Model. Surrealist. Photographer. World War II correspondent. Lee Miller's life reads like a M masterclass in living several different lives in one lifetime. "She was the nearest thing I knew to a mid-20th century Renaissance woman," said fellow World War II photojournalist David E Scherman. Perhaps her most remarkable work is from her time as a World War II photojournalist and correspondent, documenting women's war effort in Britain, the Siege of St Malo, the Alsace Campaign and the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps.
A fractured childhood
Elizabeth 'Lee' Miller was born on 23 April 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York, to Florence and Theodore Miller. Growing up on a farm provided near endless possibilities for adventure and Theodore, a mechanical engineer, would treat Lee the same as her two brothers, encouraging their shared interests in science and machinery. Lee's favourite toy was a chemistry set, and she was soon introduced to photography when her father installed a darkroom in a cupboard underneath the stairs. Yet Lee's childhood was to end abruptly. At the age of seven she was sexually assaulted, by a family acquaintance. The trauma was to be further aggravated, as the perpetrator infected Lee with gonorrhoea - a venereal disease for which the medical treatment at the time consisted of numerous acid irrigations, administered daily for a year. "It changed her whole life and attitude," her brother, the aviation pioneer John Miller, recalled years later. "She went wild."
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Denne historien er fra Issue 114-utgaven av History of War.
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COUPS & CHAOS
How the French armed forces lost the war in Algeria and almost destroyed French democracy in the process
BATTLE OF ALGIERS
When the Front de libération nationale FLN) took its war to the streets of the capital, France’s military responded with merciless wrath
THE RISE OF ALGERIAN RESISTANCE
How the anti-colonialist struggle around the globe helped inspire Algeria’s liberation movement to organise and fight back
ROOTS OF REVOLUTION
A century of French occupation led to a genocide in Algeria that provoked one of the bloodiest showdowns of the modern age
DWIGHT W BIRDWELL
In the opening hours of the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive, this Specialist Five led his armoured cavalry detachment in repulsing a fierce communist assault against Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon
THE FIVE STRATEGY AND LEADERSHIP
Phillips O’Brien discusses how this quintet of national leaders impacted the course of the Second World War
Great Battles FLODDEN
On the morning of 9 September 1513, King James lV of Scotland stood atop Flodden Hill with what seemed an insurmountable advantage over the English. Yet by the day's end he would lay slain and his army shattered
FERDINAND 'THE BLOODY'
Known for his brutal martial punishment and execution of his own men, Ferdinand Schérner’s ruthlessness was matched only by his devotion to Nazi ideology
AIRBORNE UNDER SIEGE ARNHEM
For nine days the heroic 1st Airborne fought desperately, waiting vainly for relief that never came
SCANDINAVIA UNDER ATTACK
Hitler’s forces smash through Denmark and Norway ina grim foretaste of the terrible fate awaiting the rest of Western Europe
