Portal:World War II/Selected picture

The battleship USS Pennsylvania leads USS Colorado, USS Louisville, USS Portland, and USS Columbia into Lingayen Gulf before the landing on Luzon, Philippines in January 1945. Battleships and other big gun naval vessels that served in the Pacific Theatre during World War II were used primarily for offshore bombardment of enemy positions and as anti-aircraft screens for aircraft carriers.

Infantrymen of the 255th Infantry Regiment move down a street in Waldenburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, searching for a fugitive after a recent raid by the 63rd Infantry Division in 1945.

The Battle of Normandy (D-Day) is one of the best-known battles of World War II. The invasion force included 4000 landing craft, 130 warships for bombardment and 12,000 aircraft to support the landings. In order to persuade the Germans that the invasion would really be coming to the Pas de Calais, the Allies prepared a massive deception plan, called Operation Fortitude. An entirely fictitious First U.S. Army Group was created, with fake buildings and equipment, and false radio messages were sent.

The crew of the sinking Zuikaku salute as the flag is lowered on 25 October 1944.

General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower gives the order of the day, "Full victory – nothing else", to paratroopers of the 502nd Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, at RAF North Witham in England, just before they board their airplanes to participate in the first assault of the D-Day invasion. Eisenhower's success in planning and executing the battle led him to be seen as a hero by the American public.

A Supermarine Spitfire Mark XVI. The Spitfire was an iconic British single-seat fighter used by the RAF and many Allied countries in the Second World War. The Spitfire saw service during the whole of WWII in all theatres of war, and in many different variants. It is often credited with winning the Battle of Britain.

Jews captured by SS and SD troops during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising are forced to leave their shelter and march to the Umschlagplatz for deportation. The SD trooper pictured second from the right, is Josef Blösche, who was identified by Polish authorities using this photograph. Blösche was tried for war crimes in Erfurt, East Germany in 1969, sentenced to death and executed in July of that year.

The mushroom cloud caused by the detonation of the "Fat Man" bomb during the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan in 1945, rising approximately 18 kilometres (11 mi) above the hypocenter.

Benito Mussolini of Fascist Italy (left) and Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany, two of the Axis leaders of World War II, before one of the Honor Temples of Königsplatz, Munich, sending off their armies to North Africa and into Egypt against the British.

General Douglas MacArthur signs the Japanese Instrument of Surrender as Supreme Allied Commander during formal ceremonies on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Behind General MacArthur are Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright and Lieutenant General A.E. Percival.

Female internees practicing calisthenics at Manzanar War Relocation Center, California. In 1943, Ansel Adams was invited to photograph the everyday life of the Japanese American internees in the camp. Adams' intent was to "show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, (…) had overcome the sense of defeat and despair by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment."

A crying Sudeten woman salutes Adolf Hitler as German forces sweep into Czechoslovakia, October 1938. Originally published in the Völkischer Beobachter, it supposedly showed the intense emotions of joy which swept the populace as Hitler drove through the streets of Cheb, 99% of whose inhabitants were ardently pro-Nazi Sudeten Germans at the time. In contrast, when the photo was published in the U.S., it was captioned, "The tragedy of this Sudeten woman, unable to conceal her misery as she dutifully salutes the triumphant Hitler, is the tragedy of the silent millions who have been 'won over' to Hitlerism by the 'everlasting use' of ruthless force." It is unknown what the true circumstances surrounding the photo are.

Senior American military officials of World War II. Seated are (from left to right) Gens. William H. Simpson, George S. Patton, Carl A. Spaatz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Courtney H. Hodges, and Leonard T. Gerow; standing are (from left to right) Gens. Ralph F. Stearley, Hoyt Vandenberg, Walter Bedell Smith, Otto P. Weyland, and Richard E. Nugent.

Landing ships putting ashore on Omaha Beach at low tide during the first days of the Battle of Normandy, mid-June, 1944. Barrage balloons fly overhead and U.S. Army "half-tracks" form a convoy on the beach. The Normandy landing was the largest seaborne invasion in history, with almost three million troops crossing the English Channel.

Crash landing of an F6F Hellcat into the port side 20mm gun gallery of the USS Enterprise, November 10, 1943. Lieutenant Walter L. Chewning, Jr., USNR, the Catapult Officer, is climbing up the plane's side to assist the pilot from the burning aircraft. The pilot, Ensign Byron M. Johnson, escaped without significant injury. Note the plane's ruptured belly fuel tank.

The forward magazine of the destroyer USS Shaw explodes as a result of combat damage during the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. At right, the bow of USS Nevada can be seen after her aborted escape attempt out channel. Many people mistakenly believe the ship shown exploding is USS Arizona, whose destruction during the attack accounted for over half of the men killed in action.

U.S. Army soldiers during the Bougainville campaign (in the Solomon Islands) during World War II. Japanese forces tried infiltrating the U.S. lines at night; at dawn, the U.S. soldiers would clear them out. In this picture, infantrymen are advancing in the cover of an M4 Sherman tank.

This Chinese child soldier, age 10, with heavy pack, is a member of an army division returning to China following the capture of Myitkyina airfield, Burma, under the allied command of US Major General Frank Merrill in May 1944. Chinese and allied troops had earlier crossed through the treacherous jungle of the Kumon Bum Mountains before attacking Japanese troops to the south. A number of international conventions have since come into effect that try to limit the participation of children in armed conflicts. However, according to Human Rights Watch, as many as 300,000 children remain direct participants in war in over twenty countries around the world today.

The smouldering body of a boy killed by a V-2 rocket attack on the main intersection in Antwerp, Belgium, November 27, 1944, on the main Allied supply line to Holland. The V-2, one of the German Vergeltungswaffen, was the first ballistic missile and first man-made object to achieve sub-orbital spaceflight. Over 3,000 V-2s were launched as military rockets by the Wehrmacht against Allied targets in World War II.

Slave laborers at Buchenwald, one of the Nazi concentration camps, at the camp's liberation in April 1945 by the United States Army's 80th Division. Some 250,000 people were incarcerated in Buchenwald. Although it technically was not an extermination camp, one estimate places the number of deaths in there at 56,000. Author and future Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel is on the second row from the bottom, seventh from the left.

A 1942 aircraft worker at the Vega Aircraft Corporation in Burbank, California. Women on the United States home front during World War II took on many manufacturing jobs in factories, producing munitions and materiel for the battlefront. This photo was one of a series intended to chronicle many aspects of war mobilization, including factories, railroads, aviation training and women employees.

The American aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill burns after sustaining two successive kamikaze strikes within thirty seconds during the Battle of Okinawa on May 11, 1945. Nearly 350 died, making this the deadliest kamikaze attack on a US ship during World War II. Although badly damaged, the carrier was able to return to Puget Sound Navy Yard under her own steam.

Prisoners interned by the Nazis in Ebensee concentration camp, a subcamp of Mauthausen-Gusen in Ebensee, Austria, are liberated by the United States Army. The prisoners are malnourished, incredibly pale and show signs of abuse and mistreatment. The camp was reputedly used for medical experiments by Aribert Heim, known as "Doctor Death".

Rosie the Riveter was a name applied to thousands of women who replaced men in the factories on the United States home front during World War II. Here, a metal lathe operator machines parts for transport planes at the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation plant, Fort Worth, Texas.

The aircraft carrier USS Franklin is afire and listing by 13° after being hit by a Japanese air attack on March 19, 1945, during World War II. The crew is clearly seen on the flaming deck, watched by the crew of the light cruiser USS Santa Fe (from where this was taken), which was alongside assisting with firefighting and rescue work. The casualties totaled 724 killed and 265 wounded.

During World War II, and especially in 1943, Hamburg, Germany was severely damaged by aerial bombardment, with some 55,000 people killed.

After being forced to leave the Philippines after the Japanese victory in 1942, General Douglas MacArthur vowed, "I shall return." 31 months later, he waded ashore at Palo Beach at the outset of the Battle of Leyte, fulfilling his pledge as the United States retook the island.

J. Howard Miller's famous poster for Westinghouse, entitled We Can Do It!, is iconically associated with Rosie the Riveter, a cultural icon of the United States. Rosie represented the six million women who worked in the manufacturing plants on the home front which produced munitions and material during World War II while the men (who traditionally performed this work) were fighting in the Pacific and European Theaters. This "character" is now considered a feminist icon in the U.S., and a herald of women's economic power to come.

Benito Mussolini of Fascist Italy (left) and Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany, two of the Axis leaders of World War II.

Polish cavalry in Sochaczew in 1939 during the Battle of the Bzura.

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima is a historic photograph taken on February 23, 1945, by Joe Rosenthal. It depicts five United States Marines and a U.S. Navy corpsman raising the flag of the United States atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.Bill Genaust, who was standing almost shoulder-to-shoulder with Rosenthal about thirty yards from the flag raising, was shooting motion-picture film during the flag-raising. His film captures the flag raising at an almost-identical angle to Rosenthal's famous shot.

A real-life Rosie the Riveter working on the A-31 Vengeance bomber in Nashville, Tennessee.