Photos Colour and Colourised Photos of WW2 & earlier conflicts

Out of these four young people, 2 survived the Warsaw Uprising, a woman and a boy on the right. First days of August 1944.



North Downtown. A group of insurgents from the "Koszta" company at the side entrance to the Philharmonic building at ul. Jasna 5. From the left: Zofia Domańska "Zocha", Roman Rozmiłowski "Zawada" holding the German captured submachine gun MP 28 II "Bergmann", 2nd Lt. Stanisław Kuśpit "Kruk", Antoni Tuleja "Niedźwiedź"

Author of the photo: Eugeniusz Lokajski "Brok"
source: Warsaw Uprising Museum

Warsaw insurgents from the legendary "Zośka" Battalion in the liberated "Gęsiówka" concentration camp.



From the left are: Wojciech Omyła "Wojtek", Juliusz Bogdan Deczkowski "Laudański" and Tadeusz Milewski "Ćwik".
The photo was taken on the day the camp was liberated on August 5, 1944.
A few minutes after the photo was taken, a German artillery shell hit the wall above their heads. Ćwik was killed on the same day on August 5 by an artillery shell. Wojtek died on August 8. Juliusz Deczkowski survived the war and died in 1998.

Sappers of the Royal Engineers searching for mines around a knocked out German Pz.V Panther tank, in a field near Villers-Bocage, Calvados. 4 August 1944.



(Photo source - © IWM B 8573)
Mapham, James (Sergeant)
No. 5 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit

Colour by Doug

Malygina Nadezhda Petrovna, nurse, guards sergeant of the 1st tank battalion, 62nd tank brigade. Austria 1945.



Colour by Olga Shirnina

After the Marines captured this mountain gun from the Japs at Saipan, they put it into use during the attack on Garapan administrative center of the island. Circa July 1944.


Photographer of image - Cpl. Angus Robertson.

Two British soldiers of the Durham Light Infantry share cigarettes with an American 82nd Airborne Paratrooper. Avola, Sicily - July 11th 1943.

Italy.- Training of soldiers of different nationalities with the German Air Force, 1943



Free Arabian Legion (Arabic: جيش بلاد العرب الحرة‎) was the collective name of several Nazi German units formed from Arab volunteers from the Middle East and North Africa during World War II.
Hellmuth Felmy had by June been given command of Army Group Southern Greece and was to continue the raising of the German-Arab units through Sonderstab F, which had now been expanded and "should be the central field office for all issues of the Arab world, which affect the Wehrmacht. Therefore, the two units Sonderverband 287 and Sonderverband 288.
The 3rd battalion of Sonderverband 287 was taken from the unit and sent as the Deutsche-Arabische Lehr-Abteilung to the Caucasus in September 1942. It was part of the Axis offensive into the region and the German plan to raise an Iraqi government-in-exile there. They were then to use the region as a force station and base for a way of conquering Iraq. The plan never came to be and the unit never saw action following heavy German setbacks in late 1942. The unit was sent to the battle in Tunisia through Italy in January 1943. Here the Deutsche-Arabische Lehr-Abteilung was placed on the southern flank of the Axis army and was used to recruit more local Arabs who formed a second battalion of auxiliaries who were used for guard duty and as construction troops. The whole unit was captured along with the rest of the Axis forces in Africa, May 1943.
The remaining soldiers the 3rd battalion, i.e. the Deutsche-Arabische Lehr-Abteilung, who had not been sent to North Africa, were used, together with French residing Muslims from North Africa, to form into the German-Arab Batallion 845 in the summer of 1943. They served in the Peloponnese region of Greece as part of the 41st Fortress Division from November the same year. It participated in the Greek partisan war, specifically against ELAS. In October 1944 it was withdrawn from Greece into Yugoslavia and was in early 1945 strengthened by the addition of Arabs from a battalion of Arab volunteers that was disbanded before it was fully formed. It ended the war near Zagreb as part of the 104th Jäger Division.

Eight Army Infantry moving cautiously through Via Della Croce in the ruins of Impruneta in Tuscany, 3 August 1944.



(Photo source - © IWM NA 17570)
Johnson, Sergeant
No. 2 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit

Colour by Doug

Photograph from the Warsaw Uprising 1944. North Downtown. The liaison officer Bożena Grabowska "Magda" standing in front of the tenement house at 7 Moniuszki Street. Uprising posters visible on the wall: "Our Road to Freedom 1939-1944", "We Fight for Whole, Freedom, Independence" and "Every Missile, One German" by Henryk Chmielewski.

The woman in the photo survived the war and died in 2013.

A barricade at the entrance of Szpitalna Street to Napoleon Square with a built-in "Chwat" German tank destroyer 38 (t) "Hetzer", which was captured during the fights for the Main Post Office.


One of the greatest achievements in the first days of the Warsaw Uprising was the German Jagdpanzer 38 (t) Hetzer type self-propelled gun, weighing 15 tons. The vehicle belonged to the 743 Tank Destroyer Battalion.

Photo: Museum of the Warsaw Uprising
The author of the photo: Tadeusz Bukowski

Warsaw South Downtown - A group of soldiers from the Scout Company of the "Gustaw" Battalion at the barricade on Krucza Street, after crossing the sewers from the Old Town to Downtown.



Photo: Warsaw Uprising Museum

A Warsaw insurgent with a Błyskawica submachine gun (a Polish construction, conspiratorial produced in Poland) interrogates the German SS in the yard of a tenement house at ul. Zielna 34 - North Downtown.



Orders issued by the commander of the Uprising, Antoni Chruściel "Monter", arranged the rules of dealing with detainees in the first half of August. Among the three groups listed in the documents, the worst was foreseen for the second, which included SS men, Gestapo men or harmful Volksdeutsche. They were handed over to Special Military Courts.

Author of the photo: Eugeniusz Lokajski "Brok"
Photo: Museum of the Warsaw Uprising

76 years ago, the Slaughter of the Wola District began. German troops brutally murdered approx. 60 thousand people in 3 days. residents of Warsaw.
The slaughter of Wola was the greatest massacre of civilians during World War II.

From Saturday, August 5, 1944, in the Wola District, and then in the Ochota District of Warsaw, a mass slaughter of civilians has been taking place. Few manage to escape or survive covered with the bodies of their relatives and neighbors.
Grenades were thrown into the apartments, gasoline was poured over the apartments. Thousands of people died as a result of being burned. Later, groups of several hundred people were formed from the inhabitants of Wola to be executed. Some human body heaps numbered 2,500 or even 12,000 bodies. People even had to take pieces of wood, paper, rags with them to burn better later. Because after the execution, the Germans poured gasoline over individual layers and they were burned. The German command feared that these thousands of bodies swelling in the sun could cause an epidemic.
The slaughter of Wola by the Germans during the Warsaw Uprising is one of the greatest mass crimes in the history of the world.

At the top of the hangman, at the bottom of the victim ...

Yakovlev Yak-9D fighters of the 6 Gv.IAP, Black Sea Fleet in June 1944. Plane number "22" in the foreground displays the Gaurds emblem and the Order of the Red Banner and is piloted ht Captain M.I Grib.


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The Yakovlev Yak-9 was a single-engine fighter aircraft used by the Soviet Union in World War II and after. Fundamentally a lighter development of the Yak-7 with the same armament, it arrived at the front at the end of 1942. The Yak-9 had a lowered rear fuselage decking and all-around vision canopy. Its lighter airframe gave the new fighter a flexibility that previous models had lacked. The Yak-9 was the most mass-produced Soviet fighter of all time. It remained in production from 1942 to 1948, with 16,769 built (14,579 during the war). Towards the end of the war, the Yak-9 was the first Soviet aircraft to shoot down a Messerschmitt Me 262 jet. Following World War II it was used by the North Korean Air Force during the Korean War.

Warsaw, Northern Downtown, Warsaw Uprising 1944.



Sapper Zbigniew Knotowski ps. "Obowiązek" from the 3rd company "Szare Szeregi - Junior" ("Sępy") of the "Kiliński" Battalion on guard at the entrance to the gymnasium on ul. Górskiego 2.
He died during the Uprising.

Photography from the Warsaw Uprising. Northern Downtown. NN paramedic and injured Krzysztof Palester ′′ Krzych ′′ from the ′′ Umbrella ′′ battalion after leaving the channels on Warecka Street near the Nowy Świat Street. Inside is the liaison Maria Stypułkowska-Chojecka ′′ Kama"

Two local Italian nurses dress minor injuries for two British soldiers in front of the Cathedral of Sant'Agata in Via Vittorio Emanuele II, Catania, Sicily. 5 August 1943.



L/Cpl. A. Barton, from Middlesbrough (carrying an Italian MAB 38 (Moschetto Automatico Beretta) and Pte. J. Powers from Manchester, both of the 6th Bn., Durham Light infantry, 50th (Northumbrian) Division.

(Photo source - © IWM NA 5341)
Gladstone (Sgt)
No. 2 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit

Colour by Doug

Australian Soldiers, accompanied by local children, drawing water from the village pump at Fleurbaix, Pas-de-Calais, France.
May 1916.



photosource © IWM ( Q 650 )
photographer- Brooks, Ernest (lieutenant)

Colourised by Benjamin Thomas

Lance Corporals A Burton and L Barnett, Corps of Military Police, British 6th Airborne Divisional Provost Company, guarding a road junction near Ranville, Normandy on the 9th of June 1944.
Horsa gliders can be seen in the field behind.



Colourised by Paul Reynolds

Photo IWM B 5291©

Members of the 12th Parachute Battalion - 5th Para Brigade - 6th Airborne Division enjoy a brew after fighting their way back to allied lines after three days behind enemy lines, 10th June 1944.



Colourised by Paul Reynolds