A small box containing six rolls of German Agfa film negatives, carefully wrapped in tracing paper, was found by its new owner in the basement of an old German house. The young German man gave this find to his girlfriend from Poland, saying, “I want nothing to do with this.” And later, as I continued my search for unknown war negatives, I recovered them from her hands.

The box bears the owner’s address, surname, and first name in black ink. Lieutenant Gunter Kögel was from Leipzig and served in the Wehrmacht artillery regiment that was one of the first to invade the Soviet Union from Ukraine. The images depict the German army’s advance through western and central Ukraine toward Moscow at the beginning of the war in 1941.

Lieutenant Koegel captured various scenes of life in Ukrainian towns and villages with his lens. He was interested in everything—from the national costumes of the locals to the architecture of village huts and the decorations of Orthodox churches, even funeral processions. He also photographed numerous combat actions and the everyday lives of German soldiers: the German army’s attack, soldiers’ tents, dugouts, fire control systems, and German artillery fire on Soviet positions from a 105mm light field howitzer (leFH18), as well as the aftermath of the war: Red Army prisoners of war, and hit Soviet light and heavy tanks and aircraft. Nothing escaped the young lieutenant’s curious “tourist” gaze, and thus these previously unknown negatives became a unique front-line diary and a testament to the first months of the monstrous war on the Eastern Front.