An original 1944 Second World War press photograph of British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill inspecting a bazooka, flanked by three-star U.S. Lieutenant General Omar Bradley and Churchill's personal bodyguard, Walter H. Thompson.
Stockholm: Svenska Dagbladets newspaper, 9 May 1944. Photograph. This is an original Second World War press photograph of British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill inspecting a revolutionary anti-tank weapon for infantry, the shoulder-fired rocket launcher known as the bazooka. Churchill is flanked by three-star U.S. Lieutenant General Omar Bradley (right) and Churchill’s personal bodyguard Walter H. Thompson (left).
The gelatin silver print on glossy photo paper measures 5.75 x 4.375 inches. Condition is very good minus, the image of Churchill crisp and clean, with minor blemishes and wear to the edges of the photograph, including a crease at the upper right corner and a fractional loss to the blank background at the upper left. The verso is rich in original provenance, featuring a red inked date of “9/5 1944”, and a typed title “Winston Churchill” as well the purple ink stamp of the archive in which this image resided (“Svenska Dagbladet’s Picture Archive”), a clipping of the caption from the image’s original newspaper publication, and additional notation in black ink in Swedish translating as “Free picture from the American legation.” That presumably refers to the wartime U.S. legation in Stockholm, which would have supplied such photos to Swedish newspapers as wartime publicity. The original, published newspaper clipping caption, also in Swedish, translates as “Churchill recently made an inspection tour of some American armored units stationed in England. In his hand he holds a ‘Bazooka,’ the new American anti-tank weapon, which is operated by two men.” Remnants of brown paper and adhesive scars at the four corners of the verso indicate that a typed caption may also have been affixed to the verso. The photograph is protected within a clear, removable, rigid sleeve.
Churchill was a soldier before he was a politician and maintained a lifelong informed fascination with the minutiae and machinery of combat. The man who began his career as a cavalry officer and participated in the ‘last great cavalry charge in British history’ would later help design the tank, pilot aircraft, direct use of some of the earliest computers (for WWII code breaking), and ultimately preside as Prime Minister over the first British nuclear weapons test. During the Second World War he showed keen interest in – and critical support for – the struggle for technological mastery that would prove as critical to winning the war as men, material, and logistics.
Tanks – destruction of which was the bazooka’s primary purpose – are of particular note. As First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War Churchill advocated for development and application of the tank as a decisive offensive battlefield weapon. The tank would, of course, revolutionize offensive warfare during the Second World War. To the chagrin of the Allies, it was most effectively engineered and employed by Nazi Germany. The bazooka was the U.S. Army’s shoulder-fired anti-tank rocket launcher of World War II. It gave foot soldiers a way to knock out tanks and fortified positions without artillery or anti-tank guns.
Then-three-star Lieutenant General Omar Bradley (1893-1981) would command the U.S. First Army, the American ground force that landed at Omaha and Utah beaches on D-Day. Bradley would become the last American officer to hold five-star rank and the first to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Walter H Thompson (1890-1978), a Scotland Yard Special Branch detective, initially served as Churchill’s personal bodyguard from 1921-1932, returning when the Second World War broke out to protect Churchill throughout the war, from 1939-1945. He later wrote memoirs about his years with Churchill, including I Was Churchill’s Shadow (1951) and Assignment: Churchill (1955).
This press photo once belonged to a newspaper’s working archive. During the first half of the twentieth century, photojournalism grew as a practice, fundamentally changing the way the public interacted with current events. Newspapers assembled expansive archives, including physical copies of all photographs published or deemed useful for potential future use, their versos typically marked with ink stamps and notes providing provenance and captions. Photo departments would often take brush, paint, pencil, and marker to the surface of photographs themselves to edit them before publication. Today these photographs exist as repositories of historical memory, technological artifacts, and often striking pieces of vernacular art. Item #005640
Price: $275.00