From Europe and the US, all the way to parts of Africa and Asia, there were few areas of the globe that were left untouched by the Second World War. Whether helping at home or serving on the other side of the planet, civilians and servicemen and women alike were forced to adapt to a new way of life.
These colour images capture the courage and sacrifice of a generation and preserve the extraordinary events that shaped our history...
Shortly before Germany and then the Soviet Union invaded Poland in September 1939, the Polish military carried out a demonstration of their power. This stirring photo of Poland's cavalry, along with photos of its infantry and tanks, appeared in the Illustrated London News (ILN) on 26 August 1939. "Poland's impressive horse cavalry are seen here, probably the best in Europe and equipped with sword, lance and machine guns", the ILN noted. "One can't help feeling the sword and lance are going to have limited effect against a Panzer tank." The writer was correct and despite a brave fight, Poland fell in less than a month and was partitioned by Germany and the Soviet Union.
This image shows two airmen in a makeshift shelter, guarding a Royal Canadian Air Force training centre in Canada in around 1940. Thanks to The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, more than 130,000 crewmen and women from the Commonwealth – including Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand – were trained in Canada during the war.
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Between October 1940 and June 1941, the Germans dropped almost 28,000 bombs on Greater London in what became known as The Blitz. In the first three weeks of September 1940 alone, bomb disposable teams handled around 2,000 bombs. Scenes such as this one of British Army soldiers attempting to dig an unexploded bomb from sand became almost commonplace.
On 13 September 1940, Buckingham Palace and its grounds were hit by five bombs dropped from a single German plane. King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth were at home and were photographed inspecting the damage the following day. Following the bombing, the then-Queen famously said: "I am glad we have been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.” Despite being advised to flee the country, the royal family remained in Britain. “The children will not leave unless I do," the Queen Mother declared. “I shall not leave unless their father does, and the King will not leave the country in any circumstances whatever.“
This image shows the lighter side of life during The Blitz, with a woman pouring drinks in an underground shelter in Islington, London. As many as 180,000 people took cover inside the tunnels of the London Underground system. Despite this, around 40,000 civilians were killed and as many as two million homes were damaged or destroyed during the bombing campaign. Hitler's bombing of the UK and the rest of Western Europe ended in June 1941, when he needed his planes to assist with Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union.
This photo of Anne Frank is thought to have been taken in 1941, during a time in which Jewish rights were increasingly restricted after Germany's invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940. Anne and her family went into hiding in June 1942, where Anne wrote her now-famous diary until her last entry on 1 August 1944. The family were discovered and arrested three days later. They were transported first to Auschwitz, where Anne's mother died. Then Anne and her sister were sent to Bergen-Belsen, where Anne died one day after her sister, aged just 15. Only Anne's father, Otto, survived the war.
This image shows a small boat rescuing a seaman from the USS West Virginia, after it was attacked by Japanese naval and air forces at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The dreadnought battleship caught fire after the USS Arizona exploded close by and it can be seen burning in the background. More than 2,400 people died in the attack, including civilians, while eight battleships and more than 300 planes were lost. The following day, America declared war on Japan. The USS West Virginia was repaired and took part in battles including Iwo Jima and Okinawa, before she was eventually decommissioned in 1947.
American Naval officers are pictured here paying tribute to the heroes lost at Pearl Harbour. Many of the victims of the Pearl Harbour attack died when their ships sank, unable to escape. The Navy spent three years recovering and identifying the lost servicemen. However, many were left nameless until a project was launched in 2015, using modern DNA analysis to identify remains. Most recently, Herman Schmidt – a 28-year-old gunner's mate – was identified and finally laid to rest in 2023, more than 80 years after his death.
Formerly a luxury French cruise liner, SS Normandie was the largest ocean liner in the world when it was seized by the US government in New York in December 1941 and renamed the USS Lafayette. The plan was to turn it into a troop transport ship. However, on 9 February 1942, the ship caught fire during renovation works at New York's Pier 88 and the blaze took five hours to put out. The damage caused her to list and roll over, sticking in the mud of the Hudson River. One person died in the disaster, with 285 suffering injuries. The Normandie was eventually broken up for scrap.
As men all over the world were called up to fight, women stepped into new roles. Here we see two women preparing a North American B-25 Mitchell bomber for painting. The B-25 was flown by the Dutch, British, Chinese, Russians and Australians, as well as Americans, during the Second World War. It was most famously used in the April 1942 Tokyo Raid.
Originally set up in 1917 to boost food production in the UK during the First World War, the Women's Land Army (WLA) was reformed in June 1939. At its peak in 1944, more than 80,000 women were working on Britain's farms. In the photo on the left, WLA members (often nicknamed 'land girls') Mrs. Gosden, Peggy Rose and Ivy Baldwin move hay by horse and cart on a farm in Tooting, South London. On the right, Joan Coleman, formerly a city typist, forks mangold wurzels – a type root vegetable often grown for animals.
Even for the most well-travelled pilot, to fly a Lockheed Hudson RAF reconnaissance bomber over the Pyramids at Giza in 1942 must have been extraordinary. While Egypt was largely neutral during the war, it served as a base for British military operations. Italy invaded the country in September 1940 and Egypt eventually declared war on Germany and Japan in February 1945.
Despite Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union having signed the German-Soviet Pact in 1939, which promised that the two countries would not attack each other for 10 years, Germany shattered the relationship in June 1941 when it invaded Soviet-held territories. Germany was on the verge of taking Stalingrad (known as Volgograd today), when the Soviet army launched a massive counteroffensive and – after two months of fighting – the German soldiers surrendered. Military historians estimate that 1,100,000 Russian soldiers were killed, wounded or captured at Stalingrad, and around 40,000 civilians died. The city was left in ruins, as we can see from this photo of women hanging out washing amid the devastation.
This photo gives us a rare glimpse into Adolf Hitler's private life. In it, his long-time mistress Eva Braun appears to be commanding his dog, Blondi, at the Berghof, Hitler's residence near Berchtesgaden, Germany. She would eventually become his wife, in a secret ceremony performed in a bunker beneath Berlin, just one day before they ended their lives following the Soviet army's invasion of the city.
At the outbreak of the war, experienced pilot and engineer, Pauline Gower (right), established the women's branch of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA). Starting out as a team of eight, the female ATA pilots flew planes between factories, repair shops and battle zones across Britain. Gower successfully lobbied for female pilots to get equal pay and was awarded an MBE in 1942. She's pictured here in the cockpit of an Airspeed Oxford trainer with ATA pilot Lettice Curtis.
As with so many jobs previously filled by men, women across the world took jobs in munitions factories to help the war effort. This image shows Fee Perez inspecting .30 calibre rifle and machine gun bullets at the Remington Arms Company's Bridgeport plant. Taped to her workstation is a photo of her husband, Melburn, who was serving overseas.
These are some of the earliest colour photographs from around the world
Three Curtiss Kittyhawk Mark IIIs of the RAF's No 112 Squadron line up on the runway, preparing to depart from Medenine, Tunisia on a sortie. The pilots of the near two planes are waiting for the section leader in the farthest aircraft to move out. The Squadron became known as the 'Shark Squadron' due to the distinctive 'shark mouth' insignia they painted on their aircraft.
The British Army's Gold Coast Regiment began life in 1901 and was expanded at the outbreak of the Second World War. Pictured here socialising in Accra, Ghana (formerly the British Gold Coast colony), soldiers of the Gold Coast regiment fought in Burma (now Myanmar) in 1945, taking Southern Burma one hill at a time from the Japanese in intense close-quarters combat.
This incongruous meeting took place between an American airman and a local camel owner on the runway at the US Army Air Corps Air Transport Command base in Maiduguri, Nigeria in June 1943. As a British colony, Nigeria became a base for bombing missions in North Africa and the Mediterranean and it supplied as many as 100,000 troops who fought in Eritrea, Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), Sudan, India and Burma.
Here, US servicemen battle to put out a fire after an RAF Bristol Beaufighter crash-landed at the US Army and Air Force base in Cairo, Egypt. Known as 'whispering death' due to its ability to fly relatively quietly at low levels, the Beaufighter was flown extensively throughout the Second World War, notably in Burma, India and the Middle East.
These children are greeting Allied troops in Palermo, Sicily. The Allied invasion of Sicily – called Operation Husky, part of a wider plan to invade and defeat fascist Italy – was ultimately successful; the Allies won control of the island and captured 125,000 Italian soldiers. Then on 24 July, Italy's fascist regime under dictator Benito Mussolini was toppled, with Mussolini arrested. A new Italian government, headed up by Pietro Badoglio, immediately began to establish peace terms with the Allied governments.
This image shows local Indian men hoeing the air strip at the United States Army Air Force base in Chabua, Assam, India. Pilots would fly supplies from Chabua over the Himalayas, to support China's war effort against Japan. Known as 'flying The Hump', the route over the mountains was one of the most dangerous routes ever flown and crashes were common.
These German prisoners of war were photographed helping a farmer and his young son with the harvest in Britain in 1943. More than 400,000 POWs were held in the UK during the Second World War. Most were German and Italian, but several thousand Ukrainians, Czechs and Austrians were also held captive. While the exact number of camps in the UK is still unknown, there were at least 400 – including 52 in Scotland.
Assisted by a monkey, American Sergeant Elmer J Pence of the 26th Fighter Squadron, 51st Fighter Group is pictured here adding another victory marking to Major Edward Nollmeyer's Curtiss P-40K Warhawk. In 1943, the 51st Fighter Group was based in China, defending the eastern end of 'the Himalayan Hump', harassing Japanese ships and supporting Chinese ground forces.
German-American actress Marlene Dietrich was one of the earliest and most dedicated Hollywood stars to get involved in the Allied war effort. Staunchly anti-Nazi, she travelled to the front lines of the conflict in North Africa and Italy, where she performed to rescued Allied soldiers, as well as France and Germany, to entertain 'her boys'. Here we see her sitting on a piano, singing to troops and wounded soldiers at an evacuation hospital near the Italian front lines in May 1944. All in all, Dietrich gave over 500 performances for Allied troops. She also created a fund to help Jewish people escape Germany and supported them once they arrived in the US.
Robert F Sargent was a chief petty officer in the United States Coast Guard. As a Chief Photographer's Mate in the Second World War, he took this image, entitled 'Into the Jaws of Death'. It shows the moment troops of Company E, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division landed on Omaha Beach during the Normandy Landings on D-Day, 6 June 1944. As many as 4,000 Allied troops died on D-Day, along with thousands of French civilians. Sargent survived the war and his photo became one the defining images of the war.
Two young French boys sit among the rubble of Saint-Lo, France, watching Allied vehicles drive through the ruined town. During the Battle of Normandy, Saint-Lo was bombed three times by Allied forces as part of their attempts to end German occupation in France, killing almost 800 civilians in the first attack alone. The town was also bombed once by the Germans. Almost the entire town was levelled and as a result it was named the 'Capital of Ruins'. Saint-Lo was entirely rebuilt following the war and is known today as France's horse capital, thanks to its famous stud farm.
While this image could be a still from the 1986 film Top Gun, it's actually a photo taken on 3 April 1945, during the Battle of Okinawa, Japan. It shows Landing Signal Officer (LSO) Lieutenant Walter F. Wujcik watching an approaching plane on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Belleau Wood. The ship was named after Bois Belleau, France, the scene of a bloody First World War battle in which 55% of the US 4th Marine Brigade suffered casualties.
In 1944, Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) turned 18 and enrolled in the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). In March 1945, she began training as a mechanic and the following month passed a driving and vehicle maintenance course at Aldershot in Hampshire, England. That same month she was photographed as a Second Subaltern, standing in front of an ambulance (pictured). The princess was later promoted to Junior Commander, the equivalent of Captain. At the end of the war, she and her sister, Princess Margaret, famously left the palace incognito to celebrate VE Day in the streets among ordinary Londoners.
The 86th Infantry Blackhawk Division served in France and Germany during the war and took part in the liberation of the Attendorn civilian forced-labour camp in Germany, which it discovered on 11 April 1945. The camp housed as many as 1,000 Polish, Soviet and Czech prisoners who had been forced to work at nearby factories. Pictured here on 17 June 1945, women lined up on the dock at the New York Port of Embarkation to welcome home soldiers of the Blackhawk Division. The men can be seen cheering and waving from the deck of the transport ship. The war was to end just a few months later, on 2 September 1945.