World War II
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End of War Kiss
Glenn Edward McDuffie, a U.S. Navy sailor in World War II and believed to be the man in the famous kiss picture taken by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, died today March 3, 2014. It was decades ago on Aug. 14, 1945 in Times Square when McDuffie and a nurse celebrated the end of the war in an embracing kiss that is an iconic image in American history.
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World War II: Before the War
JUN 19, 2011 | The years leading up to the declaration of war between the Axis and Allied powers in 1939 were tumultuous times for people across the globe. The Great Depression had started a decade before, leaving much of the world unemployed and desperate. Nationalism was sweeping through Germany, and it chafed against the punitive measures of the Versailles Treaty that had ended World War I. China and the Empire of Japan had been at war since Japanese troops invaded Manchuria in 1931. Germany, Italy, and Japan were testing the newly founded League of Nations with multiple invasions and occupations of nearby countries, and felt emboldened when they encountered…
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Hitler Commits Suicide
On this day of April 30th in 1945, holed up in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces, ending Hitler’s dreams of a “1,000-year” Reich. Since at least 1943, it was becoming increasingly clear that Germany would fold under the pressure of the Allied forces. In February of that year, the German 6th Army, lured deep into the Soviet Union, was annihilated at the Battle of Stalingrad, and German hopes for a sustained offensive on both fronts evaporated. Then, in June 1944, the Western Allied armies landed…
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