World War II Behind Closed Doors (34 page)

A vast prisoner of war camp, holding thousands of captured Red Army soldiers in the summer of 1941. During the course of the war the Germans took 5.7 million Soviet prisoners — 3.3 million died in captivity.

Major Hugh Lunghi (centre, with moustache) in Moscow as part of the British Military Mission. This photograph was taken after the war when Field Marshal Montgomery (third from right) visited the Soviet Union.

An Allied Arctic convoy – PQ 18 – comes under German attack. These convoys provided vital aid for the Soviet war effort.

The first wartime meeting between Franklin Roosevelt (left) and Winston Churchill in August 1941 aboard HMS
Prince of Wales
in Newfoundland. Here they would sign the Atlantic Charter.

Canadian soldiers – with British support – land on Spitsbergen in the Arctic circle in August 1941 as part of Operation Gauntlet.

Red Army soldiers fight amid the ruins of Stalingrad in the autumn and winter of 1942. They finally defeated the Germans here in early 1943 after Operation Uranus.

Valentina Ievleva, a teenager in Archangel, who became pregnant by an American sailor. She was subsequently sent to a labour camp, accused of ‘spying’.

Sir Owen O'Malley, British Ambassador to the Polish government-in-exile based in London. He wrote two key reports about the Katyn massacre.

The ruins of Stalingrad. Around half a million Soviet troops died in the epic struggle to recapture this city.

In the spring of 1943 the Germans uncovered evidence of Soviet atrocities against Polish citizens in the forest of Katyn.

The first encounter between Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin in Moscow in August 1942. Despite the smiles, this did not begin as a meeting of minds.

George Elsey, a naval officer in the White House Map Room during the war, briefs President Harry Truman.

Soldiers from the Polish II Corps patrol amongst the ruins of the town of Cassino, at the foot of Monte Cassino, in the aftermath of the battle in May 1944.