WWII STD posters

Kurt Vonnegut interviewed about the Dresden bombing

V-J Day

Gandhi's letter to Hitler

American servicemen, WWII (Kodachrome)

4x5 Kodachromes | Shorpy Historic Photo Archive

Fort Knox, 1942 (Kodachrome)

4x5 Kodachromes | Shorpy Historic Photo Archive

American workers, WWII (Kodachrome)

4x5 Kodachromes | Shorpy Historic Photo Archive

Mickey Mouse gas mask

Monopoly contraband

Kilroy Was Here: Monopoly

Peleliu landing

Okay, I didn't see that one coming: episodes 3 and 4 of The Pacific were pretty subdued, and I was wondering if the series would get lost in the love life of the protagonists. But no, of course, the fierce battle of the Peleliu landing came on rather unexpectedly. Prepare for you breath to be taken away by the incredibly well-filmed assault on the island with the amphibious tanks, it's pretty intense.

YouTube - The Pacific - Part 5 "Peleliu Landing" Promo [HQ]

The Pacific battle map

For their miniseries The Pacific, HBO has put up an interactive flash map recounting the battles and events pictures in the series. Neat if you want to learn more about the action and the three main characters.

HBO: The Pacific: Battle Map

How to hide an airplane factory

During World War II the Army Corps of Engineers needed to hide the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant to protect it from a Japanese air attack. They covered it with camouflage netting and trompe l’oeil to make it look like a rural subdivision from the air.

Think or Thwim » How To Hide An Airplane Factory

The Pacific

Produced by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman for HBO: the new 10-part miniseries The Pacific. At a rumored 150 million dollars budget, this looks like a really epic show, comparable in scope and style to Band of Brothers (which was created by the same creative team). The trailer on the HBO web site linked below is much better than the short one in the video.

HBO: Series: Watch The Pacific videos including episode recaps, previews & clips on HBO.com.

Vasili Blokhin

This guy is one of the most prolific slaughterer in the history of mankind: Vasili Blokhin was the chief executioner in Russia during the time of Stalin, and he is said to have personally executed tens of thousands of people. At the massacre of Katyn in 1940, it is said that he shot 7000 Polish prisoners of war in 28 nightly sessions, boasting an average kill-ratio of one murder per three minutes. After the reign of Stalin he purportedly sank into alcoholism and madness and killed himself in 1955.

Vasili Blokhin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Catch-22, 1961

Joseph Heller's Catch-22 indeed is one of the best war novels, or even one of the best novels of the twentieth century, for that matter. The novel recounts the events surrounding an American bombing squad based in Italy in the late stages of World War II. Yossarian, the main character, desperately wants to get grounded for fear of his life, and tries to approach the unit's doctor about that. He's told that he can be grounded and sent home but "there's a catch" (and that's also where the title of the book comes from): Catch-22 is the situation in which any pilot that asks to be grounded is in a "no-win" or "double-bind" situation:

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

Through a repetitive prose often bordering on slapstick, the hilarious antics of the characters and also the absurdity of the military hierarchy and the processes involved in it are laid out. Heller can turn from light-hearted comedy to gory war drama in a second, and all characters in his book have been affected by the insanity of war in some way: some become reclusive, others manic, still others psychotic like the protagonist himself.

Read Joseph Heller's Catch-22