Mental Floss posted a link to
Frank Scherschel's Time-Life collection of rare color photos taken in Europe before and right after the Allied invasion of Normandy beach on June 6, 1944.
I pasted a few below but definitely click the source link to see the whole collection, some of these are really intense.
From LIFE.com: "In rare, color photos taken before and after the invasion, LIFE photographer Frank Scherschel captured countless other, lesser-known scenes from the run-up to the onslaught and the heady weeks after: American troops training in small English towns; the French countryside, implausibly lush after the spectral landscape of the beachheads; the reception GIs enjoyed en route to the capital; the liberation of Paris."
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An abandoned German machine gun, France, June 1944
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An American tank crew takes a breather on the way through the town of Avranches, Normandy, summer 1944
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View of the ruins of the Palais de Justice in the town of St. Lo, France, summer 1944. The red metal frame in the foreground is what's left of an obliterated fire engine
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| From D-Day until Christmas 1944, German prisoners of war were shipped off to American detention facilities at a rate of 30,000 per month. Above: Captured German troops, June 1944 |
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| American Army trucks (note cyclist hitching a ride) parade down the Champs-Elysées the day after the liberation of Paris by French and Allied troops, August 1944 |
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| "Paris is like a magic sword in a fairy tale — a shining power in those hands to which it rightly belongs, in other hands tinsel and lead. Whenever the City of Light changes hands, Western Civilization shifts its political balance. So it has been for seven centuries; so it was in 1940; so it was last week." — LIFE after the French capital was liberated in August 1944 |
