Photographing the Final Days of World War II in Germany (34 photos)

In the last weeks of World War II, Harold W. Clover, a combat photographer in the S-2 Section of the U.S. Army’s 31st Combat Engineer Battalion, documented the scenes and events around him as his unit pushed from the French Alsace into Nazi Germany, then into Austria, where they served occupation duty, in 1945. Clover donated many of his film negatives to the U.S. National Archives—where I recently visited, digitizing most of these prints below for the first time. Clover’s striking photographs capture the lives of war-weary civilians as well as soldiers—sometimes in a playful light—while still depicting the ugly reality of war. A photo previously included in this story has been removed because it did not meet The Atlantic's editorial standards. To receive an email notification every time new photo stories are published, sign up here. Three U.S. Army soldiers sit together in Dossenheim, France, in February of 1945, as their units prepare to move east, into Germany. From left: Private David Taub, T/5 Shigeo Takayama, and an unidentified soldier. The original caption reads: "GIs David Taub, Berlin refugee; Shigeo Takayama, Nisei; and Iowa farm boy with sniper rifle (42nd—Rainbow Division). Dossenheim, France." In 2003, Takayama, whose father was held in a Japanese-American internment camp in Arizona during the war, recorded an oral history interview for the Japanese American Military History Collective, recalling his experiences. ( Harold W. Clover / U.S. Army / National Archives)

Mar 17, 2025 - 20:32

Photographing the Final Days of World War II in Germany (34 photos)

In the last weeks of World War II, Harold W. Clover, a combat photographer in the S-2 Section of the U.S. Army’s 31st Combat Engineer Battalion, documented the scenes and events around him as his unit pushed from the French Alsace into Nazi Germany, then into Austria, where they served occupation duty, in 1945. Clover donated many of his film negatives to the U.S. National Archives—where I recently visited, digitizing most of these prints below for the first time. Clover’s striking photographs capture the lives of war-weary civilians as well as soldiers—sometimes in a playful light—while still depicting the ugly reality of war.

A photo previously included in this story has been removed because it did not meet The Atlantic's editorial standards.

To receive an email notification every time new photo stories are published, sign up here.