The need to censor during combat is understandable. Letting the enemy know how effective their bombing campaign has been, or seeing how your opponents trenches or fortifications are configured. Clearly needs to be avoided. Didn't Saddam Hussein shut down Western journalist in Bagdad? During the air campaign of Dessert Storm, when it was realized how accurate the bombing strikes were? Hitting mostly the military targets, and missing the soft civilian targets Hussein's military were using as protection for those military sites? It is interesting to see those photos that had been censored before release. Gives you an idea of what was considered important to the government and military command of the time. Makes you wonder about what we are seeing about modern day events in msm as well. Who decided what was acceptable for public viewing and perhaps why? As always, thank you for the continuing efforts of the Imperial War Museums!
I was watching parts of the war on live webcams during the Iraq invasion. Clearly, the Iraq government didn’t know what was out there. I found some websites with links to these cameras. I watched a minor battle of Iraqi troops on the back of an armed Toyota pickup truck and taking on American ( I assumed it was them) troops in a dry river bed need a highway over pass. Needless to say, it didn’t go well for them.
The reason why is actually rather simple. The US targeted iraqi infrastructure so accurately, the TV signal cutting out was a que to say "Bullseye" on the power grid. If you dont have power you dont have TV, as soon as the signal cut out they knew they hit them
My father was one of the people who enabled the photographic Spitfire to use its camera more efficiently by the implementation of toy railway tracks, which prevented the icing and sticking problem at high altitude.
My great-uncle Jozef Cincík was also a war photographer. He photographed battles on the Eastern Front of World War II. His photographs were published in several books about the battles of the Slovak Army during the battles in the Soviet Union.
I wonder if any are online now. Possibly in the Internet Archive. If not, maybe it could be possible for you to upload it, if you have any of those books.
@@eh1702 I couldn't find his publications publicly available online. There is a copyright problem. I have a photocopy of the book Summer in the Crimea somewhere. I am disappointed with these rules. Jozef Cincík was the first professional photographer of the Slovak Press Agency and he doesn't have a photo of himself on Wikipedia and I can't put it there because I am not the author of the photo and it hasn't been 80 years since it was taken.
1:31 Roger Fenton almost certainly staged the photograph of the lane with cannonballs here. Entitled “The Valley of the Shadow of Death” there are two versions, one - this one - was taken second and Mr Fenton had rearranged some cannonballs to make for a better photo. I know that’s not the focus of this video, but an interesting bit of photographic history!
It was not the valley of the infamous Charge, but something had happened here. You are right: The first picture showed the cannonballs that had rolled into a ditch, but that wasn't very exciting, so Fenton and his assistant laboriously moved cannonballs from the ditch back to the road from which they had presumably rolled.
My Grandfather on my mums side was a photographer with his own studio in Fleet Street, during the war he developed photos for the R.A.F. he also with my mothers help took photos of all the film stars mainly woman for the press. My mum herself prior to the war had been in a dance troupe and was used by my grandfather to put the ladies at ease thus making the pictures more natural and provocative. Sadly due to the excesses of his job my grandfather died in the sixties, mum however lived to be 99 and died last year she still remembered the many stars she met at the time, my grandfathers surname was Julian and most of his photos are now somewhere in a national archive.
Thank you IWM staff for another year of informative content creating and video uploads, you are now one of my favorite military channels on UA-cam. Merry Chrismas and Happy Nee Year!
Im an ex British military photographer and i can say all the photos i took in Iraq and Afghanistan had to be approved prior to relaese, obviously this was to protect family members from seeing relatives killed or injured but also to endsure UK forces were shown in a positive way. Have to say though US military and civilian photographers had far more freedom, the Americans have never shied away from showing the reality of war and would release imagery the UK MOD never would. Good example of this was the documentary 'With the Marines at Tarawa', which showed American audiances the brutal reality of the war in the Pacific. Even today the US realeases imagery of their military in action the kind of which the British would censor.
I know it's morbid to say it's my favorite but... the sailor getting last rights on the deck of an aircraft carrier is an image that would haunt anyone.
Many of the censored photos that are shown, it's clear that there are particular details that are being hidden. But the image that is used as the title shot for this video - my instinctive reaction is "Is that censored or just cropped for aesthetic reasons?". To my eye the tight focussed version with just the burnt out car and the pedestrian walking past ignoring it is a better photograph - it tells a much better story than the wider shot which is a bit more cluttered. Good video by the way.
It's censored - so much devastation of a London street without a crashed German bomber as the centrepiece would never be published in the British newspapers in WWII. There was a constant morale battle going on with impoverished Brits getting uppity about their outsize contribution to troop numbers while "the government" is unable to protect their families from the unending nightly bomber Blitz. Hence the effects of German terror bombing were underplayed. The public didn't travel much from their neighbourhoods therefore it was possible to hide the magnitude of the casualties & the destruction. If the Germans had known how Londoners [& people in other target cities] were feeling they might have tried telling the Brit public the truth! German high command incompetence, major espionage failures & having an authoritarian hierarchy cost the Nazis dear. Don't forget the Brits voted Churchill out of power as soon as there was a post-war election - being lied to for six years did not sit well in a literally bankrupt Britain.
I take encoragement that even at the height of battle, the censors were indicating the reason for the picture being rejected. The cropped version you surmise could easily have been used with a generic 'how's the war going?' piece for example. We mustn't forget that not only was there a need not to give away details that may apply to a particular raid, but there was an overwhelming need to 'stand up' the misinformation being sent out as misdirection protecting vital secret activities.
There is an important ongoing war in Europe, which oddly didn't get a mention, considering the amount of war footage coming from it, and the heavy involvement of the UK.
Because they are guides, not narrators, with traditional view to object not directly to visitors, encouraging them to view there to, not ono the guide. Its museum, not news tv.
AI and Photoshop have ruined photography. Give me a roll of 24 anyday. We're lucky enough to live near a small photoshop that still has tanks. They'd never be able to sell them anyways.
Excellent! Photography gave the home front and their posterity a view of the horrors of war. Black and white photos were bad enough but using modern techniques to colorize them shows that in war there are no victors, just victims. Millions of them.
With the recent passing of Falklands conflict photographer Paul G Haley, a photo of whom was at 8.44 in the video, are there any plans to commemorate his passing with a compilation video of some of his iconic Falklands images which form part of your collection? Surely it would be a fitting tribute from the IWM for him and the images he captured of the conflict?
Operation and information precautions are good reasons for measured censorship. But why did they not release the names and titles of those books that were burnt? Curious.
What are you on about? Who burnt books & when? The Nazis had a list of banned books & other publications - they held book burnings, but it was for show with no book titles eliminated totally. Book burnings/bans only work in fiction.
Interesting video. But please, please, just talk to camera. It's distracting when you so pointlessly talk to the side. Detracts from an otherwise excellent video. Cheers.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to establish the veracity of modern combat and military images. Using AI or straight-up human intervention in altering images - still or moving - is undermining trust in what is presented to the viewer. Images from the conflict in Ukraine have been shown to have been altered for propaganda purposes. We do not know what to believe anymore. It drives me to my default option: *The state lies to its people.* (Experience taught me this.)
Thanks for the film. The IWM is one of my favorite institutions, the task of the IWM is tremendous and valuable and they do an excellent job at it. The IWM has long been a beacon if how war must be remembered and has been an inspiration for similar institutions World wide. But I cannot say that I am slightly annoyed by the out of proportion (and out of subject) attention to the contribution of woman during wars when woman were merely serving at the homefront. Or, as the female photographer featured in the film, arrived at the front when the War was over. Valuable and beautiful photographs were made by her, but she knew she was merely documenting an aftermath and exposing herself to the dangers of War. If the IWM was founded merely to preserve the memory of service of the four woman in neat uniforms featured in the photo shown in the film (a photo taken in London) then the IWM would not anymore exist today. I know society was unjust and woman did not share equal rights with men. And I know about bravery of woman at the frontline or in field hospitals within range of the fight in the trenches. My own great aunt Delphine Borginon (belgian citizen) was an ambulance driver for the US forces in France during the First World War. But the suffering and heroism was a male affair, then. (During the World Wars). A lot has changed since then and woman now are not an exception when we mention warriors. They have earned their place now. And that is what the IWM should show: how in modern war soldiers of both sexes are rallying to the cause with equal valor. But making an interesting film more tedious and less representative by focusing unduly on woman is an aberration and diminishing to the men who fought. We Will Remember Them. They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. Thanks for a great, not perfect, but still a great film. Lieven
I disagree, battlefields are complex, messy, and 'foggy' places - if what you say was true the overwhelming drone/ISTAR usage by the Israelis would have wrapped ip thier Gaza 'issue' within weeks. Information censorship has and always will be vital. One perfect example is the accurate (and brave) use of dumb bombs by the Argentinian air forces to strike RN ships. They kept hitting them but the bombs weren't exploding....that fact had to be kept secret....if that if info had got out then the priming distance would have been shortened on the bombs for the next sortie, and numerous ships would have been lost.
@@robmax4416 I'm going off what Dylan Burns has reported after being embedded with units in Ukraine. Yeah you can have camouflage over static positions, but there is a reason why SPGs in Ukraine are used as static positions. As soon as they make any movement near the front they get spotted and a $1,000 FPV drone is sent to destroy it.
I love how the thumbnail simply get’s the Vibe across Great editing Goodest work Feel’s way more in touch with Reality when they just get the point out Efficiently instead of rambling on with sterile robotic semantics and failing to even use special words for their Practical meaningless Cutting the filler
Combat is more horrifying than the worst horror movie. Movies are toned down because the public can't accept the images (UA-cam changes color into B/W when blood is shown.), but movies always raise the bar so future soldiers will be inured to the horrors of war and the carnage of human bodies shredded by iron shrapnel. God forbid the great repression causes low attendance in armed service recruitment. What will we do if nefarious corporations can't control the U.S. war machine/economy to do their bidding?
@@billyponsonby and having Putin allies in the White House now for 2025-2028 will hurt Ukraine and all the other normal USA allies tremendously- not to mention hurting the USA itself, possibly irreparably…
WW1 Private to risk his life for his country but forbidden to take camera. Hardly for giving away intelligence,more so the folks back home didn't get to see what their loved ones were being forced to endure,literally at gunpoint.
The need to censor during combat is understandable. Letting the enemy know how effective their bombing campaign has been, or seeing how your opponents trenches or fortifications are configured. Clearly needs to be avoided. Didn't Saddam Hussein shut down Western journalist in Bagdad? During the air campaign of Dessert Storm, when it was realized how accurate the bombing strikes were? Hitting mostly the military targets, and missing the soft civilian targets Hussein's military were using as protection for those military sites? It is interesting to see those photos that had been censored before release. Gives you an idea of what was considered important to the government and military command of the time. Makes you wonder about what we are seeing about modern day events in msm as well. Who decided what was acceptable for public viewing and perhaps why? As always, thank you for the continuing efforts of the Imperial War Museums!
You assume basic competency from Iraqis?
You can't even get that in Comments. I mean, I got so filled up during Dessert Storm.
@@samsonsoturian6013 They had a plan but then the coalition air force spoiled it with how accurate their bomb strikes were!
I was watching parts of the war on live webcams during the Iraq invasion. Clearly, the Iraq government didn’t know what was out there. I found some websites with links to these cameras. I watched a minor battle of Iraqi troops on the back of an armed Toyota pickup truck and taking on American ( I assumed it was them) troops in a dry river bed need a highway over pass. Needless to say, it didn’t go well for them.
The reason why is actually rather simple. The US targeted iraqi infrastructure so accurately, the TV signal cutting out was a que to say "Bullseye" on the power grid. If you dont have power you dont have TV, as soon as the signal cut out they knew they hit them
My father was one of the people who enabled the photographic Spitfire to use its camera more efficiently by the implementation of toy railway tracks, which prevented the icing and sticking problem at high altitude.
My great-uncle Jozef Cincík was also a war photographer. He photographed battles on the Eastern Front of World War II. His photographs were published in several books about the battles of the Slovak Army during the battles in the Soviet Union.
I wonder if any are online now. Possibly in the Internet Archive. If not, maybe it could be possible for you to upload it, if you have any of those books.
@@eh1702 I couldn't find his publications publicly available online. There is a copyright problem. I have a photocopy of the book Summer in the Crimea somewhere. I am disappointed with these rules. Jozef Cincík was the first professional photographer of the Slovak Press Agency and he doesn't have a photo of himself on Wikipedia and I can't put it there because I am not the author of the photo and it hasn't been 80 years since it was taken.
1:31 Roger Fenton almost certainly staged the photograph of the lane with cannonballs here. Entitled “The Valley of the Shadow of Death” there are two versions, one - this one - was taken second and Mr Fenton had rearranged some cannonballs to make for a better photo. I know that’s not the focus of this video, but an interesting bit of photographic history!
It was not the valley of the infamous Charge, but something had happened here. You are right: The first picture showed the cannonballs that had rolled into a ditch, but that wasn't very exciting, so Fenton and his assistant laboriously moved cannonballs from the ditch back to the road from which they had presumably rolled.
They definitely should have mentioned that the photo was staged for impact
Excellent piece. Very enlightening and well illustrated. Thank you.
My Grandfather on my mums side was a photographer with his own studio in Fleet Street, during the war he developed photos for the R.A.F. he also with my mothers help took photos of all the film stars mainly woman for the press. My mum herself prior to the war had been in a dance troupe and was used by my grandfather to put the ladies at ease thus making the pictures more natural and provocative. Sadly due to the excesses of his job my grandfather died in the sixties, mum however lived to be 99 and died last year she still remembered the many stars she met at the time, my grandfathers surname was Julian and most of his photos are now somewhere in a national archive.
Thank you IWM staff for another year of informative content creating and video uploads, you are now one of my favorite military channels on UA-cam. Merry Chrismas and Happy Nee Year!
5:04
What are these markings at the side of the gun turret?
They're precise elevation reference points of the gun. With data on charge plus shell weight the gunnery officer uses inclination to establish range.
@@CDeBeaulieu
Thank you very much for taking your time to explain it.
Im an ex British military photographer and i can say all the photos i took in Iraq and Afghanistan had to be approved prior to relaese, obviously this was to protect family members from seeing relatives killed or injured but also to endsure UK forces were shown in a positive way.
Have to say though US military and civilian photographers had far more freedom, the Americans have never shied away from showing the reality of war and would release imagery the UK MOD never would. Good example of this was the documentary 'With the Marines at Tarawa', which showed American audiances the brutal reality of the war in the Pacific. Even today the US realeases imagery of their military in action the kind of which the British would censor.
I know it's morbid to say it's my favorite but... the sailor getting last rights on the deck of an aircraft carrier is an image that would haunt anyone.
Thanks for posting 😊.
Many of the censored photos that are shown, it's clear that there are particular details that are being hidden. But the image that is used as the title shot for this video - my instinctive reaction is "Is that censored or just cropped for aesthetic reasons?". To my eye the tight focussed version with just the burnt out car and the pedestrian walking past ignoring it is a better photograph - it tells a much better story than the wider shot which is a bit more cluttered.
Good video by the way.
It's censored - so much devastation of a London street without a crashed German bomber as the centrepiece would never be published in the British newspapers in WWII.
There was a constant morale battle going on with impoverished Brits getting uppity about their outsize contribution to troop numbers while "the government" is unable to protect their families from the unending nightly bomber Blitz. Hence the effects of German terror bombing were underplayed.
The public didn't travel much from their neighbourhoods therefore it was possible to hide the magnitude of the casualties & the destruction. If the Germans had known how Londoners [& people in other target cities] were feeling they might have tried telling the Brit public the truth! German high command incompetence, major espionage failures & having an authoritarian hierarchy cost the Nazis dear. Don't forget the Brits voted Churchill out of power as soon as there was a post-war election - being lied to for six years did not sit well in a literally bankrupt Britain.
I take encoragement that even at the height of battle, the censors were indicating the reason for the picture being rejected. The cropped version you surmise could easily have been used with a generic 'how's the war going?' piece for example. We mustn't forget that not only was there a need not to give away details that may apply to a particular raid, but there was an overwhelming need to 'stand up' the misinformation being sent out as misdirection protecting vital secret activities.
Interesting. Thank you IWM
Ironically this video includes something not mentioned in the narration - early examples of cinematography.
Another excellent video, congratulations.
There is an important ongoing war in Europe, which oddly didn't get a mention, considering the amount of war footage coming from it, and the heavy involvement of the UK.
I've never understood the IWM's use of side or angle views of narrators.
Because they are guides, not narrators, with traditional view to object not directly to visitors, encouraging them to view there to, not ono the guide. Its museum, not news tv.
Is this a re-upload of some sort? The thumbnail looks very familiar.
It does. The entire thing felt familiar.
Incredible...just like all the modern color photos that are appearing on the 'net. Incredible = not to be believed.
AI and Photoshop have ruined photography. Give me a roll of 24 anyday. We're lucky enough to live near a small photoshop that still has tanks. They'd never be able to sell them anyways.
Excellent!
Photography gave the home front and their posterity a view of the horrors of war. Black and white photos were bad enough but using modern techniques to colorize them shows that in war there are no victors, just victims. Millions of them.
Interesting post, thanks.
With the recent passing of Falklands conflict photographer Paul G Haley, a photo of whom was at 8.44 in the video, are there any plans to commemorate his passing with a compilation video of some of his iconic Falklands images which form part of your collection? Surely it would be a fitting tribute from the IWM for him and the images he captured of the conflict?
An expartner of mine, her grandfather helped design the early reconnaissance cameras used by the RFC.
An excellent story, well told.
5:30 The side shot should be banned, everyone's sick of it.
Definitely, it was old and worn out 10+ years ago
Illuminating.
Interesting how even a clock in a photo can be dangerous information.
Operation and information precautions are good reasons for measured censorship. But why did they not release the names and titles of those books that were burnt? Curious.
What are you on about? Who burnt books & when? The Nazis had a list of banned books & other publications - they held book burnings, but it was for show with no book titles eliminated totally. Book burnings/bans only work in fiction.
The off-axis camera view of the host talking seems very dated and odd today.
Good Video. Thank You, (Comment #45)
The title of the video was misleading. Only a few seconds were spent explaining censorship. Otherwise, it was very fine video.
Interesting video. But please, please, just talk to camera. It's distracting when you so pointlessly talk to the side. Detracts from an otherwise excellent video.
Cheers.
@2:48 Amateur cell phone Videographers, take note; *Landscape , Landscape , Landscape*
It is becoming increasingly difficult to establish the veracity of modern combat and military images. Using AI or straight-up human intervention in altering images - still or moving - is undermining trust in what is presented to the viewer. Images from the conflict in Ukraine have been shown to have been altered for propaganda purposes. We do not know what to believe anymore. It drives me to my default option: *The state lies to its people.* (Experience taught me this.)
Don't actually tell you why the original photo was censored, but a decent video
@@simonprince987 so the enemy couldn't get feedback on the effectiveness of their attacks... maybe try paying attention 🤷♂️
Imagine if people really talked to you sideways.
That'd be quite annoying.
I wondered about those profile shots too.
Yes, they are trying to be clever but it makes it look amateurish. It's silly and annoying.
Thanks for the film. The IWM is one of my favorite institutions, the task of the IWM is tremendous and valuable and they do an excellent job at it. The IWM has long been a beacon if how war must be remembered and has been an inspiration for similar institutions World wide.
But I cannot say that I am slightly annoyed by the out of proportion (and out of subject) attention to the contribution of woman during wars when woman were merely serving at the homefront. Or, as the female photographer featured in the film, arrived at the front when the War was over. Valuable and beautiful photographs were made by her, but she knew she was merely documenting an aftermath and exposing herself to the dangers of War. If the IWM was founded merely to preserve the memory of service of the four woman in neat uniforms featured in the photo shown in the film (a photo taken in London) then the IWM would not anymore exist today.
I know society was unjust and woman did not share equal rights with men. And I know about bravery of woman at the frontline or in field hospitals within range of the fight in the trenches. My own great aunt Delphine Borginon (belgian citizen) was an ambulance driver for the US forces in France during the First World War. But the suffering and heroism was a male affair, then. (During the World Wars). A lot has changed since then and woman now are not an exception when we mention warriors. They have earned their place now. And that is what the IWM should show: how in modern war soldiers of both sexes are rallying to the cause with equal valor.
But making an interesting film more tedious and less representative by focusing unduly on woman is an aberration and diminishing to the men who fought.
We Will Remember Them.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Thanks for a great, not perfect, but still a great film.
Lieven
Why are these pictures scrolling through so damn *FAST??*
Well..... Fenton certainly proved that the spanner behind the camera does lie!!
Who is the presenter.
@7:29 USAAF Spitfire.
With drones, satellites and phones the battlefield is practically transparent. Each side can know enemy movements as soon as it happens.
That's silly. There's literally dozens of myths floating around as we speak and several wars you have never heard of
As communications technology advanced, the size of the battlefield expanded.
I disagree, battlefields are complex, messy, and 'foggy' places - if what you say was true the overwhelming drone/ISTAR usage by the Israelis would have wrapped ip thier Gaza 'issue' within weeks.
Information censorship has and always will be vital. One perfect example is the accurate (and brave) use of dumb bombs by the Argentinian air forces to strike RN ships. They kept hitting them but the bombs weren't exploding....that fact had to be kept secret....if that if info had got out then the priming distance would have been shortened on the bombs for the next sortie, and numerous ships would have been lost.
I would say yes and no. There are still ways to evade drones.
@@robmax4416 I'm going off what Dylan Burns has reported after being embedded with units in Ukraine. Yeah you can have camouflage over static positions, but there is a reason why SPGs in Ukraine are used as static positions. As soon as they make any movement near the front they get spotted and a $1,000 FPV drone is sent to destroy it.
More accurate than painting in no man’s land:
“Probably a few more armaments factories and not quite so many elephants…”
I love how the thumbnail simply get’s the Vibe across
Great editing
Goodest work
Feel’s way more in touch with Reality when they just get the point out Efficiently instead of rambling on with sterile robotic semantics and failing to even use special words for their Practical meaningless
Cutting the filler
Combat is more horrifying than the worst horror movie. Movies are toned down because the public can't accept the images (UA-cam changes color into B/W when blood is shown.), but movies always raise the bar so future soldiers will be inured to the horrors of war and the carnage of human bodies shredded by iron shrapnel. God forbid the great repression causes low attendance in armed service recruitment. What will we do if nefarious corporations can't control the U.S. war machine/economy to do their bidding?
"The casualty in war is the truth"
The FIRST casualty in war is the truth
In Ukraine, the Americans can see everything on and near the battlefield. What they choose to share is another matter.
@@billyponsonby and having Putin allies in the White House now for 2025-2028 will hurt Ukraine and all the other normal USA allies tremendously- not to mention hurting the USA itself, possibly irreparably…
9:33 - You do know that that photo was 'faked'...?
WW1 Private to risk his life for his country but forbidden to take camera. Hardly for giving away intelligence,more so the folks back home didn't get to see what their loved ones were being forced to endure,literally at gunpoint.
Interesting video spoilt by not looking at me when you are talking to me. Really distracting! Awful psychology.
Nothings changed
Why would it?
Governments still lie to their people.
War, war never changes.
Because we are all wet wipes
No, it's to maintain operational security. If you watched the video instead of reacting reflexively you'd understand that.
Vhut?
Facts.
Oof 😅