Marshal Pétain

Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain, around 1930, while he was still Inspector-General of the Army. He would retire from this post in 1931.
A hero of the first world war, he would sully his name in the second when, in 1940, he headed the Vichy government.
After the war, Pétain was tried and convicted for treason, and sentenced to death, but the new president, De Gaulle, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.

Original B&W photo.

ARP on Patrol

In London, in 1940, an Air-raid Warden phones from a shattered telephone kiosk.


Original B&W photo.

Wartime Evacuees

Children being evacuated from London, in 1940.


Original B&W photo.

Dog of War

Private Alexander Boccardo with his Doberman, at the Marine War Dog Detachment Training School at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in 1943.


Original B&W photo.

Herbert Morrison

Home Secretary Herbert Stanley Morrison, wasn't in a Labour government, but in Winston Churchill's wartime coalition. He is pictured here while in that office, in 1943.


Original B&W photo.

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf, pictured here in 1927. She is thought by some to have been antisemitic, but this is probably due to the general attitude, and the speech patterns, of the time. She was happily married to a Jewish man, and managed to upset the Nazis enough to make it onto their list, the Sonderfahndungsliste G.B., of Britons to be arrested immediately following a successful invasion of Britain.


Original B&W photo.

Guy Gibson

Guy Penrose Gibson, Commanding Officer of the famous Dambuster raid. In this photo, one of his medal ribbons is the Victoria Cross, which he was awarded on the 22nd of June 1943, so this photo was taken between that date and his death on the 19th of September 1944.


Original B&W photo.

Christmas in Lebanon

Lebanon gained independence from France in 1943, during the second World War, but the Allies kept the region under control until the end of the war. The French withdrew the last of their troops in 1946, when this photo was taken. These children, however, are American, possibly the children of diplomats.


Original B&W photo.

Glenn Miller

Alton Glenn Miller made a decent living prior to his great success in 1938. In 1942, he joined the US Army Air Force and, two years later, disappeared forever after his aircraft encountered bad weather over the English Channel, on December 15th 1944.
I'm not sure when this photo was taken, but I suspect it was after he found success, but before he joined the USAAF.


Original B&W photo.

President in Waiting

John F. Kennedy (left) and his elder brother Joseph Patrick, in May 1942. In this picture, it was Joe who was the "President in Waiting". Their father, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr, was in the political wilderness because he had supported Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler and the Nazis, and he placed all his political ambition on the shoulders of Joe. When Joe was killed in 1944, that ambition was transferred to the next son, JFK.


Original B&W photo.

Nazi Loot Recovered

US soldiers with a painting by the French Impressionist Edouard Manet, titled "Wintergarden", discovered in the vault at Merkers.


Original B&W photo.


Colour reference for the painting.

Ike

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, date unknown, but probably the 1940s.


Original B&W photo.

George Formby

George Formby and his wife, in 1944, entertaining the crew of the Headquarters ship HMS Ambitious, off the coast of Normandy.


Original B&W photo.

Curtiss C-46 Commando

The largest and heaviest twin-engine aircraft to see service in World War II, the Curtiss C-46 Commando.
The C-46 is still in use today, in remote places such as the Arctic.


Original B&W photo.

Lockheed P-38 Lightning

The Lockheed YP-38 Lightning, probably around 1939. The "Y" denotes "prototype", which is probably why all the reference photos I've seen of the YP, or Yippee, show the aircraft in this lurid colour.


Original B&W photo.

Monty & Friends

General Bernard Law Montgomery with his puppies 'Hitler' (left) and 'Rommel' in France.


Original B&W photo.

Billy Hitler

Although he was at first rebuffed because of his infamous Uncle Adolf, William Patrick Hitler enlisted into the United States Navy on March 6, 1944, after writing a letter to the President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, begging to be allowed to do so.


Original B&W photo.

Ebensee Concentration Camp

Newly liberated prisoners of the Ebensee concentration camp, on or shortly after May 6, 1945.


Original B&W photo.

 

Wilhelm Marschall

Admiral Wilhelm Marschall, shown here while he was the commander of the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer, in 1934.


Original B&W photo.

 

Lord Haw Haw

William Joyce, in 1938, while still working for Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. He was later infamous for colluding with the Germans during the war, broadcasting propaganda with the callsign "Germany calling! Germany calling!" and was hanged for treason in 1946.


Original B&W photo