Vintage Military - Part 28

 WWII - Eastern Front, Soviet Union

In my Vintage Military series, I have been concentrating on World War II fronts that Americans were involved it, and to a lesser extent the British and Australians, because my main photo sources are from those countries.  But the war was a global war.  Today we'll look at Germany's Eastern Front, where Germany fought against the Soviet Union.

Specifically, today we'll look at photos of Soviet troops in World War II.  Above, we see Russian soldiers playing in a lake in an unspecified location in 1942.  The soldiers are making an impressive gymnastic pyramid.  Most of them are naked because at that time, it was normal for soldiers to go swimming naked.

Here are some Soviet soldiers in 1942 after washing. 

I came across a trove of photos showing Soviet soldiers crossing the Western Bug river in 1944.  This river flows from the Ukraine into Belarus and Poland.  Before World War II, the Bug river formed part of the boundary dividing up Poland between Germany and Russia in the secret non-aggression pact of 1939.  Of course, Hitler later double-crossed the Russians by invading Russia, so in 1944 when the Soviets crossed the Bug, it was a big deal because they were moving the war back onto German territory.

As you can see, many Soviet soldiers crossed the river naked as a practical way of not getting their uniforms wet.

Here a naked guy is helping hold things together on a makeshift raft.

While nearby, three men carry a DShK heavy machine gun so it doesn't get wet.

And these guys carry another machine gun.

The rest of the soldiers strip and carry their packs across.

We end with a 1942 painting by Russian painter Aleksandr Deyneka called After the Battle, depicting soldiers taking a shower.  In a previous post on Deyneka, I explained how this painting was originally a bunch of athletes in the shower, but by calling it After the Battle in the middle of World War II, Deyneka transformed them into heroic Soviet soldiers, which made the painting of nude men more acceptable to the Soviet authorities.