Military disasters part I: Gallipoli, WWI

After Turkey joined to fight along Germany in 1914 Russia demanded its allies to open up a new front directly against Turkey. Britains war-minister lord Kitchener made a plan of invading the peninsula of Gallipoli. The operation was a disaster.

The invasion of Gallipoli started in february 1915 with an naval attack. After first few successes the operation suffered a setback, when three battleships ran into mines. The first amphibious assault was delayed and Turkish troops had more time to prepare their lines.

25th of April the second assault started and the Allies managed to get some foot at the peninsula only to discover that they were sitting ducks to Turkish artillery. Also when days turned to weeks the Allied faced some severe diseases and lost a lot of men becouse them also. In the first days of August the death toll went past 30.000, but the Allied just sent more men to solve the situation. Finally in January 1916 Allies retreated. There is a huge variety in estimated death tolls, but the most common would be about 50.000men dead and 150.000wounded. The Allied forces didnt archieve anything in the operation except the damage done to Axis´ manpower.

snipe

Vasili Zaitsev. 235 confirmed kills

Carlos Hatchcock. "Only" 93 kills, but still a legend

Simo Häyhä and Lauri Törni

Lauri Törni aka Larry Thorne. Fought in Winter war and continuation war, where he got hit but he escaped from the hospital to fight in the front. Then joined the German army and fought there. After WW2 he moved to United States and fought in Vietnam. Almost got expelled from US army when he beated alone 8 men with a barchair after they harassed his lady.

Törni in Vietnam, 10th Special Forces Group. He died there in december 1964 during a secret operation, the helicopter carrying him crashed into a hill in bad weather.

Simo "The white death" Häyhä. A sniper with 505 confirmed kills in 3months time (about 5-6 kills/day). The real number is estimated to be near 700 because of submachinegun kills and no time to count them in battle. Used always iron sights, freezed his firing positions so snow wouldnt disturb and show his positions.

Photo after Häyhä got hit by a explosive bullet. So its not manipulated, the sharp figures in the right is the background.

Winter War

First moments of Winter War, Russian bombers above Helsinki. 30. Nov. 9.15AM.
The bombing killed 90 people.

The Battle of Raate road. Because of motorized vehicles the Russians had to move mainly on roads while Finnish could easily ski. This made it easy to the Finns to use a move called "Motti". The Finns destroyed the first and last vehicle of the convoy and made it stop. Then they opened fire from all directions including trees etc.

30. November 1939 Soviet union attacked Finland and the Winter war began.

More about the invasion of Poland

The offical order of attacking Poland, signed by Adolf Hitler 31.8.1939.
Sorry for bad quality, I didnt find a better picture anywhere.

A copy of "The Topeka Daily Central" date september 1st. Gives me chills to think when somebody has opened the newspaper in the States and spit his morning coffee out when reading the headlines.

The city of Frampol, before and after. Frampol was the home of three thousand Polish jews and it was bombed to ground even it had no industry or military troops. The bombing happened on 13. september.

 

Picture taken on the evening of september 1st. The city is Wielun and 75% of its buildings were destroyed. This was the first military action of WW2 that was focused completely against civilians.

I got so excited about this that I had to find out a bit more when I had time. Here are few more pics..

World war II - Europe

Im starting with maybe one of the most famous pictures of Second World War; German soldiers moving a road barrier at Germany-Poland border.
Second world war had started only minutes before this picture was taken, when German battleship Schleswig-Holstein and Luftwaffes Stuka dive-bombers started bombing Polands soil. About 4.50AM 1.9.1939. "Blitzkrieg" turned out to be successiful and Danzig was occupied the same day.

Starting..

So.. To this blog im going to post pictures from the whole era when pictures have existed. I think im going to concentrate on war pictures because I find that wars have changed the history most. I´ve planned that Im going to post one picture per day and also explain a bit of the pictures story or background.
I created this blog mainly because I like to search and find out all kinds of things from history, and maybe someone becomes intrested in this blog too.

Maybe a bit about me: Im a young student from the west coast of Finland. I´ve alvays been very intrested in history and especially 20th century. To be honest I dont have very much time to this blog because of my studies and hobbies but thats why I plan to post only one picture per day.