The Second World War in Colour

The Second World War in Colour

The Second World War is the most documented, devastating and disastrous war in human history. This book presents new insight into the events that shaped the modern world, events from the invasion of Poland to the atom bomb that devastated Hiroshima.

All war is tragic and brutal, none more so than the Second World War. For those born after 1945, the was has appeared only in black and white in countless books, films, and grainy newsreels, even though much of it was shot in color by both military units and amateur filmmakers. Color photography was expensive to develop, and the media were reluctant to show all the horrors of battle in – what at the time was thought to be unbearable – color to the “home front”.

The Second World War in Colour contains more than two hundred compelling color images, from the grueling conditions to the front lines, to aerial dogfights and blazing cities, to the utter devastation of Hiroshima following the dropping of the atomic bomb. Ten years of exhaustive research has enabled these largely unseen stills to be compiled for the first time into a remarkable record, removing the veil of time and chiaroscuro to forever change our view of the Second World War.

In addition to the drama of the color images, there are harrowing testaments and recolections by hundreds of individuals of different nationalities who bring color to the record in a different way – like to fight, mourn, suffer, and finally celebrate during those long six years when the world was at total war.

Teo generations have grown up since the Second World War to think of that war as a conflict fought in black and white. These color images bring home the horrors and stresses of that war for the first time with a vivid new clarity. This is war seen face-to-face, not through a glass darkly.