Russian Prisoners of War Liberated By Advancing U.S. Troops
Date:
ca. 1945
Description:
Information on back of photo reads: "Liberated Russians cluster around a Ninth U.S. Army soldier, carried high on their shoulders, for cigarettes, which they had not seen in many months. When the American finally convinced the Russians that he had no more, they "chaired" him and carried him around the yard before their former prison, the Nazi Stalag 326, south of Bielefeld. The first U.S. troops reached Stalag 326 April 2, 1945. Nine thousand Russian prisoners of war were liberated but thousands were at the point of starvation. Tubercular patients numbered 1,350. in vast mounds all around the camp, 30,000 Russians, most of them starved to death, were buried in heaps of 500. Major Gregory Matviev, who was captured in Sebastopol in 1942, reported that hundreds died daily of starvation and "about 50 were shot every other day for no reason at all.""
Allied Officers Attend Show Given By Freed Russians, Lippstadt, Germany
Date:
ca. 1945
Description:
Information on back of photo reads: "Colonel H.A. Forlong (left) of Pontiac, Michigan, Surgeon of the 18th Corps, Ninth U.S. Army, sits beside a Russian Army officer at a stage show given in Lippstadt, Germany, May 20, 1945, by liberated Russian soldiers and former slave workers. Lippstadt is 70 miles northwest of the Rhine River city of Duisburg.
Information on back of photo reads: "Private Thomas H. Olsen of Chicago, Illinois, checks over the baggage brought by one of the German Army women to the prisoner-of-war enclosure of the 83rd Infantry Division, Ninth U.S. Army. The women surrendered after receiving leaflets. Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force reported May 1, 1945, that nearly three million German prisoners had been taken by the Allies in the West since "D-Day" (June 6, 1945)."
Information on back of photo reads: "German civilians sit with their children outside of a house in a Reich town captured by troops of the Ninth U.S. Army advancing to the Rhine River. The civilians have been lined up for questioning by an American officer. Units of the Ninth Army reached the Rhine March 2, 1945, when they captured Neuss opposite the industrial center of Dusseldorf."
Battered Bamberg Cleared of Enemy, Bamberg, Germany
Date:
1945/04/14
Description:
Information on back of photo reads: "Civilians move about on a street in a shell-torn Bamberg, Germany, after occupation of the city by troops of the Seventh U.S. Army April 14, 1945. Enemy forces withdrew from the medieval city, 30 miles northwest of Nurenberg, after a short fight. The retreating Nazis blew up the bridge across the Main and Renitz Rivers, leaving Bamberg an island."
A large port and industrial center that includied u-boat pens and oil refineries was bombed throughout the war. An air attack in July 1942 created one of the largest firestorms of WW II, killing 42,600 civilians, wounding 37,000 and practically destroying the city.
The photograph was most likely taken in Holland, which had been under Nazi control for several years until portions of the country was liberated by the Allies in the Fall of 1944 during Operation Market Garden.
Information on back of photo reads: "Debris litters the interior of a ruined church in Germany, one of the many buildings destroyed during the bitter fighting which marked the Allied thrust into the Reich."
