April 2014 - LIFE

‘The World of Tomorrow’: Scenes From the 1939 New York World’s Fair

November 22, 2019April 29, 2014 by

On April 30, 1939, the colossal New York World’s Fair opened in what is now Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, in the borough of Queens. The 1939 world exposition — or “expo,” for short — was unique in many respects, not least in that it differed in both theme and purpose from the expositions that had come before, in places like Paris, London, Chicago, and St. Louis. Those world’s fairs had, by and large, celebrated technological innovation and advances in science and medicine. The New York World’s Fair, on the other hand, took as its focus nothing less than, in the words of the fair’s official bulletin, presenting visions of “the World of Tomorrow.”

This, the fair told its visitors — more than 40 million of them, by the time the expo ended — this is what we believe the future will look like.

That the future, in many of the exhibits and pavilions at the fair, looked almost wholly urban, rather sterile and vaguely Le Corbusierian might be a little disappointing to some viewers today. But when one considers that the 1939 expo — the second-largest American world’s fair of all time — was conceived, planned and executed in the latter years of the Great Depression and on the cusp of the global cataclysm of World War II, there’s something refreshingly and almost audaciously positive about the overall vibe. The exhibits might not have accurately anticipated or imagined what “Tomorrow” actually ended up looking like. But the fact that thousands brought the fair into being, and tens of millions came to witness the results of their efforts, suggests an optimism about the distant, if not the immediate, future that feels downright enviable today.

— story by Ben Cosgrove

Exterior view of the Administration Building for the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Models of the sculpture ‘Night’ by artist Paul Manship, created for the 1939-1940 World’s Fair.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene in Queens, New York, before the April 30, 1939, grand opening of the World’s Fair.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Administrative buildings designed for the 1939 World’s Fair.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Craftsmen work on a huge diorama prior to the opening of the 1939 Worlds Fair.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Craftsmen work on a huge architectural model of “the city of the future” at the 1939 World’s Fair.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Preparing for the 1939 World’s Fair, New York.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Working on General Motors’ “Futurama” exhibit— the city of the near future— at the 1939 World’s Fair.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Display in the Ford Motor Company pavilion at the 1939 World’s fair.

Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Exhibit featuring raw materials that go into making Ford automobiles, 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Waxworks on display at the 1939 World’s Fair, including Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes (bottom middle) and Adolf Hitler.

Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Exhibit featuring raw materials that go into making Ford automobiles, 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Architectural model created for the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Architectural model created for the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Architectural model for a textile building created for the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Architectural model created for the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Architectural model created for the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Modernist symbols of the 1939 World’s Fair, the Trylon and the Perisphere— collectively called the “Theme Centre” of the expo.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

1939 New York World’s Fair.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE magazine feature on the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Pope John XXIII and Vatican II: The Catholic Church’s Modern Moment

August 11, 2021April 24, 2014 by

As monumental as the election of a new pope has always been and always will be for Catholics around the world, other (very) occasional events in the life of the church often have far more wide-reaching and long-lasting effects. The pontiff is, of course, the supreme figure in the church’s hierarchy —but more than 260 men have held the title over the past two millennium, and only a relative handful of those figures have presided over historic changes in the ways Catholics worship and relate to both their local parishes and congregations and to the Holy See in Rome.

By contrast, for example, the Second Vatican Council (known colloquially as Vatican II) held at St. Peter’s between 1962 and 1965 was more significant in both its message and its spiritual and cultural ramifications than any single act or pronouncement by any pope of the past few centuries. The twenty-first Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church, and only the second ever held at Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican II offered nothing less than an utterly new dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the modern world.

Opened in October 1962, when Pope John XXIII was pontiff, and lasting until December 1965, during the papacy of Pope Paul VI, Vatican II advanced both major and minor reforms to church doctrine and matters of faith, e.g., encouraging Catholics to pray with non-Catholic Christians; a new prominence (and power) for bishops within the church; the sanctioning of languages other than Latin during Mass, and more.

Here, LIFE.com recalls the historic, landmark Vatican II council with photographs by Hank Walker and Paul Schutzer.

Pope John XXIII rode in the procession to St. Peter’s Basilica at the start of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene in Rome during the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Vatican Ecumenical Council and Ecumenical Procession, Rome, 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A table of cardinals during the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, 1962.

Hank Walker The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Prelates attended a party at the Chinese Embassy in Vatican City on the eve of Vatican II, 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cardinals at a party held by the Chinese ambassador, Rome, 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Vatican Ecumenical Council and Ecumenical Procession, Rome, 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene during the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, 1962.

Hank Walker The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pope John XXIII during the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, 1962.

Hank Walker The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene inside St. Peter’s Basilica during the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, 1962.

Hank Walker The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Devout observers of the procession of Catholic prelates entered St. Peter’s during the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, 1962.

Hank Walker The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pope John XXIII rode in a procession to St. Peter’s Basilica at the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Meet the Actress Who Set Out to Kiss 10,000 Soldiers to Boost Morale

March 18, 2024April 21, 2014 by

The line between blatant self-promotion and selfless magnanimity is often hazy, and it takes a delicate sense of balance — or a great gimmick — to neatly straddle the two. Case in point: a young actress, in a rush of wartime patriotic fervor, decides to raise troop morale by a surefire, if unorthodox, method. And if her well-meaning stunt earns her some welcome publicity — well, where’s the harm?

Here’s how LIFE magazine described just such a scenario in an article titled “LIFE Goes to an Army Party,” published in the uncertain days of March 1942:

At an Army encampment near a southern California aircraft factory last month, perky movie starlet Marilyn Hare embarked on one of the most formidable morale-building projects yet contrived for the U.S. Army. A good fighting machine, she knew, thrives on joie de vivre. From her father, the late Ernie Hare of the famed pioneering radio team call the Happiness Boys, 18-year-old Marilyn had learned the art of evoking merriment in others. But in this hour of national crisis, Miss Hare had evolved a unique inspiration program of her won. It was her aspiration to kiss 10,000 soldiers.

Bright and early Feb. 5 squads of soldiers assembled in the balmy California sunshine. Bright and early merry Marilyn arrived for her great undertaking. She mounted a soapbox and as a kind of musical hors d’oeuvre sang “Kiss the Boys Goodbye” to an accordion accompaniment. Then, stepping down, she went to work.

First she passed down the aisle giving each grinning trooper a taste of her pretty lips. Since other soldiers had duties elsewhere in camp, she wandered from barracks to soup kitchens to sentry posts. There was no shortage of Marilyn’s war commodity, nor were there priorities or second rations. She left each soldier well-bussed and bemused. At day’s end her kissometer recorded 733 smacks. The effect on morale was terrific. As they staggered back to their chores, Marilyn’s be-lipsticked beneficiaries mumbled dreamily: “We won’t wash our faces for a month.”

Alas, there’s no record of whether or not Marilyn, who died in 1981, went on to kiss another 9,267 soldiers to reach her lofty, publicly stated goal. For her own part, she did enjoy a brief, modest success in the movies and, many years later, had small parts on hit TV shows like The Wild Wild West and My Three Sons.

Not the enduring fame that, as a young actress, she energetically pursued — but for several hundred grateful American soldiers, she was a star of the first magnitude.

Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Marilyn Hare

John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

High Angle: Helicopter Views Across America

May 4, 2023April 20, 2014 by

In 1952, the notion of a photographer going up in a helicopter to take pictures of landscapes, monuments, buildings and other notable sights from the air was novel enough to warrant a 12-page article in LIFE magazine. That Margaret Bourke-White was the photographer who climbed aboard various “whirlibirds” to make the singular, vertiginous photos, however, would hardly come as a shock to LIFE’s readers back then, or to photojournalism buffs today.

Bourke-White, after all, broke ground again and again throughout her career, and LIFE frequently shared her adventures with its readers.

In 1930, she was the first Western photographer officially allowed into the USSR; she was America’s first accredited woman photographer in WWII, and the very first authorized to fly on combat missions; she was one of the first and certainly the most celebrated of the photographers to document the horrors of Nazi concentration camps after they were liberated in the spring of 1945; she was the last person to interview Mohandas Gandhi before he was assassinated; and on and on.

So, in the spring of 1952, when she traveled around the country, photographing both world-famous and utterly nondescript sites (and sights) in New York, California, Illinois, Indiana and elsewhere, from the vantage point of a helicopter, few who knew anything of her career would have been surprised.

The pictures from the assignment, on the other hand, can still startle and even astonish viewers today, decades after Bourke-White made them. As expressions of one woman’s and one magazine’s endless pursuit of new ways to celebrate America’s breadth, energy and its vast, thrilling scale, the pictures here are unparalleled.

That they were made from a helicopter is just cool.

The Statue of Liberty photographed from a helicopter, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The George Washington Bridge photographed from a helicopter, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Midtown Manhattan (with the entrance to a cross-river tunnel visible at lower left) photographed from a helicopter, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Columbus Circle, New York City, photographed from a helicopter, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Coney Island, New York, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

This near-drowning of a Coney Island bather named Mary Eschner drew a knot of people. The reviving victim , at the center of the circle, was attended by lifeguards.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

New York state, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Back Bay, Virginia, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Trains after snowfall, Chicago, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A grain elevator, operated by the Norris Grain Co. on the southeast side of Chicago, unloaded corn from a lake boat in a Calumet River slip (right foreground). In the freight yards (background) snow-covered gondola cars were loaded with coal.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Chicago River, crossed by the Michigan Avenue bridge.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Pittsburgh Steamship Co. ship carried ore to the US Steel plant. Gary, Indiana,

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A steel plant, Gary, Indiana.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Water skiers and motorboats sped across the water, Long Beach, Calif.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A freight train traveled through the El Cajon Pass outside San Diego, Calif., 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Coronado Hotel and its surroundings, San Diego, Calif.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Golden Gate Bridge, photographed from a helicopter in 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Ocean Beach, San Francisco, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Farm workers harvested onions, Burbank, California, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Beach riders guided their horses along the shore at high tide near Fort Funston, Calif.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Over the Texas star on the San Jacinto Monument near Houston, the helicopter-borne camera looked sharply down the 570-foot shaft to the steps and parking lot below. The tower marked the spot where Sam Houston defeated General Santa Anna in 1836.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White hung from Navy helicopter to photograph rescue work.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE photographer Margaret Bourke-White in a helicopter.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White in a helicopter.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White stands before a helicopter with two unidentified men, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

High Society: Hillary and Tenzing After the First Ascent of Everest

January 20, 2020April 18, 2014 by

It’s been more than 60 years since Edmund Hillary (later Sir Edmund, of course) and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to summit Mount Everest, and all these decades later their feat still resonates as one of the 20th century’s signature moments. Here, LIFE.com looks back at that remarkable time with some rare photos from the celebrations after the climb, as well as page spreads from the cover story that ran in LIFE a few months later chronicling the accomplishment and the bitter controversy that swirled around the entire event.

As LIFE noted in its July 13, 1953, issue, the historic ascent was hardly greeted with unalloyed goodwill and enthusiasm from all corners of the globe. In fact, international politics and racial pride were quickly thrust into the conversation about Hillary’s and Tenzing’s astonishing feat.

“Everest’s Conqueror’s Come Back,” LIFE roared in one headline in that special issue, then immediately blunted the celebratory tone with a caveat: “They bring thrilling stories of a great deed, but little men besmirch their riotous welcome.”

Thus in a sad foreshadowing of the often contentious debate that had dogged so many attempts on Everest throughout the years (Is it worth the risk of life and limb? What does the local community get out of it?) the very first successful climb to the top of the world’s highest peak sparked some often quite ugly jockeying for credit and supremacy. Jockeying, it should be noted, that both Hillary and Tenzing, who were fast friends, readily denounced.

(Also, while LIFE makes more than one mention of “British climbers” in its reporting, Edmund Hillary was in fact a proud, born-and-raised New Zealander. He died in 2008, at the age of 88, in Auckland. Tenzing died two years before Hillary, at age 71, in India.)

“The climbers who conquered Everest,” LIFE wrote, “came down to a world eager to see them, honor them and hear their full story. . . . They came down to such a welcome such surging excitement and hero worship as had never before stirred the steamy lowlands of Nepal.”

The first official welcomers met the mountaineers outside of Banepa [the article continues], 20 miles from Nepal’s capital Katmandu. In the lead was British embassy party, bearing beer and sandwiches; then came the Nepalese to garland the heroes with flowers and sprinkle them with kumkum, a vermilion powder of rejoicing. Devil dancers met that at Bhadgaon, still 15 miles out. The wife of Sir John Hunt, the expedition’s leader, came out to meet him. Tenzing’s wife and their two teenage daughters flew from Darjeeling, India. . . .

To the distress and the half-resentful bewilderment of Colonel Hunt and his British climbers, however, these first wild welcomings carried a clear implication that, in Asia, the real hero of Everest was Tenzing alone. The conquest of Everest, a product of selfless teamwork between Asian and European, was being twisted into an ugly tool of Asian nationalism, inflamed further by the normal British habit of treating the hired Tenzing like a hired man. . . .

Today, as men and women continue to test their own mettle on the peaks of the Himalayas and on the heights of other, equally lethal mountain ranges around the globe, the pictures in this gallery are a reminder that for some people, the risks have always, unquestionably, been worth the rewards.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay after their ascent, 1953.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A welcoming sign in Nepal, like most in Katmandu, singled out Sherpa Tenzing for honor, 1953

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Edmund Hillary, 1953.

James Burke/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Tenzing Norgay, 1953.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John Hunt, 1953.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Nepalese greet Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, 1953.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Heroes rode into a welcoming throng in Temple Square of Bhandgaon in India. Tenzing stood in the leading jeep, while Hunt and Hillary sat in the second.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A celebration for Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, Nepal, 1953.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Devil dancers pranced in celebration in Temple Square.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Tenzing Norgay arrived in India after first ascent of Mt. Everest, 1953.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John Hunt, Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay in India, after the first ascent of Mt. Everest, 1953.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The reception for the 1953 Everest expedition, Nepal.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Edmund Hillary at a reception for the 1953 Everest expedition, India.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John Hunt, Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay at a reception for the 1953 Everest expedition, India.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Life Magazine Cover July 13, 1953.

Life Magazine July 13, 1953.

Life Magazine July 13, 1953

Life Magazine July 13, 1953.

After the Fall: Photos of Hitler’s Bunker and the Ruins of Berlin

January 17, 2020April 15, 2014 by

In the spring of 1945, as Russian and German troops fought savagely, street by street for control of the German capital, it became increasingly clear that the Allies would win the war in Europe. Not long after the two-week battle for Berlin ended, 33-year-old LIFE photographer William Vandivert was on the scene, photographing the city’s devastated landscape and the eerie scene inside the bunker where Adolf Hitler spent the last months of his life; where he and Eva Braun were married; and where, just before war’s end, the two killed themselves on April 30.

Between August 1940 and March 1945 American, Royal Air Force and Soviet bombers launched more than 350 air strikes on Berlin; tens of thousands of civilians were killed, and countless buildings apartment buildings, government offices, military installations were obliterated. Vandivert, LIFE reported, “found almost every famous building [in Berlin] a shambles. In the center of town GIs could walk for blocks and see no living thing, hear nothing but the stillness of death, smell nothing but the stench of death.”

Hundreds of thousands perished in the Battle of Berlin—including untold numbers of civilian men, women and children—while countless more were left homeless amid the ruins. But it was two particular deaths, those of Hitler, 56, and Eva Braun, 33, in that sordid underground bunker on April 30, 1945, that signaled the true, final fall of the Third Reich.

Vandivert was the first Western photographer to gain access to Hitler’s Führerbunker, or “shelter for the leader,” after the fall of Berlin, and a handful of his pictures of the bunker and the ruined city were published in LIFE magazine in July 1945. A few of those images are republished here; most of the pictures in this gallery, however, never appeared in LIFE. Taken together, they illuminate the surreal, disturbing universe Vandivert encountered in the bunker itself, and in the streets of the vanquished city beyond the bunker’s walls.

In his typed notes to his editors in New York, Vandivert described in detail what he saw. For example, of the fourth slide in this gallery, he wrote: “Pix of [correspondents] looking at sofa where Hitler and Eva shot themselves. Note bloodstains on arm of soaf [sic] where Eva bled. She was seated at far end . . . Hitler sat in middle and fell forward, did not bleed on sofa. This is in Hitler’s sitting room.”

Remarkable stuff but, as it turns out, it’s probably only about half right. Most historians are now quite certain that Braun committed suicide by biting into a cyanide capsule, rather than by gunshot—meaning the bloodstains on the couch might well be Hitler’s, after all. On that late April afternoon in 1945, with his “Thousand-Year Reich” already in its death throes, Hitler shot himself in the temple.

Oberwallstrasse, in central Berlin, saw some of the most vicious fighting between German and Soviet troops in the spring of 1945.

William Vandivert/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A new view of a photograph that appeared, heavily cropped, in LIFE, picturing Hitler’s bunker, partially burned by retreating German troops and stripped of valuables by invading Russians.

William Vandivert/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In typed notes that William Vandivert sent to LIFE’s New York offices after getting to Berlin, he described his intense, harried visit to Hitler’s bunker: “These pix were made in the dark with only candle for illumination … Our small party of four beat all rest of mob who came down about forty minutes after we got there.” Above: A 16th century painting reportedly stolen from a Milan museum.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

With only candles to light their way, war correspondents examined a couch stained with blood (see the dark patch on the arm of the sofa) located inside Hitler’s bunker.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Abandoned furniture and debris inside Adolf Hitler’s bunker, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Papers (mostly news reports dated April 29, the day before Hitler and Eva Bruan killed themselves) inside Hitler’s bunker, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Russian soldier stood in Adolf Hitler’s bunker, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A desk inside Adolf Hitler’s bunker, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An SS officer’s cap, with the infamous death’s-head skull emblem barely visible.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A ruined, empty and likely looted safe inside Hitler’s bunker.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE correspondent Percy Knauth, left, sifted through debris in the shallow trench in the garden of the Reich Chancellery where, Knauth was told, the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were burned after their suicides.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In the garden of the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A bullet-riddled sentry pillbox outside Hitler’s bunker, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An unidentified hand on the destroyed hinge of the door to Hitler’s bunker, burned off by advancing Russian combat engineers, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Empty gasoline cans, reportedly used by SS troops to burn the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun after their suicides in the bunker, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Russian soldiers and a civilian struggled to move a large bronze Nazi Party eagle that once loomed over a doorway of the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An American soldier, PFC Douglas Page, offered a mocking Nazi salute inside the bombed-out ruins of the Berliner Sportspalast, or Sport Palace. The venue, destroyed during an Allied bombing raid in January 1944, was where the Third Reich often held political rallies.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At the Reichstag, evidence of a practice common throughout the centuries: soldiers scrawling graffiti to honor fallen comrades, insult the vanquished or simply announce, I was here. I survived. Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A crushed globe and a bust of Hitler amid rubble outside the ruined Reich Chancellery.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

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