7’3” Jakob Nacken (221 cm), the tallest German soldier of WW2, chatting with 5’3” (160 cm) British corporal Bob Roberts after surrendering to him near Calais, France, 1944.(1000X1408)

George Blind, member of the French Resistance smiling at a German firing squad, 1944

Georges Blind, a member of the French resistance, smiling at a German firing squad, 1944. This was a mock execution attempting to get the resistance fighter to talk. It didn’t work. Georges did not divulge any information. Blind died in a concentration camp later the same year.

Burial at sea on the USS Intrepid, November 1944.

Lockheed Martin employee Sally Wadsworth working on the fuselage of a P-38 Lightning in California in 1944

US medic gives first aid to a wounded German SS soldier, France 1944

Simone Segouin was a French teenager who bravely fought on the front lines against the German occupiers, and helped liberate the historic city of Chartres. After the war ended, Simone was promoted to lieutenant and awarded the prestigious Croix de Guerre. 1944,

A Jewish child shows her friends a dandelion she found in the grass while waiting outside the gas chambers. Auschwitz-Birkenau, May 1944

The temporary grave of Theodore Roosevelt in Normandy, soon after his death, July 1944.

Children eating the half a liter of supplementary food per day received from the Interkerkelijk Bureau voor Noodvoedselvoorziening en Kinderuitzending during the Hunger Winter, The Hague, Netherlands, 1944/45, photo by Menno Huizinga

Lest We Forget- 77 years ago today: Apprehensive GIs load onto a British landing craft for the invasion of Normandy. D-Day 1944.(US National Archives original color photo)

An American version of a sidewalk cafe, in fallen La Haye du Puits, France on July 15, 1944, as Robert McCurty, left, from Newark, New Jersey, Sgt. Harold Smith, of Brush Creek, Tennessee, and Sgt. Richard Bennett, from Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, raise their glasses in a toast.

French resistance fighter, Paris, 1944

Soviet officer and Finnish officer comparing watches, Vyborg September 4, 1944

German soldiers having a snowball fight in a train yard while awaiting deployment. France, 1944. (original color)

A woman is humiliated for having had personal relations with the Germans. In the Montelimar area, France, French civilians shave her head as punishment. August 29, 1944.

American soldier poses with captured German weaponry, 1944-45.

Shoemaker’s Lunch, 1944. by Bernard Cole

American troops march through the streets of a British port town on their way to the docks where they will be loaded into landing craft for the D-Day assault in June of 1944. (Original Color)

Elisabeth "Lilo" Gloeden stands before judges, on trial for being involved in the attempt on Adolf Hitler's life, 1944

American troops treat a wounded dog on Orote Pennisula. W.Eugene Smith. 1944

This Chinese soldier, age 10, with heavy pack, is a member of an army division boarding a plane returning them to China, following the capture of Myitkyina airfield, Burma, under the allied command of US Major General Frank Merrill, May 1944.

The 101st Airborne Division’s “Filthy Thirteen”volunteer pathfinders preparing to parachute into France just after midnight on June 6, 1944. They were among the first allied troops to set foot on French soil on D-Day; their mission was to mark drop zones for the airborne assault.

“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve”- The U.S. Pacific fleet getting ready for battle during the Marshall Islands Campaign, 1944.

French little girl with three American admirers. Normandy, France June 22, 1944

B-17 Flying Fortress crew members Gus Palmer (left), and Horace Poolaw (right), citizens of the Kiowa nation stand near their aircraft in 1944. (Colorization, link to original in comments)

Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex, aerial photograph from a 1944 Allied recon plane

French female collaborator punished by having her head shaved to publicly mark her, 1944

1 of the 11 surviving pictures taken by LIFE Magazine photographer Robert Capa on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

Flying Officer Cristopher F. C. Lee in Vatican City, 1944, soon after the Liberation of Rome, destined to have great acting career starting three years later (404×599)

The mugshot of Sergei Korolev, Soviet Ukrainian rocket engineer, the man responsible for the first human spaceflight, soon after his arrest by Stalin's secret police in 1938. While in custody he was severely beaten by the NKVD henchmen. He remained incarcerated until 1944

Helen Keller visits wounded soldiers at a military hospital in Texas, 1944

14 year-old George Junius Stinney Jr. being lead to the execution chamber where he was executed by electric chair at South Carolina Penitentiary. The youngest person executed in the USA. June 16, 1944

A young boy greets his father, a soldier allowed to return home for Christmas, 1944.

Parisian resistance fighters shooting at Nazi occupiers from a window, 1944

“Hot and weary after fighting on Saipan, Marine PFC T. E. Underwood of St. Petersburg, Fla., takes a long, cool drink of water from his canteen. July, 1944.”

Sikh soldier of the Indian Red Eagle division showing a captured German flag after taking over Monte Cassino, Italy in May, 1944.

The “Parade of the Vanquished”- almost 60,000 Wehrmacht prisoners-of-war march the streets of Moscow, 1944.

A fake neighborhood on top of the Boeing factory to deter possible air attacks during WWII. King County, Washington. Circa 1944

BBC War Correspondent Robin Duff makes a recording during the D-Day landings, 1944.

Soldiers from the U.S. Army, speaking with a Pontifical Swiss Guardsman, from the (city state and micro nation) Vatican City, a neutral country within the city of Rome, following it’s libration by Allied forces (Canadian, British and Commonwealth, Polish, and American), June 4th, 1944.

A Kodachrome of some some of the Allied Generals. 1944

An Itallion Woman Inspects a Scottish Soldiers Kilt. Coliseum, Rome 1944

Relatives of people that died during the Ardeatine massacre pray at the Ardeatine Cave site. The Ardeatine massacre was a mass killing of 335 civilians and political prisoners carried out in Rome on 24 March 1944 by Nazi German occupation forces (Rome, Italy 1944)

Today marks the 78th anniversary of the Battle of Peleliu, often described as one of the most harrowing battles of World War 2. The island was predicted to be taken in 4 days, instead it lasted 2 months. (September 15th - November 27th, 1944). 720x577

Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia on the selection ramp at Auschwitz II, c. May 1944. Women and children are lined up on one side, men on the other, waiting for the SS to determine who was fit for work. About 20 percent at Auschwitz were selected for work and the rest gassed.

This Italian woman is curiously inspecting the kilt of a Scottish soldier. The soldiers are standing near the Coliseum after the liberation of Rome in 1944.

Canadian Soldiers (possibly from the 3rd Canadian Division) catch up on their sleep during a lull in the fighting. Normandy, June-August, 1944.

Deceased German soldiers lie in a ditch near Anzio, Italy. 6 March, 1944 (Colourized)

1944 - Harry Hudec - 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper