War Seen Through The Lens of a Soldier.(Review)

When I was growing up, I used to thumb through my mother's photo album of her post-World War II years in occupied Germany, where she worked first as an American Red Cross "girl," then as a journalist for Stars and Stripes' Weekend magazine. I was mesmerized by the black-and-white snapshots of two clashing worlds: images of bombed-out ruins of cities or orphaned kids were glued in the album alongside shots of officers- club cocktail parties and sailing trips on the Rhine. So I was excited to come across photographer Tony Vaccaro's book, "Entering Germany: 1944-49" (192 pages. Taschen. $30), a remarkable look at this often neglected chapter of history. After the greatest generation whipped the Nazis, there was still another huge task: turning America's devastated enemy into an ally.

A Pennsylvania-born infantryman who carried an Argus C-3 35mm camera into battle, Vaccaro set out to record the brutality of war and took thousands of photographs, from Normandy to the Elbe. After VE Day, he became a photographer for the U.S. State Department in Germany, then joined the staff of Weekend magazine (where, ...