Today is the 66th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day (VE Day), which marks the end of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.
Today, we uploaded four items into CUL’s Flickr: The Commons Photostream from the Melvin Shaffer collection, showing World War II-related places such as Dachau, Berlin, the Reich Chancellery, and Germany in early May 1945.
Shown right: The Hitler Door, Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 1945, by Melvin C. Shaffer. “This view I call the ‘Hitler Door,’” says Shaffer, “because it is at the rear of the Chancellery and is the one through which you went before going down into the underground headquarters. Out and to the left was the courtyard wherein the cremation of Hitler took place.”
The World War II collections are a just small part of CUL’s 30 digital collections. CUL has embarked upon an ambitious program to digitize its rare, historic holdings from its six special libraries. We have more than 11,000 digitized photographs, manuscripts, imprints, and works of art on a wide array of topics, such as Texas, Mexico, the U.S. West, the Civil War, SMU history, and much more. You may view these items on the CUL Digital Collections web page.