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Original photographic album belonging to a German Wehrmacht serviceman, probably serving in the German Army (Heer), containing 235 Second World War photographs, mainly dating from 1939 to 1942.
The photographs document everyday life among German soldiers, the 1940 campaign in France and Belgium and, probably, military operations on the Eastern Front following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.
The album includes numerous photographs of soldiers, German, French and Soviet tanks, armoured vehicles, motorcycles, destroyed aircraft, artillery pieces and captured military equipment. Other images show bomb-damaged towns, bridges, religious buildings, civilians and German military cemeteries with individual graves.
Particularly noteworthy are photographs of Paris, the Sacré-Cœur Basilica and Versailles, tanks possibly identifiable as German Panzer III and Soviet KV-1 models, and an especially interesting photograph showing five German soldiers displaying two captured Soviet flags bearing Cyrillic inscriptions.
The collection may have belonged to a serviceman who participated first in the Western campaign of 1940 and subsequently on the Eastern Front, although neither his military unit nor this service history has been conclusively established.
The album is of considerable historical and documentary interest due to its variety of wartime locations, photographs of destroyed or captured military equipment, war cemeteries and, particularly, images of captured Soviet flags.
