Bodies of dead Chongqing citizens lie in piles after some 700 people were reportedly killed by a Japanese bombing raid on China in July of 1941. Between 1939 and 1942, more than three thousand tons of bombs were dropped by Japanese aircraft over Chongqing, resulting in well over 10,000 civilian casualties.

October 16, 2012, 2:26pm / 29

Haile Selassie (right), the exiled Emperor of Ethiopia, inspecting an airport after the Italians were defeated by Allied troops, May 1941.

October 16, 2012, 1:29pm / 36

Anonymous asked: Were there any women soliders in ww2? Or were they mostly nurses?

The Red Army had many female soldiers and officers, everything from infantry to tank crews to bombing crews (holla, night witches) and, most notably, snipers. The USSR was the only power in the war to allow women to fight on the front because they were in a war of annihilation and needed every able body that could hold a rifle, to hold a rife. They didn’t have time for gender roles when the Reich was attempting to wipe them off the map. Not to mention the Soviet women were badass as fuck.

Many of the resistance movements had women partisans—the Maquis, though typically male, had female agents. As did the Netherlands resistance, Soviet, China and so on.

The offices of the OSS and SOE used women agents too because, well, who would suspect a woman to be a spy? In many cases, the women agents used the sexism of German soldiers to their advantage and were quite crafty—Lucie Aubrac comes to mind in particular because in her reports (and memoir) she states that to get her husband out of jail, she lied to German gestapo officers about being pregnant out of wedlock and having to marry him so she wouldn’t be shamed. There’s a lot of interesting stuff when it comes to women agents.

Women enlisted in the military weren’t simply nurses, they were across the board in positions; US Marines, WAVES, WAC, AWAS, WRNS, Land’s Army, etc. They helped farm (especially in GB), took up the traditional duties of men officers at home and kept things in order.

October 16, 2012, 1:29pm / 45

A rationing inspired ad for goose eggs, c. 1945

October 16, 2012, 12:27pm / 21

Anonymous asked: Can you please post photos of OSS women agents? Is it true that some of there were in combat on the front lines like field intelligence or something like that?

They were never front line, OSS were covert intelligence agents—the precursorer to the CIA—and the same with the SOE. they served either office posts, or we’re behind the lines working with partisans or as spies. Here’s four that are well known, http://demons.swallowthesky.org/post/26328929828

Sorry for the shitty formatting, I’m on my iPad :(

October 16, 2012, 12:08pm / 3