The 1930s and 1940s were a time of upheaval for the US and the world at large.

Reeling from the start of the Great Depression in 1929, the world soon faced a greater disaster with World War II, which lasted from 1939 to 1945. Though the US did not enter into the war officially until after Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the global war still affected the country.

The following photos, from the US Library of Congress, give us a rare glimpse of life in the US during World War II in color. They show some of the amazing changes that the war helped usher into the US, such as women in the workforce and the widespread adoption of aerial and mechanized warfare.

SEE ALSO: These amazing colorized photographs bring World War I to life

Mrs. Virginia Davis, a riveter in the assembly and repairs department of the naval air base, supervises Chas. Potter, a National Youth Administration trainee from Michigan, in Corpus Christi, Texas. After eight weeks of training, he will go into the civil service.

Answering the nation's need for woman-power, Davis made arrangements for the care of her two children during the day and joined her husband at work at the naval air base in Corpus Christi.

Jesse Rhodes Waller, AOM, third class, tries out a .30-caliber machine gun he has just installed in a US Navy plane at the base in Corpus Christi.

The US military has been attempting to use terrible smells as non-lethal weapons as far back as World War II. We spoke with science writer Mary Roach about the military's decades-long search for the world's worst odor.

You can read more fascinating stories about humans at war in Roach's new book, "Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War."

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During World War II, there were many ingenious and courageous raids, but only one would come to be known as “The Greatest Raid of All” – the British raid on St. Nazaire.

Since the beginning of hostilities, the German Navy had wreaked havoc on shipping in the Atlantic. With the fall of France, the Nazis had ample facilities on the Atlantic to service their fleet, well away from areas patrolled by the Royal Navy.

The British wanted to take this away and force them through the English Channel or the GIUK (Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom) gap, which they heavily defended. To do this, they devised a daring raid that would put the port of St. Nazaire out of action.

The plan, codenamed Operation Chariot, was to assault the port with commandos supported by a converted destroyer, the HMS Campbeltown. The British planned to load the Campbeltown with explosives and then ram it into the dry docks where it would detonate. The commandos would also land and destroy the port while up-gunned motor launches searched for targets of opportunity.

The raiding force consisted of 265 commandos (primarily from No.2 Commando) along with 346 Royal Navy sailors split between twelve motor launches and four torpedo boats.

The raiders set out from England on the afternoon of March 26, 1942, and arrived at the target just after midnight on March 28. At that point, the Campbeltown raised a German naval ensign to deceive German shore batteries. However, a planned bombing by the Royal Air Force put the harbor on high alert, and just eight minutes from their objective they were illuminated by spotlights.

A gun battle between the approaching ships and the Germans ensued. At one mile out, the British raised their own naval ensign, increased speed, and drove through the murderous German fire. The helmsman of the Campbeltown was killed, his replacement wounded, and the whole crew blinded by searchlights. At 1:34 a.m., the destroyer found the Normandie dry dock gates, hitting with such force as to drive the destroyer 33 feet onto the gates.

As the commandos disembarked, the Germans rained small arms fire on the raiders. Despite suffering numerous casualties, they were able to complete their objectives, destroying harbor facilities and machinery.

The commandos on the motor launches were not so lucky. As the boats attempted to make their way to shore, most of them were put out of action by the German guns. Many sank without landing their units. All but four of 16 sank.

The motor launches were the means of egress from the port for the commandos already ashore. The image of many of them burning in the estuary was a disheartening sight.

Lt. Col. Newman, leading the Commandos on shore, and Commander Ryder of the Royal Navy realized evacuation by sea was no longer an option. Ryder signaled the remaining boats to leave the harbor and make for the open sea. Newman gathered the commandos and issued three orders: Do the best to get back to England, no surrender until all ammunition is exhausted and no surrender at all if they could help it. With that, they headed into the city to face the Germans and attempt an escape over land.

The Commandos were quickly surrounded. They fought until their ammunition was expended before proceeding with their only remaining option: surrender. Five commandos did manage to escape the German trap though and make their way through France, neutral Spain, and to British Gibraltar, from which they returned to England.

As the Germans recaptured the port, they also captured 215 British commandos and Royal Navy sailors. Unaware that the Campbeltown lodged in the dry dock was a bomb waiting to explode, a German officer blithely told Lt. Commander Sam Beattie, who had been commanding the Campbeltown, the damage caused by the ramming would only take a matter of weeks to repair. Just as he did the Campbeltown exploded, killing 360 people in the area and destroying the docks – putting them out of commission for the remainder of the war.

The British paid dearly for this success. Of over 600 personnel involved, only 227 returned to England. Besides those taken prisoner, the British also had 169 killed in action. The raid generated a large number of awards for gallantry, one of the highest concentrations for any battle.

Five Victoria Crosses, Britain’s highest award for gallantry, were awarded, two posthumously. There were a total of 84 other decorations for the raiders ranging from the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal to the Military Medal.

SEE ALSO: Amazing colorized photos show a new side of World War II

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Just over a mile from where a stretch of the Berlin Wall once stood in Germany’s capital city, the neighborhood of Rummelsburg was evacuated earlier this week after construction workers uncovered a 550-pound American bomb. The bomb, with its fuse still intact, had sat dormant for more than 70 years since the Allies dropped it during World War II.

This one had failed to detonate, and now, decades later, its corroding fuse could set it off at any time. Every year, at least one or two such bombs explode in Germany without warning, according to the 2015 film The Bomb Hunters, which documents the work of the KMBD—the bomb squad for the state of Brandenburg.

First reported by the Associated Press, the story of this latest discovery was picked up by a handful of media outlets worldwide. But to Germans, such findings are so frequent in certain cities that it’s hardly shocking anymore. In fact, the KMBD estimates that more than 2,000 tons of unexploded bombs are uncovered each year, according to Smithsonian magazine.

Many are found in Oranienburg, a city roughly an hour outside Berlin. “They have it so well figured out that the city has a very specific routine [to find and defuse bombs], and it's coordinated very well through their website,” says Berlin-based filmmaker Rick Minnich, who spent a year and a half filming The Bomb Hunters in Oranienburg. “People are just kind of like, ‘Oh, well, getting evacuated again.' And when schools get evacuated, sometimes kids get upset that their school is just outside the evacuation area, because then they have to go to school.”

The threat, however, lingers.

During the war, the U.S. and its allies showered Europe with 2.7 million tons of bombs, some of which had a delayed fuse so that they would detonate hours or even days after they landed. It was a terror tactic, designed to hinder the cities’ recovery. Half ended up in Germany, and what’s left today buried in German soil makes up the roughly 10 percent of bombs that never went off. Instead, they were left scattered as the country pursued aggressive post-war reconstruction efforts.

No one knows exactly where these bombs are lurking, and in the past they’ve turned up in a multitude of places: in people’s backyards, underneath railroad tracks, beneath highways, and near airports. Just last week, the German carmaker Volkswagen discovered a 550-pound bomb under its headquarters in the city of Wolfsburg, about 150 miles outside Berlin.

When a bomb is discovered, it can paralyze an entire city. In 2011, for example, the City of Koblenz came to a halt after authorities found a 10-foot bomb weighing two tonsalong the riverbank. Some 45,000 residents were evacuated, according to the New York Times. Jails, hospitals, hotels, and the city’s main train stations all had to be emptied, and authorities shut down a busy stretch of the highway. Temporary shelters were set up for the elderly and other vulnerable people.

Accidental discoveries have led to casualties, though it’s been rare. Still, when a bomb is found on private property, the consequences for the owner are sometimes devastating. In The Bomb Hunters, Minnich turned his camera on Gunthard ‘Paule’ Dietrich, a retired taxi driver who discovered a bomb in his back yard. When the KBMD came to defuse it, they ended up having to detonate it instead. The explosion blew up his house and destroyed everything he owned. Afterwards, Paule’s efforts to rebuild had to be put on hold because authorities suspected two more bombs were lurking in his neighbor’s yard.

Paule lives in Oranienburg, one of the heaviest-shelled towns in Germany during the war: 5,690 bombs were once dropped over just 45 minutes. The Allies had targeted the city’s military infrastructure—an airplane-manufacturing plant, Hitler’s arms depot, an atomic-research facility, and the railway station, which served as a transit hub for German soldiers heading toward the Eastern Front.

Today, according to the film, some 300 remain in the ground there, making Oranienburg the German city with the highest concentration of unexploded WWII bombs. “It's really extreme at the moment; they've been having a defusing about once a month this year because they found several bombs in one spot,” says Minnich. “They've been defusing them one at a time in full hazmat suits because the soil is radioactive. That's the area where the factory was, where the Nazis were doing their nuclear research.”

City officials began aggressively searching for them in 2008, launching systematic searches that involve drilling holes as deep as 30 feet all around town. To determine their approximate locations, researchers analyze hundreds of archival aerial photos taken shortly after the bombings, purchased from the U.S., the U.K., and Germany. The price: “A six-figure sum,” local expert Frank Ritter says in the video.

Germany isn’t the only country still suffering the volatile relics of wars past. Unexploded bombs from WWII and World War I have been found London,France, and Belgium. The threat of leftover bombs also lingers in the U.S. And among developing countries, Laos still feels the effects of the 2 million tons of bombs dropped on its provinces in the 1960s and 1970s, with at least 20,000 bomb-related casualties since the Vietnam War.

Meanwhile, civil war has left Southeast Asian countries like Cambodia and African nations like Angola and Mozambique with millions of landmines scattered throughout. Where the government hasn’t taken the initiative to clean up the land, nonprofits like APOPO, which trains rats to find landmines, have jumped in.

“If it's still such a problem from WWII, what about all the wars that have been fought since then?” asks Minnich. The sobering truth is that finding these bombs will go on for generations—and yet it’s still a race against the clock. The longer efforts to uncover them take, the more corroded and unstable bombs become.

Minnich recalls visiting the temporary shelters when German cities had to be evacuated. “It’s kind of a strange experience, because that’s where you sometimes find people who were little kids when the bombings took place,” Minnich recalls. “It’s like the war never ended.”

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It seems we’re entering another of those stupid seasons humans impose on themselves at fairly regular intervals. I am sketching out here opinions based on information, they may prove right, or may prove wrong, and they’re intended just to challenge and be part of a wider dialogue.

My background is archaeology, so also history and anthropology. It leads me to look at big historical patterns. My theory is that most peoples’ perspective of history is limited to the experience communicated by their parents and grandparents, so 50–100 years.

To go beyond that you have to read, study, and learn to untangle the propaganda that is inevitable in all telling of history. In a nutshell, at university I would fail a paper if I didn’t compare at least two, if not three opposing views on a topic. Taking one telling of events as gospel doesn’t wash in the comparative analytical method of research that forms the core of British academia. (I can’t speak for other systems, but they’re definitely not all alike in this way).

So zooming out, we humans have a habit of going into phases of mass destruction, generally self imposed to some extent or another. This handy list shows all the wars over time. Wars are actually the norm for humans, but every now and then something big comes along. I am interested in the Black Death, which devastated Europe.

The opening of Boccaccio’s Decameron describes Florence in the grips of the Plague. It is as beyond imagination as the Somme, Hiroshima, or the Holocaust. I mean, you quite literally can’t put yourself there and imagine what it was like. For those in the midst of the Plague it must have felt like the end of the world.

But a defining feature of humans is their resilience. To us now it seems obvious that we survived the Plague, but to people at the time it must have seemed incredible that their society continued afterwards. Indeed, many takes on the effects of the Black Death are that it had a positive impact in the long term.

Well summed up here: “By targeting frail people of all ages, and killing them by the hundreds of thousands within an extremely short period of time, the Black Death might have represented a strong force of natural selection and removed the weakest individuals on a very broad scale within Europe,“ …In addition, the Black Death significantly changed the social structure of some European regions. Tragic depopulation created the shortage of working people. This shortage caused wages to rise. Products prices fell too. Consequently, standards of living increased. For instance, people started to consume more food of higher quality.”

But for the people living through it, as with the World Wars, Soviet Famines, Holocaust, it must have felt inconceivable that humans could rise up from it. The collapse of the Roman Empire, Black Death, Spanish Inquisition, Thirty Years War, War of the Roses, English Civil War… it’s a long list. Events of massive destruction from which humanity recovered and move on, often in better shape.

At a local level in time people think things are fine, then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of this it is hard to see happening and hard to understand.

To historians later it all makes sense and we see clearly how one thing led to another. During the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme I was struck that it was a direct outcome of the assassination of an Austrian Arch Duke in Bosnia. I very much doubt anyone at the time thought the killing of a minor European royal would lead to the death of 17 million people.

My point is that this is a cycle. It happens again and again, but as most people only have a 50–100 year historical perspective they don’t see that it’s happening again. As the events that led to the First World War unfolded, there were a few brilliant minds who started to warn that something big was wrong, that the web of treaties across Europe could lead to a war, but they were dismissed as hysterical, mad, or fools, as is always the way, and as people who worry about Putin, Brexit, and Trump are dismissed now.

Then after the War to end all Wars, we went and had another one. Again, for a historian it was quite predictable. Lead people to feel they have lost control of their country and destiny, people look for scapegoats, a charismatic leader captures the popular mood, and singles out that scapegoat. He talks in rhetoric that has no detail, and drums up anger and hatred. Soon the masses start to move as one, without any logic driving their actions, and the whole becomes unstoppable.

That was Hitler, but it was also Mussolini, Stalin, Putin, Mugabe, and so many more. Mugabe is a very good case in point. He whipped up national anger and hatred towards the land owning white minority (who happened to know how to run farms), and seized their land to redistribute to the people, in a great populist move which in the end unraveled the economy and farming industry and left the people in possession of land, but starving.

See also the famines created by the Soviet Union, and the one caused by the Chinese Communists last century in which 20–40 million people died. It seems inconceivable that people could create a situation in which tens of millions of people die without reason, but we do it again and again.

But at the time people don’t realize they’re embarking on a route that will lead to a destruction period. They think they’re right, they’re cheered on by jeering angry mobs, their critics are mocked. This cycle, the one we saw for example from the Treaty of Versaille, to the rise of Hitler, to the Second World War, appears to be happening again. But as with before, most people cannot see it because:

1. They are only looking at the present, not the past or future

2. They are only looking immediately around them, not at how events connect globally

3. Most people don’t read, think, challenge, or hear opposing views

Trump is doing this in America. Those of us with some oversight from history can see it happening. Read this brilliant, long essay in the New York magazine to understand how Plato described all this, and it is happening just as he predicted. Trump says he will Make America Great Again, when in fact America is currently great, according to pretty well any statistics.

He is using passion, anger, and rhetoric in the same way all his predecessors did — a charismatic narcissist who feeds on the crowd to become ever stronger, creating a cult around himself. You can blame society, politicians, the media, for America getting to the point that it’s ready for Trump, but the bigger historical picture is that history generally plays out the same way each time someone like him becomes the boss.

On a wider stage, zoom out some more, Russia is a dictatorship with a charismatic leader using fear and passion to establish a cult around himself. Turkey is now there too. Hungary, Poland, Slovakia are heading that way, and across Europe more Trumps and Putins are waiting in the wings, in fact funded by Putin, waiting for the popular tide to turn their way.

We should be asking ourselves what our Archduke Ferdinand moment will be. How will an apparently small event trigger another period of massive destruction. We see Brexit, Trump, Putin in isolation. The world does not work that way — all things are connected and affecting each other. I have pro-Brexit friends who say ‘oh, you’re going to blame that on Brexit too??’ But they don’t realize that actually, yes, historians will trace neat lines from apparently unrelated events back to major political and social shifts like Brexit.

Brexit — a group of angry people winning a fight — easily inspires other groups of angry people to start a similar fight, empowered with the idea that they may win. That alone can trigger chain reactions. A nuclear explosion is not caused by one atom splitting, but by the impact of the first atom that splits causing multiple other atoms near it to split, and they in turn causing multiple atoms to split. The exponential increase in atoms splitting, and their combined energy is the bomb. That is how World War One started and, ironically how World War Two ended.

An example of how Brexit could lead to a nuclear war could be this:

Brexit in the UK causes Italy or France to have a similar referendum. Le Pen wins an election in France. Europe now has a fractured EU. The EU, for all its many awful faults, has prevented a war in Europe for longer than ever before.

The EU is also a major force in suppressing Putin’s military ambitions. European sanctions on Russia really hit the economy, and helped temper Russia’s attacks on Ukraine (there is a reason bad guys always want a weaker European Union). Trump wins in the US. Trump becomes isolationist, which weakens NATO. He has already said he would not automatically honour NATO commitments in the face of a Russian attack on the Baltics.

With a fractured EU, and weakened NATO, Putin, facing an ongoing economic and social crisis in Russia, needs another foreign distraction around which to rally his people. He funds far right anti-EU activists in Latvia, who then create a reason for an uprising of the Russian Latvians in the East of the country (the EU border with Russia). Russia sends ‘peace keeping forces’ and ‘aid lorries’ into Latvia, as it did in Georgia, and in Ukraine. He annexes Eastern Latvia as he did Eastern Ukraine (Crimea has the same population as Latvia, by the way).

A divided Europe, with the leaders of France, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and others now pro-Russia, anti-EU, and funded by Putin, overrule calls for sanctions or a military response. NATO is slow to respond: Trump does not want America to be involved, and a large part of Europe is indifferent or blocking any action. Russia, seeing no real resistance to their actions, move further into Latvia, and then into Eastern Estonia and Lithuania.

The Baltic States declare war on Russia and start to retaliate, as they have now been invaded so have no choice. Half of Europe sides with them, a few countries remain neutral, and a few side with Russia. Where does Turkey stand on this? How does ISIS respond to a new war in Europe? Who uses a nuclear weapon first?

This is just one Arch Duke Ferdinand scenario. The number of possible scenarios are infinite due to the massive complexity of the many moving parts. And of course many of them lead to nothing happening. But based on history we are due another period of destruction, and based on history all the indicators are that we are entering one.

It will come in ways we can’t see coming, and will spin out of control so fast people won’t be able to stop it. Historians will look back and make sense of it all and wonder how we could all have been so naïve. How could I sit in a nice café in London, writing this, without wanting to run away.

How could people read it and make sarcastic and dismissive comments about how pro-Remain people should stop whining, and how we shouldn’t blame everything on Brexit. Others will read this and sneer at me for saying America is in great shape, that Trump is a possible future Hitler (and yes, Godwin’s Law. But my comparison is to another narcissistic, charismatic leader fanning flames of hatred until things spiral out of control).

It’s easy to jump to conclusions that oppose pessimistic predictions based on the weight of history and learning. Trump won against the other Republicans in debates by countering their claims by calling them names and dismissing them. It’s an easy route but the wrong one.

Ignoring and mocking the experts , as people are doing around Brexit and Trump’s campaign, is no different to ignoring a doctor who tells you to stop smoking, and then finding later you’ve developed incurable cancer. A little thing leads to an unstoppable destruction that could have been prevented if you’d listened and thought a bit. But people smoke, and people die from it. That is the way of the human.

So I feel it’s all inevitable. I don’t know what it will be, but we are entering a bad phase. It will be unpleasant for those living through it, maybe even will unravel into being hellish and beyond imagination. Humans will come out the other side, recover, and move on.

The human race will be fine, changed, maybe better. But for those at the sharp end — for the thousands of Turkish teachers who just got fired, for the Turkish journalists and lawyers in prison, for the Russian dissidents in gulags, for people lying wounded in French hospitals after terrorist attacks, for those yet to fall, this will be their Somme.

What can we do? Well, again, looking back, probably not much. The liberal intellectuals are always in the minority. See Clay Shirky’s Twitter Storm on this point. The people who see that open societies, being nice to other people, not being racist, not fighting wars, is a better way to live, they generally end up losing these fights. They don’t fight dirty.

They are terrible at appealing to the populace. They are less violent, so end up in prisons, camps, and graves. We need to beware not to become divided (see: Labour party), we need to avoid getting lost in arguing through facts and logic, and counter the populist messages of passion and anger with our own similar messages. We need to understand and use social media.

We need to harness a different fear. Fear of another World War nearly stopped World War 2, but didn’t. We need to avoid our own echo chambers. Trump and Putin supporters don’t read the Guardian, so writing there is just reassuring our friends. We need to find a way to bridge from our closed groups to other closed groups, try to cross the ever widening social divides.

(Perhaps I’m just writing this so I can be remembered by history as one of the people who saw it coming.)

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The following 1944 photo, colorized by Marina Amaral, shows two American GIs sitting next to a military vehicle in Nazi-occupied Geich, Germany.

The two soldiers from C Company, 36th Armored Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division, smoke cigarettes while looking out at the war-torn city.

The 9th Infantry Division, nicknamed the "Old Reliables," was one of the first US Army combat units to fight on the ground during World War II. The unit saw a little more than 300 days of combat during the war.

See more of Marina Amaral's gorgeous colorized photos »

SEE ALSO: Amazing colorized photos show a new side of World War II

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In the below 1944 photo, colorized by Marina Amaral, US Army troops examine a one-man submarine that washed up on the Anzio beachhead in Italy.

According to The National World War II Museum, the submarine was converted from a torpedo, with the warhead chamber replaced with a cockpit.

US troops captured the 17-year-old Nazi pilot when the beached unterseeboot, or U-boat, was found in April 1944.

See Marina Amaral's gorgeous gallery »

See more of Marina Amaral's gorgeous colorized photos: This rare colorized WWII photo of US troops takes you to the frontlines of Nazi Germany

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Before Lady met Tramp and Captain Jack Sparrow was dependent on rum, Walt Disney Productions' humble beginnings included informational videos.

Amazingly, one of these educational videos was a theatrical short on how to effectively operate a high-caliber rifle used to take down tanks.

Developed in 1942, “Stop That Tank!” was a 22 minute instructional film produced by Walt Disney Productions in partnership with the National Film Board of Canada.

In it, a cartoon rendition of a prancing Adolf Hitler breaks the monotony of the forthcoming chore: sitting through another instructional film that the soldiers would soon be watching. Afterwards, Disney’s signature vintage mix of using actual characters, cartoons, and a narrator, provide detailed instructions on the proper techniques of using the rifle — such as loading, aiming, firing, and cleaning.

The rifle mentioned in the film happened to be a Mk.1 “Boys Anti-Tank Rifle” that was originally manufactured in Britain. Weighing in at 36 pounds, this monstrous .55 caliber rifle .55 — slightly reminiscent of Barrett’s M82 — stood at 63.5 inches tall and had a 36 inch barrel.

Here's what the film's animation looked like:

Watch the entire video below:

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A trove of 20,000 Democratic National Committee emails was leaked last week — and experts are speculating that Russian hackers are responsible.

Hillary Clinton's campaign has suggested that Russia leaked the emails to help elect Trump, who has a history of making positive comments about the country and Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile, Trump encouraged any Russians listening to his press conference on Wednesday to find the emails Clinton deleted from her private server.

If Russia really is trying to skew the presidential election, such interference would be bizarre — but not entirely unprecedented.

In fact, there's a significant history of other countries meddling in American politics to further their own interests.

Here's a look at four times it's happened:

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Great Britain, 1940-1941

In 1940 and 1941, Great Britain was suffering through World War II, and it badly needed American help.

According to historian Tim Naftali, the country used its intelligence services to help President Franklin Roosevelt push for American intervention.

British spies spread negative rumors about aviator Charles Lindbergh, the leader of the isolationist "America First" movement. They tapped into the embassies of enemy nations in Washington to pass information to Roosevelt. They even gave money to interventionist groups — all with the approval of Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Vietnam, 1968

If Russia is interfering in the contest between Trump and Clinton, it wouldn't be the first time another country has played a role in tipping the outcome of a presidential election.

On the eve of the 1968 election, Richard Nixon's campaign colluded with the South Vietnam government to delay peace in the Vietnam War.

As the election approached, Nixon aides feared President Lyndon Johnson would try to help the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey, by making progress in peace talks with Vietnam — and days before balloting, Johnson said he would call for a halt in bombing.

So, according to now declassified documents, Republican activist Anna Chennault reached out to Saigon with an offer of better peace terms from a Nixon presidency. The Vietnamese then delayed negotiations and prolonged the war, helping Nixon win the election.

The Soviet Union, throughout the Cold War

The Soviet Union made multiple attempts to influence American politics throughout the Cold War, according to "The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB," a book by Christopher Andrew that delves into KGB archives.

The archives show that the KGB promoted false John F. Kennedy assassination theories, forged a letter to incriminate American intelligence officer E. Howard Hunt in the assassination, and spread rumors that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was gay.

The KGB also tried to discredit Martin Luther King Jr. and stoked racial tensions by mailing false letters from the Ku Klux Klan. It even disseminated a false story that the AIDS virus was manufactured by the US government.

On this day, 72 years ago, the single largest anti-Nazi military operation led by a resistance movement began. 

The Warsaw uprising, led by the Polish resistance Home Army movement, raged from August 1 to October 2, 1944. The goal of the operation was to liberate the Polish capital, with the help of an advancing Soviet column. 

However, the Soviets ultimately stopped their advance short and left the Home Army to deal with a renewed Nazi offensive against the city alone. Ultimately, the Nazis crushed the uprising and razed approximately 95% of the city in revenge. 

This photo of the Warsaw uprising, colorized by Marina Amaral, depicts two members of the Home Army, Henryk Ożarek (left) and Tadeusz Przybyszewski (right), battling against the Nazi occupation of the city. 

See more of Marina Amaral's gorgeous colorized photos »

SEE ALSO: This rare colorized WW2 photo of US troops takes you to the frontlines of Nazi Germany

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All photos republished with permission by Marina Amaral.

SEE ALSO: This is one of the most bizarre World War II photos of a Nazi submarine we've seen

This 1941 photo shows a German soldier surrendering to a Soviet troop during the Battle of Moscow.

Canadian infantrymen advance up stairs while dodging sniper fire in Campochiaro, Italy in 1943.

This 1944 photos shows US troops on a patrol in France.

Today marks the 71st anniversary of the day the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima in Japan. They later dropped another bomb on the city of Nagasaki, and days later, Japan surrendered. 

The Russian government released never-before-seen footage of the aftermath in the two bombed cities that was taken by Soviet Troops assigned to survey the damage.

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On August 6, 1945, the US dropped a nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. 

The bombing of Hiroshima was the first time a nuclear weapon had ever been used outside of a testing environment, and it was the first of only two military uses of a nuclear weapon in history. 

Overall, the effects of the bombing of Hiroshima were utterly devastating. The bomb is estimated to have wiped out approximately 90% of the city. Between the initial devastation of the bombing, and the subsequent effects of radiation poisoning, over 100,000 people died in Hiroshima. 

This photo, colorized by Marina Amaral, showcases the overwhelming devastation of Hiroshima immediately following the attack. 

See more of Marina Amaral's gorgeous colorized photos »

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On August 6th and 9th of 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing significant death and destruction in both areas. To this day, the bombings remain history's only acts of nuclear warfare.

Many things are known about the sequence of events leading up to the dropping of the bombs, known as "Little Boy" and "Fat Man," which were loaded onto airplanes on the North Field airbase on Tinian Island, part of the Northern Mariana Islands to the south of Japan.

Until recently, though, few photographs were available documenting the final preparations before the bombings. But newly declassified pictures shed additional light on the hours leading up to the nuclear attacks, showing how and where the bombs were loaded.

These chilling photos show us what it was like to prepare for one of the most important moments in modern history.

(First seen on AlternativeWars.com. This post was written by Christian Storm.)

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Soldiers check the casings on the "Fat Man" atomic bomb. Multiple test bombs were created on Tinian Island. All were roughly identical to an operational bomb, even though they lacked the necessary equipment to detonate.

On the left, geophysicist and Manhattan Project participant Francis Birch marks the bomb unit that would become "Little Boy" while Norman Ramsey, who would later win the Nobel Prize in Physics, looks on.

A technician applies sealant and putty to the crevices of "Fat Man," a final preparation to make sure the environment inside the bomb would be stable enough to create a full impact once it detonated.

By the early 1940s, World War II was in full swing, with battles raging around the planet. The US, however, was largely spared the effects of the global conflagration.

But that doesn't mean the war didn't affect Americans on the home front.

Nationwide, workers and civilians mobilized for the war effort, getting jobs in factories, raising money through war bonds, and showing their patriotism and support in front yards and main streets all across the country.

The colorized photos below, taken between 1942 and 1943 and compiled by the Library of Congress, depict life in the US during World War II and show how Americans at home contributed to winning one of the largest and most destructive wars in modern history.

SEE ALSO: Gorgeous color photos from the Great Depression show life in one of America's darkest times

A combat crew receives final instructions just before taking off in a YB-17 bomber from a bombardment-squadron base at Langley Field, Virginia, May 1942.

A woman aircraft worker at Vega Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, California, shown checking electrical assemblies in June 1942.

A woman working on an airplane motor at a North American Aviation Inc. plant in California, June 1942.

Gadget, the world's first atomic bomb, was detonated on the morning of July 6, 1945, changing the course of history. 

Produced by Noah Friedman. Original reporting by Amanda Macias.

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By the early 1940s, World War II was in full swing, with battles raging around the planet. The US, however, was largely spared the effects of the global conflagration.

But that doesn't mean the war didn't affect Americans on the home front.

Nationwide, workers and civilians mobilized for the war effort, getting jobs in factories, raising money through war bonds, and showing their patriotism and support in front yards and main streets all across the country.

The colorized photos below, taken between 1942 and 1943 and compiled by the Library of Congress, depict life in the US during World War II and show how Americans at home contributed to winning one of the largest and most destructive wars in modern history.

SEE ALSO: Gorgeous color photos from the Great Depression show life in one of America's darkest times

A combat crew receives final instructions just before taking off in a YB-17 bomber from a bombardment-squadron base at Langley Field, Virginia, May 1942.

A woman aircraft worker at Vega Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, California, shown checking electrical assemblies in June 1942.

A woman working on an airplane motor at a North American Aviation Inc. plant in California, June 1942.

Legend has it that Gen. George S. Patton earned his “Old Blood and Guts” nickname for having a lust for battle without regard for the lives of his troops.

But the reality of Patton’s genius is quite the opposite; he produced more results in less time with fewer casualties than any other general in any army during World War II, according to Patton biographer Alan Axelrod in the American Heroes Channel video below.

“He wanted his officers who he trained to know what they were going to expect in battle,” said Axelrod. “He [Patton] said to them, ‘you’re going to be up to your neck in blood and guts.’ This made quite an impression, and it stuck and from that point on, he was known as ‘Old Blood and Guts.'”

Still, high operational tempo and strict adherence to the rules pushed his men to the breaking point and hurt morale in the ranks. A common GI saying about Patton was, “our blood, his guts.”

The general’s low point came in August 1943 when he slapped two shell-shocked soldiers under his command for crying. For this, Gen. Eisenhower deemed him too undisciplined to lead the Normandy invasion, so he placed Patton in charge of a “ghost army” at Pas de Calais, France.

He was a decoy, and the Nazis took the bait; after all, they considered Patton the Allies’ best commander. Even weeks after D-Day, the Germans continued to wait for Patton’s crossing at Pas de Calais amassing troops for the fight.

This American Heroes Channel video demystifies Patton’s “Old Blood and Guts” nickname and shows the genius behind his relentless war tactics.

Watch the video from American Heroes Channel:

SEE ALSO: 9 gorgeous photos of abandoned WWII bunkers in the Alps

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NOW WATCH: Rare color film shows what it was like in the Marines during WWII

"That was the greatest and finest moment of my life," one of the world's most brutal tyrants reportedly said after touring the newly Nazi-occupied French capital.

The day after Germany signed an armistice with France, Hitler and his cronies toured the Dôme des Invalides, which holds Napoleon's tomb; the Paris opera house; the Champs-Elysees; the Arc de Triomphe; Sacre-Coeur; and the Eiffel Tower on June 23, 1940.

Hitler spent just three hours in the "City of Light," but his forces occupied northern France for four years until the Allied forces liberated Paris on August 25, 1944, 72 years ago on Thursday.

"The Germans were driven from many strategic parts of the city by the combined onslaught of the French military and the fury of citizens fighting for their liberties," the Associated Press reports.

During Hitler's brief tour, he instructed friend and architect Albert Speer to take note of the city's design to recreate similar yet superior German buildings.

"Wasn't Paris beautiful?" Hitler reportedly asked Speer.

"But Berlin must be far more beautiful. When we are finished in Berlin, Paris will only be a shadow."

While sightseeing, Hitler also ordered the destruction of two French World War I monuments that reminded him of Germany's bitter defeat.

SEE ALSO: This is the last known photo of Hitler

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NOW WATCH: Startling facts about World War II

Three years before Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Adolf Hitler ordered the construction of the world's largest tourist resort, located on a beachfront property on the island of Rügen.

The Nazis called it Prora.

Capable of holding more than 20,000 residents at a single time, Prora was meant to comfort the weary German worker who toiled away in a factory without respite.

According to historian and tour guide Roger Moorhouse, it was also meant to serve as the carrot to the stick of the Gestapo — a pacifying gesture to get the German people on Hitler's side.

But then World War II began, and Prora's construction stalled — until now. 

In 1936, Germany was still enmeshed in the concept of "people's community," or volksgemeinschaft, from World War I. It was a sense that Germans stood united, no matter what.

While the Nazi police state was in development, the overarching German vision was a hopeful one, Moorhouse tells Business Insider. "And this is where something like Prora comes in."

Over the next three years, more than 9,000 workers erected a 2.7-mile-long building out of brick and concrete. Its practicality was dwarfed by its grandness. Moorhouse calls it "megalomania in stone."