• Features
  • Books
  • Teaching
  • Digital & Film
  • Blog
  • IHS
  • Texas
  • Spotlight
  • About

The past is never dead. It's not even past

Not Even Past

Looking at World War II

by Joan Neuberger

Looking at World War II on Wikimedia Commons

As more and more archives and news agencies digitalize their collections, a rich store of historical photographs is available to anyone with a computer. World War II was documented by photographers around the world and many of their photographs are now posted on Wikipedia’s website for images in the public domain (free for anyone to view and copy), Wikimedia Commons.

Berlin, Reichstagssitzung, Rede Adolf Hitler

In 2008, the German Federal Archives made a large collection of WWII photos, 100,000 images, available on Wikimedia. These include battle and home front photos from all over the Europe. Here we see Hitler delivering a speech at the Kroll Opera House to the men of the Reichstag on the subject of Roosevelt and the war in the Pacific, declaring war on the United States. Below, Nazi police in Poland check a Jewish woman’s documents.

Following the example of the German Federal Archives, the Russian Information Agency, Novosti, began uploading photographs to Wikimedia for pubic domain access this year (2011). The first collection focused on photos from World War II.  Here we see women fleeing from a bombed building during the Siege of Leningrad and below, a partisan instructing men on using weapons.

Even after looking at hundreds, if not thousands, of historical photos, I am still often struck by the immediacy of the past that photographs offer. This uncanny ability, to bring the past closer and give more nuanced understanding, make these collections invaluable tools for studying history.

 More on Wednesday: private publications of photos from the experience of World War II in France and the U.S.

Photo Credits:
Photographer unknown, Deutsches Bundesarchiv
Wirthgen, May 1941, Deutsches Bundesarchiv
Boris Kudoyarov, December 1942, RIA Novosti
Petrusov, August 1941, RIA Novosti
all public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Posted September 26, 2011 More 1900s, Blog, Europe, Film/Media

Recent Posts

  • IHS Workshop: “Whose Decolonization? The Collection of Andean Ancestors and the Silences of American History” by Christopher Heaney, Pennsylvania State University
  • Converting “Latinos” during Salem’s Witch Trials: A Review of Cotton Mather’s Spanish Lessons: A Story of Language, Race, and Belonging in the Early Americas (2022) by Kirsten Silva Gruesz
  • Breaking ChatGPT: Good Teaching Still Beats the Best AI
  • Remembering Rio Speedway
  • Fear Not the Bot: ChatGPT as Just One More Screwdriver in the Tool Kit
NOT EVEN PAST is produced by

The Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

We are supported by the College of Liberal Arts
And our Readers

Donate
Contact

All content © 2010-present NOT EVEN PAST and the authors, unless otherwise noted

Sign up to receive our MONTHLY NEWSLETTER

  • Features
  • Books
  • Teaching
  • Digital & Film
  • Blog
  • IHS
  • Texas
  • Spotlight
  • About