Chilling and strange WWII photo in my possesion. Need answers.

Thats what I thought too Otto, but its not a film Ive ever seen. It just looks too perfect to be real.

Really?? Ive heard tons of accounts of the Germans using the PPSH because it simply worked better.

 

A couple of possible problems here:

The German's boot is not hob nailed. This is pretty much standard for German military foot wear. There should be shiny metal nail heads all over the bottom.

The Russian appears to be holding a 1943 PPsH but is wearing a M1940 helment. He also is wearing a pistol. Very unusual combo there. Pistols were rarely issued to other than officers and they usually chose another weapon for combat.

You might also note that neither the German nor the Russian have their weapon pointed at their enemy. Both are angled off to a degree. This would be common in reenactments where blanks were being used and both want to avoid injuring the other party. The muzzle opening of the Soviet SMG also looks way too small. It could be the angle or something but, it doesn't appear big enough at all.

 

A lot of Wehrmacht/Waffen SS picked up the PPSH-41, it was a better weapon than the MP40 for one thing.

 

Call me a bit of an amateur, but how do we know for certain that the man in the foreground is a German? Could this not be Russian troops?

By the way.. what makes the Russian look 'American'? Just curious

 

Might be his accent!!!

 

The quality is so good, it makes me think it is a publicity still from a movie made post WW2 shot by a professional photographer using a 35mm SLR camera and high speed black and white film. One of the WW2 hollywood films I saw had the Germans using a captured Russian sp assault gun, so that might fit with the German soldier having a Soviet Weapon.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

 

Hi all,

I'm new here but I think I have some information considering that photo. I'm pretty confident that "German soldier" is infact a Finnish soldier with Finnish Suomi-KP smg which Russians later copied and called it PPsh-41. You can find info of the Suomi KP for example here: Suomi M/31 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
And what comes to the helmet and uniform, Finnish Armed Forces ordered German helmets during 20's and 30's and got more supply from Germany during Continuation War. And Finnish uniform was very much like German Jaeger uniform from 20's.

I think this photo has been taken during Continuation War at the Karelian Isthmus. The trees and the soil in general is just like that over there.

I can't tell if it's staged or not but I'm 99% sure that it's taken by Finnish combat photographer. How a copy of that photo ended up at Halifax beats me but more strange things have happened

 

Most of these action photos were staged...even ones meant to look real...They had a number of uses. This to me at least is a classic staged shot. Both weapons should be firing at this point...the cameraman would have to be one of the luckiest sons of a gun to have that framed up and shot in the tenths of seconds this would have taken...the blur suggests movement which suggets they werent both just standing there, waiting for the other to blink. The picture quality looks too good (yes there were cameras with that resolution, but few field cameras).
An interesting "hoax" shot...

 

I am bothered by the fact that the fellow with the jackboot would appear to be traveling left to right and henceforth ahead of the fellow with the gun. Since the Russian would appear to be in almost the middle of the trench I would think that he would be aiming at the lead man, not the fellow behind.

KTK

 

Very interesting thread. The 'German' soldier appears to be Finnish. I'm 90% sure that he is carrying a Suomi KP-31 (I have one on the workbench right now, and there's a lot of similarities). If I'm right (and assuming the Russian has a PPS-43), this would date it to the Continuation War along the Finnish/Russian frontier. Alternatively, the Finns could be members of the SS volunteer battalion, which was active from 1941-1943.

For what its worth, I think it's staged.

• The focus seems too precise (most battle photos from the period aren't even close to this well focused)
• Picture seems too sharp, especially for an 'action' shot taken by a camera with full-manual control
• No visible noise or scratches, which are common for WW2 photos.
• No motion blur, which would also be common on WW2-era photos. If this is an action shot, why are the soldiers just standing still?
• If this is real, how did the Russian manage to sneak up on the Finn? Keep in mind that if he had just jumped into the trench, the solider on the right would have likely shot him already.
• Is it just me, or are the guns not actually aimed at each other? I think its fairly clear that the Russian gun (PPS-43?) is not aimed towards the Finn.
• The context just seems wrong. If you were a photographer, and you had a machine gun pointed towards you at point-blank range, would your first instinct be to take a perfectly composed picture?

If this isn't staged, could this possibly be a still from a post-war Finnish film?

For those that think this is real, it would be somewhere in the Finnish Defense Forces photo archive. A few months ago, they posted several hundred thousand photos from their WWII collection online.....Happy hunting!

 

A ww2 era Leica camera with a decent film can give you that quality and more, but I agree it looks staged if only because the fotografer would be crazy to think about shooting a picture rather than bullets in that situation.

 

Mirror image? The pistol holster should probably be on the right although in war conditions I guess the rules don´t always count...

http://englishrussia.com/2011/04/03/uniforms-in-the-red-army/15/

Where are the other Red Army soldiers?

 

I absolutely agree, its just that you almost never see this level of quality in 'battlefield' photos. Its not the photohgrapher's fault, either -- with old cameras, there's just too many variables. Its not like today where you can just point your camera in one direction and take a photo without thinking. Its very hard to believe that the photographer would get the exposure and aperture correct to take this high-quality photo in the heat of battle.

 

I think I can settle at least one thing in this photo. The weapon the 'Russian' is holding is a PPS-43. I'm confident of that because the wings protecting the front sight are large and very close to the muzzle, whereas the wings on a Soumi are smaller, and the wings on a PPSH are both smaller and further back from the muzzle.

The missing ring on the Russian suggests to me that he is a prisoner and thus this is a staged after-action photo.

 

Image search brought this up (the book cover), not sure how much it will help though.

http://www.dobra-knjiga.com/home.asp?NaslovID=13365

 

why doesnt someone email Sven?