12 Old War Photographs You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped

12 World War II Sure Had Some Creative Setpieces

Oh, come on -- that's a still from an Indiana Jones movie. Even the soldier looks shoddily greenscreened into that clearly fake, overdramatic movie set. Some half-mechanical Nazi insect monster is going to pop out of that giant Iron Cross jack-in-the-box, and then Hellboy's going to charge on screen and punch him right in his fascist wang.

But nope: It's totally real. In 1913, the people of Leipzig, Germany, pooled all their money together to build an immense monument to the 1813 Battle of Leipzig, a defining moment in German history when an allied army defeated Napoleon. And we guess they figured the best way to do that was to re-create one of the more preposterous sets from The Chronicles of Riddick:

Now let's fast forward past a few decades of boring civil engineering and construction and get to the action: As the Americans fought their way across Eastern Germany, 150 SS fanatics holed up in the monument and packed the sucker full of enough ammo and food to hold on until their Necromonger reinforcements could arrive. What they didn't count on was the one thing America had in abundance: moxie.

Well, that, and a shitload of artillery. After a steady pounding from the big guns, shell-shocked SS troopers eventually emerged from their bunker, took a look back at the Bond villain lair they'd just crawled out of ...

... and reluctantly conceded that, yeah, they were probably the bad guys all along.

11 Seas of POWs

In 1939, Stalin and Hitler plunked two straws into a single milkshake and became best buds forever when they signed the Treaty of Non-Aggression Between Germany and the Soviet Union. Then, in 1941, Hitler got a memo reminding him that he was an evil asshole (he knew he'd forgotten something), so he dropped everything and rushed off to go break the pact. Operation Barbarossa saw the Nazi war machine storming across the German/Russian border. Taking the Soviets by surprise, the Germans captured around 5,500,000 POWs -- that's five and half MILLION Russian prisoners of war -- prisoners that they obviously didn't have room for in the backs of their tiny, efficient German cars. So when the POWs asked where they'd be doing their time, the Germans pointed to "over there" and quietly insisted "It is too a prison."

Unsurprisingly, with no roofs over their heads, a bunch of callous Nazi wardens in charge and only the cold, unfeeling bosom of Mother Russia to nestle up against at night, the camps were a living hell. The casualties were so unfathomably high that even telling you the number would instantly ruin even the greatest comedy article (it was a soul-shattering 3.3 million. Dang. We were on a roll here, too).

But if it's even the smallest consolation, the Russians got to paint their own lovely pastoral scene out of Nazis when the war ended:

Did you immediately start scanning for Wookiees in that picture? Psh. Nerd. We spent the first few minutes staring at that giant map and trying to figure out the best place to deploy our Space Marines -- you know, like cool guys do. But even though glass displays and glowing vector graphics have been a sci-fi trope since Luke was cruelly bull's-eyeing womp-rats in his T-16 (harming small animals: first sign of a sociopath, buddy) ...

... that top photo is pure uncut reality. It's actually the American flight command center for South Vietnam at Tan Son Nhut Air Base in 1966. That's right, that Minority Report-style war room up there existed over a decade before the first Star Wars film even came out. Those rebels weren't kidding when they said they needed new supplies ...

9 The Statue of Liberty Army

What you're looking at here are 18,000 U.S. troops standing in a formation that resembles the Statue of Liberty. The photo was used as an advertisement for war bonds during World War I, because nothing says "patriotism" like a human Magic Eye poster.

Now, if you just look at the base and see the dozen or so guys standing there, then let your eyes fuzz out to take in the rest of this image -- this doesn't look that impressive. It's what, a hundred guys? Big deal.

But note the angle of the photograph: It's not taken from directly above -- it's a 3/4 overhead view -- and yet the image stays in perfect proportion anyway. How did they do that? Well, the number of men in formation had to increase exponentially the farther away they were from the camera. For example: There are 12,000 of them in the torch alone. The whole human statue, from foot to tip, is nearly a quarter of a mile long.

Dang, say what you want about Lady Liberty, but she sure can handle a lot of dudes at the same time.

8 Some Planes Go Off-Roading

That's a perfectly still image, taken from exactly overhead, and from a great distance away. It's tiny, black and white, and hard to resolve any details. And it is still easily the best action scene we've ever watched. This was taken at Martuba, Libya, on July 6, 1942.

Imagine being on the ground for that: You and your friends are just kickin' back, taking in some rays, when suddenly the skies go dark. You look around and find yourself right smack dab in the middle of a giant shadow, and the thing casting it wants you dead in a hurry. You nod grimly to your fellow pilots, and despite the total lack of runway, you decide to go for it: What choice do you have? You're going to try to take off. As the world bursts into fire and grit all around you, you race; you race for your life, and for the lives of your fellow soldiers; you race for your country, and your army, and your platoon; you race the speedy horse of Death himself, for your will to survive burns hot and angry in your guts; you race ... and you don't win. You are bombed into oblivion.

But that's OK, because these were Axis planes! Haha, eat aerial death, you stupid Nazis.

7 Cleanup Was a Bitch

This photo was taken on June 18, 1953, when U.S. forces threw an objectively ridiculous amount of explosives at Chinese forces during the battle of Outpost Harry. Seriously, we know war is epic, but there's just no way this many artillery shells were actually necessary. It's like waking up after a particularly large party, only to find the entire yard buried under beer cans. It just shouldn't be possible -- you don't even remember buying that much beer. And yet, here you are. Your parents come home in two hours, and now you have to pick up like 10 million artillery shells while suffering through what has to be a vicious battle-hangover.

6 Donkey Power

He was a tight-laced, by-the-book sergeant. She was a hang-loose party animal -- literally! They didn't want to go to war in the first place, but now they're just too stubborn to come home. Coming this summer, it's Sergeant Jackass!

The donkey corps was an actual military unit, deployed for the 1943 invasion of Sicily. The poor roads and rugged conditions rendered most conventional vehicles unusable, then the colonel in charge of the vehicle pool stepped in a mule-pie one day, and the rest was history ...

5 Grenadeface

Either that's an X-ray of the exact second Bob Grenade first thought up the idea for the grenade, or this poor son of a bitch has a grenade in his face. It's the latter, of course, because Vietnam was a terrible goddamn thing. This hapless soldier found himself in this predicament after he stepped on a landmine, which, by itself, is pretty darn unlucky. When the grenade he was carrying on his chest was blown inside of his own head by the other, unrelated explosion going off right beneath his feet, he officially entered wrathful god/gypsy curse territory. But even a furious and scorned deity knows when enough is enough, and the soldier finally caught a break: You can actually still see the pin and spoon in there, meaning the grenade was not armed ... when it went inside of his skull.

Yep, real lucky.

4 The Largest Camera

Oh my God. Somebody get us a micro-schnauzer NOW.

Aw, it's just a giant camera? Well, crap.

Fine. We guess that's kind of neat. We guess.

What you're looking at here is a normal size dog and a giant-ass K-19B camera. Like all cameras back in the day, the K-19B was unwieldy as hell and massively complicated. Unlike cameras of the day, the K-19B could take photos at night from a distance of several miles, and was hardly ever mounted to a man wearing black socks and sandals (it was usually found on spy planes). The thing we love most about the K-19B is that the inventors built it to look like a giant normal camera for no particular reason -- as though you worked it by using both hands to press down on that gargantuan button and wind that comically large switch. Those wacky camera technicians, you know? They have fun.

3 Disposable Hueys

Holy shit! Either somebody forgot to buckle their seat belt on Barrel Roll Day, or some pilot is ghost-riding his Huey like a beat-up Huffy. But despite what it looks like, this was neither a superfluous act of destruction nor an accident. Just like these guys weren't shoving their helicopter off into the water because it was constantly spouting terrible, vaguely racist knock-knock jokes:

These are photos from Operation Frequent Wind, also known as Operation What Do You Mean the Vietnamese Don't Like Us Very Much? When it became apparent that the U.S. was not going to win the Vietnam War, everybody needed to get the hell out of there fast. The South Vietnamese UH-1 Hueys responsible for the evacuation flew out to friendly ships and immediately disgorged their passengers. As soon as that was done, they had to be pushed right off the deck to make room for more.

So what about this guy?

Same deal: That's a pilot flying his chopper out to sea before bailing out. He's just not doing the whole "push it gently off the boat" thing, because he knows that when you get a chance to trash a helicopter with no repercussions, you do that shit with style.

2 The Missile Rapture

There's no good way to say this, so we'll be blunt: Apparently the Rapture happened. Obviously, you're reading this site, so you are not one of the Chosen. First, the bad news: Eternal war, and the devil rules the world. Good news: No more churchgoers crowding up Sunday brunch! Waffles and damnation for all!

In actuality, those streaks are coming, not going. These are photos of a test of the MIRV Peacekeeper missile being conducted just off the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific. MIRV stands for "multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle," which basically just means we've found a way to use the space program to kill people.

There's always one troublemaker ...

And as you probably guessed, it's not generally a good time for the people on the ground when the Finger of God lands on them.

If these had been real warheads instead of empty fakes, each would've held a 300-kiloton nuclear weapon. To put that in perspective: The Little Boy bomb that devastated Hiroshima was 16 kilotons. Here's what the ultimate power of devastation looks like, as it is being assembled by two middle-aged men in button-down shirts:

1 The Trouble With the Troubles

Northern Ireland was a very tense place for a very long time. And at the epicenter of the tension was a city called Derry, where "The Troubles" all began.

By 1969, everybody was an unclaimed fart away from a citywide fistfight. And then a group of Protestants had a parade that had the gall to come close to a bunch of Catholics -- so you know that shit was on. The ensuing riots, skirmishes and conflicts were so prolonged and so commonplace that the townspeople simply learned to go about their business as the boys played war in their front yards. That led to photos like the above, where Seamus Hardass' new Facebook pic is being photobombed by a girl on roller skates. Or the below ...

... where an elderly gentleman is casually ducking under the line of fire on his way to the pub. We always thought it was a joke -- a cliche stereotype with no basis in reality -- but seriously: Nobody gets between an Irishman and his drink. Not even death himself.

Eric Yosomono writes for GaijinAss.com and has a Facebook page here. Show him some love and LIKE him! Douglas A. McDonnell is a Photoplasty Ninja and encourages, nay, demands you check him out.

For more insane photos that HAVE to be fake (but aren't), check out 16 Real Old-Timey Photographs That Will Give you Nightmares and 15 Images You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped.

If you're pressed for time and just looking for a quick fix, then check out The Logical Next Step in Auto Modification Technology.

And stop by LinkSTORM to discover what folks in the 1920s used to do when the cable went out.

And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get sexy, sexy jokes sent straight to your news feed.

Do you have an idea in mind that would make a great article? Then sign up for our writers workshop! Do you possess expert skills in image creation and manipulation? Mediocre? Even rudimentary? Are you frightened by MS Paint and simply have a funny idea? You can create an infographic and you could be on the front page of Cracked.com tomorrow!