'Russia carries on', 1943 (c)

Photograph, World War Two, Eastern Front (1941-1945), 1943 (c).

The Germans, in reprisal for partisan actions, executed thousands of innocent Soviet civilians, but millions more died from starvation as the Germans requisitioned food for their armies and fodder for their horses. As they retreated from Ukraine and Belarus in 1943-1944, the German occupiers systematically destroyed infrastructure, towns, villages and crops. Civilians were left to starve or die of exposure. These parents have found their murdered son among a pile of dead bodies.

One of 26 British and Soviet official photographs.