and commanders of the U.S. armed forces) from which “any or all persons” could be relocated. No specific ethnic groups or sections of the nation were singled out in the text of the order, but it stated that these new powers would serve as “protection against espionage and against sabotage”. In practice, it resulted in the internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans, nearly two-thirds of whom were American-born citizens; smaller numbers of German- and Italian-Americans were interned as well, but no ethnic group was targeted by the government to the extent that the Japanese were. 

Virtually every Japanese-American living on the West Coast was interned, while a small fraction of those living in Hawaii - just over a thousand - suffered the same fate. The justification for the executive order was practical; it was believed that many Japanese, Issei and Sansei alike, could not possibly remain loyal to the United States if it went to war with Japan. It was outwardly practical (the Ni’ihau Incident seemed to prove American suspicions), and it was deeply rooted in racial prejudice. Many white farmers were glad to see their Japanese competition uprooted and displaced; several newspapers printed opinion pieces that supported wholeheartedly the internment based on their own personal feelings toward the Japanese; the American public (including even Theodore Geisel/Dr. Seuss) generally supported the move; and the Supreme Court, the ultimate defender and interpreter of the U.S. Constitution, upheld the constitutionality of the executive order in Korematsu v. U.S. (also see: Hirabayashi v. U.S.).  Camps were run by the Wartime Civil Control Administration and the War Relocation Authority; the largest of these by population were Tule Lake and Poston, but the most well-known today is Manzanar.

Some Japanese-Americans escaped internment by volunteering to serve in the U.S. Army, and many of them served in the famous 442nd Infantry Regiment, a unit that fought in Europe after 1944. Ironically, while many of its members’ families remained interned at home based on widespread racism and suspicions of disloyalty, this all-Japanese unit eventually became the most decorated infantry regiment in the history of the U.S. Army: twenty-one of its members were awarded the Medal of Honor. 

Executive Order 9066 was eventually rescinded in 1976, and surviving Japanese internees received payments and apologies from the U.S. government in the 1990s. But money paid four decades later could not compensate for the time lost in the camps; the businesses, homes, farms, and other property sold last-minute at ridiculously low prices by their owners or vandalized and destroyed in their absence; and the humiliation and disillusionment at having been denounced by their own countrymen and rounded up by their own government. 

Images compiled by The Atlantic

unhistorical:

January 27, 1945: Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz concentration camp.

The Auschwitz concentration camp network, which included Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Auschwitz III-Monowitz, and dozens of smaller satellite camps, collectively made up the largest concentration camp run by the Third Reich over the course of the war. The first prisoners arrived at Auschwitz in May of 1940; by 1945 millions of people had passed through - and died - in Auschwitz, with Rudolf Höss estimating a total death toll at 3,000,000 Jews, plus hundreds of thousands of Poles, Roma, prisoners of war, and any other social and political “undesirables”. Because the Nazis destroyed records and many of the camp facilities in an attempt to mask the extent of their crimes as Red Army forces approached, exact numbers are difficult to ascertain, but the generally accepted death toll is around 1.3 million people, who died from gassing, sickness, and starvation.

The original camp, Auschwitz, served a variety of purposes: a prison to hold enemies of the Third Reich/General Government; a steady source of enslaved laborers; a relatively small-scale extermination camp. Medical (in the loosest sense of the word) experimentation was also performed on prisoners at Auschwitz I, including those conducted by the notorious “Angel of Death”, Josef Mengele. Construction began on Auschwitz-Birkenau in late 1941 in preparation for the implementation of the “Final Solution”. Although it was referred to as a prisoner-of-war camp, there was no hiding what purpose this second camp would serve, thanks to the gas chambers and crematoria that made up the tools of Auschwitz-Birkenau’s murder machine. There was even a separate “Gypsy camp” where thousands of Roma and Sinti prisoners were sent to be exterminated. 

When liberation by oncoming Soviet forces became imminent (which it seemed by late 1944), orders were sent out to blow up the camp’s facilities, along with orders to exterminate the remainder of its prisoners. The latter orders were never carried out, but evacuations (i.e. death marches) to other camps did take place. Sadly, the only prisoners the 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army managed to free by the time they arrived on January 27, 1945, were those too sick to walk with the rest. They numbered around 7,500, compared to the 50,000 plus who had been forced on the march. One Russian officer describes the scene of the liberation:

They [the prisoners] began rushing towards us, in a big crowd. They were weeping, embracing us and kissing us. I felt a grievance on behalf of mankind that these fascists had made such a mockery of us. It roused me and all the soldiers to go and quickly destroy them and send them to hell.

A child survivor, only ten years old at the time, describes his own experience:

We ran up to them and they gave us hugs, cookies, and chocolate. Being so alone a hug meant more than anybody could imagine because that replaced the human worth that we were starving for. We were not only starved for food but we were starved for human kindness. And the Soviet Army did provide some of that.

In 1947, Rudolf Höss was hanged near Crematorium I of the original Auschwitz camp.