I'm Genuinely Having Trouble Breathing After Seeing These 41 Extremely Disturbing And VERY Problematic Historical Photos Barely Anyone Has Seen Before

Recently, I wrote a post about the commonly romanticized historical eras that were actually a lot more messed up than people realize. And one of the top responses on that post was the 1920s, otherwise known as the "roaring '20s."

People cite works like The Great Gatsby in reference to this era, and imagine it as a glamourous time full of flapper dancers, wealth, and cocktails. But in reality, the '20s were a lot more than that. Here are some disturbing images from that decade that you definitely never saw in history class:

Although not to these extremes, it's also interesting how some of these things are still pretty relevant today.

1. This image of a school in New York in 1925, enjoying the supposed "benefits" of having no heat:

2. These little boys — yes, literal children — smoking cigarettes in 1928:

3. This truly shocking ad from the '20s speaks for itself:

4. This photo demonstrating the horrific anti-Japanese movement in 1923, a campaign initiated by the Hollywood Association:

5. This chilling image, also from Berlin, of an extremely crowded house for the homeless in 1920:

6. This absolutely terrifying shot from a Klu Klux Klan (KKK) initiation ceremony in 1925:

7. In this picture from January 1925, Hitler is sitting at his desk. This was 14 years before World War II started, and right before the government ended their ban on the Nazi Party:

8. And this is what Hitler's prison cell looked like only a month prior, when he was incarcerated for attempting to overthrow the government (again, hauntingly, this was long before the Holocaust even began):

9. Here's what a law class at Yale University looked like around this time period — everyone looks, well, the exact same:

10. This horrifying photo of desperately poor women at a mine dump in Manchester, searching the ground for food:

11. This photo of a family's belongings outside their house after being evicted, which was happened pretty frequently given the housing crisis:

12. This hectic photo of immigrants travelling by boat:

13. This photo displaying the extremely high prices of food in Germany, during a period of hyperinflation:

14. And this picture of a woman lighting a fire with paper money during the hyperinflation period, demonstrating just how little value money had in those days:

16. This picture of extreme right-wing individuals in Rome 1922, burning socialist books:

17. You might've never heard about the sixth deadly cholera pandemic, which spanned from about 1899–1923. Here is an image of fishermen's wives getting vaccinated for cholera by officials in Tokyo:

18. This line at a soup kitchen in Berlin during a period of high inflation:

19. This advertisement may be visually beautiful, but it just screams "patriarchy" to me:

20. This image, displaying the horrible conditions as a result of "religious riots" in San Luis Potosi, Mexico in 1926:

21. This image of a burned Ireland city after an attack from the British:

22. I fear the slogan in this cigarettes ad may not have aged well, given all we know about smoking today:

23. This photo of poor people living in Paris, waiting to fill their carts with coal:

24. This sad image from an orphanage in 1925 in Russia:

25. This lonely sailor from the Navy looking forlornly at his ship from the shore of the Galapagos:

26. The idea of being a housewife is frightening enough for me, an ambitious Gen Z woman. But this image of a 1920s housewife wearing an "anti-dust hood" takes that terror to a whole new level:

27. This picture of an unemployed woman selling apples on the street during the Great Depression:

28. This image, which looks like a simple photo of men on a train in Berlin...until you realize the train was being used as emergency housing, and the men are actually sleeping in the railway cars:

29. This photo from a Klu Klux Klan parade in Washington in 1925 makes me shudder:

30. These people living in poverty, waiting in line to buy milk for 11 cents per quart:

31. This horrible photo of refugees in Germany in 1924 living in an opera house as a result of the housing crisis:

32. This truly horrible ad for a tobacco company:

33. This strong criticism of women's suffrage, distributed in Tennessee in 1920:

34. This shot from the prohibition era of Virginia police officers investigating underneath a sailor's mattress, where they found a whopping 191 bottles of liquor:

35. This photo of an "opium den" in New York, when the harmful drug was alarmingly popular:

36. This picture of former service workers outside their tent homes, protesting eviction:

37. This image of babies sharing cribs at an overcrowded hospital in China in 1925:

38. This picture from a hotel in 1926 that makes a pretty wild demand:

39. This attempt at smuggling rum across the Mexican border into the United States during the prohibition era:

40. This seemingly innocent shot of professional racing driver Barney Oldfield — you'll notice he's wearing zero protective equipment other than a pair of goggles on his forehead, and there's a cigar in his mouth:

41. And finally, this one isn't awful so much as weird — but here's what people wore when curling in the 1920s:

Which image shocked you the most? Any other facts about the 1920s you'd like to share? Tell us in the comments below.

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